RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

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confocaloid
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RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by confocaloid » June 6th, 2022, 7:10 am

Where and how should one publicly discuss various LifeWiki-related issues that pop up sometimes? Should it happen on LifeWiki itself (talk pages), or on these forums (in a dedicated thread for LifeWiki questions, or in separate threads, or both), or maybe either on the wiki or on the forums depending on some guidelines?

If the discussion takes place on LifeWiki, one may have to frequently switch between two places to discuss things (as opposed to having all discussion in one place). There may be no completely objective way to decide where to ask something specific. The attention is split between two places, which seems to be a disadvantage.

If the discussion takes place on these forums, there will be at least two different kinds of questions discussed in one place: one is about documenting existing knowledge; another is about creating something new in the first place. I think "being a good wiki editor" is sufficiently distinct from "being a CA enthusiast" to make this even a reasonable thing to ask for comments from the community.

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by confocaloid » August 15th, 2023, 1:13 pm

Bump.
Any constructive feedback regarding any of the issues mentioned on LifeWiki:Tiki bar is appreciated.
Same for the forum threads: "What it is like to be a hassler?", "... Terminology and Analysis"
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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by dvgrn » August 15th, 2023, 2:15 pm

confocaloid wrote:
August 15th, 2023, 1:13 pm
Bump.
Any constructive feedback regarding any of the issues mentioned on LifeWiki:Tiki bar is appreciated.
Same for the forum threads: "What it is like to be a hassler?", "... Terminology and Analysis"
Yup, I've got the same problem, and still haven't figured out an answer for it. The forums seem more "public" -- i.e., a few more people will notice a discussion if it happens there, and might say something.

The relevant LifeWiki talk page or the Tiki Bar seem like more relevant places to put in-depth discussions, theoretically. But in practice, questions there don't seem to get a very wide response a lot of the time.

I guess if a question seems important enough, the best bet is still to create a new forum thread for the topic. Maybe optionally link to the forum thread from the Tiki Bar?

I was thinking recently about doing this for the "period-N glider shuttle" -> "period-N dependent reflector loop" renaming idea, for example -- just because that topic got kind of lost in the big discussion about "signal", but it's not really strongly related to that discussion.

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by Nathaniel » October 28th, 2023, 2:35 pm

In my mind, the ideal situation would be that discussion of LifeWiki issues happens on LifeWiki, since that keeps everything in one place. Talk pages keep discussion close to the relevant page, for example.

However, in practice I find LifeWiki much worse for having long discussions, much worse for being notified when others have responded to discussions, and much worse for perusing old discussions. So...

Please provide thoughts on (and/or suggest changes to) the following proposal:
- I make a "LifeWiki Discussion" forum.
- Any quick/easy discussions take place on the relevant article's talk page (e.g., if you just want to leave a quick note about why an article says something, or why you did something, use the talk page).
- All discussions that are likely to involve more than a single reply instead take place on the LifeWiki Discussion forum (and can be linked to, e.g., from an article's talk page if relevant). For example, any discussions looking for consensus of what a particular LifeWiki policy should be would happen in this forum. This would make the current Tiki Bar essentially null and void, and those discussions would instead happen in the new LifeWiki Discussion forum.

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by dvgrn » October 28th, 2023, 3:01 pm

Nathaniel wrote:
October 28th, 2023, 2:35 pm
Please provide thoughts on (and/or suggest changes to) the following proposal:
- I make a "LifeWiki Discussion" forum.
- Any quick/easy discussions take place on the relevant article's talk page (e.g., if you just want to leave a quick note about why an article says something, or why you did something, use the talk page).
- All discussions that are likely to involve more than a single reply instead take place on the LifeWiki Discussion forum (and can be linked to, e.g., from an article's talk page if relevant). For example, any discussions looking for consensus of what a particular LifeWiki policy should be would happen in this forum. This would make the current Tiki Bar essentially null and void, and those discussions would instead happen in the new LifeWiki Discussion forum.
That seems worth a try to me. The potential for damage seems ... well, very low, considering we could always agree to delete it again if it was a disaster or didn't get used.

I guess I'd say that "All discussions that are likely to involve more than a single reply" is maybe a little too broad. There are plenty of multi-reply discussions that happen without any particular disagreement, even -- just a group of editors working out what makes sense, and collectively picking the best solution that comes up. The criterion might be more "All discussions that seem likely to involve irreconcilable differences of opinion", or "All issues that seem unlikely to be resolved by LifeWiki discussion", or something along those lines.

Edit War Reporting Thread
I think I would probably add my proposed "Edit War Reporting Thread" to that forum, if that forum existed. The idea of an "Edit War Reporting Thread" is for editors to have something constructive to do besides just continue to edit and undo and edit and undo again, when a disagreement arises. If it's clear that a second undo should in fact happen, then a LifeWiki admin can do it (and hopefully that will count as an "executive decision" and the edit war won't continue interminably).

To be clear, this would be a short quick appeal for review, not a discussion thread in its own right. In cases like this, the first round of discussion would presumably happen in edit summaries; the second round would happen on the article's talk page; the third round currently happens in the Tiki Bar but now might happen on a newly created thread on this proposed LifeWiki Discussion forum. By the time something gets to the stage of a post on the Edit War Reporting Thread, the useful discussion should all pretty much have happened, and the point will have been reached where people just plain disagree on basic premises and (hopefully) everyone agrees that it's time to find a way to settle the issue and move on.

I.e., for a problematic page that has been through an edit / undo / redo sequence, they can refrain from just doing another undo for the same reasons, and instead create a post linking to the page -- and then immediately self-report it. This will put the problem into the "reported posts" queue. If history is any guide, reported posts get more consistent attention more quickly than long painful discussions that are hidden away on talk pages, or even on the Tiki Bar.

Current Experience with the Reported-Post Queue
I've generally tried to keep the number of active reported posts to a minimum, in the last year or two. Sometimes I'll just close a report, if A) in my opinion the post in question is actually perfectly tolerable and no action is really needed, and B) other moderators seem unlikely to disagree with (A). Sometimes I'll leave a reported post in this category open for a week or two, just to check whether any other forum mod might think that action is needed after all. For the most part nobody has taken action in these cases, so eventually I take that as a sign that my first-guess response wasn't too far off -- and then I'll close the report.

When posts really need to be moved or deleted, someone moves them or deletes them, of course -- and/or writes PMs to the author of the posts in question to explain what needs to be done differently next time.

I think that's worked out reasonably well, recently, all things considered. What do other people think?

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by confocaloid » October 28th, 2023, 8:03 pm

Nathaniel wrote:
October 28th, 2023, 2:35 pm
Please provide thoughts on (and/or suggest changes to) the following proposal:
- I make a "LifeWiki Discussion" forum.
- Any quick/easy discussions take place on the relevant article's talk page (e.g., if you just want to leave a quick note about why an article says something, or why you did something, use the talk page).
- All discussions that are likely to involve more than a single reply instead take place on the LifeWiki Discussion forum (and can be linked to, e.g., from an article's talk page if relevant). For example, any discussions looking for consensus of what a particular LifeWiki policy should be would happen in this forum. This would make the current Tiki Bar essentially null and void, and those discussions would instead happen in the new LifeWiki Discussion forum.
I support the proposal for a "LifeWiki Discussion" forum as a replacement for the Tiki bar. In my opinion, forum threads are indeed more convenient for discussions than wiki pages. In a forum thread, replies by different people automatically become separate posts without having to apply a specific formatting / indenting. To be able to participate in a forum thread discussion, one does not need to learn wiki-markup and wiki conventions (such as signing your replies with four tildes).

I think several already existing threads could be also moved to the new forum, e.g. this thread,
Suggested LifeWiki edits,
LifeWiki infoboxes,
FAQ,
Can we substantiate this claim?,
Non-notable Pages,
Its it a stub? Is it notable?,
Glider synthesis on LifeWiki,
LifeWiki Did-You-Knows,
and several older threads.
dvgrn wrote:
October 28th, 2023, 3:01 pm
I guess I'd say that "All discussions that are likely to involve more than a single reply" is maybe a little too broad. There are plenty of multi-reply discussions that happen without any particular disagreement, even -- just a group of editors working out what makes sense, and collectively picking the best solution that comes up. The criterion might be more "All discussions that seem likely to involve irreconcilable differences of opinion", or "All issues that seem unlikely to be resolved by LifeWiki discussion", or something along those lines.
In my opinion, forum threads would be more convenient than wiki for any discussions on a specific topic, regardless of whether or not there are serious disagreements. I think "All discussions that are likely to involve more than a single reply" would be a good rule of thumb.
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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by hotcrystal0 » October 28th, 2023, 10:03 pm

Nathaniel wrote:
October 28th, 2023, 2:35 pm
In my mind, the ideal situation would be that discussion of LifeWiki issues happens on LifeWiki, since that keeps everything in one place. Talk pages keep discussion close to the relevant page, for example.

However, in practice I find LifeWiki much worse for having long discussions, much worse for being notified when others have responded to discussions, and much worse for perusing old discussions. So...

Please provide thoughts on (and/or suggest changes to) the following proposal:
- I make a "LifeWiki Discussion" forum.
- Any quick/easy discussions take place on the relevant article's talk page (e.g., if you just want to leave a quick note about why an article says something, or why you did something, use the talk page).
- All discussions that are likely to involve more than a single reply instead take place on the LifeWiki Discussion forum (and can be linked to, e.g., from an article's talk page if relevant). For example, any discussions looking for consensus of what a particular LifeWiki policy should be would happen in this forum. This would make the current Tiki Bar essentially null and void, and those discussions would instead happen in the new LifeWiki Discussion forum.
We should have a “LifeWiki Discussion” forum. Suggested Lifewiki Edits should be moved to it and pinned.

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4o$41b6o$40b2ob4o$41b2o!

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by MEisSCAMMER » October 29th, 2023, 11:46 am

Nathaniel wrote:
October 28th, 2023, 2:35 pm
Please provide thoughts on (and/or suggest changes to) the following proposal:
- I make a "LifeWiki Discussion" forum.
- Any quick/easy discussions take place on the relevant article's talk page (e.g., if you just want to leave a quick note about why an article says something, or why you did something, use the talk page).
- All discussions that are likely to involve more than a single reply instead take place on the LifeWiki Discussion forum (and can be linked to, e.g., from an article's talk page if relevant). For example, any discussions looking for consensus of what a particular LifeWiki policy should be would happen in this forum. This would make the current Tiki Bar essentially null and void, and those discussions would instead happen in the new LifeWiki Discussion forum.
Agree, for the reasons above and because to me, it kind of makes sense that administration and content should be kept separate. Wiki stuff is already bleeding over to this forum anyway (suggested edits, the infobox war that recently erupted, and the others from confocaloid's post), so why not make it official? Also the tiki bar is perhaps a bit too big and intimidating for me at least to even begin to look at discussion. If it were chunked into bite-sized threads it might be easier to comprehend.
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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by TYCF » November 1st, 2023, 12:06 pm

A new user group?
LifeWiki:Editors

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by GUYTU6J » November 1st, 2023, 9:50 pm

TYCF wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 12:06 pm
A new user group?
LifeWiki:Editors
What is the selection criterion?

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by confocaloid » November 1st, 2023, 10:21 pm

Minor point: the group name "Editors" is somewhat strange, because everyone who edits LifeWiki pages can consider themselves an editor, regardless of any additional abilities (i.e. deleting pages, etc.)
GUYTU6J wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 9:50 pm
What is the selection criterion?
I (obviously) cannot answer the question. But for me, it would be hard to trust that someone who strongly wants certain pages to be deleted / holds strong opinions on the issues, will not misuse the ability to do so. viewtopic.php?p=136953#p136953
It is bad that pages marked for deletion often wait months or years before their fate is decided. However, "marked for deletion" tag does not automatically mean that the page should be deleted.
(And thanks to whoever actually reviews the deletion requests and handles them in a reasonable way.)
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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by Haycat2009 » November 2nd, 2023, 2:01 am

confocaloid wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 10:21 pm
Minor point: the group name "Editors" is somewhat strange, because everyone who edits LifeWiki pages can consider themselves an editor, regardless of any additional abilities (i.e. deleting pages, etc.)
GUYTU6J wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 9:50 pm
What is the selection criterion?
I (obviously) cannot answer the question. But for me, it would be hard to trust that someone who strongly wants certain pages to be deleted / holds strong opinions on the issues, will not misuse the ability to do so. viewtopic.php?p=136953#p136953
It is bad that pages marked for deletion often wait months or years before their fate is decided. However, "marked for deletion" tag does not automatically mean that the page should be deleted.
(And thanks to whoever actually reviews the deletion requests and handles them in a reasonable way.)
I agree. In my opinion, "Editors" should be renamed "Extended editors"
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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by dvgrn » November 3rd, 2023, 10:27 am

confocaloid wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 10:21 pm
GUYTU6J wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 9:50 pm
What is the selection criterion?
I (obviously) cannot answer the question. But for me, it would be hard to trust that someone who strongly wants certain pages to be deleted / holds strong opinions on the issues, will not misuse the ability to do so. viewtopic.php?p=136953#p136953
@confocaloid, this part of your post has been reported. Given the context of the quote and the link, it does seem to be a clear violation of Rule 1. Please be careful not to attack other forum members in this way in the future.

You clearly hold extraordinarily strong opinions on quite a number of issues yourself -- as do many of us! That's just a fact of Life, and not in any way a valid criticism of anyone. It continues to surprise me that you are able to make these kinds of statements about other people's behavior, without noticing that the same exact words could equally well apply to your own behavior.

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by dvgrn » November 3rd, 2023, 10:29 am

GUYTU6J wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 9:50 pm
What is the selection criterion?
To answer the original question: a couple of people volunteered to take on some LifeWiki maintenance responsibilities, who didn't want to wade into the more difficult side of LifeWiki moderation.

People in the "Editor" category are moderators who will not be dealing with disputes -- i.e., they won't issue warnings or mediate conflicts. They will attempt to make use of extra powers in uncontroversial situations (e.g., delete privileges for pages that clearly need to be deleted).

Like many aspects of the LifeWiki, the new "Editor" category is an experiment, and we probably won't go overboard and add a whole lot of people to it, until we see how things work out. Try not to worry too much about the name "Editor" -- it's just an arbitrary label for a functional subcategory of moderator.

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by confocaloid » November 3rd, 2023, 3:59 pm

dvgrn wrote:
November 3rd, 2023, 10:27 am
It continues to surprise me that you are able to make these kinds of statements about other people's behavior, without noticing that the same exact words could equally well apply to your own behavior.
The difference is that I'm not volunteering to get page deletion access, and I'm not pretending to be someone who knows better than everyone else which pages should be deteted and which shouldn't. I marked a number of pages for deletion, but it is up to moderators to decide which of those should actually be deleted.
confocaloid wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 10:21 pm
Minor point: the group name "Editors" is somewhat strange, because everyone who edits LifeWiki pages can consider themselves an editor, regardless of any additional abilities (i.e. deleting pages, etc.)
dvgrn wrote:
November 3rd, 2023, 10:29 am
Try not to worry too much about the name "Editor" -- it's just an arbitrary label for a functional subcategory of moderator.
I already wrote this is relatively minor issue, but it is still confusing. Common sense suggests that everyone who edits pages is an editor, and being able to edit pages does not imply any extended access such as deletion of pages. I think something like "page deleter" would be better for this purpose.
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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by MEisSCAMMER » November 10th, 2023, 8:28 pm

confocaloid wrote:
November 3rd, 2023, 3:59 pm
Common sense suggests that everyone who edits pages is an editor, and being able to edit pages does not imply any extended access such as deletion of pages. I think something like "page deleter" would be better for this purpose.
I'd suggest a simpler route, with something along the lines of 'sysop' to make it clear that they 'operate' the 'system' without moderating anything. It's simple, clear, and to the point. The current powers of this usergroup are not, I am led to believe, solely restricted to deletions, which is why I'm not a huge fan of 'page deleter'.
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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by Nathaniel » November 12th, 2023, 7:42 pm

confocaloid wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 10:21 pm
Minor point: the group name "Editors" is somewhat strange, because everyone who edits LifeWiki pages can consider themselves an editor, regardless of any additional abilities (i.e. deleting pages, etc.)
I agree with this -- I actually don't particularly like the name "Editor", since (for example) it makes it difficult to write "LifeWiki" namespace articles about non-Editor editors who edit the wiki without being confusing.

So I'm very happy to change the name "Editor" to something else... I just don't particularly prefer any of the other suggestions that I've seen so far. "Extended editors" somehow feels too long and clunky, "Page Deleter" doesn't quite capture all of the extra permissions that they have, and "sysop" would be too confusing since it's the actual MediaWiki term for what we now call "Moderators". Any other suggestions?

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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by haaaaaands » November 12th, 2023, 7:54 pm

Nathaniel wrote:
November 12th, 2023, 7:42 pm
confocaloid wrote:
November 1st, 2023, 10:21 pm
Minor point: the group name "Editors" is somewhat strange, because everyone who edits LifeWiki pages can consider themselves an editor, regardless of any additional abilities (i.e. deleting pages, etc.)
I agree with this -- I actually don't particularly like the name "Editor", since (for example) it makes it difficult to write "LifeWiki" namespace articles about non-Editor editors who edit the wiki without being confusing.

So I'm very happy to change the name "Editor" to something else... I just don't particularly prefer any of the other suggestions that I've seen so far. "Extended editors" somehow feels too long and clunky, "Page Deleter" doesn't quite capture all of the extra permissions that they have, and "sysop" would be too confusing since it's the actual MediaWiki term for what we now call "Moderators". Any other suggestions?
what about "lesser moderator"?



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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by hotdogPi » November 12th, 2023, 8:20 pm

Maintainer?
User:HotdogPi/My discoveries

Periods discovered: 5-16,⑱,⑳G,㉑G,㉒㉔㉕,㉗-㉛,㉜SG,㉞㉟㊱㊳㊵㊷㊹㊺㊽㊿,54G,55G,56,57G,60,62-66,68,70,73,74S,75,76S,80,84,88,90,96
100,02S,06,08,10,12,14G,16,17G,20,26G,28,38,47,48,54,56,72,74,80,92,96S
217,486,576

S: SKOP
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Re: RFC: The default public place to discuss LifeWiki-related issues

Post by confocaloid » November 12th, 2023, 8:38 pm

hotdogPi wrote:
November 12th, 2023, 8:20 pm
Maintainer?
I think that could work. It would avoid confusion with all wiki editors, and at the same time it would not contradict the part "They do not mediate conflicts between other editors..."

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