User talk:Caius/Command-Mints

Editors can move pages here, not just sysops. Unless you mean to change that? human  15:51, 16 January 2008 (EST)

TK
I would suggest changing his block time. I think that there is a good middle ground between a block within policy and a long block. Looking over the block logs for TK, I found ten justifiable blocks. Starting with the second 1 in the sequence I would suggest that TK's block should be 143 days. He's earned "days". I really think that this could work for everyone on both sides of this debate. Thoughts? --Edge  runner  76 14:59, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * That's actually a fine idea. I'd vote for commuting to 143 days.- 15:00, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * Thanks again Edgerunner, that's a great compromise! What does anyone think about the rules, though?_ 15:05, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * Thanks to you. I think that it is a good solution and have gone and done it.  If anyone feels that strongly against it, it's not that hard to change again.  I like your rules.  I came to this solution after reading through them to be honest.  --Edge   runner  76 15:07, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * What a strange place to find the explanation of the block! Now it makes sense to me. Edge, can you copy it to TK's talk page or something, as well?  Thanks! human  15:51, 16 January 2008 (EST)

CREEP
Hey guys, I have been absent for most of this debate mostly because I have been busy with  real life so I may have to be brought up to speed overtime because I really don't want to wade through any of the TK bullshit. Mobocracy was embraced certainly for ideological reasons and because of our experience at CP and it maybe problematic for particular cases here and there. TK is a good example, and set rules for how to deal with such situations are probably a good thing. Where mobocracy fails we can set up rules. But lets try and keep it focused only on places mobocracy is failing. Do we really set rules about "promotions" and user rights? Have these been causing problems? If not lets not just create rules for the sack of rules. We are a small enough site that we can still respond to individual cases of problems as individual cases. That allows for specific responses to specific situations. I still think the focus should be on "guidelines" not rules, flexibility and fast response time are pluses to our current system. Rules make things rigid and slow things down. Clearly in the case of TK it all back fired...but how many TKs do we have? How much do we change the organization of our site in response to single outlier? 15:53, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * I think we need the sysop promotion rules, especially since we had a small flap about it earlier this year.- 15:56, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * But there have only been two issues there - HG, who we made a sysop for a while before he/we imploded over him, and the abovementioned TK. Other than those two, no sysop demotion has ever caused the slightest ripple of controversy. Usually just a few gentle condolences. human  16:12, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * I still think it'd be useful to have around as a fallback, because last time, the question was, "what procedure do we use?" and no one had a clue...- 16:12, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * What "last time"? It's only controversial when someone demands to be made sysop, meaning it's not controversial, since that invalidates their request by definition. (OK, so write that definition ;)) human  16:16, 16 January 2008 (EST)
 * Solid point! I'll keep these aroudn as persuasive then.  Unless we want to ratify the block section.- 16:21, 16 January 2008 (EST)

Rules make things rigid and slow things down. This is a line of thought that I have seen in several other communities I've been in, both on- and offline, but I've actually always found the opposite to be true: That the presence of a number of well thought-out and reasonable rules to deal with the more common or important situations streamline things rather than slow them down. This is because if you don't have those rules, when such a situation springs up, the community tends to engage in lengthy discussions over how to deal with it, and more often than not, end up with some solution with unforeseen consequences that creates more problems than it solves. Also, we should remember that the fundamental problem with CP was not that they had rules, but rather that those rules were never adhered to in practice. I understand why the CP experience led us to establish the mobocracy, but I think it may have been an overreaction - the better approach would be to have a set of sensible rules and make sure that they are followed. -- AKjeldsen Godspeed! 05:28, 17 January 2008 (EST)
 * That makes sense to me AKjeldsen.--Bobbing up 05:45, 17 January 2008 (EST)

Things to consider and read
I am once again going to point to my favorite article. For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, go read it. 

And the worst crisis is the first crisis, because it's not just "We need to have some rules." It's also "We need to have some rules for making some rules." And this is what we see over and over again in large and long-lived social software systems. Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups.

The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as time increases.

The later is a quote by Geoff Cohen. He has a neat blog who has a few more credentials than just blogger.

We can pretend that we are all a bunch of people who all get along together with just the god given utilitarian morals that make sense. In reality, the first part has to be taken into account - we are all a bunch of people. Politics happens when there are three people and there are certainly more than three here. There will be arguments and disputes and some people have different standards for what is acceptable behavior than others do.

When these issues erupt without rules there is no clear way to resolve them. Some options are: If you can delay solving a problem long enough, one of three things will happen: The problem will become so large that it will destroy the organization, everyone gets used to living with the problem it ceases to be a problem, or the problem solves itself. In cases two and three, you win. Meanwhile, you don't make enemies by rocking the boat. -- The Consultants' Handbook
 * Someone says I am the leader and does it (this typically results in other people either following or saying no you are not and then a fight about that)
 * Try to be a pure democracy (its a pain and the number who don't care about the site may outnumber those who do - the core group has to count more than an outsider)
 * Pretend to be an ostrich and hope it goes away

When it gets down to it, none of those are really acceptable for the long term survival of a community. In this past episode, all three of these showed themselves (some people said just do it and be done with it, some people tried to have a vote, and some people suggested we just ignore it).

And so I return back to the point. We need rules. We need rules about how to make rules. We need rules about how to behave (since some people don't understand that). We need rules about what to do about those who do not behave.

A wiki only works if there is a community behind it. A community is not just a bunch of people who happen to be on a website.

Other good reading from the Meatball wiki (a wiki about online communities): (there are many, many other good things to read on that site).
 * http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CategoryDifficultPerson
 * http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?TrollingTactic
 * http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WhatIsaTroll
 * http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?FalseRepentance
 * http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CommunityExile

It is almost certain that everything that we have experienced here has been experienced and documented. And without going to truly groundbreaking shifts of community and software (the two are not able to be separated) it is likely that everything we will try to do has been tried before by some group and documented. It is in the community's best interest to read and learn from those so that we do not make the same mistakes again.

History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells "Can't you remember anything I told you?" and lets fly with a club. -- John W. Campbell

--Shagie 17:00, 16 January 2008 (EST)


 * I <3 Meatball wiki. Trent turned me on to it in the early RW days. That's why I know he is experimenting on us. human  20:14, 16 January 2008 (EST)


 * Hmm, I am almost convinced......but let me propose that we all ready do have defacto rules on how to run the site and make decisions. We are a small enough of a community that we have manged to internalize how things are "run" here. This problem arose this is one of the few times that we as the community of core users disagreed with significant numbers in both camps. So the defacto systems failed. My question is if this is going to be an endemic problem that has to be addressed now? And if we do decide to codify our rules lets not create new ones until we have thought out what the existing rules are and simply written them down. For example, I was complaining earlier about the rules for user rights promotion. Really my complaint is not that there are rules but that they are different then the rules we have been using. Up to this point our rule has been basically to give the rights to users that are willing to use them for site cleanup and other janitorial duties and that they don't have any particularly special prestige just more duties and the decision proccess to date has been to allow anyone who is in good standing and volunteers to have the rights, or when the group spontaneously nominates someone for it. So why can't we just codify this system we are currently using? Why does it have to be changed? So in conclusion if we really do need to write down rules lets just figure out what our defacto rules to date have been and write those down. Let us not start changing things for the sake of change. 21:05, 16 January 2008 (EST)

Democracy
While we have a noble tendency to want to use the best system of governing mankind has yet developed, keep in mind that for democracy to work, you need to identify the voters - for instance, if sysops are to vote on something, we know exactly who they and how many there are, so voting can be straightforward as long as a quorum "attends".

However, the nature of an open wiki leads to hundreds, or thousands, of usernames ranging from strong contributors to one time wandals.

If we were to say "let the mob vote", who do we mean? The perhaps fifty people who actually edit the site with any regularity? Me, AmesG and the inhabitants of New Gwenson?

Just something to keep in mind when discussing "mob wide" voting.

I'm not proposing this, because we don't really need it, but we could have one level of "user rights" that we confer on all "real" editors - "voting rights". Then we'd know how many voters there are. human  08:19, 17 January 2008 (EST)


 * We could just have a Vote namespace where votes are posed and the voting opens at a certain time and closes at another (predetermined) time. --Edge   runner  76 08:23, 17 January 2008 (EST)
 * I would add that more time needs to be given than was given for the TK vote. Those of us off-line missed the whole thing...  Sterileminichatroomthingy 09:18, 17 January 2008 (EST)
 * Yes. I think that for any real votes that matter, the "polls" should be open for a week, and somehow properly publicized. human  09:33, 17 January 2008 (EST)
 * Maybe it would be a good idea to elect/appoint one specific person to deal with the formalities of such things - making sure it's properly announced and set up, has the proper duration, counting the votes, etc. It's probably not something we need to do too often, so the workload would be negligible. -- AKjeldsen Godspeed! 10:15, 17 January 2008 (EST)