User:Xeeron/policy

Freedom vs Etiquette

In most policy debates, I am argueing against restrictions of content in any form, be it user page, guild page, build page restrictions or a strict enforcement of etiquette. I have a positive outlook on individuals and think that the positive power of creativity and community building that ensues when there are few restrictions will outweight the chaos that might be a by-product. Further, I am strictly on the side of tolerance and freedom: Freedom will inevitably lead to some excesses, but that should be toleranted instead of restricting freedom to prevent them.

Contrary to some others, I do believe that wikis and democracy are not exclusive of each other. Democracy is far from perfect, but it is (in my mind) still the best form of organization for human societies, including wikis.

Builds

Among editors of the old guildwiki, I might be most reknown (infamous?) for having played a huge part in starting up the build section there. While I have learned plenty about designing reasonable policies and forming consenus, one thing has not changed since the very first stages of the build section there till now: I still believe that builds can be hosted on a wiki and that the wiki structure provides several advantages (e.g. direct links to skills which are updated by other wiki-editors, clever and automatic categorization, an automatic and well designed page for comments, an easy way to change builds once posted) which are hard to emulate in other forms of build listings. It is clear that the guildwiki builds section lead to some controversy among editors and aditional work for sysops, but I feel that most of that controversy can be avoided by more cleverly designed build policies and the small rest that might still survive is more than compensated for by the huge value a build section delivers to normal wiki-users.

Mission statement

My "mission statement" from the 2007-06 bureaucrat election:

In terms of content policy, I support a very wide range of content on the wiki. That is, I would favor non-restrictive policies on user pages, guilds, builds and legacy content. Basically for me, as long as it does not disrupt other content on the wiki in any way, it should not be disallowed hastily. Especially the "social side" of the wiki, which is happening on user and user talk pages is something I would love to see flourish.

Regarding wiki formatting, I freely admit that I am not a coding pro. Maybe for that reason, but also to make it easy for now editors to start contributing, having an easy to use wiki is a prime concern for me. Templates can both be a curse and a blessing there. A curse if they hinder new editors with their complexity, a blessing if they reduce formatting code and are well documented.

When it comes to sysops (not bureaucrats) powers, I hope for a policy that makes the process of becoming sysop reasonably hard, but allows sysops to have a certain flexibility when making their decisions. Not every eventuality can be foreseen and set into policy, that is why we should chose individuals whom we trust to make the right decisions when they encounter a situation which is not covered by policy. Bureaucrats on the other hand should be a measure of last resort which will hopefully rarely be needed, stepping in only asked to because sysop action has been controversial.

Lastly a few words about myself. I have been an editor on guildwiki for a long time, but stopped contributing there a few months before guild wars wiki started up, because I substantially disagreed with the lack of transparency and communication by Gravewit. Once guild wars wiki came around, I joined in from the start hoping this to be a place that carries over all what made guildwiki good, but tweaking those parts which did not work out well there. I played Guildwars since beta and still play both PvP and PvE regularly.

I am usually outspoken, not afraid to tell people when they are wrong, even if they might not like to hear that. In discussions, I will resist social pressure and argue my point, but I am always open to rational arguments and there is a good chance you will get me to change my mind if you have good reasoning to back your position up. Building of networks and all kinds of "court politics" is one of my weaknesses. I tend to view everyone as basically positive every time we meet, even if there is strong evidence to suspect otherwise. So you might describe my social competence at somewhat lacking, but I feel that I make partly up for that by being a very fair minded person. I will never ever pre-judge a person and give everyone a fair chance.

Guidelines instead of Policies

We finally have a guideline policy, so there are several non-formatting guidelines forthcomming. That is great. One huge problem with policies is that they have to be totally waterproof, all-inclusive and very precisely worded. After all, once they are passed people will jump on every single word in there to justify their point in arguements. And the task of changing a policy, even if it is an uncontroversial one, is enormous, normally taking a few months minimum.

Of course there need to be some foundations of the wiki, who do not change every day. Policies are that. However for most tasks, a guideline might be the better idea. Just as a policy, it represents a written down form of consensus. Yet it can be changed much quicker and does not have the binding power that makes wiki lawyers out of people. So what should be a policy, what a guideline? If you feel confident that you can define every case possible, make a policy, else a guideline.

A defense of elections and democracy

Whenever the topic of "leadership" (that is, how to allocate those possitions that, by policy and/or metawiki software are endowed with more powers than normal users) comes up in discussion, sooner or later the usefullness of elections as a means of allocating these positions is called into questions. I will argue here that elections are the best possible means.

The arguement against elections

All arguements usually used against elections boil down to one common thread: "The users do not elect the best candidate". Sometimes this is backed up by assertions that the average user is less well known than the "elite" and thus less able to choose, sometimes an arguement is made that wikis are by construction giving more weight to more knowledgable users and this should also hold in choosing the leaders.

Refuting the counter arguements (part I)

The arguement that the elite will make better choices than the total of the population is far from unproblematic (see part III), but take it as given for the moment. What is notably absent from almost all comments arguing against votes and elections is a proposal of some other procedure that would be superior to elections. No way of chosing a leader is perfect. Comparing elections to a perfect choise is thus misleading (unless the opponents can point out such a perfect way). Elections might fall short of being perfect, but the real comparison is with all other possible ways of choosing. Elections are the best possible alternative as long as they are better than all other methods, not only when they are perfect.

If any alternative method is suggested, it is usually either "discussion" or a form of "staying with the status quo". Lets look at discussion first. This is mostly advocated by proponents of wikis who point out that wikis don't vote on the article content and that wikis are ruled by consensus, not majority. This sentiment runs strong among wiki users and is usually taken for granted. To see why it is none-the-less wrong, it is important to note the difference between ideals and reality. Ideally all decisions on a wiki about content and all other matters would be made by consensus after discussion. It is this ideal that everyone should strive to meet. However, in reality, not all matters are decided by consensus simply because there are always some where consensus can never be reached. Check wikipedia where some articles switch from protected to revert war for months and months for examples. Do not confuse a description of reality with a lack of ideals. It is perfectly possible to try to solve every conflict via consensus and to still realise that some conflicts can not be solved by consensus.

The conflicts that can not be solved by consensus need to be solved otherwise. Without regulation, this often comes down to voting by stealth, where people do informal counts of opinions on the talk page and the minority backs down after lengthy discussion has shown that no consensus can be reached. With a more determined minority, decision can be stalled endlessly. However, some decisions have to be made and can not be stalled, e.g. choosing a person to wield bureaucrat power. Since a wiki can technically not be without a bureaucrat, some means of reliably choosing one need to be made, "discussion" is not enough.

The other form of choosing leaders is usually voiced in the form of "there is nothing wrong with the current ones, so why bother discussing choosing them". Of course this arguement is shortsighted. Somehow those leaders came to the position of power they now have so the question of how best to choose them still remains.

Refuting the counter arguements (part II)

A very unrefined version of argueing against elections is the version saying that "the elite should choose". First off, this only moves the problem, but does not solve it (so how does the elite choose? By vote? By discussion? ...). Second, the biggest problem of who is the elite is almost always ignored, leading to the secondary problem of how membership of the elite is established (by vote? by discussion? ...). The one thing you can be sure of is that 99% of the people making this arguement will count themselves as part of the elite...

Refuting the counter arguements (part III)

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