Suggestion for a New Discussion Rule

[Ultima_Reality]

STAFF-ONLY THREAD

In light of recent events, as well as not-so-recent ones, I decided to make this thread to address a relatively common scenario I've seen popping around, which I am sure at least some of you are familiar with: A thread gets made, someone (Normally a trusted user, such as a Staff Member) finds it disagreeable and argues back, but for some reason or other, said member stops responding midway through the thread, and the proposed changes usually get stalled until they come back. Variations exist, of course, but the gist of it always remains the same.

I can name a couple of examples of this (Although I am absolutely certain there are many, many more), some of which I fully admit I'm guilty of, myself. Nevertheless, it's not too hard to conclude that regardless of the circumstances behind those events, this kind of thing is textbook stonewalling, and actually interferes with the flow of the revisions being attempted. Sure, this is ultimately a hobby, but past a certain point, shit like this starts to actually mess with other people's enjoyment of it, which I don't think is acceptable given the purpose of this wiki at all.

So, what do I suggest? Basically, I say we should put forth a new discussion rule establishing a deadline for how long a user is allowed to be absent from a thread they were taking a major part in. If the deadline expires, and the user in question still hasn't returned to the thread, the discussion continues as normal without them. And, afterwards, they are of course free to make a new thread to try and revert those changes. I am well aware that this something that's technically already done, but as of yet, it is not a formal standard (As far as I can tell, anyway), and nor is there any structure or consistency when it comes to enacting it, so, I believe it being introduced as a proper discussion rule is more than fair.

As for how long this deadline would be: Personally, if there is no further word from the absent party clarifying that Real Life issues and other more important matters are reducing their time on the wiki, I'd suggest a standard time limit of three days, which may very well have its length reduced or nullified if the user in question has been visibly active on other parts of the wiki with no issue and for a continued period, but I understand that some people may find this too short, so, if this is well-received, I'll leave the exact length to be decided by other people.

Plus, it should be noted that, even if an explanation for their absence is provided, the deadline should not be extended indefinitely unless there is an extremely good reason behind it. The importance of the revisions they are opposing is a large factor that obviously needs to be accounted for, but in my view it is in no way reasonable to allow a thread to be stalled for months or years, regardless of its subject matter.

So, that is that.

 

[Armorchompy]

I think three days is maybe a little too short, I think a week or five days for the first "offense" in a thread and then three days for ulterior pauses would be better.

 

[Tllmbrg]

Personally I think 3 days works just fine but I suppose 5 days isn't bad
I do think how much support the revision already has by then should factor though

 

[Armorchompy]

I do think how much support the revision already has by then should factor though

true

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I do think how much support the revision already has by then should factor though

Should definitely be taken into account as well, yeah.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I do not think it's a good idea to be deadlining certain ones especially ones that are wiki wide. Plus a lot of those could have had other staff members debating in place, but discussion rules against making threads most staff in charge are otherwise burned out by said topics. It's admittedly stressful if one staff members feels forced to carry the weight of the entire wiki solely because the rest of the staff is either too afraid of propaganda or simply too uncaring or burned out by a topic that otherwise effects the entire wiki. It sort of makes sense for verse specific revisions, but not for wiki wide ones or revisions that reek of double standards that basically effect every type of feat that isn't "Pure destruction" or "Characters punching really hard."

 

[Tllmbrg]

Also in regards to if someone is visibly on the wiki and just not responding I think like a day or two works
If you decided to argue on a CRT I don't think it's unreasonable to expect you to be active on it while on site, because if you take over a day to respond to the CRT without saying anything about that it really calls to question why you even bothered arguing over it

 

[Antvasima]

I am not sure. 3 days seems like far too limited time. We are not in a great hurry, and sometimes there is great need for members with great expertise in an area that are not available until later, or that need time to properly analyse an issue. This would risk to push through lots of unreliable revisions, so although the intention behind this is good, setting specific restrictions risks to do more harm than good, so I prefer case-by-case basis evaluations, or at least a much longer time limit when it is necessary.

 

[KLOL506]

I agree with Ant and DDM

 

[Tllmbrg]

This would risk to push through lots of unreliable revisions, so although the intention behind this is good, setting specific restrictions risks to do more harm than good, so I prefer case-by-case basis evaluations, or at least a much longer time limit when it is necessary.

Yah, good thing the OP mentioned adjusting the time depending on the thread
The 3 day limit is like a baseline for your average verse CRT

 

[Antvasima]

It is still far too little. We need to keep our flexibility and safeguard against unreliable revisions being pushed through too quickly. Our more drastic revisions should be thoroughly evaluated before they are applied, and we are in no great hurry. Slowly but surely has mostly worked well so far.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I should also note that I've already specified that three days is just what I would personally set it as, not a concrete suggestion or a demand. As said, I will just leave the default length of the deadline to be discussed by other staff members.

 

[Tllmbrg]

It is still far too little. We need to keep our flexibility and safeguard against unreliable revisions being pushed through too quickly. Our more drastic revisions should be thoroughly evaluated before they are applied, and we are in no great hurry. Slowly but surely has mostly worked well so far.

Three days is not that short
I really don't see why an internal revision of a verse needs more then that unless you're just overhauling the whole verse
How is being willing to drag a debate for weeks flexibility?
If anything it just stonewalls and halts progress because nobody wants to deal with the wait unless they're bonkers

At best I'm willing to go at max for a week without any special notices and even then it's eh

 

[Duedate8898]

I agree with the general sentiment, especially since I've done it a few times in regards to a few bleach threads of recent due to just being tired of the back and forth. Generally, I think I agree with this being used. I think in the case of the verse-specific threads a general period of a three to four days, while with more site-wide revisions I think at least a month is a good baseline.

While I understand the need for accuracy in profiles/pages and do our best to not let changes that shouldn't go by through, we also have to keep in mind that it works both ways. We can and do have things which are widely out of date, flat wrong, or just bad on the site, and if someone's actively trying to fix that we shouldn't keep them from doing it just because we can't afford to argue anymore or are searching far and wide for more evidence or don't have the time.

That's just how I see it.

 

[AKM sama]

This requires case-by-case analysis. Every thread is different. It's not always like "an opposing party is missing so let's apply the changes". Sometimes the opposing party is needed to continue further discussion itself so as to reach a proper conclusion and their points can't be handwaved simply because they stopped replying or lost interest. Sometimes, nobody besides that opposing party is interested in that thread so proper discussion doesn't take place for days.

Expecting people to dedicate their lives to argue on a single thread is unreasonable. Taking my own example, sometimes I need to take a break for a few days due to real life so people in any thread that I am in, understand and are compromising enough to wait for me instead of rushing it because "the deadline expired". Sometimes I am online doing other works of priority and choose not to respond to specific threads for a few days, and that's perfectly fine.

I completely agree that we cannot wait for months. Even one month of absence or less in most cases should be enough to reach the conclusion that the person who was supposed to reply is not going to reply, and the thread should progress without them, and they can make whatever changes they want when they return. But drawing a hard line, and that too of only 3 days, is something that does not sit well with me. I'd say admins and thread mods should use their sense of judgment in such cases according to the situation.

 

[Planck69]

This looks good to me. Though, I feel that 5-7 days are more reasonable.

 

[Tllmbrg]

Expecting people to dedicate their lives to argue on a single thread is unreasonable. Taking my own example, sometimes I need to take a break for a few days due to real life so people in any thread that I am in, understand and are compromising enough to wait for me instead of rushing it because the deadline expired. Sometimes I am online doing other works of priority and choose not to respond to specific threads for a few days, and that's perfectly fine.

Nobody said that
I'm fairly certain the whole premise here is in case of ghosting for several days without any notice

 

[Antvasima]

This requires case-by-case analysis. Every thread is different. It's not always like "an opposing party is missing so let's apply the changes". Sometimes the opposing party is needed to continue further discussion itself so as to reach a proper conclusion and their points can't be handwaved simply because they stopped replying or lost interest. Sometimes, nobody besides that opposing party is interested in that thread so proper discussion doesn't take place for days.

Expecting people to dedicate their lives to argue on a single thread is unreasonable. Taking my own example, sometimes I need to take a break for a few days due to real life so people in any thread that I am in, understand and are compromising enough to wait for me instead of rushing it because "the deadline expired". Sometimes I am online doing other works of priority and choose not to respond to specific threads for a few days, and that's perfectly fine.

I completely agree that we cannot wait for months. Even one month of absence or less in most cases should be enough to reach the conclusion that the person who was supposed to reply is not going to reply, and the thread should progress without them, and they can make whatever changes they want when they return. But drawing a hard line, and that too of only 3 days, is something that does not sit well with me. I'd say admins and thread mods should use their sense of judgment in such cases according to the situation.

I agree with this. Such massive restrictions would demand too much of many of our most valued contributors and push through widespread extremely unreliable statistics in the long run. Patience is far more important for the sake of accuracy and safeguards.

 

[AKM sama]

I'm fairly certain the whole premise here is in case of ghosting for several days without any notice

You can't know if somebody is really ghosting you or just busy with some kind of emergency or other important work. You shouldn't run assuming the worst possible scenario.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I completely agree that we cannot wait for months. Even one month of absence or less in most cases should be enough to reach the conclusion that the person who was supposed to reply is not going to reply, and the thread should progress without them, and they can make whatever changes they want when they return. But drawing a hard line, and that too of only 3 days, is something that does not sit well with me. I'd say admins and thread mods should use their sense of judgment in such cases according to the situation.

See above for my actual stance regarding the idea of a three days-long deadline, since you seem to have missed that on the OP itself. As for the bolded part, I would say that is good on paper, yes, but it doesn't tend to happen too often based on what I've seen, so, at the very least a call for action is warranted here, I believe.

 

[Antvasima]

Nobody said that
I'm fairly certain the whole premise here is in case of ghosting for several days without any notice

So every time something unexpected happens IRL, somebody should place time-specific leaves of absence in every thread they are active in? That is not remotely realistic for our type of work, especially as the notifications system here is tricky for those unfamiliar with it.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Considering that staff members are needed to approve the threads anyway, I think one can entrust them to decide on the appropiate time case-by-case. A few days are minimum, though.

But let me also say, to be absolutely clear, that absence definitely shouldn't be seen as dismissing votes or arguments. Otherwise, some party can just continue the debate so long until someone loses interest.

 

[Tllmbrg]

So every time something unexpected happens IRL, somebody should place time-specific leaves of absence in every thread they are active in? That is not remotely realistic for our type of work, especially as the notifications system here is tricky for those unfamiliar with it.

If a car hits you no I don't expect it
But if we're in the middle of a heated and important CRT and something which doesn't have you on a hospital bed or worse happens I think a quick "Yo I got some IRL issues" isn't too much to ask

Also this isn't work, it's a hobby
And some of us don't like being left in the dark for a CRT's fate so

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

As said many times before, wiki wide revisions are often said to only be done during summer times. But some times, the main staff carrying the weight of the plans have RL issues or have literal technical difficulties that prevent them from getting a single piece of work done; examples include problems caused via moving into a new house during the summer. And on top of that, sometimes other wiki wide revisions that are otherwise more mandatory/urgent took center stage before the one made first could even get done.

So verse specific threads could be deadline for sure, but wiki wide revisions have always been a "Better late than never" situation. Also, typically rejections to a proposal also have a lot less reason to to be deadline since even if the rebuttal is a lot of work, the outcome of it is actually a lot less work for everyone and everything else since all we need to do after that is pretty much close the thread and not update 5000+ pages and remove thousands of calculation blog posts. Wear as pushing for revisions that are otherwise controversial is not only "A lot of work" but 99.99% is too much work for the otherwise little payoff. Furthermore, it could cause a lot more destruction on the wiki and doesn't actually fix anything.

I'd say the more controversial a revision is and/or of deadlining something rushes a lot more work than it does post-poning or slowing down work, than that's more of a reason not to deadline something. Better is a perfected revision that takes months or years to craft than a rushed revision that causes a lot more harm than good.

 

[Antvasima]

Considering that staff members are needed to approve the threads anyway, I think one can entrust them to decide on the appropiate time case-by-case. A few days are minimum, though.

But let me also say that absence definietly shouldn't be seen as dismissing votes or arguments. Otherwise, some party can just continue the debate so long until someone loses interest. Just to say that clearly.

Yes, we are very seldom inflexible regarding this, as long as other members bump the threads to remind us about their lack of input. Too strict set in stone rules leave us with no flexibility, and that is potentially dangerous.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

But let me also say that absence definietly shouldn't be seen as dismissing votes or arguments. Otherwise, some party can just continue the debate so long until someone loses interest. Just to say that clearly.

That's a good point as well. The absence of a certain user doesn't mean that the arguments they made are invalid so much as it means the debate can't properly continue on the same pace. Someone else is obviously free to continue in their stead.

 

[Antvasima]

If a car hits you no I don't expect it
But if we're in the middle of a heated and important CRT and something which doesn't have you on a hospital bed or worse happens I think a quick "Yo I got some IRL issues" isn't too much to ask

Also this isn't work, it's a hobby
And some of us don't like being left in the dark for a CRT's fate so

See my previous reply. Also, the hobby part just underlines the validity of AKM's arguments earlier. We cannot expect everybody to be like me and Medeus and be constantly active with helping out nearly all the time.

However, maybe we could write a rule that simply tells our staff to not be too inflexible regarding when we should give up on waiting for input? There are legitimately cases where this has been a problem. I just think that the initially suggested rule would cause problems in many more discussions than the ones it solves.

 

[AKM sama]

As for the bolded part, I would say that is good on paper, yes, but it doesn't tend to happen too often based on what I've seen, so, at the very least a call for action is warranted here, I believe.

If the argument stopped midway during the thread and sufficient time has passed, one of the sides would obviously contact the mods to suggest that something should be done. The mods would obviously respond to it saying that either they should wait for a bit more, or they can continue the revisions due to the absence of opposing party. If everybody else is active except for the opposing party, it shouldn't be so hard.

 

[Ogbunabali]

A rule like this should definitely be a thing. If someone doesn't have the time to participate in a thread and is absent for days at a time, then they shouldn't be there in the first place, rather they should just wait until they have free time and make a CRT themselves. This type of stonewalling has been abused many times and it's a real problem that needs fixing, that's why a case by case shouldn't really be a thing here, we need a strict time limit set in place for these kinds of actions, otherwise it'd just get abused again.

5-7 days period is fine with me.

 

[AKM sama]

How about something like this:

"For verse-specific threads, if the only opposing party does not reply for over 2 weeks without any notice, then the moderators should try to get the thread to completion without them, assuming that they'd probably not reply. However, their points should not be discarded. They should be kept in mind while the thread goes on and any evaluation is done, and anybody else is free to argue in their stead."

Or something to that effect. 2 weeks is a placeholder there.

 

[CrimsonStarFallen]

I myself suggested a week before to Ultima, with a lower amount of time if someone is just plainly ignoring the thread.

I myself have been guilty of not answering threads for weeks at a time. Rules like this help us ground ourselves, I feel, an incentive to keep arguing.

 

[Antvasima]

How about something like this:

"For verse-specific threads, if the only opposing party does not reply for over 2 weeks without any notice, then the moderators should try to get the thread to completion without them, assuming that they'd probably not reply. However, their points should not be discarded. They should be kept in mind while the thread goes on and anybody else if free to argue in their stead."

Or something to that effect. 2 weeks is a placeholder there.

This seems like a much better suggestion to me.

However, maybe we could write a rule that simply tells our staff to not be too inflexible regarding when we should give up on waiting for input? There are legitimately cases where this has been a problem. I just think that the initially suggested rule would cause problems in many more discussions than the ones it solves.

There is also this. I would appreciate if others build on this idea.

 

[Elizhaa]

I am fine with the rule. Though, I am also open to 7 days wait period.

 

[Antvasima]

I still do not think that it is remotely realistic for the continuous running of this community to apply such an extremely strict and inflexible rule, for reasons that I, AKM, Medeus, and DontTalk have mentioned earlier in this thread.

Many members recurrently need considerable time in order to be able to help out, and rushing threads to be applied before they have received nearly sufficient reliable input would strongly risk to completely mess up the reliability of the wiki and our ability to properly organise discussion threads with some measure of flexibility. Meaning that applying this would strongly risk to cause very serious lasting harm.

 

[Antvasima]

I do not think it's a good idea to be deadlining certain ones especially ones that are wiki wide. Plus a lot of those could have had other staff members debating in place, but discussion rules against making threads most staff in charge are otherwise burned out by said topics. It's admittedly stressful if one staff members feels forced to carry the weight of the entire wiki solely because the rest of the staff is either too afraid of propaganda or simply too uncaring or burned out by a topic that otherwise effects the entire wiki. It sort of makes sense for verse specific revisions, but not for wiki wide ones or revisions that reek of double standards that basically effect every type of feat that isn't "Pure destruction" or "Characters punching really hard."

I am not sure. 3 days seems like far too limited time. We are not in a great hurry, and sometimes there is great need for members with great expertise in an area that are not available until later, or that need time to properly analyse an issue. This would risk to push through lots of unreliable revisions, so although the intention behind this is good, setting specific restrictions risks to do more harm than good, so I prefer case-by-case basis evaluations, or at least a much longer time limit when it is necessary.

It is still far too little. We need to keep our flexibility and safeguard against unreliable revisions being pushed through too quickly. Our more drastic revisions should be thoroughly evaluated before they are applied, and we are in no great hurry. Slowly but surely has mostly worked well so far.

This requires case-by-case analysis. Every thread is different. It's not always like "an opposing party is missing so let's apply the changes". Sometimes the opposing party is needed to continue further discussion itself so as to reach a proper conclusion and their points can't be handwaved simply because they stopped replying or lost interest. Sometimes, nobody besides that opposing party is interested in that thread so proper discussion doesn't take place for days.

Expecting people to dedicate their lives to argue on a single thread is unreasonable. Taking my own example, sometimes I need to take a break for a few days due to real life so people in any thread that I am in, understand and are compromising enough to wait for me instead of rushing it because "the deadline expired". Sometimes I am online doing other works of priority and choose not to respond to specific threads for a few days, and that's perfectly fine.

I completely agree that we cannot wait for months. Even one month of absence or less in most cases should be enough to reach the conclusion that the person who was supposed to reply is not going to reply, and the thread should progress without them, and they can make whatever changes they want when they return. But drawing a hard line, and that too of only 3 days, is something that does not sit well with me. I'd say admins and thread mods should use their sense of judgment in such cases according to the situation.

I agree with this. Such massive restrictions would demand too much of many of our most valued contributors and push through widespread extremely unreliable statistics in the long run. Patience is far more important for the sake of accuracy and safeguards.

So every time something unexpected happens IRL, somebody should place time-specific leaves of absence in every thread they are active in? That is not remotely realistic for our type of work, especially as the notifications system here is tricky for those unfamiliar with it.

Considering that staff members are needed to approve the threads anyway, I think one can entrust them to decide on the appropiate time case-by-case. A few days are minimum, though.

But let me also say, to be absolutely clear, that absence definitely shouldn't be seen as dismissing votes or arguments. Otherwise, some party can just continue the debate so long until someone loses interest.

As said many times before, wiki wide revisions are often said to only be done during summer times. But some times, the main staff carrying the weight of the plans have RL issues or have literal technical difficulties that prevent them from getting a single piece of work done; examples include problems caused via moving into a new house during the summer. And on top of that, sometimes other wiki wide revisions that are otherwise more mandatory/urgent took center stage before the one made first could even get done.

So verse specific threads could be deadline for sure, but wiki wide revisions have always been a "Better late than never" situation. Also, typically rejections to a proposal also have a lot less reason to to be deadline since even if the rebuttal is a lot of work, the outcome of it is actually a lot less work for everyone and everything else since all we need to do after that is pretty much close the thread and not update 5000+ pages and remove thousands of calculation blog posts. Wear as pushing for revisions that are otherwise controversial is not only "A lot of work" but 99.99% is too much work for the otherwise little payoff. Furthermore, it could cause a lot more destruction on the wiki and doesn't actually fix anything.

I'd say the more controversial a revision is and/or of deadlining something rushes a lot more work than it does post-poning or slowing down work, than that's more of a reason not to deadline something. Better is a perfected revision that takes months or years to craft than a rushed revision that causes a lot more harm than good.

Yes, we are very seldom inflexible regarding this, as long as other members bump the threads to remind us about their lack of input. Too strict set in stone rules leave us with no flexibility, and that is potentially dangerous.

See my previous reply. Also, the hobby part just underlines the validity of AKM's arguments earlier. We cannot expect everybody to be like me and Medeus and be constantly active with helping out nearly all the time.

However, maybe we could write a rule that simply tells our staff to not be too inflexible regarding when we should give up on waiting for input? There are legitimately cases where this has been a problem. I just think that the initially suggested rule would cause problems in many more discussions than the ones it solves.

If the argument stopped midway during the thread and sufficient time has passed, one of the sides would obviously contact the mods to suggest that something should be done. The mods would obviously respond to it saying that either they should wait for a bit more, or they can continue the revisions due to the absence of opposing party. If everybody else is active except for the opposing party, it shouldn't be so hard.

How about something like this:

"For verse-specific threads, if the only opposing party does not reply for over 2 weeks without any notice, then the moderators should try to get the thread to completion without them, assuming that they'd probably not reply. However, their points should not be discarded. They should be kept in mind while the thread goes on and any evaluation is done, and anybody else is free to argue in their stead."

Or something to that effect. 2 weeks is a placeholder there.

I still do not think that it is remotely realistic for the continuous running of this community to apply such an extremely strict and inflexible rule, for reasons that I, AKM, Medeus, and DontTalk have mentioned earlier in this thread.

Many members recurrently need considerable time in order to be able to help out, and rushing threads to be applied before they have received nearly sufficient reliable input would strongly risk to completely mess up the reliability of the wiki and our ability to properly organise discussion threads with some measure of flexibility. Meaning that applying this would strongly risk to cause very serious lasting harm.

@DarkDragonMedeus @SomebodyData @Celestial_Pegasus @Wokistan @Mr._Bambu @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @Ogbunabali @Abstractions @LordGriffin1000 @Colonel_Krukov @SamanPatou

I would greatly appreciate if you would read all of the arguments I quoted above.

I would especially appreciate if somebody could build an alternative rule based on my "Maybe we could write a rule that simply tells our staff to not be too inflexible regarding when we should give up on waiting for input?" suggestion, as I am very concerned about that the change suggested in the first post of this thread would completely mess up our ability to properly organise discussions and get reliable results from them, and as such cause very serious lasting harm to the reliability of our wiki profile pages.

Risking to systematically rush all threads without proper safeguards definitely seems like a bad idea.

 

[ByAsura]

I don't really have any opinion here, but I have been in situations where my notifications for a specific thread have just stopped working for more than 3 days.

A week seems more reasonable than 3 days if we're going with a timeframe.

 

[Antvasima]

What about AKM's suggestion of 2 weeks with improved rule text contents? That would at least give us some leeway.

I still do not think that it is realistic to rush a large part of our threads simply because the most knowledgeable members are not constantly active every day in the manner that only I and Medeus likely are of all our wiki members, and in addition, expecting them to constantly give exact time schedules for when they will come back to all discussions that they are active in is not realistic either.

That said, we do need to write a rule about that our staff have to use their common sense regarding when we need to stop waiting due to lack of input. For example if a knowledgeable member repeatedly ignores notifications despite being active in our forum.

 

[ByAsura]

As long as it's more than 3 days, sure. But I also agree the guideline itself is a bit unrealistic.

I'd say that's only a problem in verses/threads with little to no staff/knowledgeable members, they've promised to give information, or there's a portion of a franchise (eg. Doctor Who and Dalek Omnibus, which I can't find to make my new revision but someone else on this wiki might have) that's completely inaccessible to all but this specific staff member. Threads seem to move on anyway if none of those factors are met.

 

[Antvasima]

Yes, these are good points, although I think that the problems would be more common than that.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Yeah DT's point is probably my primary fear with this rule- it will be used to stonewall revisions into being accepted. Most often a silence is where neither party has anything new to bring about (in my opinion) and nobody takes the next step forward. If one group continues to just push for circles after that point, I don't think they should "win" the debate by right of endurance and willingness to repeat themselves. So I find myself against this rule (even though DT doesn't seem to be).

If we did implement it, I'd go for a longer time period.