GuildWiki talk:Comments

Comments
The language is a bit stilted, if you can rephrase it to sound less formal, please go ahead.

I have opted to design section headers as part of the first comment in a asection. I often rely on my section header to be there for the text of my comment, and I certainly expect the section header to have been authored by the person who signed the first comment.

It is hard for me to imagine how a comment could vandalize the wiki; if it was gratuitious and had no bearing on the content it is placed in relation to, it would also be considered spam; but a comment can contain markup that affects comments below it, or the page around it, especially if it contained code to change its position. Overly large repetitive or pointless edits could also be considered vandalism, and there should probably be a provision giving users extended arbitration rights over their own talkpages in these cases as well. Hmm, wasn't that the point of doing this in the first place? --◄mendel► 11:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the User talk: provisions would be better collected in their own section. --◄mendel► 13:17, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Should we make a better distinction between vandal spam, spam without purpose, and convo spam, which is usually done by active users in a playful, usually tongue in cheek style that doesn't have malicious intent or uses broken coding?--Łô√ë [[Image:Gigathrash_sig_G.jpg|Ho ho ho!]]îğá †ħŕášħ 13:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Vandal spam is vandalism. Spam is advertising or otherwise unrelated posts completely out of context. I think if a user announces they don't want "convo spam" on their talkpage, we should honor that request. I'm not sure what purpose a distinction would serve. Maybe you can give some examples where this would make a difference? --◄mendel► 13:50, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Why not make it into a generic GW:TALK page that explains the purposes of talk pages and the rules for them, with clarification for User talk pages? --JonTheMon 15:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * linking it via GW:COMM would be optimal redirect imo. &mdash; Scythe   16:35, 10 Dec 2010 (UTC)

Let's Discuss
These are my thoughts. For the most part, this policy is simply a codification of common sense and past actions. That's what a policy should be. There are a few things I would like to see changed, though:
 * 1) Comments may be modified or deleted in case of obscenity, libel, spam, or vandalism... In the case of modification, you should append a signed note to it indicating the change. I think in most of the listed cases a clear edit summary is enough, or in the case of (intentional) vandalism no summary at all, which falls within the scope of GW:QDV. Rollback doesn't even give the option of edit summaries, and requiring the user of the tool to note every instance would be neutering. I've never understood mendel's concern over libel, maybe that's a German thing.
 * 2) On the talk pages of active users, it is up to those users to decide how to treat spam or vandalism. Comments should not be moved off a user's talkpage without their consent. If the spam or vandalism involves external links to illegal or adult comment, it should be removed and probably revision-blasted by a sysop. If the vandalism modifies other users' comments in a malicious (read: non-funny) way, it should be reverted- otherwise the policy would be in conflict with itself. Otherwise I am comfortable with letting the talk page's respective user call the shots. We have occasionally seen topics moved off talk pages to more appropriate venues via the move templates- perhaps this should be requested of the user in the future. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png|link=User:Felix Omni]] 16:03, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Libel is one of the few ways to break a law by writing. I left obscenity and libel out of the list of things talkpage owners can decide, so your "adult content" case is already covered (but this could be made more clear). --◄mendel► 16:46, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Last I checked, libel was punnishable in the states. Given how much of it goes on in any given day, however, I might question how often any is actually punished. Yamagawa 18:26, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Consensus
A section created to serve similarly to the support and oppose sections on a RfA page.

Support

 * 1) Should have been here before. &mdash;  Scythe   21:10, 23 Dec 2010 (UTC)

that's not how it used to work
We'd work on policies until they had consensus, i.e. deal with opposing arguments not by listing them, but by respecting them and working to integrate them. I don't think we should stop that tradition. If we don't, this section is useless. --◄mendel► 08:58, 24 December 2010 (UTC)