Wikipedia talk:WikiCivics

Rationale
I've gone and implemented a spontaneous grand plan, which I think nevertheless is fairly conservative. It was worrying me that we had very important, thematically related subject matter spread across many articles. I didn't see this situation as bad or redundant from a functional viewpoint: I think it's valuable to have different kinds of pages, in particular 1) succinct cheat-sheets that we can point people to from the Welcome page or in our personal greetings to new users (the "tutorials wing"), and 2)Deeper and more substantiated discussions. I think we had articles of both types. With the former "Staying cool when the editing gets hot" article, which I've redirected to "Writers rules of engagement", I think we had something aspiring to be a cheat sheet, and I've edited to make it more so. With "civility" and the full-length NPOV article, those are naturally in depth, and I didn't touch those but to put a header at the top that labels them as part of the series. My worry was that with several places for people to contribute ideas on Civility, for example, ("civility" itself, "wikiquette" and "staying cool" all were pertinent) some pages were liable to miss out on some valuable ideas or improvements, and I think that had already happened with "staying cool" (most of my editing involved replacing certain items with the succincter formulations of the current Wikiquette article). Now that these pages are prominently connected, I'm thinking that someone with a good idea for one of them will be led to consider whether it's a good one for any of the others, and add it, either beefing it up or trimming it down, as appropriate to the page for which the idea is destined. Also, without being formally designated as needing to be lean and mean, the cheat sheets like "staying cool and Wikiquette" were at risk of becoming bloated tomes (as everybody who comes by contributes or amplifies an idea). Bloating means the cranky people who adminstrators have pointed to the page to learn manners are liable to just turn away crankier.

I'm thinking also that the prominent grouping means that if someone stumbles on what is not quite the right page for their idea or their need, they will know immediately where to go, and that likewise would-be mediators will learn that they have a choice of where to point their hypothetical mediatees, and so be able pick the most suitable one. e.g. for the unconsciously rude, there is the Wikiquette cheat sheet, and for the hardened and philosophically uncivil ( as in "I know how to be polite, but this place is a jungle and so it's jungle rules that I'm going to go by") there's the "Civility" page. 168... 04:37, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Page protections
I've protected the page because I think it's the sort of thing that only administrators should edit. No?168...
 * No. See Protected page for my cmt. Dysprosia 06:16, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

which is copied below

Why is this Miniseries of Wikicivics protected? What if someone wants to add something to it? Dysprosia 06:14, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, if that someone is an administrator like you, she can. I hope you'll respect the themes, though, and keep it cohesive. I don't think it would be so valuable as a cornucopia, or with pages outside the Meta space.168... 06:25, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * I may, sure, but what about someone else, who doesn't have admin privileges? Dysprosia 06:27, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Obviously I thought of that and you know what I thought. Now I know what you think, but I wish you'd tell me why.168... 06:35, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * But I'm slow and I don't get things so well :) I mean, say if someone finds a really useful article to add to the page - there's less reason for having to make a non-admin find an admin to ask them to add it. I just don't see any real big reason to protect it, I guess. Dysprosia 07:10, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm thinking there aren't many pages to add, if any. I originally conceived this thing as a way to link just three articles--Wikiquette,Staying cool when the editing gets hot and Civility--because they all had to do with manners or conduct (See Wikipedia talk:Miniseries of Wikicivics for more on the rationale). Then I decided that policy governs conduct, so that sort of belonged too. But I left out various style issues and things that aren't very official. Politeness and policy are official, but not much else seems to be around here. 168...|...Talk 07:21, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, I suppose :) Dysprosia 07:25, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that it should be protected. Protection is not permitted by Protection policy, "I don't think anyone will want to edit this" is not sufficient reason for protection. (Oh, I see Eloquence unprotected it a couple hours ago...) Martin 18:15, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * That wasn't quite my rationale. But I'll bow to popular opposition, unless/until the unprotectedness becomes a problem. 168...|...Talk 19:30, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Oh, my apologies for misunderstanding. Good luck. :) Martin


 * The protection on this page should be removed ASAP. There is NO reason to prevent +90% of our users from editing this page. Kingturtle 03:48, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The reason is that admins know the metapages and most others don't, and so they're much more likely to know what exists and where it goes. I've had one page turned into a redirect once by Taku...an act of vandalism as far as I'm concerned. I think this is just like the Main Page, which is protected for the same reason.168...|...Talk 04:16, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * The main page is *very* high visibility, which is why it's protected. This page is not high visibility, so it should not be protected. Martin 04:20, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

These things were born yesterday and they've already been vandalized because somebody didn't what they were and started deleting without even asking questions. They're meant to become extremely high visibility. I think in the future people will not want to move around the metapages except via the directory. I don't care about the name or what it looks like. I do care about good thematic groupings and coherence in the names of the links, so as one scans down the list one can tell easily what section one is in. So at the information page there's a lot of "current" this and "current" that. I made "Conflicts between users" into "Current conflicts between users" and in the "requests" section I made "change name for attribution of edit" into "request to change name...". etc. Anyway, I've now saved copies of these in my personal subpages and unprotected these, due to popular (but I think wrong-headed) demand. 168...|...Talk 04:42, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Other Commentary
Lovely idea. +sj+ 00:22, 2004 Feb 22 (UTC)

Redirecting to community main page
With the new community main page, I think 168's project is no longer needed. We should be able to get everything we need on the new community page, so I propose to redirect there. --Michael Snow 20:14, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Your suggestion makes no sense at all and could have been said with regard to the old Main Page design. The Main Page is part of the problem, not the solution. There should be links to all the subdirectories like this one from the Main Page, b/c there's not enough space on the Main Page to put together everything that ought to be grouped.168...|...Talk 21:42, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)