Debate talk:The mobocracy

For what it is worth:

I was one of the main architects in setting up a lot of the phrases, guidelines, and the like that have been used to define the "governance" of this site. I was not the only one by any means, and a lot of it was developed in a zeitgeist that has probably left. Much of what was established was a reaction against our experience at CP and a desire to try a Web 2.0 experiment that was different than "established" wikis. We emphasize both community and content, and bring to bare a fairly diverse number of tools to allow people to interact at many levels. I still stand by my tautology when this site first started, we are what we are, and that is what we are. I tend to avoid getting involved in discussions about massively overhauling the power structure of the site, for multiple reasons (the least of which is not that these things have a tendency to go nowhere). I do want to go on the record of saying however, that our founding principles do inherently include the idea that if we need rules, or want them, we can have them. There is nothing anti-rationalwiki about doing so.

For now things are generally okay, but I only want to add one other piece to the puzzle. If this site continues its growth trajectory we are approaching a couple tipping points. The "classic" tipping point is when you move from a community where everyone knows everyone else has all ready passed. There are enough users now that come and go that it is easily possible to not be intimately familiar with everyone. We are currently in community stage I have best heard of as the point where "you might not know someone that knows how to do something or who someone is, but you at least know someone who would know someone" or "if I have a question I at least know someone who knows who to ask about it." Another six months of growth like we have seen and even this might pass. We might get to the point where we can not come home after work and see everything that happened on the site in recent changes. That means that things can be happening on the site that someone is not aware of and has no easy way of finding out about it. I think an important question to ask is does our current site policy have "legs" or would it fail under a growth scenario? I don't know the answer, which is why I am posting on the talk page as this is more "meta" than taking a specific stance on this debate. Of course, there is always the possibility this is our "high water mark" and we won't get into the growing pains mentioned above. But I think it is worth considering. tmtoulouse 14:53, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

Turdblossoms
I added the cat, but's not enough to put this discussion in the template, since it requires both the cat and that the article be in RationalWiki:. Removing the namespace requirement drags in a few other random things, since the template adds the cat wherever it is placed... thoughts on how to clean this up?

Template:Turdblossom is where it is.  ħ uman  15:23, 6 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Never mind, I managed to crowbar it by adding the Debate namespace to the dpl that makes the list in the template.  ħ uman  16:34, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

Redirects
It took me twelve clicks - as an accomplished user - to find al-Qaeda - Redirects, seriously needed. I'll make at least one now.  ħ uman  01:10, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

Ugh. I hope this comes out clearly
Believe it or not, despite my writing occurring more often in other venues, I still come here fairly often, if only to try to keep tabs on things (although some people change their names enough that I don't know who they are anymore). I also link here from my blogs from time to time.

Anyway, I hope we continue to reach certain tipping points. Growth is interesting (but disorienting).

As to rules, well, RW is in many ways (as was WP sort of) and complex emerging system. Things have organized themselves based on contingencies and occasional injections of dominant personalities. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. The character of RW has remained remarkably unchanged over time.

That being said, there will always be times when top down rather than bottom up events will occur. Some of us ended up asserting ourselves rather aggressively in the TK event, based on personal reasons, which is neither good nor bad, and is less likely to happen in the future. In the past, as others had pointed out, we originally all knew each other reasonably well, quirks an all. That will likely never be the case again.

All the above is a rather unclear so let me say a few specific things.


 * Politics: we have a bias. So what.  But we try to avoid having a clearly set bias for a particular party, etc.  We have, in general, avoided articles that are "political" rather than social commentary, and those social commentaries have been biased toward a civil libertarian perspective, which seems to suit the group.


 * Conflict: we haz sum. So what?  Usually, we get through it with our current procedures. Honestly, the main "rule" should be "no bullying".  If someone just can't find a niche here, then they either aren't trying hard enough or can find another wiki.  If someone is clearly bullying someone and trying to give them the shove, perhaps there should be a "process" to deal with it.  Big meta discussions aren't a bad thing, and help us clarify our RW.


 * Sysops: are both leaders and janitors. So be it. Sysops generally are folks who care enough to do the janitorial work, and to try to moderate conflicts.  To ignore that they are leaders is foolish, but some are more "leaderly" than others.  I once tried to create a category system to label the expertise of various editors, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for certain more level-headed individuals (AK comes to mind) to be go-to folks in case of conflict that doesn't get successfully hashed out in the usual mobbish fashion.  That is a rare event.


 * I CAN HAZ WIKI ITS MINE ALL MINE: No it's not.  It's everyone's---at least those who care about it, so folks who assert too much ownership need to chill a bit.  As more members come, things will change, and if enough of the first generations of editors are around, the character of the wiki will be fairly stable.  It will never become a right-wing rag, a narrow hate site, etc.


 * Rules: we have some. If we need more, we should adopt them with caution and with a trial period, and not be afraid to toss them if they don't work.

Sure all of this is unclear, but I've said my piece for now. -- -PalMD -- 10:20, 9 October 2008 (EDT)