Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:22, 20 December 2005

um, don't you need a number of collaborating editors before you can call an article an actual Misplaced Pages guideline?--MONGO 05:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

It is a guideline for all those who accept its use. Just like every other rule, law and guideline, it gets its power through consent. I consent to this guideline as does any other person who edits it. --Peter McConaughey 19:06, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Consistency

The guideline template delineates standards that are used by only part of the members of Misplaced Pages. If we want to use a different template to delineate that function, we have to be consistent about it, including use on guidelines that are similar to this one, like the Misplaced Pages:One-revert rule. --Peter McConaughey 20:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Not a guideline (yet)

There needs to be some sort of concensus that this is a generally accepted guideline before adding the tag onto the page. Take a look at Misplaced Pages:Policies and guidelines for more info. Carbonite | Talk 20:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Why don't you put a proposed tag on any of dozens of other guidelines that people created without going through the Cabal's official Misplaced Pages:Policies and guidelines? What difference is there? The only difference is that the Cabal loses power when people are voluntarily nice to each other. A policy like this one, where people show respect for other editors without being forced goes against your Modus operandi of required top-down power and despotism at Misplaced Pages.

Carbonite, you have no clothes on. --Peter McConaughey 20:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

No personal attacks, please. Note that I've also changed the one-revert rule page to a proposed guideline. Carbonite | Talk 20:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

See how many rules you have to make up to avoid showing respect to someone? I suggest talking about things and incorporating the contributions of others if you want the same respect shown to you. --Peter McConaughey 21:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

What rules have I made up? There's a big difference between making up rules and asking you to respect the rules we currently have. I'm not asking for respect. Carbonite | Talk 21:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

You're not asking for respect? If "No personal attacks, please," isn't a request, the only other possiblity is that it's a demand. If that is the case, please allow me to rephrase:

See how many rules the cabal has to make up to avoid showing respect to people? I suggest talking about things, incorporating the contributions of others, and thereby winning their esteem instead of demanding that people give you respect by citing "rules." --Peter McConaughey 03:16, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

To clarify: I'm not asking for, requesting, demanding or expecting respect from anyone. If my actions cause an editor to respect me, that's a great bonus, but I'm not here to ask people for respect. "No personal attacks" isn't about respect, it's about civility. As that policy says "We cannot always expect people to love, honor, obey, or even respect another. But we have every right to demand civility." Carbonite | Talk 03:22, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be part of the "obey" thing? --Peter McConaughey 04:29, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. Peter, please see Misplaced Pages:How to create policy. If you would like this to be an enforced policy or guideline, this will guide you through the proper steps. Of course, you can always just follow a personal policy as many editors do with the 1 revert rule. --LV 21:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I've protected the page to cool-down the dispute. Peter, please listen to some of the other editors's advice, and also try and follow the guideline on your proposed page. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 21:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

LMAO You can take off the protection tag. I won't restore any more reverts. If the Cabal doesn't want to call this a guideline, that is fine with me. I don't see any difference between this and 1RR, but you're the Cabal and what the Cabal says goes.

Why don't we just remove the tag altogether? I have no interest in subjecting the limits that I impose on myself to the acceptance of the Cabal. --Peter McConaughey 21:19, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the others. I have no doubt that your proposal is made in good faith, but if you want this to pass without a hitch, you should go through the proper process. As for other guidelines, they were either discussed in other places, or have generally been followed by Wikipedians for a long time. New guidelines should go through the approval process. The very existence of the {{proposed}} template suggests that this is the proper way to go about getting a guideline approved. --Deathphoenix 21:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't consider this to be a proposal. It is a guideline that I follow. If the Cabal has a monopoly on what can be called a "guideline," then I will call it something else. The Cabal's official approval process doesn't interest me. --Peter McConaughey 21:19, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

See also

• Misplaced Pages:Harmonious editing club

Questions

Do I assume correctly that being bold is still possible under this proposed policy, as in: instead of reverting someone else's changes incorporate them with any changes you want to add? Perhaps something to that effect should be added to the policy? Is the goal to reduce the chances of inadvertent censorship that often happens with reverting? This proposed policy makes no mention of what to do after the other side has been given an opportunity to debate but chooses not to? What to do in a situation of outright censorship or obfuscation, an assumption of good faith would be incorrect and may decrease the chance of discerning the other editors' duplicitous partisan motivations? I agree it is good to give fellow editors the benefit of the doubt and work positively, but directly assuming anything can be detrimental to comprehension and awareness. zen master T 21:52, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Excellent point. I've started adding that under advanced methods. --Peter McConaughey 21:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the "assume good faith" policy should be renamed to "give the benefit of the doubt (but don't necessarily stop doubting or thinking)" policy, or some such. zen master T 22:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

"Benefit of the doubt" is close to the way I think about it, but it is perhaps not strong enough for me. The key word in that guideline is "assume." Misplaced Pages's "assume good faith" tells us to trust people as a default. If there is any way to attribute good motivations to their actions, we should do so. Even members of the Cabal and vandals desire to make Misplaced Pages strong in their own disparate misguided ways.

We are all pushing Misplaced Pages in generally the same direction, but exploring different paths to getting there. Social Darwinism will eventually weed out the paths that are least efficient. In a worst-case scenario, the Cabal would win their fight to control Misplaced Pages and Social Darwinism would find the entire project less fit to survive than its competitors, but even Misplaced Pages's death would promote knowledge of what went wrong and a more viable collective intelligence in the future.

We can assume good faith in every instance where bad faith has not been established because good faith for the strength of Misplaced Pages is the underlying motivation for almost all members, even those that may appear to have a strange way of showing it. More importantly, the collective intelligence of a vast collaborative consensus is far greater than any individual's intelligence quota. When we subjugate ourselves to the will of the entire collective (not the control of a biased minority like the Cabal), we see the ebbs and flows of the edit process as necessary fluctuations in Misplaced Pages's overall evolutionary growth. --Peter McConaughey 03:03, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Assuming is exactly the wrong thing we should be encouraging. 80% of the time I've seen someone refer to "assume good faith" it's been by outright POV pushers, refering to that policy after a conflict has already started can have the affect of stifling critical thought, which I hope you will agree would be a bad thing? Misplaced Pages has the potential to be a great and vast collaborative consensus collective intelligence wonderland but it's a long ways off yet. "Give the benefit of the doubt" has the consensus building positivity plus no potential to be used to stifle. zen master T 03:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The cabal can obfuscate "Give the benefit of the doubt" just as easily as "assume good faith." In the end, it is all just words. We choose to follow the decorum to which we consent. A strong set of laws have the strong consent of the governed. A weak set of laws does not. I do not consent to "assume good faith" being used to stifle my critical thought, so it doesn't. I didn't have to ask permission. I didn't have to take a stand. I didn't have to change the wording or become aggressive in any manner to make that happen, because I am the only person who can control my mind. Nobody else has even the slightest ability to stifle my critical thought. --Peter McConaughey 04:25, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I think "assume" has the effect of causing people to just accept a course of action unquestioningly whereas giving someone the benefit of the doubt doesn't mean you have to stop doubting. Also, benefit of the doubt is more clear it is a good policy the first time or at least not endlessly. I am not concerned about you or I being stifled necessarily but how the phrase is or will be used upon the masses, I've seen it used problematically (80% of the time), the policy should be renamed or editors should be flagged when they refer to it for the purpose of stifling. zen master T 06:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I think most people would agree with you, but we can let them choose for themselves. I've made a Self-rule template to create pages such as the one you propose. We don't have to ask the Cabal to change their made up "guidelines" that they enforce as canon law. As Wikipedians, we can rule ourselves. --Peter McConaughey 06:01, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

How can people choose for themselves if they are perhaps stifled by a policy that advocates assumption? I don't suppose the cabal will hold itself to higher standards too? zen master T 08:37, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

The Cabal doesn't have the inherent ability to control people. Those who submit themselves to the claimed authority of the Cabal give it its power. (This isn't much different than WP:TINC, except for the blatant internal inconsistency of the TINC first asserting that a Cabal can exist, and later asserting that it can't.)

It's funny to watch the subtle ways that the Cabal claims authority. For instance, when Carbonite "moved" the Zero-revert rule to my user space, he wrote in his edit summary, "template has been moved to user space," as if it were an act of God that he was reporting as a dispassionate observer.

An even funnier one was last night when Carbonite forced jpgordon into a "time out": User_talk:Jpgordon#Personal_attack.

In response, jpgordon says "Good call." --Peter McConaughey 19:32, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

The guideline itself

Pity all the discussion here is meta-discussion, about whether it's a guideline or not! Anyway I like this guideline a lot and I try to follow it. Basically I think reverting any good faith change upsets people. Maybe the reverter didn't know it was a good faith change, but still. I make a slight exception for anons' edits, because it's really hard to tell the difference between vandalism and good faith but bad changes, and it's not generally worth the time to find out. But when any two people are honestly trying to improve an article - whatever their differences in point of view - the whole process is generally improved by never reverting anything. Stevage 21:22, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposed re-wording

The "This excludes vandalism" bit is just a bit ugly.

Stevage 21:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism and "unnecessary incivility," apparently. Tom Harrison 21:58, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that sentence should be reworded to take into account being bold, as in: instead of removing other editors' changes incorporate them into your own. Though, discussions should always be encouraged in parallel. zen master T 22:04, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

True. Re: incivility, that's a talk-page issue, and we're probably dealing with articles here, no? Stevage 22:09, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I like the "improve". Perhaps we should go for wording that even more completely disassociates between how an editor and what an editor are saying, which are two separate considerations. The guideline could state something to the effect of: if you don't like the way an editor presents or organizes facts or sources then feel free to try to add clarity, but if you don't like what they are saying then you should be aware wikipedia includes all citable content and viewpoints from various sources. Though, there is also the perhaps separate possiblity of valid sources being illegitimately recharacterized dismissively. How should someone that follows the 0RR go about trying to "improve" upon an outright deletion or viewpoint mischaracterization? In that case the article should include a superset of the various presentation methods perhaps, though generally and to be neutral each viewpoint should be allowed to characterize itself. zen master T 22:22, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I think those are some excellent ideas. I lean toward objectively defining things like vandalism as much as possible. --Peter McConaughey 22:47, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

• It's mostly a matter of common sense, and I don't see how you could define it otherwise without resorting to instruction creep. Note also that some edits (especially by newbies) may be good faith but a patently bad idea, and thus warrant reverting. Radiant_>|< 01:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Objection to the 0RR

Its intent and spirit is not meaningfully different from the 1RR. Since there's no need to have redundant guidelines, I suggest we merge the two, before somebody comes up with a 2RR and a 4RR. Radiant_>|< 23:42, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

agree Jbamb 23:43, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

In my interpretation this is fundamentally different, the 1RR, like 3RR, may encourage an us vs them sort of content "winner" take all mentality, whereas 0RR encourages including other people's content, sources and viewpoint in addition to your own. An article should be a superset of all includable (citable, notable) sources and viewpoints. Feel free to create a counter guideline to the effect of "editors who object to WP:0RR". zen master T 00:02, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that you could combine any number of reverts together into one article, but the concept of never reverting requires humility and produces a content-friendly environment that you just don't find when egos are flaired by reverts. --Peter McConaughey 00:11, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• That view is idealistic but not based on reality. You're assuming that nobody in good faith ever makes an inappropriate addition, or places things in the wrong article, or renames or categorizes an article counter to conventions, etc. I would strongly recommend that you spend an hour on the Recent Changes patrol to find out entirely how unrealistic that view actually is. Radiant_>|< 01:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Some viewpoints need not be considered... there are vandals, trolls, vanity posts, etc...

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbamb (talk • contribs)

• Exactly. Do not revert unless you have a very good reason. And that, my friend, is exactly what the WP:1RR states, hence my suggestion to merge the bunch. Radiant_>|< 01:13, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

There's an important difference: the 0RR says "don't revert" whereas the 1RR says "if someone reverts you, don't revert" back. In that sense, they are complementary. It's not clear whether 1RR says that reverting is ok or not. I would like to see a single guideline that brings the two together. Essentially, what we have is that 3RR is a binding rule that all must obey. 1RR is a good rule for a pleasant working environment (and one I follow almost always). 0RR is an ideal that takes a bit more work, but keeps everyone happy if the working environment is already positive. 1RR can work in warzones with a bit of cooperation (sort of like a ceasefire) - 0RR probably can't. Stevage 01:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• But the 0RR won't keep everybody happy, because people regularly make well-intended but pointless or inappropriate edits (not to mention honest mistakes) that have to be undone. It degrades article quality. Radiant_>|< 01:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• The WP:1RR is harder to implement than the WP:0RR. Once a revert has been made, ego comes into play and everyone's tolerance level shrinks. It takes an incredible amount of self control to show a reverter more respect than he shows you. The environment is much friendlier when nobody shows disrespect in the first place. --Peter McConaughey 02:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• Harder to implement? Both are behavioral suggestions. Neither is enforceable. What, then, do you mean by 'implement'? Radiant_>|< 03:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps time should be a consideration: "Don't revert any change, except for vandalism, within 12 hours of your noticing it". Stevage 02:46, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• Arbitrary time limits are unwiki. Also, see my comment above. Radiant_>|< 03:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Revert only when necessary

I've created a proposed guideline that basically covers the essentials of the 0RR, 1RR, and 3RR (although this is a policy and needs to have its own page). I believe that much (possibly all) of the content from the 0RR and 1RR pages could be merged there. This would avoid creating additional "rules" (I'm sure the 2RR is on the horizon) and keep the guidelines in a central location. Please edit the proposal mercilessly. Carbonite | Talk 03:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposed merge into Misplaced Pages:Revert only when necessary

I propose that this page be merged into the more general Misplaced Pages:Revert only when necessary. As I mentioned above, having a single page would avoid creating additional pages for each new "rule" (I'm sure the 2RR is on the horizon) and keep the guidelines in a central location. Carbonite | Talk 16:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• Agree. -- Jbamb 16:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

This Carbonite just doesn't give up, does he? If he can't delete it, he moves it. When he gets busted for moving it and it gets moved back, he makes up a guideline that sounds the same but isn't and proposes a merge. I've seen him do similar and worse things with articles.

I've got an alternate merge proposal. How about User:Carbonite & Misplaced Pages:Troll? --Peter McConaughey 19:22, 20 December 2005 (UTC)