WikiIndex:Policies and Guidelines

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Template:RightTOC For a few simple guidelines, see WikiIndex:Guidelines. For other guidelines, see Category:Guidelines.

(The rest of this page should eventually link to policies and guidelines, but for now, it is being used to describe or develop, suggestions for etiquette, policies or guidelines. This is mainly a practical means to resolve disputes by mutual agreement in an ethical standard.)

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 (Lumenos) 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 "~~~~".)

Notes to editors of this page

Comments must abide a neutral point of view

ANNOUNCEMENT: This is a proposal to adopt something similar to Wikipedia's policy of a neutral point of view for this page. Comments that do not seem to follow this policy shall be deleted or relocated (to a talk page). Secondly, it is proposed that we do not post about any specific conflict that has been going on, but instead speak only in terms of generalizations. And that we move any of those comments that are already here, to a talk page (eventually), or delete them. Any such comments that are relevant to policy should be paraphrased into generalizations, which will remain where the comment was, while the comment is relocated to a talk page or deleted.

For example, someone posts this comment here, "I've been harassed by people from AboWiki. We should not allow this." This would be removed and a request would be placed on the commenter's talk page to propose that a specifically defined offense, be handled in a specific manner. So the proper way to propose a policy in this case would say: "I propose we do not allow editors to continue posting unanswered replies to a user's talk page. That we enforce this policy by first warning, then blocking the editor.<your signature>"

Please inquire on the talk page if you are unsure how to write "neutrally" as it is defined here.

Both this page and its talk page are for policy discussion only. If you have a specific grievance, you would like to resolve, follow the instructions on this guide, or see if Category:Guidelines has more clues, on what you can do to have your issue resolved.

I disagree strongly with Neutral Point of View for this wiki. I understand that it is for this page only - and I am not sure that is still a good thing. ~~ MarkDilley [Bold added by me (Lumenos).]
Whoa, the Man has arrived. The question is, what would be a better thing? I've listed some other options here. I don't see how we would have a sympathetic POV for this page, unless maybe it is "sympathetic" to "WikiIndex" but I'm not sure what that would mean. Lumenos 00:51, 4 September 2009 (EDT)
What potential problems do you see with this "NPOV" here? (It is not Wikipedia's NPOV, BTW) Lumenos 00:51, 4 September 2009 (EDT)
We are allowing "commenting" on this page, but I don't want to open up debates about specific conflicts. This is my reason for the "NPOV". Lumenos 00:51, 4 September 2009 (EDT)
Another idea would be to use the talk page for "comments" but the whole thing is pretty much my "POV", so I don't want to exclude others. Lumenos 00:51, 4 September 2009 (EDT)
I feel strongly that we should be signing our proposals and claims here and I thank you for doing so. Lumenos 00:51, 4 September 2009 (EDT)

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

All policies should denote what type of enforcement is appropriate for the policy. Here are some suggested "categories of enforcement" 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).
      • Warning tags are too strong - I like the idea of tags and think they should point to constructive information. ~~ MarkDilley
    • 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):

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.
  • Check the "user contributions" and copy a link to the diff showing the "offenses" which should be the administrator's stated reason for the block.
    • Note, this information may not be available if an administrator decides the edit is not suitable to remain in the page history. (This is called an "oversite", I think.) In this case you may request that both parties privately email you their version of the event, or anything they claim to have copied, and you may privately email these to another administrator for review.
  • State your request (see "Suggested requests", above)
  • Explain which policy you believe they have violated.

Excluding wikis from WikiIndex

The following is a quote of sysop DavidCary: " As I have said before, in my opinion, every publicly-available wiki should be listed on this WikiIndex, no matter how evil. The only exception is when that wiki's owner or that wiki's community chooses to WikiIndex:OptOut. (Although I don't understand why one would put a wiki on the public web, but not want anyone to know about it, I will respect such wishes)." DavidCary 23:35, 2 September 2009 (EDT) Lumenos 16:16, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

The following is a quote of sysop DavidCary: " Others seem to agree with my "completist" preferences." DavidCary 23:35, 2 September 2009 (EDT) Lumenos 16:16, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

The following is a quote of sysop DavidCary: "You may be able to convince me that we shouldn't display offensive wiki logos, and perhaps you may convince me that we shouldn't make an easily-clickable active link to an illegal site." DavidCary 23:35, 2 September 2009 (EDT) Lumenos 16:16, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

The following is a quote of sysop DavidCary: "But to completely censor every mention of a wiki? How does "pretend that evil wiki don't exist" help our users?" DavidCary 23:35, 2 September 2009 (EDT) Lumenos 16:16, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

If it is a question of something our readers need to know, of course. Lumenos 16:16, 3 September 2009 (EDT)
It wouldn't help our users, necessarily, it may help whomever the evil wiki is being evil to, by giving the wiki an incentive to change their evil ways. But you know, there is evil and then there is evil... oh yeah, then there is evil. Lumenos 16:16, 3 September 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)

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

Notability

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.

Verifiability

For any controversial content I (Lumenos) propose that we adopt something similar to Wikipedia's inclusion policy on verifiability with some differences.

Difference #1: We have a different notability requirement.
Difference #2: Sources can be simply links so long as the info is easy to find on the link.
If it is not easy to find, do something to make it easier to find the info.
Note to readers: You can use "CTRL + F" on your keyboard to find words or phrases on a web page.

How sympathetic or critical? (Who decides?)

We have the following options:

  • Allow only the sympathetic view in articles. (Criticism can be done on the talk pages anyway, unless we limit this also.)
  • Attempt a Neutral Point of View for articles.
  • Attempt a Neutral Point of View for articles but allow a section for "critical" viewpoints.
  • Have separate articles for sympathetic and critical viewpoints. Anyone would be able to create the critical article for any wiki, if they have a grievance or negative review (with the following limitations).

But, critical or not, all articles shall be restrained by the policies on:

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)
(Proxima is a sysop here.) Lumenos 11:02, 2 September 2009 (EDT)
I propose that critical articles may contain rebuttals to criticisms. (Lumenos 13:33, 31 August 2009 (EDT))
MarkDilly seems to be the most (or only) active bureaucrat, in one example he suggested a criticism page that was named like "Constructive Criticism of..." then he wrote the wiki's name, but I don't want to post that here because I'm trying to speak in the general sense although I should add that he did mention the wiki so this is not necessarily a policy he is suggesting for all wikis. Lumenos 11:22, 2 September 2009 (EDT)
I second this uuh suggestion. Lumenos 08:05, 3 September 2009 (EDT)
I appreciate the restraint and professionalism that everyone is displaying here. I'd just like everyone to know that I'm not gonna post some witty statement like "BWAM", because that is not the purpose of this policy page. :-) Lumenos 11:02, 2 September 2009 (EDT)
Uhh Lumenos he didn't say that the main article would link to the critical one. Lumenos 11:02, 2 September 2009 (EDT)
Doh! You shut up that is what he meant! Lumenos 11:02, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

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. For example, Wikipedias Neutral Point of View for main articles, if there are not special critical articles. Lumenos 11:02, 2 September 2009 (EDT)
Otherwise, let the main article be "sympathetic" and have separate critical articles (or sections), but both of these would be limited by notability and verifiability policy. Lumenos 11:02, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

DavidCary (sysop) suggestion for one article on (24 November 2008) is here. Lumenos 11:02, 2 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.

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