GuildWiki talk:Policy

I love the new initiatives on the policy front, Tanaric. And I pretty much agree with all your changes. However, I am slightly concerned that later policy changes may become too arduous if people were to read the bold-face conditions as requiring unanimosity among all editors to enable even the smallest change. In fact, I believe a consensus is, and can be, reached and defined by an overwhelming majority despite objections. I'm splitting hairs, I know, but on issues such as this, a little hair-splitting is probably not a bad idea. -- Bishop [ rap|con ] 18:17, 5 August 2006 (CDT)


 * The process is designed to be difficult&mdash;adding or changing policies generally requires a significant amount of work for the editors who make sure everything is in compliance. Our policies should be flexible, but they should not be swinging back and forth every month or so.


 * That said, here's how I interpret consensus. If everyone who meaningfully contributes to a discussion agrees on a change, that's consensus. Note that I said "meaningfully." If somebody chimes in once, says "no dont change plz thx," and doesn't offer any good reasons why the policy shouldn't change or suggestions to make the change more reasonable, I don't consider his dissent as taking away from consensus.


 * If even one reasonable complaint about a policy change exists, I think it's reasonable to avoid the change. However, I see this as a somewhat recursive process&mdash;you can apply this interpretation of "consensus" to the potential negative as well. If everyone (but possibly the person who raises the complaint) believes that the change is beneficial regardless of the negatives noted in the complaint, consensus is there to go ahead with the change despite the complaint.


 * I believe my interpretation of consensus encompasses what you want to see changed about my proposal. If this is so, I should write up an article about what consensus means and how it's interpreted here at the GuildWiki, and include a better-written version of those last two paragraphs. :)


 * &mdash;Tanaric 18:43, 5 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Yes, I think your definition of consensus is close enough to mine as to be indistinguishable. I merely thought I would mention that a strict interpretation of "no vote can ever be considered binding nor, unless unanimous, indication of consensus." indicates that consensus must be entirely unanimous. I welcome your idea of defining it in a seperate article. -- [[Image:Bishop_icon2.png]] Bishop [ rap|con ] 18:58, 5 August 2006 (CDT)


 * My point with that was that votes should not be the primary means of establishing consensus&mdash;discussion should be. We've recently begun a vote-using trend that I think is harmful to the wiki, so I wanted to establish their lack of credibility right from the start. :) &mdash;Tanaric 19:02, 5 August 2006 (CDT)


 * You and I are obviously on the same page. I'm not going to comment further untill others have chimed in, because this will simply degenerate into a whole lot of patting each other on the back (erh, more than it already has, I mean). -- [[Image:Bishop_icon2.png]] Bishop [ rap|con ] 19:16, 5 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I have to say I agree entirely Tanaric and Bishop. It is often the case that votes are either "for or against" and do not encourage a situation where compromise can be made. I have recently despaired over the way in which decisions for style and formatting have been made, and even the way in which many policy disputes have recently been handled.


 * Good work Tanaric!  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 06:19, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Now that I've found this discussion...I think the idea that we have a vote culture here is overplayed. In all honesty I think the major contributors here are all aware of trying to avoid a vote culture (and have been for some months), consequently I don't think we have many votes. I don't see voting as a major problem, we've had it for some time now but we don't seem to be engaging in it more frequently, in fact I'd say we actually vote less and less now and pretty much use it at the right time, when the discussion has carried on for too long, arguments are going round in circles and people are getting frustrated and all relevent arguments have been raised. --Xasxas256 07:21, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * That's a fair interpretation&mdash;I'm still in the "one vote is too many" camp, but that's probably because I was here back in the formative stages of the wiki, and we never used votes then. I'm willing to (grudgingly) accept them as a measure of gauging current opinion. The policy is show that votes can only be used in this manner.


 * Even if the notion of a burgeoning vote culture is overplayed, it's important to codify things in such a way that no vote culture can arise. If you can word my vote/consensus prohibition that better portrays the intent of the community, by all means, please do so. :) &mdash;Tanaric 07:52, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I would bring up Tetris' vote on bound spirits and that new unknown user's vote on sockpuppetry as good examples of recent premature votes that did not try to achieve a collective understanding of the issue. Basically, I think it should be noted somewhere that "votes" cannot be used to bring about an end to a discussion. Votes should be used when the community is trying to choose whether to go with BeastBox1, 2 or 7, but not when one side in a debate feels he has seemingly more support and so he says, well, let's just vote on it! --Karlos 11:15, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I think Xasxas256 expressed the reasoning behind the bound spirit vote. "pretty much use it at the right time, when the discussion has carried on for too long, arguments are going round in circles and people are getting frustrated and all relevent arguments have been raised." The discussion would have never came to a compromise. But there were faults with the vote. It was in bas taste that you, Karlos, were not made aware and that the vote only lasted a week. Other than that, it just didn't seem like too many users cared about the discussion about bound spirits.


 * I would also much rather have discussions to finalize situations and not turn to voting. But when two or three users are set in their way of thinking and will not budge, then that leaves a precarious situation. It dissuades other users from participating in the discussion, and if the discussion is heated enough, those that do are dismissed it seems. Those kind of discussions should be brought to an end then and there. Not only is compromise near impossible, but it looks bad for the wiki, especially when it's prominent users of the community going at it. *looks innocent* Just recalling what I've seen in the past. One question that either no one has thought of, or everyone knows about it, but me. What would happen if a discussion went around in circles for weeks, no compromise is made, no real concensus has been shown, and we are trying to lessen the number of votes? -Gares 13:55, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * If discussion cannot reach a consensus, there must be a reason. Two or three users won't be stubborn about something unless there's a good reason to be stubborn. If the change isn't clearly, unequivically good, we shouldn't be making the change. That's the reasoning behind the vote policy as written.


 * When we need a beast box, it doesn't matter if one wins by a one-vote margin, because they're all essentially the same&mdash;it's a question of style and preference. We need a beast box, and there's no point in delaying it further when the discussion is down to whether light red or dark red looks better. When it comes to policy, there's no need to finalize something. If a change never gets consensus/approved, that's totally okay. If a proposed new policy never gets the backing of the community, that's okay too. We don't need half-supported, controversial policies on the wiki. We need well-written guidelines of the mores that already exist. &mdash;Tanaric 14:24, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * In the case of articles at large I can understand that voting is sometimes a reasonable way of resolving a debate, but I think that it's important that GuildWiki policy only gets changed/implemented/removed when done so with fully reasoned argument and not simply a tick box.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 15:22, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I noticed a reference to "the vote policy as written". To the best oif my knowledge, there is no formal policy on voting, and I honestly do not believe we should have a formal policy on it (to me, a policy implies condoning the migration to a vote culture - others may interpret this differently).  However, we do have voting guidelines at Category:Votes.  Those guidelines should be better clarified to indicate when a vote should and should not be used (among other shortcomings of the guidelines as currently written). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:47, 6 August 2006 (CDT)

Open proxies policy
This was brought up in the aftermath of the "Stabber" flareup but was subsequently not followed through. I think GuildWiki should seriously consider no open proxies policy like WP:NOP to prevent all future cases of abuse. We already know that at least some of the characters involved in the "Stabber" incident used Tor proxies. Here is a dynamically maintained list of known Tor proxies. I think GuildWiki should follow Wikipedia's lead and indefinitely block all these and other open proxies. 64.78.164.226 23:43, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Why are you posting through an anonymizer yourself? Just curious. --Karlos 00:45, 7 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Because of size and exposure differences, Wikipedia faces different issues than we do. Blocking, or rather attempting to block, proxy IP addresses are an uphill battle that we cannot win or even begin to fight. Your own origination IP is an excellent example; there is absolutely no way for us, as a community, to tell if you are genuinely using an almost impossibly non-descript access point, using an open proxy, or exploiting a compromised machine.


 * The only advantage we could gain from blocking known TOR-nodes, for instance, would be to raise the bar slightly for those who wish anonymity. However, that is more likely to prove a negative (by preventing genuinely privacy-concerned people from editing the wiki) than a positive, because determined, disruptive users with a real intent to cause harm could do so anyway.


 * The only way we could really prevent these issues would be to change policy to favor registered, long-term users over anons or newly registered ones. And that goes against what we stand for and how we do things (and Karlos regularly takes heat for having this view), so that is not an option. Instead, I think we're better off doing what we have been all along, which is to handle each issue as it crops up. -- [[Image:Bishop_icon2.png]] Bishop [ rap|con ] 00:54, 7 August 2006 (CDT)

Page protection
While I'm at it, there are a lot of pages that should be (semi-)protected but aren't. These are pages that new, unregistered, or non-admin users have no business editing. Protecting them is harmless as only admins edit them anyhow, and it would prevent pointless drama such as in Template talk:Cleanup. 64.78.164.226 00:07, 7 August 2006 (CDT)
 * Project:Policy (the parent of this talk page) should be semi-protected at least, and possibly fully protected.
 * Settled policies such as GW:ULC, GW:YAV, GW:CONTENT, etc. should be fully protected.
 * Official listing pages such as Project:Administrators, Project:Fansite status and so on.
 * All official templates should be semi-protected at least and preferably fully protected. The following is an incomplete list of such templates.
 * , and
 * and
 * All templates in the series
 * and
 * and
 * All templates in the series
 * and
 * All templates in the series
 * and
 * and
 * I agree with you, but if you look at Template talk:ban you'll see what happened when I protected that. --Rainith 00:24, 7 August 2006 (CDT)
 * That objection was raised by User:Stabber who is now absent/exiled. We can restart the debate and see if there has been a shift in consensus. 64.78.164.226 00:28, 7 August 2006 (CDT)