The current state of the wikiHow Forums isn’t too great, let’s be honest. General Chat is a mess, people are bumping threads left and right, people are making unnecessary threads. Some simple, common-sense guidelines could help us out a lot on here, I’d think. This is why I’m proposing ten important guidelines which should shape our Forums in a positive way.
We have a great IRC Governance policy, but it’s long seemed to me like our forum policy isn’t particularly clear. It’s my hope that we can put this “on the books” per se, to make these items, which may seem obvious to some of us, clear to all members of our forums, present and future. Of course, any ideas and changes/additions/subtractions to these guidelines are welcomed. The home for this proposal is here ( http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Policy-Proposals/Forum-Guidelines
). If on the 30th (seven days from today), we appear to have reached a general consensus on the plan, then I will put it to an official vote, as per our Amending Policy and Achieving Consensus policy ( http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Policy-Proposals/Amending-Policy-and-Achieving-Consensus
). So, thoughts? TL;DR: We should have a set of policy for the forums. Thoughts?
Just to be clear, I left some things that lead to tense discussion on here out of this proposal (namely any rules regarding profanity usage) intentionally. I feel like having these guidelines is important, and that we shouldn’t be set back by bickering over certain minute points like that. If we found something of that nature to be a problem on here sometime in the future, as a community we could amend these and other policy pieces. To amend though, there must be something TO amend. That’s why I hope we can get behind these.
A lot of the problem is that individuals miss potential interesting threads when nonsense threads or old bumped threads clog up the top of that subforum. We have guidelines for IRC, why not for the forums?
The way the forums are going has proven that “unspoken rules”, “our own ideas”, “common sense”, “things anyone over age 13 should know from living their life” are not being practiced. Users are posting nonsense threads, bumping ancient threads, trolling, etc. If the community consensus is really to leave the Forums as is, that’s incredibly disappointing but I guess that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
We put out the IRC Governance… is that read by anyone? If we used that reasoning across the board, we might end up with no site policies. Nonetheless, I’m just going to put this to rest. I lost, not a big deal. I’m disappointed that this didn’t work out, and confused that most people think the forums are in a bad way but don’t want to fix that, but meh. Life goes on.
This is something I could get behind.
If we are going to take those 3 and qualify them as some sort of site policy for the forums then we should vote and do that in a few days on the policy proposal page (which would be edited accordingly). That’s usually how it’s been done in the past when new policies are proposed. If we’re going to make them just informal guidelines, then I’m not sure what the best plan of action would be- maybe just an informal poll or something?
I think the question becomes whether this would be approved as we do policy (through a vote on the proposal page) or if we can just establish a consensus within this thread and have someone sticky a new thread with the three guidelines at the top of each subforum.
3 forum threads, one for each? 3 subsections of the page I made for the original proposal? I think any sort of anonymous polling, which you touched on earlier, should be avoided, namely for two reasons: 1) People might end up voting multiple times and we’d have no way to know. 2) That’s not how it’s typically done. @Krystle
Any advice on what to do here?
Ttrimm
11
Some kind of direction would be a good idea.
I think you are mainly talking about General Chat. For that I do not agree with any set rules. Civility is implied and generally enforced by those that participate. Threads you don’t want to read? Ban them, or just don’t read them? I choose not to read.
Maniac
13
In my eyes, we have more control over IRC since we have established IRC ops, we have a way of banning users, etc. I guess blocks on the regular site apply to the forum, and users can probably be blocked solely from the forums, but right now I don’t think we really have any established penalties for actions on the forum. Would creating rules for the forum allow us to have more control over what occurs? Maybe… but I’m not in favor of creating rules that a person above the age of 13 (which is required in order to join wikiHow) should already know from living their life. If you don’t go up to a random person in real life and scream in their face, for instance, you shouldn’t do it online either. But I know how that goes…
Who decides what is interesting? Also, IMHO bumping has never
hurt anyone; true, sometimes I have to scroll down to find something that interests me, but I cope.
system
15
I am not liking this… 1. IRC guidelines should remain for IRC only and not for the wikiHow forums. 2. Most active administrators have already said that they do not care about thread bumping in General Chat. 3. If admins want to moderate the forums, let them. Forum trolling is a blockable offense already; there isn’t reason for another policy. 4. Many people will whine (and yes, I have been guilty of this in the past) that anything other than agreeable consensus in policy discussions/community controversies qualifies as a “lack of civility.” If I am not using profanity or attacking other contributors personally, I should be able to argue without someone throwing this one out as an excuse to have a thread closed. 5. I might agree with this. We should have a certain amount of designated threads for randomness/foolishness and no more. 6. I have introduced a problem with this by constantly proposing new ideas. Some people put idea proposals in Collaboration Corner; I keep putting them in Village Pump. Where does your plan say that I should dump my ideas? (I see that your thread is in the Village Pump, however…) 7. This is common sense; again, why are admins unable to handle it with the current guidelines? 8. Unless I am told not to do this, I should be able to. I have rehashed many old ideas from previous threads with success. 9. So now, we are mandating that people use proper grammar? 10. This sounds redundant… Please understand that I hate it when contributors crush a perfectly good idea just because they don’t want to see any change to the system. That isn’t my motive for this criticism; I am skeptical of the need for a new set of rules when things are working just fine already. All that this proposal would do is allow anyone to run around on the forums claiming that such-and-such violated rule 4 and needs to be blocked or that User A started a thread in the wrong section (with an argument following the accusation). Essentially, this new bunch of conduct rules will not facilitate better behavior on the wiki; instead, they will allow every user to become a policy policeman. This would definitely result in biting the newcomers and increased conflict about who is/is not “doing it the right way.” Even though I am very surprised that I have reached this conclusion, it would be better if admins continue to fulfill this role without the need of your guidance policy. (They certainly don’t need it anyway, because most of it is common sense or generally regarded as good etiquette on forums.)
I am actually against this. If I feel someone is breaking the unspoken rules of the forum, I just yell at 'em. The rules shouldn’t be specific. We each have our own ideas about what is acceptable here.
I guess that’s one way of looking at it. I don’t see anything intrinsically wrong with the forums now. I’m just sayin’, what is the point of having rules if they aren’t going to be enforced? The forums are so ambiguous that not everyone would agree with specific rules, admin probably aren’t going to enforce forum rules even if they do exist, and it IS possible to block someone for trolling the forums.
system
18
Any chance of your um… proposed guidelines for forum usage actually getting READ by any one? We could easily spend days and weeks debating and discussing rules… only to have them ignored, not read, and still not followed by most.
True, but I suppose if someone breaks the rules we can say “Here’s the rules and stuff,” and then they can say, “Oh, I didn’t see that, thanks,” or possibly, “F*** YOU!!!”
