Topic: Wiki governance (Read 4652 times)

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Relevant self-quote cut-copy-pasted from IRC:


Exact section from the license in question states:

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@nanotube -- Ok then, sounds like a plan...

I might not have much time in the next 48 hours, but I'll almost certainly be able to have a working version before the end of the month of May 2013

That's great! Give it a try and let's see how it works out - no harm it trying. Hopefully we can get away with mostly a copy/paste job from wp :).

^The procedures are well-understood, and already documented as follows:

• Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License <-- open source, with mandatory attribution
• Archiving a talk page: how-to guide detailing the "best common practice" from English Wikipedia
  
  • Talk archive template, From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository <-- Header for the archive. Goes inside for the archive itself
  • Example 1, cleaned-up talk page which has an archive <-- meta-pun intended -- it's the talk page for "Argument_(disambiguation)"
  • Examples 2, 3, 4, 5, etc... From the built-in template documentation <-- This is actually the navigation box template itself
    (clean looking, and user friendly navigation header for the talk page...
    It can simply be {{transcluded}} instead of being manually re-coded each time
  
  Creating new documentation, and other templates can sometimes be non-trivial, but this is neither an unmanageable task, nor a huge amount of wiki-code if we decided to completely do everything from scratch.
  
  ... My own preference however, is to NOT re-invent the wheel, but rather jump through one or two hoops, following the creative commons license "attribution" procedures, and invoke the "copy" and "remix" permissions to adapt the existing work to the specific needs on bitcoin wiki.
  
  Hope this information helps, and I'm volunteering to help fork the the "talk page archiving" implementation & documentation from en.wikipedia.org, and will be careful to avoid a violation of any relevant creative commons license terms (attribution procedures)

No.
A lot of old users were created by spambots, prior edits do not mean a user isn't a spambot.

I used to be able to edit and it isn't telling me to make the payment.  Old users weren't grandfathered in then?

The wiki pages are protected from spam using the BitcoinPayment system. You make a small one-time contribution and then you can edit everything (except pages that are truly locked).

Ideally new users should see a message telling them about this system more prominently, but I don't know how to implement it ... it's possible that only MagicalTux has access to do this kind of change (and he is quite busy).

Have all the wiki pages been locked to editing?

Something has to be done, I see no down side of adopting the proposed "core rules".

I fully agree. What do you think about this (latest) version of the rules?

We haven't defined the exact process for determining and setting these rules yet ... right now that is open for debate, but I'd like to focus on the specific rules, get as wide as possible acceptance on that, and perhaps move on to define processes for changing them later on.

I would support clear rules, clear and transparent process and broad inclusive participation by the community. Basically, the exact opposite of the bitcoin.org management.

@gmaxwell is much more comfortable with rule by decree, as he has demonstrated on the bitcoin.org Press Center debacle. He cannot be trusted with a "community" process because he treats it like peasants petitioning the king. Just go check out the pull requests on bitcoin.org to see how it works: He keeps changing his mind on what the criteria are, applying them any way that supports his predetermined decision, no matter how inconsistent and transparent.

Why should comments on discussion pages _ever_ be removed?
Discussions can be archived if the talk page gets crowded.

We can document how to do this if the need arises.

I support the effort to make this Bitcoin wiki tent bigger. Comments on discussion pages should not be removed until issues are settled. It may help to require references (as in external or notable articles) when disputes cannot be otherwise resolved.

I support ripper234's efforts to establish rules of fair play and consensus building.

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.

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


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

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.

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.
 

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

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.

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.