User:Friday/XW
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Update. This may be obsolete or pointless. WP:BRD explains it quite well.
This is a page of personal musings right now. Maybe it could eventually become a voluntary association of 'pedians who agree with this way of doing things. Or maybe it's just a pointless restatement of existing guidelines. Anyone can feel free to edit this.
Lately I've decided that the main opposing philosophies at Wikipedia aren't inclusionists and deletionists, as many people seem to see it. I think there's a more important divide between those who want to exactly follow a rigid process, and those that just want to do what they think is appropriate, with or without using an exact process.
XW, or Extreme Wikipedia. The general idea, name, and five values are shamelessly stolen from Extreme programming.
The five values are:
- Communication
- Simplicity
- Feedback
- Courage
- Respect
This is a natural corollary of be bold, with a bit of ignore all rules thrown in. I started thinking about this as a response to the discussion about AfD. AfD may be ok in cases where a large discussion is needed to build consensus, but a lot of what gets listed there are pretty clear cases, which could ideally be decided sooner.
XW means, do what you think is right. If you see an article that's a definite delete, delete it. If you were in error, someone else may undelete it. (This example of course is not technically feasible at present, but works great under a pure wiki deletion system.) Listening to other people who disagree with an action you took is utterly essential. A group of good editors communicating frequently with one another can do wonders. Perfection is not neccessary; aim for continuous improvement.
Key concepts:
- Building an encyclopedia is more important than following guidelines and policies. Remember that the rules and suggestions are here to help build the encyclopedia, and are meant to be generally useful. They should not be created or followed for their own sake. All editors (yes, admins too) should be willing to change or undo any edits or actions taken by others, regardless of who did it.
- Be bold... once!: Yes, be bold. But, you should be boldest only in things that are easily reversible by anyone. That way, if you were too bold, very little harm is done. Someone will revert you, and you're not going to violate WP:1RR, right?
- Communicate. Being bold is not meant to encourage recklessness or (worse yet) edit warring. Not sure about a change? Start a discussion about it instead of just doing it. Did someone disagree with an action you took or even revert it? Talk it over.
- Use common sense. Altho I'm a big advocate of 1RR, it's sometimes OK to not follow the rule. Reverting vandalism is an obvious one. But, reverting problematic editors can also be an exception. This must be done with caution, though- it's easy to see anyone who disagrees with you as a "problem editor". If someone is editing against consensus and not participating in discussion, it may sometimes be alright to disregard 1RR.
Examples:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prophecy (Harry Potter)
Caution: The bolder one is, there more it's important to play nice with others. Don't violate WP:1RR (except in clear cases of vandalism, for example) and be nice. If another editor undoes one of your actions, stop and talk about it. Even if you still feel you're in the right, don't get in an edit war. Another editor may well come by and back you up. Admin or Bureaucrat actions should be treated like article edits and may be undone sometimes by others. There should of course be no warring over such actions any more than there should be edit warring.
Anti-patterns: Some adminstrators (or worse yet, bureaucrats) don't ever revert another admin's decision, out of apparent "respect for the office". This is a very bad idea. If someone does something you strongly disagree with, don't be afraid to undo it. This is not to encourage warring, though- if there's already been a war over something, adding one more cycle to it probably doesn't help.
Questions: is this really anything more than a re-statement of WP:BB and WP:NOT a bureaucracy? Perhaps the entire existance of this concept is silly. Still, XP tells us useful things about how to get individuals to work productively as a group, it's possible there are lessons learned there that translate well into Wikipedia.
