User talk:Tanaric/Starting out

Discussion

Very good. -elviondale (tahlk) 04:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

There are a couple sections that I would like to tweak, but overall an excellent starting point. The only one that jumped out at me as needing immediate work was "You don't have any responsibilities, so don't pretend like you do." ... while I like the concept and what I believe to be the idea behind it, I can already foresee someone using it as an excuse to be irresponsible and disruptive in their goal to "have fun". Some rewording is needed, but I can't think of how at the moment. I'll come back after I get some sleep. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 04:53, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I would go and delete the "have fun" part. Same as with people that just want to "have fun" (aka, vandalise pages for the sake of it), people who overstress with contributions will end having conflicts with users (a revert war here, a "pic or didn't happend" there), and will have to face a sysop. Besides, i feel the rest of the not-policy-nor-guideline covers it already.--Fighterdoken 07:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Have fun is good. Perhaps Good luck and Have a lot of Fun! RT | Talk - A joyous wintersday to all 08:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The part that I was concerned about has already been revised - yay! Much better now! --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Locations

Personally, I'd prefer is essays and such are keept in userspace, to avoid cluttering of GW2W space and the need for the big notice on top. Backsword 11:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Essays? What has this got to do with essays? This is a guideline of how to behave on the wiki, and doesnt belong in userspace.... Since we have no NPA yet, I can freely say this; do you think at all before you say somthing? Have you even read through any of the things you've posted on? --Warwick (Talk) (Contr.) 12:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

NPA is the only one we have, and since it's taken from GWW, it has no loopholes. Backsword 16:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

We have *no* policies as of yet, including NPA. We arn't GWW, we're GW2W, so its not exactly the same, and we are making our own policies. we have no policies, and so i could call you anything I want without fear of retribution. --Warwick (Talk) (Contr.) 16:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

for exactly that reason, we have temporarily adapted the NPA. - Y0_ich_halt 16:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I correct myself then. I still think that I cant make any sense of what hes saying, though. --Warwick (Talk) (Contr.) 16:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Not really. The decisions to adopt NPA and ADMIN weren't supported by consensus or discussion. (Regardless, I don't think he violated the spirit of NPA, which has been lost on GW1W.) Armond 18:35, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe by "essay", he's referring to the way "essay" is used on Wikipedia to differentiate itself from policies and guidelines. And he also believes that such articles should be placed in user space instead. Which I disagree. Project name space is fine, or at the most, I'll concede that it can be moved into a Help namespace. -- ab.er.rant 15:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Content before policies or policies before content

I see exactly where that paragraph came from (the ill guided attempt to establish all policies on GWW1 before establishing content), but that still does not make it true here. We will have almost 0 content for this wiki for many months to come, due to the fact that GW2 is not released yet. While, obviously, we should not forbid the addition of content, it seems wise to use that time to think about policies.

As a side note, I removed the claims to consensus from the page: A single person essay, edited by 2 more is very different from consensus. Nothing should be finalised here till the wiki is much more known and interested people have found their way here. Definitely talk about stuff, but avoid the mistake of letting the small minority of early users setting the rules for years to come. --Xeeron 13:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The small minority of early users must set the rules for years to come. There's no other way to exist. Those rules are fluid and can change, but they still exist before the main masses of users show up. —Tanaric 16:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

We don't want caos. Just a wasy to access the info. Rules can change. RT | Talk - A joyous wintersday to all 16:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Taking a look at the discussion here, I'd say a lot more than three people agree with this. (I'm among them, in case it wasn't clear.) Armond 18:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I am not saying wait weeks, but declaring consensus in the first hours of a wiki's existance is pretty strong, when many people who will be interested might not even have found this yet. I am sure that in a week or two, everyone who is interested in guild wars wikis (and their policy) will be on board, so there is no need to do it all in the first day. --Xeeron 18:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Prity sure it's the second day, nearing 3rd. RT | Talk - A joyous wintersday to all 18:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Pretty sure the (now removed) text in question was written hours after opening the wiki. Backsword 18:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

K RT | Talk - A joyous wintersday to all 18:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree with Xeeron (I was going to write that actually). I think Tanaric does not realize the extreme difference between the start of gww and the start of this wiki. Gww started with an extreme overweight of content, 3 fully campaings released and a settled competitor to be compared to (Guild wiki), and gww needed to fill at least the essentials asap, policy should be coming later, but for what you said that didn't happen. This wiki is different, here we are with no other wiki to compete and actually with practically no content to be added. I see no real reason to, but we could even forbid adding content for a couple of months and I think that will make little difference. Then in my opinion, all this wiki should be turned into a serious research and discussion over the best policy to rule the wikis (yes plural, I see no reason to have different policies on gww and gw2w). You already have the experience of two-different-ruled wikis, if you actually learned from it you should be able to settle good fundamental policies and convince the most people about that. But instead, you continue to say that we should run this without actual policies and that we should be creating them "in the run" resulting probably in instructured ad-hoc ones like you actually learned nothing from your previous experiences. If I understood correctly (if not tell me) there was a big difference between Guild Wiki and these wikis, in the first one there was an actual "wikiboss" who had the last word on discussions, did that worked? Yes I think, but that has a cost, the wiki is shaped to that individual judgment. In the other hand on gww we have elections and all there was (or are) problems and some people think adminship should have more freedom but even with that gww did a wonderful job in less than a year. What is better? I don't such an experience to give a valid opinion but I think the larger the project the least effective the "boss" is, and gw2w will probably be very large in both content and time. Coran Ironclaw 08:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Coran, I'm beginning to see why you've been hostile to me recently. Let me try to clear things up.

Firstly, I am well aware of the difference between the start of this wiki and the start of GWW. This is why, during the start of GWW, I advocated policies before content. There was too much material hitting too fast with a giant pool of editors -- we needed a structure for it to fit or it wouldn't have fit at all. This wiki is much more similar to the start of the GuildWiki. There's a relative handful of us and no existing content available. Thus, policies are not important because there's no risk of things getting out of control. They can naturally evolve into place as content becomes available.

Secondly, you can't rule the wiki. Forget about the bureaucracy for a second. For those of us who spend a lot of time in Talk, bureaucracy and leadership seem like the most important things in the world. That said, the previous wikis actually run in spite of our bureaucracy, not because of it. The reason formal bureaucracy must eventually exist is because without it, informal bureaucracies spring up and make a mess of things. In my experience, gradually allowing the initial informal bureaucracy become the formal bureaucracy works best if there's enough time and patience to allow it. This wiki has nothing in more abundance than time.

Thirdly, you have it wrong about the GuildWiki. My official title there was "bureaucrat," but as I was the only (active) one, I've been referred to as the "wikiboss." In many cases, yes, I could exercise a final say. That said, in general, I didn't. If I had, everybody would have left. It was my policy to avoid interfering in content disputes. There was the one big exception of the builds wipe -- and I tried as hard as I could to have it work out some other way, I even offered Xeeron a wikiboss position for our builds section -- but in general content was left to the editors.

I'd block jerks and I'd offer advice and guidelines for those who would listen. I wrote most of our "policies" there, but I didn't create them from scratch -- instead, I documented the unwritten practices we had all, without realizing it, settled on. I appointed sysops who I trusted to exercise the discretion I exercised. In general, the administrators there, including myself, were just editors who were trusted to keep the peace when the situation called for it. It is grossly inaccurate to say we dictated the course of the wiki -- the regular, non-administrative editors, writers, and wiki-gnomes did that. I think, and somebody correct me if I'm wrong, that the way that the GuildWiki was "shaped to my individual judgment" was that I stayed out of things that didn't need my input.

Finally, I disagree that a head administrator is less useful as a wiki grows. I feel the opposite -- the larger the wiki, the greater the need for a single unambiguous foundation. I essentially became, based on the views of the other sysops and the editing community at large, the foundational policy for the GuildWiki. Right now, I think GWW's greatest weakness is the void where a foundation should be. There's nobody to ask "do we keep this?" because nobody is empowered to make the choice. Instead, everything is decided by the committee of talk page editors. It's a rubbish system in general, and it's lead to a great deal of clique behavior that never existed on the GuildWiki. It's also lead to a dearth of new editors, because those that begin contributing are quickly scared away by a policy or style zealot. Unless we correct these problems here, I imagine many of the editors will start a second Guild Wars 2 wiki and found it in the manner I describe.

—Tanaric 08:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Solution to the flaw you pointed out with the benevolent dictator method, Coran: have a dictator who has the sense to not control content in a biased way. In addition, you seem to imply a lack of options other than benevolent dictatorship and policy-shackled representative democracy. Another prominent option is an oligarchal meritocracy with discretionary sysops where the intent of the policy matters more than the actual policy(/cough PvX). All of the systems have been shown to be capable of at least basic functioning. GWW has shown that the policy-shackled democracy can function, if perhaps suboptimally in some cases. Guildwiki has shown that the "wikiboss" system works. PvXwiki, while hardly well respected(though we do fairly well) as a builds documentation site(although this is mostly because we are really too democratic), is a successful example of the oligarchal meritocracy with discretionary sysops and where the intent trumps the policy itself. --Edru/QQ 08:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, Edru, but doesn't PvX's oligarchical meritocracy depend on a wikiboss recognizing that merit and specifically inducting you into the oligarchy? If so, it's really the same as the GuildWiki's system. —Tanaric 08:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Essentially, yes, it does entirely depend on DE and Auron thinking you are worthy of sysophood, although obviously the opinions of other users are taken into account. I suppose that makes the score 2-1 wikiboss(although PvX would technically be wikibosses) beating policy-shackled democracy. --Edru/QQ 08:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Really, it's the opinion of all of the admins put together and thrown into the blender we call "discussion" and coming out as consensus. Though I will admit I think Krowman and I have by far the most influence. Armond 07:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, that's what I meant by "the opinions of other users are taken into account", but Auron and DE could, if they wanted, make someone a sysop that no one else on the entire wiki wanted to be sysop. It's quite unlikely that they would, but it's possible. There is nothing to prevent them from doing so if they wanted. There are no checks on their power(besides the other bcrats). --Edru/QQ 07:40, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The check is that they're not the type of people to do that. Armond 09:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The check is trusting them not to do that. Else we could let anons lead the wiki. Calor (t) 00:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Essentially the same thing, imo. One leads to the other. Armond 01:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Xeeron's edit

Xeeron, you fundamentally changed the meaning of the first two paragraphs without any discussion or even an edit summary. If you want to make the article more neutral, go ahead -- add your dissenting opinion alongside the more common one. As it is, everybody pretty much liked the way the article was.

Please revert your own edit and integrate whatever ideas you have in a less destructive manner.

—Tanaric 19:39, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Why the hostile tone? This article is not policy nor based on consensus. It is simply something you wrote up and placed prominently on the main page. I happen to disagree with a part of it and replaced it. Your "everyone" seems to be 3 people and not even include me or backsword.

Had you placed this in your userspace, I would not have touched it, but you placed it in GW2W space (and very prominently linked it from the main space). Stuff there gets edited, that is the way of wikis. If you intended this as an essay of your personal opinion, I suggest moving it to your userspace (and reverting to your last edit). --Xeeron 19:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I just tried to do what you suggested: Integrate everything into one document. I could not, because the aimed at audience of this article is not really clear to me. Is it aimed at first time users? Then a very short "don't worry about policy, that will come in due time, just start adding content" would do. Is it aimed at the current audience that contributes here (that is, 99.9% are experienced GW/GWW/PvX users)? Then it should not disencourage people from using the term policy, these people are experienced and know what they are talking about and it should assume more knowledge on the side of the reader.

I'll try to incorporate everything somehow, but it will turn out to be something along the lines of "some people here think we do not need policies, some think we do. Some people want you to discuss policies, some people don't. Some people feel that policies should follow content, other think that we should use the time till content will become avaible to talk about policies". --Xeeron 20:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I integrated it and I dislike the current version. I suggest you either remove the whole policy part and keep the rest as a beginners guide or keep your version of the policy part and move it to a guideline/policy/whatevernameyoulike proposal page to make clear it is a suggestion to be discussed and not a consensus based guideline. I don't think a mixture between "guideline (the name I prefer) on policy creation proposal" and beginners guide can work. --Xeeron 21:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Xeeron -- I wasn't intending to be hostile but I totally understand how one could read it that way. Truthfully, I was home from work for lunch and was in a hurry.

I'm certainly not opposed to any additions to the article -- even ones that disagree with opinions currently there. I'd prefer that dissent be placed in a separate article and linked to from this one, instead of inline back-and-forth, but either is okay. I was only opposed to the removal of content from the article.

—Tanaric 00:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Not sure where to put this tbh

I'd like to see a Skill Interaction subsection on skill pages (or summat), just somewhere to stick mechanics and exceptions that isn't the Notes subsection, because I'm a fag for organization. --71.229 12:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

you mean something like ==Synergy==? - Y0_ich_halt 19:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Kinda, but lack of synergy too. Like Mark of Protection will always trigger before Protective Spirit no matter the order they're applied in. A place to put notable skill interactions, good and bad, so people don't have to read through the entire talk page to see if their question was answered. --71.229 21:07, 3 April 2008 (UTC)