Wiki Community/Wiki Etiquette

This page is intended to be a discussion of wiki etiquette and how to deal with disputes between editors, problem editors/comments, and so on.

The initial content here isn't intended to reflect format or anything like that; it's just a list of some topics that have come up in the past and might be worth discussing.

• Archiving should be allowed as long as it's not an extended, interwoven discussion.
  

What benefit does it bring, though? Archiving for archiving's sake removes content about X from the page about X. That's not to say it's never a good thing. It's a useful tool in certain circumstances. It can address problems of relevance or messy pages. But it's a means to an end, not an end in itself. Removing information from a page without a specific reason to do so goes against the central purpose of this wiki. —TomGarberson


• It's not removing content Tom...if someone is going to go somewhere and wants RECENT comments, who wants to dig through 3 pages of old comments to get to the new stuff?? —PeterBoulay
  

• In the interest of avoiding having two different discussions on the same topic, I'm going to reply on the Fluffy Donuts page for now, and once we've got the specific case figured out, come back to the general. —tg

• Leaving a message explaining why you reverted (or intend to revert, if they don't fix it?)
  

An edit comment explaining the revert makes the message generally unnecessary.


• Talk pages - worth creating after a couple of consecutive reverts?

• Serious accusations
  

• Barefoot Yoga Studio
  

• Likely sock puppets
  

• Inflammatory comments that are too vague to really evaluate

• Welcoming
  

• Giving them the benefit of the doubt—where does the assumption that they mean well but just don't "get it" end?

• When issues arise and editors discuss resolutions off-wiki, what goes on in that discussion doesn't become a part of the wiki's record. If other people involved in a dispute object, should there be a time when we insist that before changes get made, the discussion occur on the wiki, and not just that it occur?

• What kind of response do they deserve (obviously this is going to vary somewhat depending on the type of threat)
  

• Differentiating between vague, "stop defaming me" type things and actual legal threats. There are pages on the wiki to help differentiate between slander and libel, but the wiki falls under the category of a common carrier, so threatening a suit reveals the person who does to be someone who shows poor form.

• Please don't threaten to quit the wiki over a discussion where someone's opinion differs from yours. It's bad manners. It also tends to stomp on any discussion under way without accomplishing a thing.

• Are they a terrible idea that'll waste excessive amounts of editor time and detract from more productive editing on the wiki?
  

• Will they blow up in your face?