User:Infinite/Rant

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17th October 2012

I don't know how I'm doing

"I don't know. I will know once I end up doing it. I will know once I end up growing towards it. I will know once I have been there. But until then, other than accepting this nomination and feeling it is the right time; I won't know until it happens."

On the 7th of June this year, I was promoted to the sysop position. I have always expressed the above even months before my actual RFA. Heck, I've even stated I would refuse the nominations. But here I am, sysop. And recently it involved more self-reflection than I've ever experienced myself doing on a wiki.

I still don't know exactly what I should be doing. The wiki isn't exactly a hostile environment; maybe a vandal here and there, and some interpersonal conflict occurs, but most of it doesn't require active administrative moderation. I am watching these conflicts happen, and see that they are resolved by the contributors themselves (most of the time). Clearly there is no direct need for a sysop to monitor and policing the contributors. That leaves janitorial tasks and (arguably more important, still) building community.

Where my confusion is coming from

Personally, I feel the community who put me in my seat is no longer present. Looking at my RFA, only a few names are still seen on the recent changes. This has demotivated me quite drastically. Not in the sense that I am resigning my position (no, I want to learn more still), but in the sense that I have grown out of touch with the GW2W's current community. Maybe that is my fault for finally getting my hands on the actual game and prior to that, having a life to take care of, but I can't shake the feeling that the old GW2W community has dissolved because of other things. Primarily, the new community's pressing need to regulate and police new consensus.

Now, I am definitely a supporter of consensus. However, when consensus gets in the way of being bold, I feel consensus is detrimental. Therefore, I shall restate my idea of what consensus is, or at least should be;

Consensus is the established practises across the wiki for all things wiki. Formatting, editing, discussion, special actions, documentation, template use, and so on and so forth. It is under no circumstances an alternative term for policy. Established consensus is not law, it is current practises until contested.

Contesting consensus means that, at any point after the current consensus was established, a new edit is made which deviates from said established consensus. This deviation is under no circumstances to result in an immediate revert, nor does it count as vandalism (as long as it isn't vandalism, of course). This point, with this new edit, is where consensus is considered contested.

Contested consensus should be discussed, not brushed under the carpet of bad edits. If an edit deviates from established consensus, bring it to the talk page; it is time to question the previously established consensus. Contributors will compare the new, bold edit(s) with the consensus-backed previous edit(s) and see whether the new edit brings in something fresh, possibly better than what was already there.

Most of the times, only minor edits pass as non-vandalism, non-reverted, consensus-breaking edits (and thus left intact). However, usually it is seen that bigger edits (primarily edits that know formatting guidelines) are reverted without a second thought. This is why this wiki is currently in a community-sense downwards spiral.

The previous community was known to constantly contest and alter established consensus. The current community invokes its wrath when established guidelines are not followed, even though the editor's intentions and their edits' results do not actually remove information from an article. This scares away contributors, and future contributors.

What consensus has to do with me being a sysop

Again, I support consensus. But as a sysop who was primarily supported to monitor the GW2W community, I feel it is my responsibility to stress all possible negative effects experienced on wiki which may reduce the sense of community. The current practise in terms of consensus is one of those negative effects.

Consensus isn't policy. GW2W is one of the few wikis that thrives because it refuses to adapt policies. We used to work with a gradually evolving community-built consensus that would literally adapt to anything, in favour of the state of this wiki. Everyone wanted to help build up the wiki from the ground, and everyone was valuable on the way there. Regrettably, some users didn't always receive the warm, including treatment that others might have enjoyed, but during other discussions, they would be heard and agreed with. You can't always have it your way, something even I am perfectly aware of.

But as that previous community diminished, the current community grew into place. It more-or-less liked what was, and wanted to perfect it. In my opinion, they didn't. Neither the content formatting, nor the "office" in which the users are working. They've radically taken the basics and forged them into a system that is hard to penetrate and change. Being a wiki dragon on this wiki will very likely result in gaining a lot of hatred.

I feel this wiki used to be perfectly capable of dealing with positive and negative wiki dragons. That said, the current community is incapable of dealing with them, and adapts statusquoism (big edits can only be made with prior community consent (consensus prior change)). I think it's high time the current community loosens up a little, and should learn to breathe.

Why statusquoism is bad

Let me tell you how GW2W was built up. At first, there was GW2W with GWW users. GW2W was mostly unknown to GW2W-only contributors, and thus the GWW crowd basically set up GW2W in the same fashion as GWW was set up. At the time, this worked. But not all the way. GW2W never really found common ground for policies (something in effect on GWW). Eventually, with some opposition, policies were discarded as a whole. The P&P was conceived. This system still stands today. P&P encompasses all practises and processes that are widely accepted on the wiki. There are no set in stone policies that can be broken (and punished accordingly), but the semantics of policies were still in place. Edit warring is bad, discuss when discussion should be had, respect the contributor, question the contributions, act in light of the wiki, not your personal agenda, etc., etc., and so forth.

It caught on quickly, and (almost) everyone seemed content with this system. The idea was to have it run for as long as we could manage it. We're still managing it, so there you go. But the fundamental aspect of the P&P is that it is never set in stone. It is always open for discussion. This is what the current community seems to fail to grasp. P&P isn't policy. And currently, especially the formatting and actions taken on revert wars lean towards policies. You can't hide behind either simply because they were established in the past, that's not how this wiki works. Either way, the P&P were the basics for our ever-evolving take on how to run the wiki. It led to many extreme overhauls but they were all good for something; we backed them as a community, instead of attacking them from the bandwagon.

And using the P&P, the community worked hard to get the wiki as ready as possible for release, losing contributors left and right as new and old contributors came in. The new faces were convinced things needed a complete overhaul, including P&P. Fortunately for GW2W, that never reached anywhere near consensus. The new ways were here to stay.

But these days, the old ways seep back into the system. Slowly but surely the wiki community grows harsher, stricter, and less forgiving. I feel this is a detrimental curve forming, and it should be halted asap.

As a sysop primarily instated to police the community

I feel it is time to press upon every member of the GW2W community that consensus is not policy and that, as soon as consensus is contested, it is also discussed (if necessary) and re-evaluated. If there is a lack of community sense, I feel confused as to why I am still seated, while I still want to learn more in my current position. So for the sake of the positive curve we once had, let's bring back the great community we once were. If only to help me figure out what exactly it is I could still do better.