Terraria Wiki talk:Policy/2

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Blog Policy Changes
Closing statement (Let me know if you think this is hasty...) : In the interest of not having this discussion (the original purpose of which having been fulfilled) linger in limbo, I think it's time to close this. It has been determined that news regarding users of the Terraria Wiki belongs on the Off Topic board. The suggestion of adding JS to prevent necroposting appears to have enough support to pass. The ongoing discussion regarding more general updates to the blog policy will be continued (reopened?) in a new section. Oscuritaforze (talk) 09:34, February 16, 2015 (UTC) Blogs are generally used to communicate news and/or information, such as tutorials and updates. In the Blog Policy, it currently states that:
 * Opening statement

"Blogs unrelated to Terraria or the Terraria Wiki will be deleted."

I believe that, so long as it bears news (as an example, 652Graystripe's blog on the shootings in his hometown), it should probably be allowed to stay.

As this is information that we might like to know, particularly since it concerns a member of the wiki, I believe it should be allowed to stay.

This isn't a concrete thing; for example, Gray's blog is vastly different than a blog communicating information about unrelated issues elsewhere in the world. Slightly more admin discretion should be allowed in the deletion (or preserving) of blogs.

If this would be allowed, it would be simple to divide the "blogs" feed into two sections by categorizing blogs appropriately.

The second part of this idea is that, after a certain amount of time, blogs should be "locked" with a simple JS code and/or archived, so that they can never be commented on. This would prevent "necroposting," as it is known, which just spams up the wiki when people have long ceased editing a blog.

Thank you.

Silver  (talk) 20:42, January 11, 2015 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) Support for the part of the proposal dealing with adding JS to prevent necroposting. Said JS (which, incidentally, was written by ) isn't that difficult to implement, and wouldn't hurt to have as a "hard" enforcement for any necroposting rules should they be proposed at any point in the future. Oscuritaforze (talk) 00:17, January 13, 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) I also think that the part regarding the proposal to add the JS to prevent necroposting would come in handy, so I support the addition of that. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻Swaggins ~ ( The Terrarian Bugle ) ~ ( Contact me )┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) ~   01:11, January 13, 2015 (UTC)

Neutral

 * 1) I'm conflicted about this. I believe that there are many different things that could be included in blogs, and it's well beyond difficult to consider them all in a single policy. In the same light however, I also believe that we do get quite a few "spam" blogs appearing; either lacking in content or are just so off-topic that they truly should be located on the forums instead. I personally think that our blog policy does need to be rethought, though I am currently unsure as to how to deal with that. At this time, I feel it may be best to say that "Blogs unrelated to Terraria or the Terraria Wiki will be deleted, with exceptions based on a case-by-case basis." What I mean by this is that depending on whether a blog's content is considered important enough to stay, it should.  In regards to the second point stated by Silver, I am in complete agreement, though in the same light I am unsure about a suitable length of time. I think that 90/180 days should be the upper limit at the very least, and even if the JS implementation either isn't possible or isn't efficient enough, I'm sure we can manage to maintain the blogs in that manner. If the latter becomes the case, I can take up that job happily.

Oppose

 * 1) I believe that the "Off Topic" board on the forums is better suited to this type of thing. 652Graystripe Talk page Contributions Edit count 23:07, January 11, 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) While I am open to the idea of updating the policy to better clarify what should stay and what should be deleted, I am opposed to having these sorts of blogs allowed. I'm not comfortable with the idea that "personal" blogs can be written on a terraria wiki, and is more the sort of thing that would go on your own website, or twitter, or something like that. Even though we don't have the problem of blog badge farming anymore, I still think it is best to keep this kind of thing out of the blogs and perhaps into the chatroom where casual off topic conversation is completely fine. SquazzilTalk 02:28, January 12, 2015 (UTC)
 * 3) I am also going to oppose the first point Silver brings up here.  "I believe that, so long as it bears news (as an example, 652Graystripe's blog on the shootings in his hometown), it should probably be allowed to stay."  In short: I personally disagree with this and believe that content like Gray's blog would be better placed in the Off Topic board on the forums, over even stated in the chat, where the people who would probably "might like to know" are typically located. IRL status updates don't belong in a blog that is shown on the front page of the wiki; it just doesn't make much sense for it to be there, in my opinion. I do, however, think that the blog policy may indeed need to be rethought, so I'll leave my thoughts in regard to that below (there probably won't be much for me to say there, though; Forze appears to have generally covered it).  (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻Swaggins ~ ( The Terrarian Bugle ) ~ ( Contact me )┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) ~   01:43, January 13, 2015 (UTC)

Comments
I agree with Path's sentiment above that the blog policy needs to be rethought. To that end, I can think of two directions we might want to consider taking: Currently, I personally favor the former, especially once we have forum guidelines/a forum policy to further clarify what goes in forums vs. what goes in blog posts. Oscuritaforze (talk) 00:17, January 13, 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) It can be better fleshed out with more specifics and (probably) examples. I think this would include more definitions under the "Blogs to be deleted" and "Blogs to be speedily deleted" sections in addition to minimizing "case-by-case basis" language as much as possible.
 * Or, we can go in the opposite direction and change the blog policy into blog guidelines. This would probably entail generalizing the page into loose guidelines for writing blogs on this wiki and removing the deletion guidelines in favor of making blog deletion entirely community-driven (except in certain case-by-case exceptions of clear abuse).


 * I prefer the former, also. Elaboration and the addition of more definitions would indeed, in my opinion, improve the policy and provide a more clear set of rules for users to have a look at before posting their blog(s). (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻Swaggins ~ ( The Terrarian Bugle ) ~ ( Contact me )┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) ~  01:43, January 13, 2015 (UTC)


 * I also agree with this plan of action for the blog policy, more specifics will indeed help, and I'm also fine with keeping it more to a "policy" style rather than loose guidelines, so as not to create more discussion for each blog than there needs to be. SquazzilTalk 01:59, January 13, 2015 (UTC)4


 * I prefer the latter option, though with some elements of basing a blog policy against a forum policy as well. That allows it to be a little more friendly to users who don't entirely understand, and by no means rigid. Silver  (talk) 23:34, January 24, 2015 (UTC)


 * Thinking harder about how this could go, I am leaning towards the option of guidelines for 1-3 blogs per person, then moving forward onto rules/a policy that must be more strictly enforced/followed. This would both give new users a chance to get used to the blog system and the guidelines stated, as well as allowing them a little leeway to get things right before the actual policy applies to them. This of course does not imply that when a rule is implicitly broken (such as a blog being created primarily to advertise a product or promote something unrelated to the Terraria Wiki/Terraria itself), in which case a written warning would likely be appropriate, unless the breakage is so severe that it deserves a temporary block. (This implies that someone was visibly attacking somebody or their reputation, abusing/trolling someone through a blog post, etc etc.) I wonder what you guys think of this suggestion?

(reset indentation)

Alright, so to clarify: basically, a user would get to post 1-3 blogs not abiding by the policy, but rather abiding by a set of loose guidelines? And then after using up their allotted amount loose guideline blogs, they would have to revert back to following the policy with any of their future blogs? If that is indeed the case, then I think that I’m opposed to this suggestion. If not, correct my misunderstood explanation.

In my opinion, there doesn't seem to be a middle-ground to take here, though I may be wrong. It should be one way or another, I'm inclined to think. A suggestion like this would be inefficient, potentially bothersome to keep track of, and would allow blogs that really don’t belong in the blog namespace to be created (like IRL related-blogs). Rather, I'd be inclined to believe that users would be better off abiding by the policy in the first place, or at least getting a head's up from an admin regarding their violation of the policy on their talk page. That raises the question, though:

Would they see the policy before creating the blog?

I'm not very sure, but I think a solution to confirm that they'll see the policy, or at least have a solid chance at seeing the policy, would be to add a link to the blog policy in this editing notice. I think this would resolve this issue quite well (maybe even throw in a link to the manual of style to keep it relevant on both the blog and mainspace namespaces).

That said, I still maintain that we should follow the idea of adding more definitions and specifying more clarifications.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻Swaggins ~ ( The Terrarian Bugle ) ~ ( Contact me )┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) ~  01:20, January 27, 2015 (UTC)


 * In regards to Path's latest suggestion, I feel that it is adequate to politely explain to the blog writer whose blog was deleted, why it was deleted on their talkpage. A link to the policy can be provided for future reference. Most of the blogs that are deleted are pretty obvious like one liners, unrelated to terraria, or more appropriate for the forums. I don't see the harm in deleting these right away, as opposed to allowing 3 of these types of blogs to remain until action is taken. Even if someone isn't aware of the policy before writing a blog, their first deleted blog should be a learning experience for them, and I'm sure they can then figure out something more worthwhile and appropriate to write about after an admin has guided them in the right direction. SquazzilTalk 01:33, January 27, 2015 (UTC)


 * Per the closing statement, considering how the original discussion this section was created for has concluded, I think we can pick up where we left off here in a new section. (In between now and then, I hope to write up two updated versions of the blog policy to cover the two directions I proposed taking it in.)


 * This agreeable to everyone? Oscuritaforze (talk) 09:34, February 16, 2015 (UTC)