Talk:Wiki Etiquette

From the eMail discussion, we seem to disagree on a good few of the points below:

Don't leave blank pages without a declaration that you are intending to come back at some point to do it - and do so! 
(Each page has a discussion page which is intended for discussion about the content of that page: 
changes suggested, work in progress, etc) 

Conventional wiki wisdom positively encourages leaving blank stubs to pages that need to be created.

Check the history of a page before making any changes

This is a good point - it should avoid repeated misconceptions

and be sensitive about editing other people's work

nothing is lost and operating on the basis that most people will be making changes in good faith, let them carry on!

If you are about to make some more significant changes (e.g. entirely rewrite an important page, 
or change the category structure), send a mail (to Central) saying so. That way you can flush out 
people who might also be intending to do that, also find people who might want to review the changes

Mail folk in the 'history' to ask if they want to review your changes

For both of these points, perhaps a better thing would to encourage people to watch the pages they are interested in so the wiki will tell them when there are changes and they can view/disagree/amend

People watching the more important pages can enquire why the changes were made and revert to the previous version if need be but we should operate on the basis most people try to make changes in good faith and should not be too afraid to make changes.

--NeilGood 20:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Quoting convential wisdom is fine, but most wikis (I think) have at least one moderator.  This one doesn't other than a monthly check for spammers, so this isn't a standard wiki facility.  Freegle is also feeling it's way forward and consideration along the way really helps when we are probably dealing with a majoriy who haven'tever written anything on a wiki.

The issue about creating blank pages is that they have sometimes been created but the content already exists under another page title.  If new pages were genuinely needed and that is flagged up in the 'to do' list that would be fine.  But that isn't what has happened so far.  They are just left as a link with nothing on the the other end.  Which is one of the reasons people have given for not using this wiki - there are too many blank pages.

The sensitivity issue is real.  People do get upset. So why not just be careful?

JackyBarrett 2 September 2010