Timeline for Magic wand time - what does your community need?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 4, 2021 at 14:21 | history | edited | Luuklag | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 31, 2021 at 19:30 | comment | added | Philippe StaffMod | @Kevin, that’s exactly correct. That’s why I make a big deal out of iar being used legitimately. I’ve seen it invoked a lot, but very rarely correctly. | |
| Jul 30, 2021 at 21:28 | comment | added | Kevin | In my experience as a casual Wikipedia editor, mostly watching other people from the sidelines, whenever IAR gets invoked, it nearly always results in much argumentation and debate over whether it was appropriate to do so, whether the rule being ignored is even legitimate in the first place, whether the person invoking IAR is being "disruptive," etc. It's always a drama magnet and pretty much never results in everyone going "Oh, well that's OK then." | |
| Jul 29, 2021 at 12:59 | comment | added | Rand al'Thor | As a specific example: SFF meta has long had RIP posts when famous writers or actors die; some people said that's not what meta is for, we had a big discussion, and Shog said essentially "meta is for whatever you want it to be for, is this causing any actual problem?" There's a case where it might've been helpful if mods could've pointed to a clear principle of "don't blindly apply rules if there's no actual problem to be solved". Of course you have more experience of what actually happens when such a principle exists. Would be an interesting thing to discuss at more length sometime. | |
| Jul 29, 2021 at 12:59 | comment | added | Rand al'Thor | @Philippe And here my ignorance of the Wikipedia admin world emerges :-) I didn't realise that over there it's a rule so strictly defined as to need being "invoked". In the SE context, I was thinking of it more as a philosophical point to include somewhere in the help centre, to remind some over-enthusiastic appliers of letters of rules that sometimes it's better to consider what's best for the site than to blindly apply written policies. | |
| Jul 29, 2021 at 12:42 | comment | added | Philippe StaffMod | Ah, @Randal'Thor. You mean WP:IAR (Ignore All Rules) right? I can opine at great length on that one, but my feeling has consistently been that it's analogous to the Queen refusing royal assent. It's a safety valve that you hope that you never need to use. Ive seen IAR invoked maybe twice, legitimately, on Wikipedia (and that's in 10 years). I invoked it once myself, and was wrong (I failed to consider some things - I was younger and stupid(er).) It's a hard one, & in my opinion it's a great statement of philosophy, but it needs to be behind glass with a red "in case of emergency" hammer. | |
| Jul 29, 2021 at 8:43 | comment | added | Rand al'Thor | @Philippe I don't know much about the admin side of Wikipedia, but I think the best analogue of Mad Scientist's excellent point here would be this Wikipedia rule (hat-tip Shog9 for the link), which we don't explicitly have as a principle here on SE. I'd be in favour of codifying something like that in the help centre, which might help to address the issue that MS raises. | |
| Jul 29, 2021 at 1:19 | comment | added | Criggie | Separate SE sites interpret the rules different ways. On Bicycles we're pretty forgiving about grey-area posts, but other SE sites are hard-nosed and delete-happy. Upshot - not every site is the same, and being pulled up for not enacting the rules the same as another site is meh. | |
| Jul 28, 2021 at 20:06 | comment | added | Philippe StaffMod | No, WIKIPEDIA has a lot of rules:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies_and_guidelines. We are but babes compared to that particular mess (but your point is valid, nonetheless) | |
| Jul 28, 2021 at 19:41 | history | answered | Mad Scientist | CC BY-SA 4.0 |