Guild Wars Wiki talk:Talk pages/16-12-2008Draft

Trying to implement the "volatile" talk pages discussion into the guideline. The relevant changes are one extra line at the "Removal of talk page content" section and the creation of the "Volatile talk pages" section. The text in the latter has been adapted from the Solution - take 2.1 section of the original discussion. Erasculio 01:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Made a few changes, nothing major. We should include reasons as to why volatile talk pages are such (for example, how comments affect readability, how talk pages can become forums, how threads can become flame- or trolls-fests) and why these few talk pages are different to others (e.g. high traffic, visibility, popularity, etc). That can perhaps be generalised so it isn't too Izzy-specific. -- [[Image:User Brains12 Spiral.png|18px|]] Brains12 \ talk 01:21, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe we could to try to be less vague and specify what a few number of volatile pages mean and what pages shall be protected against the act of declaring them volatile. Is a repeated questioning of a page's volatile state desirable? Ɲ oɕʈɋɽɕɧ  01:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The community decides what makes a talk page a "volatile talk page" (i.e. under the "special guidelines"). That number can go up or down depending on when the community decides so. Such was the case for Izzy's talk and Ursan Blessing's talk. -- [[Image:User Brains12 Spiral.png|18px|]] Brains12 \ talk 02:30, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * So in a extreme scenario it can be each or none page? Ɲ oɕʈɋɽɕɧ  02:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes. However, even theoretically, we shouldn't consider the every-page scenario. I doubt we'll ever go higher than two (and in fact, the ursan blessing talk has been clean for quite some time now, so that one could be removed from the list). If Izzy gets used to editing and successfully maintaining his page, I'm sure we can get that down to 0. -- [[Image:User Brains12 Spiral.png|18px|]] Brains12 \ talk 02:48, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In future, will the process of declaring some page volatile happen in pleno or only amongst admins and such? Ɲ oɕʈɋɽɕɧ  02:54, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * So far, all the times a page has been set as volatile, it happened after (extensive) discussion among the community and people reaching a consensus. Erasculio 03:12, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * So a page dedicated to this (maybe something similar to the admin noticepad?) could be useful though (hopefully) not much used, couldn't it? And can we forbid "insta-volatiling"? Ɲ oɕʈɋɽɕɧ  03:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * A page dedicated to this would likely be used so rarely that I don't think it's worth creating. IMO, it would be better to continue doing what we did - using the Community portal. It's far more visible than a page specifically about this issue would be, there are plenty of links leading people there (such as the navigation bar to your left) and it's already in plenty of watchlists. Erasculio 10:33, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * We could use GWWT:Talk pages this time as there's now (rather, there will be) a centralised place for this topic. RfCs could attract more people. -- [[Image:User Brains12 Spiral.png|18px|]] Brains12 \ talk 11:48, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Concern
deemed as such by community consensus In the past seems to have been admin discretion or admin (read: brains) interpretation of what the community wants and not an actual demonstration of consensus. It seems strange at all to say if there are a number of users talking about something on a talk page that it would even be possible to reach a consensus since clearly several of those users want to discus that particular issue there. It's their wiki too, they are part of consensus making and their presence and discussion of an issue an admin might consider out of the scope of a talk page doesn't make them wrong.

It has been said in the past that A Net staff read the talk pages for skills for feedback, not just Izzy's pages, in the past bureaucrats and sysops have participated in skill balance discussions on skill talk pages, it's the natural thing to do. It has also been demonstrated that skill pages have benefited from these discussions as several questions are asked, new things are discovered and notes to clarify the skill page are often added through this process. Stifling talk page discussions may make them cleaner but it would be detrimental to the wiki. I have never seen a case where people having skill balance discussions or so called "comments outside the scope of the page" has actually had a negative effect on an actual article page.

I have also seen examples where admin discretion was used to move comments about the use of a skill, ie; does this skill ignore armour, from a talk page to Izzy's name space, which is obviously the wrong move to make. This proposed change is overzealous. 58.106.45.236 07:44, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Uh...The community reached consensus on that after a very long discussion here; it wasn't an individual decision by Brains or any other admin, although they were part of the discussion. It isn't a matter of voting: the community presented arguments about why we need better control of some talk pages, and the community accepted those arguments; until someone presents a proper counter to them, no matter how many people try to ignore those decisions, they will be upheld.
 * Arena Net could have read discussions in the skill talk pages before we got a system specifically for such feedback; but now, with that system in place, it only leads to redundant conversations happening in two places at the same time. Still, this policy doesn't really change that; we're not going to claim all skill talk pages as "volatile", only those in which discussion about balance is hurting the article itself. For examples of that, see Ursan Blessing and Smiter's Boon (PvP), two pages which had very long discussions preventing any talk about improving the article and fostering vandalism to the article itself. Erasculio 11:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)