RationalWiki talk:Community Standards

Regarding recent removal of comments.
Some users are raising complaints about their comments being removed without reasoning. I would like clarification on this exception to abstaining from removing such comments. What verge of trolling warrants a removal or could it just be troll collapsed. TranslationForAll (talk) 00:13, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Obviously vile comments made for the purposes of trolling, and of a user on their own talk-page, as described above.
 * Can you point to any specific removals that you disagree with? There is some existing policy on the CS page here: RationalWiki:Community Standards. Bongolian (talk) 00:22, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Check the saloon bar history for today. Some comments were being removed when a troll collapse could’ve been used. Here are the complaints. TranslationForAll (talk) 00:25, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * (EC) And yes, I was talking about that section where it says:

They must not be deleted, nor protected, although they can be archived periodically. Similarly, users should not delete or change another user's comments on a talk or discussion page, with the following exceptions:

TranslationForAll (talk) 00:33, 17 March 2022 (UTC)


 * (EC) There's a type of vandal who will add nonsense to talk pages, sometimes repeatedly reverting under the same or different identities, often also dropping turdblossoms about censorship as they go. In that instance, we tend to excise the nonsense. Unfortunately, sometimes it's not clear that's what's going on when they re-add the same text or reference it on a different page, so it can look good faith. Sysops who saw the first nonsense typically get rid of it when it reappears. If I see something like that that's borderline, I trust that a sysop who's got rid of it has some extra context I don't. Obviously vile stuff gets zapped on sight, of course. Other than that, it's not common on RW to remove comments wholesale. Stop feeding them and wait for their drivel to get archived is a perfectly acceptable approach. There was at least one incident fairly recently where someone came back and, because people had grown tired of arguing with a brick wall, tried to force their preferred edit on the article proper against consensus on the basis that no-one had continued the argument, but I can't remember that happening often enough to matter. Queexchthonic murmurings 00:31, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * A bit late, it would be nice if when someone had a dispute with me they pinged me, but whatever. The edit in question was one person using multiple accounts (and a few IPs) to concern troll about Biden's response to the situation in Ukraine. I removed KP's comment because otherwise he would be responding to a comment that didn't exist anymore. The removal was done under the exception listed under the first bullet point of the CS section you linked, i.e. "vile comments for the purposes of trolling" Is there anything else to the incident that you wish to dispute?  17:45, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

one gets their eye in after a while, but its never a certainty. some repeat offenders do get some leeway to see where they are going. almost always the same old place, same old dog shit. same old trolls or new drive by trolls - who knows? who cares? we are probably a little too quick on occasion to remove some suspect post when we could just let it be, just in case they genuinely were made in good faith, if any were not make the best first impression and we probably would not have been the wiki for them anyways. i wonder if a template listing simple rebuttals to all the usual far right talking points and rhetoric. anyone genuine might then have an opportunity to actually respond. the trolls never do. just reassert what they have already asserted. i dont believe we stifling the diversity of opinion or too heavy handed in censoring unpopular opinions. we are not perfect, but its not really unpopular opinion we are removing (at least not why its removed - it probably just is unpopular opinion in these parts by default) its just fucking banal and repetative opinion. if you dont want your stuff deleted as soon as you post it, change the fucking record AMassiveGay (talk) 18:50, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * i find myself using 'one' a fair a bit of late, as in 'one would think this' or 'one suspects'. dunno on its correctness when i do, probably not very, kinda feels right, but it does feel super fucking pretentious. when ever i see prince charley talking about something or other every sentence he starts with 'one this' and 'one that' and 'one does not simply walk into mordor'. never speak out loud using it. with proper english or not, it dont work with an essex accent. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:02, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Using median for ban lengths
Perhaps this isn't worth bothering with, but using a quantile for a vote outcome provably never advantages strategic voting (unless we have to interpolate, but we can just choose a quantile so that we don't have to), assuming each voter has a most preferred outcome x and prefers outcomes when they are in the direction of their most preferred outcome. If the winning outcome is w and a voter's most preferred outcome is x, and they voted for x, then if w>x, the voter wouldn't want to increase their vote because that will only move the quantile further away from their most preferred outcome. If they decrease their vote, it cannot change the quantile since their vote is already to the left of it. For w<x, it's basically the same thing. So they are best off voting honestly. Vomitorium (talk) 00:08, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Did we really just modify the community standards with only 6 votes?
Either this community is dead or it wasn't announced?-Hastur! (talk) 06:37, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * For reference-Hastur! (talk) 06:38, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, it appears that way. For what it's worth the text that has been added is not really different than what has been a de facto rule all along as far as I see it. Bongolian (talk) 07:15, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I had no idea this vote happened. 07:45, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * A surprise to me too, a site-wide announcement would have been good for a CS change. . On the other hand it's pretty uncontroversial.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:58, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Apologies, I probably should've thrown that into announcements when I saw it. It's just that real life has been keeping me from this place at the moment so I can't be as active as I want to be. -- Techpriest (talk) 16:04, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

LongStyluses's comment
In this comment, LongStylus wants to make a header asking to notify users brought to ATIM; I wanted to get a community response on that. I weakly support that idea. --Andrew5 (talk) 12:19, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I would support that too. I have made a template for that as well: Template:AtimNotice. On an unrelated note, I wanted to edit Template:CoopNotice to include a header and decapitalize "Chicken Coop", but it looks like we didn't use "subst:", so my edits would change all previous notices. I don't know what we should do about it, but it's just a minor problem. LongStylus (talk) 12:35, 3 July 2022 (UTC)