Wiki governance

[ripper234]

Update 15 April 2013 - pausing the rules, they are not in effect right now. Discussion about the rules continues.
Update 13 April 2013 - the rules are now in effect. This version will be used until further notice.


Right now the wiki has no functioning admins, and is often riddled with edit wars.
MagicalTux is the de fact owner of the wiki, and sits on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation.

It has been decided that sgornick and myself will be lead admins for the wiki (the process is taking forever, but I hope we'll get there eventually). I believe sgornick is actually too busy to take an active part in wiki adminship (correct me if I'm wrong). Once this happens, there is the question of what exactly we need to do with this power.

First order of business, I would like to recruit more admins, as I also don't have a lot of time and would need considerable help running the wiki. But this is not what this thread is about.

This thread is about what the group of admins should do once it's formed.
I believe that a primary role of the admin group should be to enforce a minimal and vital set of core rules that will contribute to the general health of the wiki.

I would like the community's help in forming this core rule set. The rules in this set should be "last resort" sort of rules - it's rather bad if we ever need to invoke them, but they need to be in place nonetheless.

I have drafted an initial proposal for a way to govern the wiki, with a proposed core ruleset. Please review, edit and discuss. (I prefer discussion here rather than the wiki itself). Feel free to refine/edit my choice of words if you find more appropriate language, and of course to edit the rules themselves. Please only insert rules that you believe will actually be beneficial to the wiki, but also take care not to put in too many rules - we want the rule set to be very minimal, and very rarely enforced.

[1714211511]

1714211511

[gmaxwell]

I don't think think the wiki needs "governance"— or at least the word sort of implies other people being bent to the will of others— thats not very wiki and it's not very Bitcoin either.  The Bitcoin wiki needs more community love and attention, for sure, but the best way to do that is to get more people involved. Sometimes this takes a bit of community building. Please feel free to reach out to me in cases where you think things aren't going well, and I'll gladly wade in and poke things in the right direction.

Making it work well doesn't take people with special rights— though having some active people with admin rights can sometimes be handy— especially now that the pay-for-edit stuff kills drive by spam dead. More voices trumps more special privileges.

[Luke-Jr]

First of all, it is not correct to say none of the current admins do anything. At least nanotube and sgornick have been proactive in managing the wiki recently.

It seems (from the Bitcoin Foundation thread) that the decision to make ripper234 an admin was done without any background check, and his self-nomination made with the intent to abuse power, an intention he has recently made explicit on reddit. Therefore, regardless of whether the Foundation is to manage the wiki or not (it currently does not), ripper234 should probably not be made an admin at this time.

Both proposals under "Future" are probably unnecessary. While certain people occasionally wage edit wars, usually to troll or censor others, the current wiki management seems to be working just fine for the most part. Perhaps a warning/ban rule should be established for the users who vandalise the wiki for trolling and/or censorship to avoid edit wars, but that seems to be the only real problem.

Regarding ripper234's proposed core rules...

• He is linking to a cleanup of the Talk page for Tonal Bitcoin, which was formerly filled with nonsensical trolling. This page was cleaned up to make room for actual discussions. Cleaning up of Talk pages is a fairly standard wiki practice. It is absurd to turn a standard practice into a rule violation.
• This is not Wikipedia. Citations may be preferrable for readers, but are not necessary ordinarily. Original research/creation is also common and necessary practice on this wiki. Points of view are subjective, and are effectively citations in and of themselves - it is absurd to censor a point of view simply because anyone disagrees with it.
• Edit wars are a symptom of trolls/censors getting away with their vandalism. Outright forbidding of them effectively only stops wiki correction (half the "edit war"), making the problem worse. If anything, the root cause should be addressed.

Finally, the wiki should not depend on this majority-rule-by-trolls forum. As long as bans are kept temporary, there shouldn't often be need of appeals; perhaps a special wiki page can be setup where banned users can post a request should there prove to be a need.

[gmaxwell]

It seems like this whole discussion has arisen out of some people on Reddit being (rightfully) unhappy with the description of Litecoin on the Bitcoin wiki, and Ripper234 offering to prevent Luke from editing it if made admin.

But Ripper234, you haven't edited the Wiki since January other than to create the governance page you linked here. Why not try to work out your disagreement with Luke instead of asking for admin access so that you don't even need to try to work with him?  It looks like you've never even edited the page in question.

When there is a disagreement the first recourse should be to expose it and try to work it out... not to ask for admin rights and write essays on governance.   Luke is— for better or worse— one of the more active editors on the Bitcoin wiki and makes a lot of perfectly uncontroversial changes too.
 

[paraipan]

It seems like this whole discussion has arisen out of some people on Reddit being (rightfully) unhappy with the description of Litecoin on the Bitcoin wiki, and Ripper234 offering to prevent Luke from editing it if made admin.

But Ripper234, you haven't edited the Wiki since January other than to create the governance page you linked here. Why not try to work out your disagreement with Luke instead of asking for admin access so that you don't even need to try to work with him?  It looks like you've never even edited the page in question.
...

Thanks for the TL;DR, I didn't know where all of this started. The admins we have now are perfectly fine.




off-topic

Personally, I'm not happy for having to pay the "anti-spam" fee, separately, for both the English and Spanish versions if I want to be able and edit the two.

/off-topic

[Wouter Drucker]

I recognize this problem. It is very prevalent among wiki's all over the world. We need mediators. I'll volunteer, contact me if you want my help.

[ripper234]

Crap, I had a long answer written and my browser crashed. Here goes again.

I don't think think the wiki needs "governance"— or at least the word sort of implies other people being bent to the will of others— thats not very wiki and it's not very Bitcoin either.  The Bitcoin wiki needs more community love and attention, for sure, but the best way to do that is to get more people involved. Sometimes this takes a bit of community building. Please feel free to reach out to me in cases where you think things aren't going well, and I'll gladly wade in and poke things in the right direction.

Making it work well doesn't take people with special rights— though having some active people with admin rights can sometimes be handy— especially now that the pay-for-edit stuff kills drive by spam dead. More voices trumps more special privileges.

I think that 99.9% of the disagreements should be resolved without admin powers or admins. I do think there is a place for admins and rules.

But Ripper234, you haven't edited the Wiki since January other than to create the governance page you linked here.

I never said I have a lot of time to invest in the wiki - actually, I wrote in the Foundation thread that the opposite is true.
I'm not sure that's relevant though.

Why not try to work out your disagreement with Luke instead of asking for admin access so that you don't even need to try to work with him?  It looks like you've never even edited the page in question.

When there is a disagreement the first recourse should be to expose it and try to work it out... not to ask for admin rights and write essays on governance.  Luke is— for better or worse— one of the more active editors on the Bitcoin wiki and makes a lot of perfectly uncontroversial changes too.

I would love to work out our differences, but regardless I think that certain rules must be agreed upon and kept. What do you think about the rules I proposed?
My approach would always be to resolve disagreements first and not rely on the rules, but I want to do it from a place that I'll have the backing of the rules if need be.

I have tried discussing things with Luke-jr in the past, but without luck.
Please read this thread.
I am open to trying once again, but a certain set of core discussion rules must be agreed upon.

First of all, it is not correct to say none of the current admins do anything. At least nanotube and sgornick have been proactive in managing the wiki recently.

This was the state of affairs when I started looking at wiki adminship several months ago. If admins are showing more interest in the wiki now that's great news.

Regarding ripper234's proposed core rules...

• He is linking to a cleanup of the Talk page for Tonal Bitcoin, which was formerly filled with nonsensical trolling. This page was cleaned up to make room for actual discussions. Cleaning up of Talk pages is a fairly standard wiki practice. It is absurd to turn a standard practice into a rule violation.

"Cleaning up" by deleting entire discussions is not standard wiki practice. Discussions on Wikipedia span huge volumes of text ... unlike the articles themselves, there is no problem in leaving these discussion up. This is why I suggested this core rule - discussions (that aren't complete gibrish or spam) should never be deleted / edited away

This is not Wikipedia. Citations may be preferrable for readers, but are not necessary ordinarily. Original research/creation is also common and necessary practice on this wiki. Points of view are subjective, and are effectively citations in and of themselves - it is absurd to censor a point of view simply because anyone disagrees with it.

I am not claiming that we should reach Wikipedia levels of fanaticism in requiring citations everywhere.
On the other hand, the wiki can't be home to every opinion someone has on a Bitcoin related topic.

Suppose I convinced a group of my friends that satoshi has a secret backdoor through which he can make 100,000,000 bitcoin. Would it be ok to put this under "criticism" section of the main Bitcoin article: "According to some, satoshi can create 100,000,000 bitcoins by using a secret backdoor"?

It would not be ok, and this opinion would be promptly deleted.

Your accusations of Litecoin being a pump & dump are not of the same caliber of "wrongness", but it's still beyond the threshold of what I believe is valid as an opinion that should not be represented in the article. I don't want to turn this thread into a specific discussion of Litecoin, but rather stick to the general rule - when an editor's opinion is disputed, he should bring forth citations to support the claim, and sometimes (after proper discussion) he should conceded that this bit of information is too subjective/POV to be included. As I said, let's conduct the specific discussion of Litecoin on a separate thread.
[/quote]

Edit wars are a symptom of trolls/censors getting away with their vandalism. Outright forbidding of them effectively only stops wiki correction (half the "edit war"), making the problem worse. If anything, the root cause should be addressed.

There are other ways to resolve differences instead of waging edit war. One such way would be to open a discussion (here or on the discussion article), and truly listen to each other's opinions. Sometimes, one must concede that his opinion is not acceptable by the majority, and agree not to keep insisting to add his edits by force.

Finally, the wiki should not depend on this majority-rule-by-trolls forum. As long as bans are kept temporary, there shouldn't often be need of appeals; perhaps a special wiki page can be setup where banned users can post a request should there prove to be a need.

In an ideal world, the wiki should reflect "everyone's" opinions. However, "everyone" is sometimes too inclusive, and some opinions are best left out of the wiki.
I don't know of another way to resolve such conflicts except agree to abide by majority rule.
Without this basic agreement, the wiki will continue to be the battlefield for edit wars, which are just not constructive.
[/list]

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

If you don't have the time to invest in the wiki then why are you a good candidate? Admins and moderators need to be actively involved in the community (sockpuppets or not). If you can't do that anymore, you step down (like what has happened on bitcointalk). If you can't do that since the start, then you're not a good candidate for a position of power (unless you're someone who works on the maintenance).

On the other hand, the wiki can't be home to every opinion someone has on a Bitcoin related topic.

yes it can.

User:TradeFortress/Personal_Opinion_Goes_Here
Objective_Article_Goes_Here

[Luke-Jr]

I have tried discussing things with Luke-jr in the past, but without luck.
Please read this thread.
I am open to trying once again, but a certain set of core discussion rules must be agreed upon.

It had nothing to do with luck, and all to do with your disinterest in doing anything other than censoring important information, and not even checking the Talk page for responses.

Regarding ripper234's proposed core rules...

• He is linking to a cleanup of the Talk page for Tonal Bitcoin, which was formerly filled with nonsensical trolling. This page was cleaned up to make room for actual discussions. Cleaning up of Talk pages is a fairly standard wiki practice. It is absurd to turn a standard practice into a rule violation.

"Cleaning up" by deleting entire discussions is not standard wiki practice.

Yes, it is. They remain archived in the Talk page history.

This is why I suggested this core rule - discussions (that aren't complete gibrish or spam) should never be deleted / edited away

Yet the example you gave is actually pretty much a good example of gibberish.

This is not Wikipedia. Citations may be preferrable for readers, but are not necessary ordinarily. Original research/creation is also common and necessary practice on this wiki. Points of view are subjective, and are effectively citations in and of themselves - it is absurd to censor a point of view simply because anyone disagrees with it.

I am not claiming that we should reach Wikipedia levels of fanaticism in requiring citations everywhere.
On the other hand, the wiki can't be home to every opinion someone has on a Bitcoin related topic.

Suppose I convinced a group of my friends that satoshi has a secret backdoor through which he can make 100,000,000 bitcoin. Would it be ok to put this under "criticism" section of the main Bitcoin article: "According to some, satoshi can create 100,000,000 bitcoins by using a secret backdoor"?

It would not be ok, and this opinion would be promptly deleted.

Your accusations of Litecoin being a pump & dump are not of the same caliber of "wrongness", but it's still beyond the threshold of what I believe is valid as an opinion that should not be represented in the article. I don't want to turn this thread into a specific discussion of Litecoin, but rather stick to the general rule - when an editor's opinion is disputed, he should bring forth citations to support the claim, and sometimes (after proper discussion) he should conceded that this bit of information is too subjective/POV to be included. As I said, let's conduct the specific discussion of Litecoin on a separate thread.

Litecoin is in fact a pump and dump. Your desire to censor that does not change that.

Finally, the wiki should not depend on this majority-rule-by-trolls forum. As long as bans are kept temporary, there shouldn't often be need of appeals; perhaps a special wiki page can be setup where banned users can post a request should there prove to be a need.

In an ideal world, the wiki should reflect "everyone's" opinions. However, "everyone" is sometimes too inclusive, and some opinions are best left out of the wiki.
I don't know of another way to resolve such conflicts except agree to abide by majority rule.
Without this basic agreement, the wiki will continue to be the battlefield for edit wars, which are just not constructive.

The point I meant to make is that this forum (BitcoinTalk) is basically 99% trolls, and productive community members avoid it for that reason.
It is not overly useful for real discussions.

[ripper234]

If you don't have the time to invest in the wiki then why are you a good candidate? Admins and moderators need to be actively involved in the community (sockpuppets or not). If you can't do that anymore, you step down (like what has happened on bitcointalk). If you can't do that since the start, then you're not a good candidate for a position of power (unless you're someone who works on the maintenance).

I honestly think that adding me as admin is a positive step, even if you can argue that the step isn't positive enough because I'm not active enough. I agree to that, and this is why I want to add more admins.

On the other hand, the wiki can't be home to every opinion someone has on a Bitcoin related topic.

yes it can.

User:TradeFortress/Personal_Opinion_Goes_Here
Objective_Article_Goes_Here

Yes of course, I'm not talking about a user's own personal page.

"Cleaning up" by deleting entire discussions is not standard wiki practice.

Yes, it is. They remain archived in the Talk page history.

Not good enough. A page's history is not accessible to most visitors. It's true that they can access it if they know where to look, but the plain truth is that if a user visits an empty talk page he will not go digging through history, but rather assume that there aren't any discussions.

In any case, this is not the way things are done on Wikipedia. For reference check out the much used talk page for Bitcoin itself. Discussions are orderly archived, never "cleaned up" by editing them away.

This is why I suggested this core rule - discussions (that aren't complete gibrish or spam) should never be deleted / edited away

Yet the example you gave is actually pretty much a good example of gibberish.

We have different definitions of gibberish then. I won't argue which definition is correct here, that would derail the thread - but the point is that when there is a difference of opinions, someone (a majority, or an admin majority) must decide.

Your accusations of Litecoin being a pump & dump are not of the same caliber of "wrongness", but it's still beyond the threshold of what I believe is valid as an opinion that should not be represented in the article. I don't want to turn this thread into a specific discussion of Litecoin, but rather stick to the general rule - when an editor's opinion is disputed, he should bring forth citations to support the claim, and sometimes (after proper discussion) he should conceded that this bit of information is too subjective/POV to be included. As I said, let's conduct the specific discussion of Litecoin on a separate thread.

Litecoin is in fact a pump and dump. Your desire to censor that does not change that.

Repeating a claim many times does not make it true.

In an ideal world, the wiki should reflect "everyone's" opinions. However, "everyone" is sometimes too inclusive, and some opinions are best left out of the wiki.
I don't know of another way to resolve such conflicts except agree to abide by majority rule.
Without this basic agreement, the wiki will continue to be the battlefield for edit wars, which are just not constructive.

The point I meant to make is that this forum (BitcoinTalk) is basically 99% trolls, and productive community members avoid it for that reason.
It is not overly useful for real discussions.

I disagree, but this is point is off topic anyway so let's not develop it further.

[ripper234]

I'm glad to report that I have been added as a new admin!
Thanks Lindsay, Gavin, Mark, and anyone else who helped make this happen.

I'd like to take this chance and push forward the rules I proposed.
I suppose that I will set a 2 week period to debate, edit and redefine these rules before I (and hopefully other wiki admins) start enforcing them.
How does that sound?

[Luke-Jr]

I'm glad to report that I have been added as a new admin!

What a shame. Given your explicit intention to abuse power, I fear this may result in a need to fork the wiki. Too bad the Foundation seems to not be giving due diligence to its decisions.

Edit: Obviously I'm going to try to work with ripper234 in the meantime, but he has thus far proven unwilling to collaborate fairly.

[ripper234]

What a shame. Given your explicit intention to abuse power, I fear this may result in a need to fork the wiki. Too bad the Foundation seems to not be giving due diligence to its decisions.

Edit: Obviously I'm going to try to work with ripper234 in the meantime, but he has thus far proven unwilling to collaborate fairly.

I am still waiting for a reply to my earlier post on this very thread.

[Stephen Gornick]

I think that 99.9% of the disagreements should be resolved without admin powers or admins. I do think there is a place for admins and rules.

This Bitcoin.it wiki isn't just used for Bitcoin (the software), it is use for and by much of the Bitcoin ecosystem.  That includes third party services, tangentially related projects, and more.

Though the wiki has admins, the admins are frequently going to be less knowledgeable or interested in each particular article's subject.  

Let's take the Tonal bitcoin article.  That's Luke's baby.  He knows more about it, is the most motivated to maintain it, etc.    Therefore, I as an admin generally am going to defer to the domain-specific champion for that article.   If that person feels there is trolling and wants to clean it up I don't want some "wiki governance policy" telling me that removal is prohibited and that I as admin can't just let Luke deal with it.    If he thinks gibberish should be purged on that discussion page for that specific topic, then I'll support Luke with that decision.   Either way, it is inert -- nobody is harmed or misled by the content on the Tonal bitcoin article so I as admin am comfortable letting that be with no intervention as an admin.

Now for topics which are directly related to the Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoin client, Bitcoin protocol or other Bitcoin-project specific areas then having some rules could become necessary, I suppose.  The odd thing is, for those there's almost never been edit wars, incessant trolling, ego trips, etc.    So that's why even without governance there's never been much of a need for administrator intervention with those.

[ripper234]

This Bitcoin.it wiki isn't just used for Bitcoin (the software), it is use for and by much of the Bitcoin ecosystem.  That includes third party services, tangentially related projects, and more.

Though the wiki has admins, the admins are frequently going to be less knowledgeable or interested in each particular article's subject.  

Let's take the Tonal bitcoin article.  That's Luke's baby.  He knows more about it, is the most motivated to maintain it, etc.    Therefore, I as an admin generally am going to defer to the domain-specific champion for that article.   If that person feels there is trolling and wants to clean it up I don't want some "wiki governance policy" telling me that removal is prohibited and that I as admin can't just let Luke deal with it.    If he thinks gibberish should be purged on that discussion page for that specific topic, then I'll support Luke with that decision.   Either way, it is inert -- nobody is harmed or misled by the content on the Tonal bitcoin article so I as admin am comfortable letting that be with no intervention as an admin.

Now for topics which are directly related to the Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoin client, Bitcoin protocol or other Bitcoin-project specific areas then having some rules could become necessary, I suppose.  The odd thing is, for those there's almost never been edit wars, incessant trolling, ego trips, etc.    So that's why even without governance there's never been much of a need for administrator intervention with those.

I don't claim to understand Tonal Bitcoins. I don't know if Luke-jr is the only person who does, or whether more people are interested in this.
I don't even want to get into the "notability argument".

Even though someone is subject matter expert, there are some things that I see as abuse of power.

1. Deletion of discussions. Why deletion is ever better than archival? I don't buy the claim that "it's archived in the history". On Wikipedia old discussion are archived and linked to from the main discussion page - let's keep the same policy here. How can a discussion on a talk page be that big of a "trolling" attempt to warrant deletion?
2. NPOV and  revert/edit wars. Sometimes there's a disagreement on article content. People should avoid edit wars, and in case of doubt open a discussion and reach a consensus. See also My edit war with Luke-jr. I certainly felt like Luke was trying to enforce his view and add his non-objective POV into articles. In this case this was an article that I created, so I can be considered enough of a "subject matter expert".

I would like to discuss any rule violation on a case by case basis. This thread is not meant to discuss any specific rule violation ... but rather to try to reach a broad as possible agreement to the rules we should follow. Did you find any rule which you think require amendment or removal? If so, please edit them. But - I would like to form some sort of commonly agreed upon basis.

[ripper234]

The rules are now in effect. This version will be used until further notice.

[gmaxwell]

I am disappointed in this turn of events.

Though I disagreed with the whole approach of setting a bunch of rules instead of building a community, I thought it wise to hack at the proposed rule a bit in case they were eventually applied.

The page sat with edits made by myself, Ripper234, and Luke in a single state for about two weeks with no further edits— one might have assumed that we'd found a formulation that no one interested found horrible.

Then today in a single series of edits Ripper234 performed a substantial rewrite and declared the page official policy.

This isn't how a community process works and I am disappointed.  I've provided additional commentary at the talk page and I'd suggest further discussion be moved there since the forum appears to be failing as a discussion mechanism for Wiki content in this case.
 

[ripper234]

I am disappointed in this turn of events.

Though I disagreed with the whole approach of setting a bunch of rules instead of building a community, I thought it wise to hack at the proposed rule a bit in case they were eventually applied.

The page sat with edits made by myself, Ripper234, and Luke in a single state for about two weeks with no further edits— one might have assumed that we'd found a formulation that no one interested found horrible.

Then today in a single series of edits Ripper234 performed a substantial rewrite and declared the page official policy.

This isn't how a community process works and I am disappointed.  I've provided additional commentary at the talk page and I'd suggest further discussion be moved there since the forum appears to be failing as a discussion mechanism for Wiki content in this case.
 

1. Since there is both disagreement, and a willingness to discuss the disagreement, I am willing to postpone enforcing the rules until either an agreement is met, or serious discussion about the disagreement stops.

2. I replied to all comments on this bitcointalk thread, but I feel that both you and Luke-jr did not reply to all of my comments, and thus effectively didn't continue the discussion. It is not my job to force you to discuss things - if you want to influence the policy, you should keep debating it if I (as the policy maker in this case) disagree.

3. Luke-jr did a few edits that significantly changed my original proposal, without posting about it here. I consider this trolling, and so I reverted it. I discovered these edits only 1-2 days ago, and reverted them as soon as I found out about them. I am open to reconsider my opinion and everything is debateable.

4. I must insist that this thread be the place to discuss this proposal and not the talk page. People can post comments there, but a link to it should be posted here. This insistence is caused by my workflow, which is email-driven. I have not figured out a clean way to get email notifications whenever a specific wiki article is edited, and since I don't visit the wiki every day, discussions on talk pages feel more difficult and delayed to me. I realize other people might prefer other workflows, but since we're all proficient bitcointalk users and are quite capable of using it, I suggest we just flock to the common communication medium that we can all manage with = bitcointalk.


Regarding your specific comments on the talk page, I haven't had time to review them yet, and will do so when I get a chance to breath (my life is super busy right now).

I repeat:

As long as there is a disagreement about the proposed rules, and a willingness to constructively discuss this disagreement, I will postpone enforcing them and making them official policy. A willingness to discuss them must include replying to comments on this thread in a timely manner. My last post sat idle for 8 days with no reply, so I concluded that nobody is interested or have the time to continue the debate right now.

[ripper234]

Sometimes this takes a bit of community building. Please feel free to reach out to me in cases where you think things aren't going well, and I'll gladly wade in and poke things in the right direction.

I will take you up on that offer in case of specific disagreements in the future.
This post is not about any specific disagreement, but rather about determining a basic code of conduct.

Now that you mention it - there is one disagreement that you might want to give your opinion on, which I touched above.

I would like you to tell me whether you believe that this edit by Luke-jr is positive or negative. I called in trolling in my previous post, and I'm sorry - let's try and stay constructive and avoid name calling.

I believe this edit is not constructive, and thus should have been reverted ... which is what I did.
My reasons for this belief:

An an exception, resolved and/or dead conversations may be pruned as necessary to make cluttered Talk pages more managable.

This goes straight against everything I said in this thread. Luke-jr significantly changed the meaning of the rules I proposed without posting any comment about it here:

"Cleaning up" by deleting entire discussions is not standard wiki practice.

Yes, it is. They remain archived in the Talk page history.

Not good enough. A page's history is not accessible to most visitors. It's true that they can access it if they know where to look, but the plain truth is that if a user visits an empty talk page he will not go digging through history, but rather assume that there aren't any discussions.

In any case, this is not the way things are done on Wikipedia. For reference check out the much used talk page for Bitcoin itself. Discussions are orderly archived, never "cleaned up" by editing them away.

The following parts were deleted from the page by Luke-jr:

# In case of dispute, citations should be brought in to support a POV.
# Citations should be "convincing". Quoting a few opinions and prefixing an opinion with "some claim that" is not cause to violate NPOV.
# No [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_warring edit wars] are allowed.

This is another significant change that was not discussed, but rather silently implemented by Luke-jr.


My edit simply reverted his silent changes.

Again I say - I am open to keep discussing any aspect of the rules, and will not implement them as long as there is a constructive debate going. Going beyond my back and changing my intended meaning is not constructive and will not be tolerated.

Perhaps the fault is mine - I haven't made this request when I started this thread.
I will repeat it here, and I think it should be the basis for further discussion:

It is not ok to make significant edits to the proposed rules without discussing them here constructively and reaching a "sort of conesus" about the proposed changes.

Any edits that contain significant changes, that contradict things I previously wrote here, and are made behind my back without prior consensus, will be reverted.

The purpose is not to enforce our views on each other, but rather find a common ground, that can only be achieved by discussion. I realize that a common ground might not be something that we can actually reach in a finite period of time. In case of a stalemate I will use my "admin superpower" and dictate my view of things, but I hope this will not be necessary, and will definitely refrain from doing this as long as constructive debate is going on.

We might have a disagreement about "what is constructive debate", if we reach that point we'll open that. For now I will assume all of us can recognize constructive debate and separate it from something that is not constructive debate.

Peace out,
Ron

[ripper234]

Another week passes and no reply to my post.

Let me explain my motivation:

1. I do not want my role as admin to mean absolutely zero. I fought to get this admin role, and I intend to use it in a way that I believe benefits the community.
2. On the other hand, I don't want to make arbitrary whim-based decisions.

This post and the Governance wiki entry is an attempt to build up a minimal degree of consensus to what constitutes "fair play", and what doesn't. Once there is general agreement to what constitutes fair play, I will make every attempt possible to convince people violating this to change their behavior.

However, I believe that in order to effectively fulfill this role, some measures are required, which I chose to codify as these rules.

I understand some people feel that my pace here is a bit rushed, or that the wiki shouldn't have any rules at all.

I repeat again: The best way to have an effect on what the core rules will be is to continue the discussion here, and keep on replying to points you disagree with.
Laying silently and/or creating drama is not going to affect the result here, only delay it for a bit until the drama subsides.

For now, I will make another effort to involve more community members in this debate - but make no mistake, I intend to proceed forward even without full agreement from everyone - because such an agreement is an unattainable goal.