Board Thread:Policies/@comment-10473115-20170415164119/@comment-10473115-20170416204753

Thanks for your answers. It seems obvious that this discussion is needed and should have been kept even earlier.

@TMAO: I try to answer carefully because I don't want to belittle your feelings in any way. But I still can't see ill will in that conversation and Monolith gave a good explanation how I also see those comments. I hope that you accept his apologies and assume more good faith on fellow editors in the future. You have no reason to feel any less than everybody else on the site and I think that you been a good admin and moderator before that. I don't know any controversial admin decisions from your part which is much more than most of us can claim. You also have been valued contributor in our discussions. I didn't know about your editing before as I'm not most active editor myself but of course everyone's opinions should be valued by their value and not by who's expressing them. We should write some guidelines how to keep discussions civil and what kind of arguments should be avoided.

I still recognize the problem you're presenting. We have a clear undertone in our discussions to value editors based on their editing. I've opposed the use of "badge hunter" because it's mostly used without assuming good faith. Unfortunately, it's also mostly used by other admins. We have also a structural problem which makes it worse. We grant user rights only after existing staff has accepted the user amongst their rank and many opinions consider only worth of the user's edits. Then we have decided to forbid editors without special user rights participating (policy) discussions on Admin forum board. I think that it tells the users that without a good edit history, don't bother about site affairs.

AnnabellRice wrote: Unless we implement some sort of time limit for discussions, from my perspective any topic that doesn't include both an eventual roll call for a vote on a proposal and the subsequent votes revealing a clear community consensus, should still be considered unresolved and thus active. That can't be the rule. We have a zillion threads where we haven't been able to come to any conclusion and that shouldn't stop us for moving on.

@Shabook: I appreciate your honest answer. I'll address some of points later when I'll try to explain my own opinions. But I want to tell you that discussions are "won" by willingness to participate in them even after better guidelines are established. Some debates will always be somewhat frustrating but nobody has invented a better way to run a wiki based on equality. Of course we should do everything we can to make a discussion environment as friendly and supportive as possible but there shouldn't be too high hopes. I feel that your comment "let's get rid of something I don't like just because I don't like it" is unfair because propositions to remove something have always been done to improve our articles. I've never thought that you really mean that we should approve everything which can be referenced to sources. That seems really unreasonable but if you really feel that way it should be proposed as a policy. I've actually thought that we should try to address the issue by voting about these principles but I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do it. But don't mix the differing opinions to unfriendly discussion.

When Nausiated misinterpreted consensus about appearances section, I opened a thread to voice my displeasure about that and his declaration wasn't accepted as a policy. I also felt disappointed when there weren't any other admins to disapprove his actions. I didn't know that he continued to edit based on that declined policy but I think that every user should have a right to tell that it's against a consensus. I understand that users don't want to oppose an admin because it seems that our consensus have been a long time that admins decide and others should follow.

I disagree with your view of purpose of being an admin. Policies should not be left to only admins. We have done that and the result isn't good. But if it helps, I can nominate users who want to contribute to editing of project pages to be granted admin rights. I don't know what would happen with the nominations as I seem to have different opinion about the role of an admin based on previous discussions about the user rights.

I also revised Honorific Naming Conventions thread and it really isn't a good example of decision making. It took two months with some vote canvassing at the end to reach a solution. It's fair to say that I might have opposed that new voting more strongly if it haven't been proposed by an admin. As you know, we have something similar stirring at Thread:1024140.

@SunGodKizaru: I already answered to "let's get rid of things" on answer to Shabook. We really should have a dedicated discussion about this instead of repeating same arguments on different places. I also want to clarify my opposing of out of wiki discussions. In the situation like this I certainly understand why that kind of communication is happening. I think that we have actually disencouraged discussions on the wiki which isn't very helpful. If we don't want discussion here, it goes elsewhere. Please read Thread:887258 to understand my stance on the matter of openness. But out of wiki groups will soon notice that coordinated effort is a good way to get more power on our discussions. And when others see this, they form their own party. We should fight against that to maintain our collaborative community.

And now to elaborate my thoughts and hidden intentions. After I joined the site I soon noticed that only written policy to be referred is the naming conventions. All other policies seemed to have been decided on some earlier discussion and only admins were able to remember those and delivered right interpretations to the common folk. I admit that the previous text is obviously an exaggeration and the actual situation was probably much better. But so I felt at the time. I also were extremely frustrated when admins talked about template problems on a closed board and I had to post to their walls hoping that my input would be taken to the actual discussion. When I was granted with admin rights my first concern was how to enforce the policies because I didn't know all those earlier discussions. I decided that it should be a priority to get users to respect written policies and improve the quality of those pages. I also wanted to encourage users without extra rights to participate discussions about our policies. It's much easier to be an admin when you have better understanding about community's wishes. I learned that some admins don't want that and the rest of the community don't care or don't dare to oppose. I also learned that forum threads are very difficult place to keep a voting and discussion deteriotes to personal attacks quite easily.

I started experimenting with different kinds of decision making to find out what would be best for our needs and community and learned that with using a common sense, it's quite possible to get results even without any clear road map. I decided to start writing policies from the very basics and opened a thread about community consensus. We have a saying in Finland that it felt like pulling a rock sled. There were very little interest and I didn't like to write a policy where decisions should be made only by the staff. That stalled my policy writing and prevented from continuing to the next phase, decision making process. I also got frustrated when it still seemed that I was the only one having this goal. I originally proposed the user group of content moderators. Of course the main motive was to get a speed to the site's maintenance tasks but I also hoped that the new group would lead to a more active discussions. That's really happened and in my view it's an improvement. But instead of more work on better policies we got more frustrations and demands for better policies. I want to remind that this is a wiki where you should act yourself and not wait to somebody else to do it. This conversation has confirmed me that I should also be more active on creating better policies but I'm sure to get frustrated again if I feel to be alone.

I don't know if I'm always helpful or sometimes actually making things worse but I can assure you that I'm as honest as I can and my only motive is to improve our community.