WikiIndex:Policies and Guidelines

I (Lumenos) searched for some policy pages and found only WikiIndex:Editing_etiquette. A block policy doesn't exist (aside from "spam") and is being discussed on WikiIndex_talk:Blocking_Policy. This seemed to be a source of confusion and conflict so I made this article to sort through a number of these specific issues. Please add your suggestions or questions here or on the talk page. (You can create user name links easily with "~~~" or "~~~~".)

Temporary purpose of this article

Eventually this article should describe "the polices" of WikiIndex, but there is more than one way "the policies" may be defined or created.

Being that the majority of WikiIndex articles are OpenEdit, and these sorts of wikis generally claim to favor consensus, I (Lumenos) have taken the initiative to try to build consensus and measure consensus. In so doing I realize that this will have to be broken into the following projects:

• Describe the policy of active administration:
  • The claimed or idealistic policies of active administrators.
  • A description of how the administration actually behaves (from the view of editors or critics who intend to alert people of the "actual" policies or the way the wiki is actually run).
• Describe consensus among editors (this is particularly important in an OpenEdit wiki, in light of "editors powers" listed in the section "Enforcement against editors". Editors do seem to have a say in some policies, even when certain sysops do not agree.):
  • Describe the claimed or idealistic policies of the wiki editors by the following criteria:
    • "Measured" by petitions (if they participate in this process).
    • "Measured" by requests or ideals expressed a dialogs such as talk pages (if the editors are not directly participating in petitions).
  • A description of how the editors actually behave (based on edit histories of active editors) and how this may influence the content or "policy" of WikiIndex.

Enforcement policies

All policies should (eventually) include what type of "enforcement" is appropriate for the "violation". Block policy is being discussed here. I (Lumenos) suggest we clearly separate the etiquette policy from the enforcement policy, because "enforcing politeness" isn't always polite nor is is always practical at archiving its ends.

Enforcement against editors

Here are some suggested enforcement categories against editor's "violations" of policy:

• (Editor's powers):
  • Etiquette: Guide to help polite people to be polite. Does not imply any enforcement. (You may edit this page.)
  • Tag: Placing "warning tags" on info that is dubious, impolite, etc. What categories of info warrants this? You could alternatively change the information (without deleting or reverting).
  • Eventual deletion: What categories of info should be deleted eventually, if the warning tags are ignored?
  • Request or alert: Tell the violator of the policy about your perception and reasoning. This could be done on their talk page or on the talk page of articles.
  • Speedy deletion
• (Administrative powers):
  • Oversite: A term that means the information will be completely vaporized! Well almost.
  • Block editor: See WikiIndex_talk:Blocking_Policy.

Enforcement against administrators

("Administrators" are sysops or bureaucrats)

I (Lumenos) suggest editors are welcome to enforce policy that may be in conflict with administrators actions. See "Editors power's" above for things you can do without administrative assistance.

The rest of this section is about how you may enforce policy against administrators, if you convince other administrators that they have violated policy.

Communicating during blocks

Before attempting to enforce policy against an administrator, you may want to get other administrator's or editors email addresses, or find other websites where they can be contacted, so that you will be able to communicate with them, if you get blocked.

Suggested requests

What you may request of other administrators if you have evidence that an administrator is in violation of policy:

• Undoing the block or protection
• Dispute resolution (Ask another sysop)
• Demotion of the administrator (temporarily or permanently)

Bring this evidence

Don't waste their time, bring your evidence and be concise. For example, if you believe a sysop has blocked a user or protected a page without good reason. Do the following:

• Copy their stated reason for the blocks, protection, or deletion. (This should be in the block log, protection log, or deletion log. If they did not leave a reason, state that they left no reason.)
• Copy the date of the block, so the block can be found easily in the log.
• A link to the diff showing the "offenses" which were their stated reason for the block.
• State your request (see "Suggested requests", above)
• Explain which policy you believe they have violated.
• Sometimes the evidence is in the user contributions of a blocked user but other times a good administrator deletes edits that merit a block but are unsuitable to be in a page history, gorssly insulting, obscene etc. Then others ask, "Why did you block that user? I can't see any bad edits." Proxima Centauri 10:42, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

Examples? Phantom Hoover 10:59, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

Biographical info

Before biographical information should be posted about anyone (or their pseudonym), both of the following criteria should be met:

1. The person meets WikiIndex's notability requirement.
2. The information was obtained "legitimately": This may be defined by their level of consent, or at least it would probably have to be within legal requirements or WikiIndex may be subject to a lawsuit.

Who is "notable" enough to warrant biographical info be posted about them?

---

Biographical information should not be included if it does not meet the following standard:

For now Lumenos suggests the standard be defined by "local" laws and Wikipedia's policy on biographical info until a standard more specific to WikiIndex can be established.

Since this is WikiIndex, I'd stick to people who are important in the world of Wikis, such as creators of established engines and people like Jimmy Wales. For guidelines on how to write the biographies, Wikipedia does look like a good model to follow. Felix Pleşoianu | talk 12:07, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

I'd really like to eventually allow editors to post some reviews of the administration of wikis, but that gets into the shady area of libel and it seems like we may just be better off with excluding all of it, if people are just gonna war about it all the time. It is fairly notable information, but I suppose the talk pages are serving that purpose alright for now. Lumenos 17:07, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

Libel's not really your problem; the problem is the quality being compromised by people with unjustified vendettas putting silly claims there. Phantom Hoover 17:12, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

True, libel is not presently the problem. I'm glad you clarified that if that may be confusing to anyone. I'm speaking in terms of the future and establishing general principles. Perhaps in doing it this way I making it more complex than people would care to deal with right now. I'm thinking maybe I will just write a policy "proposal", which will be here, and we can see if anyone wants to express agreement or disagreement or rewrite any part of it, using the consensus and collaborative approach that we are all familiar with, being wiki editors. Lumenos 00:34, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

How does everyone feel about having separate pages for criticism in the same way that Wikinfo does? Lumenos 00:39, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

The following is up for review: please add your suggestions, comments, and questions:

Youth

Separate standards should be established based on age (note these would be in addition to local legal standards that already exist, someone might provide some links to those):

• Privacy of "children" (under 14 years of age)
• Privacy of "adolescents" (14 to 18 years of age)
• Privacy of "adults" (18 or older)

There is of course, a little difficulty, at least in distinguishing adolescents from adults and distinguishing children from adolescents when we are dealing with only text.

Legitimate acquisition of biographical info about "adults"

How the information was obtained:

• When the "victim" puts information about themselves, in a place on the Internet, that they know is visible to anyone who finds it (without any "hacking"):
• Communications in chatrooms. (Note this was added after Phantom Hovers comment dated 12:21, 30 August 2009. Please keep in mind that these "policies" may change. Lumenos 04:49, 31 August 2009 (EDT) ;-)

I would suggest that all of the below are illegitimate methods of obtaining information; the object of the outing did not intend for any of these to be published on the internet. Then again, I come from RationalWiki, where it is considered an invasion of privacy to Google someone's name to find out information, though this is something of a point of contention. Phantom Hoover 12:21, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

That sounds good for we little people but I think we should have a different policy for particularly notable people such as those involved in high levels of government, major (multinational) corporations, or less centralized groups who are involved in mass killings, torture, stuff like that. Lumenos 04:53, 31 August 2009 (EDT)

So if editors/admins of WikiIndex find that a wiki does not (or cannot) promptly remove such information (when requested) should this be a basis for removal of the wiki from WikiIndex? Lumenos 04:49, 31 August 2009 (EDT)

• One on one online conversations (Note this was added after Phantom Hovers comment dated 12:21, 30 August 2009.)
• Someone reveals a secret about someone they know from real life:
  • When the person is basically open about their "secret" but doesn't want it completely public or connected with certain online identities.
  • Info gained from eavesdropping when a reasonable expectation of privacy would be expected.
• Photos taken of someone, their residence, automobile (license #), etc.
• Photos from outside, into someone's home or backyard.
• Hacking or wiretapping.
• (Any other ideas for the geek paparazzi?)

Where should this information be forbidden?

• Should this information be deleted from articles on WikiIndex?
  • Sympathetic main article?
  • Critical articles? (See section "How sympathetic or critical?")
• How about talk pages or edit histories:
  • When it is for the apparent administrative purpose of "analyzing" the claims to determine enforcement or advice? (This may be more appropriately done through private correspondence.)
  • When the apparent purpose of posting the "private" info is to "punish" or "protest" by means of exposing this "private" info?
• Will there be a minimum privacy standard that wikis will have to abide by, to receive a listing in WikiIndex?
  • What standard shall we set for main articles?
  • What standard shall we set for talk pages?

Implementation or enforcement

After we reach some consensus standard, as to what is polite or legitimate, the second question is, what is the polite or legitimate way to implement or enforce these guidelines? Will censoring actually work or will it result in the Streisand effect? If you have even one determined "protester", privacy is quite difficult to protect once the "info genie" is out of the bottle. Especially when there are edit histories, and talk pages where most any info is generally allowed, forums where only administrators can remove info from posts, etc. No one is reading only this one site. The block, delete, and oversite policies must take into account the logistic/practical question of whether these measures will have the intended result. This has to be balanced according to geek mob rule community consensus. Lumenos

Notablity

A notability guide concerning linking ("spamming"), in other wikis articles:

(See Including Liberapedia in the RationalWiki article.)

How large or active does a wiki need to be to be included in another wikis article? What is the minimum number of regular editors, if this is important?

Should the quality of the wikis content also be considered? If so, who is to make this evaluation?

How close to the subject matter do they have to be, to have a link on that wikis page? Most importantly, who decides this?

This wiki obviously can't use Wikipedia's notability policy or it will end up with a tiny list like this.

How sympathetic or critical? (Who decides?)

Are the articles on wikis to be sympathetic, critical, both, or "neutral"? Lumenos

Wikipedia supposedly uses the "neutral" approach.

This offers much opportunity for censorship and edit waring. Lumenos

Wikinfo deals with edit wars by making the main article sympathetic, and posting a link at the top of that article, to an article devoted solely to criticism.

This sort of policy sounds like it might work here, if y'all agree. Lumenos

It's cumbersome at Wikinfo but it's better than not allowing criticism at all.Proxima Centauri 01:34, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

I propose that critical articles may contain rebuttals to criticisms. (Lumenos 13:33, 31 August 2009 (EDT))

But really the all important question is, 'When there is not consensus, should the wikis users primarily control their wikis article or should it be administrators here?' Lumenos

I think that criticism should not be allowed at all, because it just provokes destructive debates; imagine if Proxima's complaints about her privacy had been left on a page dedicated to it — there would have been a bloodbath. Phantom Hoover 12:21, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

I think we should use various policies to mitigate both the criticism and the self-indulgence. Lumenos 15:55, 1 September 2009 (EDT)

DavidCary favors no criticism section in the RationalWiki article. Lumenos 15:25, 1 September 2009 (EDT)

Claims and evidence

(Wikipedia's verifiability policy)

Should WikiIndex make claims, quote sources, or only make claims as to what sources claim?

I prefer to quote sources, but this is not customary here. So sometimes I write like "Bob claims that...", but this comes across as suspicious and can be very repetitive when everything is a claim I heard somewhere. Wikipedia's policy is probably the best compromise I can think of at the moment. References can be simple web links in the body of articles since this wiki doesn't really look like it is made for paper. Note that since WikiIndex inclusion policy is broader than Wikipedia, many sources will be self-published sources (Wikipedia ordinary does not allow these) who are only considered "reliable" for info such as describing their own intentions for their wiki's, etc. (Lumenos)

Should WikiIndex allow editors to be "eyewitnesses" or speak in the first person?

I think so. I think we should allow putting the "signatures" into the articles (as Lumenos does here using this "~~~" wiki markup code) if there is no link or reference that can be easily provided or when there is a reference but it is too long for most to read to find the relevant information. Newbies may not understand what these names are but I value accuracy and I think it is not too difficult to understand or it least, it shouldn't be too distracting if they want to ignore it. What do you think? (Lumenos)

This may also help in evaluating an editors reputation, to establish whether they deserve more or less power. (Lumenos)

Community consensus

To resolve or set boundaries on conflict, I (Lumenos) suggest we work with the community here to establish policies that attempt to reflect how they want this content filtered and organized. And that any policies be updatable (deletable) according to how the community changes. By definition, we can only reflect the will of editors (not those who only read without leaving feedback of some sort) but we may put up some messages welcoming suggestions or questions as to the policy, and leave these pages OpenEdit as long as possible.