Talk:Guidelines

Please improve this

I think this is a pretty good starting point and should help people know where to aim. I'm wodering if it's really necessary to bar non-cappers from editing here. I can think of a few cases where a non-capper might make useful contribs (A longtime lurker might remember some detail on a thread, a real world friend of a capper might have some legit info to add, an obsessive proof reader might wander in here from a search engine and correct our spelling/grammar) and none where they'd come in and make unwanted changes that didn't violate some other rule. Perhaps just require registration for edits?

--GersonK 05:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with friends of cappers or even lurkers of capping come in and edit the wiki. What I don't want are people who don't have anything to do with capping coming in and making changes. I have no doubt that that is going to happen. People surfing in off of a Google search, that sort of thing. I would like to curtail that (casual surfers editing the wiki) as much as possible. This place is for cappers, by cappers. And I think we can police our own grammar and spelling. Believe me, I'm extremely anal about it and you don't know how hard it is for me not to go up to your comments and change 'wodering' to 'wondering'. When it comes to info in the wiki, I'll make sure we're up to code.

If you or anyone else doesn't agree with me, that's totally cool. I'm open to discussion about it or anything else. It's all on the table. I'm determined that this place will be run as a community. Just shy of mob rules. ;)

Arch 14:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd say that registration for edits is a good idea. It's far far to easy to make an alteration or whatnot to screw with someone's listing. Of course, once the core group of administrators gets cemented, and are able to check back often (though, we can be realistic and understand we're not going to get countless changes per minute like regular Wiki-listings do), that shouldn't be a problem. It should be firm in the guidelines, though, that is someone steps over the line in a negative way, they're off period. It might be easily changed, but you don't want someone who doesn't like capper 'vanillapepsi' coming in, and changing their entry to say "VANILAPEPSISUXXXXX!" It might be easily returned to normal, but any negative-alterations along those lines should be prohibited.

GlitterRock 15:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

So, you accept at least one of my cases where a non-capper might make valuable contributions that fall within our other rules. What I'd like to hear is an example of a non-capper coming in and making an undesirable change that isn't barred by the rules? Or in short - what could somebody do here that would be bad only if they weren't a capper? It just seems like pointless elitisim, especially with the barrier to entry on being a capper so low. Which maybe means there's not much point in my arguin the point.

(I'd think glitter's vanillapepsi case might already be covered under 5 and 9, and wouldn't be any moe acceptible if it had been done by somebody who'd made a few score of caps. P.S. I'm not so much worried about preventing bad changes from ever happening - as glitter points out, we can always revert. I'm concerned about defining bad changes before they happen, so we can say why we reverted them.) --GersonK 17:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be elitist with my views on this. It's really quite simple. I don't think people who have no clue about cappers or capping have any business editing this wiki. Why would they want to? To be dicks, mostly. Sure we can revert but why should we have to any more than we need to? We already know going in that there will be the potential for abuse citing Glitter's vanillapepsi analogy as example. Since we're already going to have to deal with that element, why tolerate it from people we don't know? That's all I'm saying.

Just for the sake of argument . . . why is the eGroup invite only? Should we allow just any Tom, Dick or Harriet join that? Not that we don't but do you see my point? There is a precedent established there. You must be a capper and you must be 'sponsored' by another.

If you guys think I'm being elitist about my view, OK. It is not intentional. I assure you. But perception is 9/10ths of reality so, if that's what you think then I can be flexible on this issue.

All that said . . . it's going to be hard to enforce such a 'rule' with the nature of a wiki, anyway. I guess the bottom line for me is that I want some kind of safeguard in place to ensure the riff-raff (elitist term,sorry ;)) allowed to edit will be a minimum.

I wanted to address Glitter's point that we should extend a warning to those who would bring negativity to the wiki would be banned. I was thinking about putting something like that in the Guidelines area but didn't want to come off as heavy-handed or whatever. I just expect people to behave themselves under the general rules and we don't have to say any more about it. Of course I'm being a Pollyanna here. So, we'll definitely need to define what will happen if the line is crossed. I can live with one line of heavy-handedness. ;)Arch 17:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

OK . . . what do you think?Arch 18:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

(1) "Cliquey" might have been a better word that "elitist". (2) I'm gonna give you a pass on the whole "anybody who doesn't smile will be flogged"/enforced friendship ethos. (3) I always thought the "must be a capper" rule could've gone unstated on the egroup too. But since "on-topic" is so much more ill defined there, I suppose it does run the risk of becoming a "cappers, friends of cappers, and friends of friends list for forwarding lawyer jokes to" list without that rule. (4) Since I appear to have won this fight, I'm gonna drop it now.

--GersonK 20:06, 24 May 2006 (UTC)