Vote Discussion Pages / Discussion

axd: concerning the VoteDiscussionPages: pardon my eternal quest for "more"... 1/please explain the '*' in front of the first option; 2/ would it be possible (pardon my laziness) to hyperlink the options to some relevant page (or a page delta would be even better) if someone wants to find out more about an option before voting (I'm not very sure what is meant by "WikiPedia style", I joined the discussion rather late); 3/maybe specify a closing date for the vote.

Bill: Among the options on the Vote Discussion Pages, there is no explanation for option three about Wikipedia style. Does that mean to automatically create parallel discussion pages?

Also, I think that there are at least three different kinds of discussion pages here. One is those pages for discussion about other things than go. This page, for example, or many of the KGS pages. Another is for go related discussion, where there is no reference to other pages with go content. BQM pages are an example, as are many of the pages discussing games. A third is for pages for parallel discussion of material on another page. Sometimes these pages are created after the fact, when the discussion on a page starts to overwhelm it.

My question is, do we want to treat all such pages the same or make distinctions between them?

For myself, I am seldom interested in the first category, but I do like to check out pages like this one from time to time. However, I do like to keep tabs on the other types of discussion pages. So having a separate recent changes page for discussions would not help me much.

rubilia: Good point. Additionally, the "tense" of a topic seems to matter, too. E. g., KGS-related discussions mainly deal with quite transitory problems; whatever solution is found there, will not improve the SL content permanently. This might be a motive to people not to grant as much RecentChanges space to such volatile issues as, in opposition, to discussions on lasting (at SL) stuff. Since it's comparable to the difference between a joseki page and an ongoing game page, I'd suggest the first two options to be specified (to something like "ongoing discussion").

Neil: Please don't turn on minor edit by default. Once that option is used for things that aren't minor edits, it will no longer be a useful option.

Dieter: I agree that the voting options don't reflect very well the actual impact on the different discussion type pages. I am very much against a MinorEdit default as well. I'm unsure as to what technical solution could do the trick. For me, a combination of unwatched pages and a decent use of the minor edit option should be sufficient. Decency needs encouragement but is never fully inambiguous. Which is why metadiscussions arise, I guess.

Cheyenne: As another possible technical solution, create a hierarchy of pages. Have the recentchanges based not on the root node of the hierarchy, but one node down (maybe have a meta-recent changes or a way of subscribing to a set of recentchanges). This would allow SL to be broken down into different categories. For example:

1. Reference - would contain encylopedica type of information. Just the facts
2. Problems - would contain the BQM, problems and interesting solutions, etc.
3. Discussion - would contain only discussion type of pages
4. Home pages, blogs, etc.
5. ..and if any specific topic becomes hot enough create it's own category..

Thus there would be a Reference recent change, a Problems recent change, a Discussion Recent change, etc.

Arno: I have added your option too. If somebody would like to change his/her vote, then make sure that your voting is still fair (i.e. at most one '+' per option taking all your edits into account.)

DrStraw Is it possible to have a flag for a page, controlled by an SL administrator, which sets minor edit as the default for certain pages but keeps major edit as the default for all others? This way if a page becomes problematical the flag can be set and changes will not show up in the recent changes list unless someone explicitly wants it so. This could be also be used in conjunctions with a "dicusssion" page type which has the flag set by default, thus obviating the need for separate treatment of these pages otherwise.

Arno: this is somewhat similar to option #4 of the ballot.

Bob McGuigan: I wonder whether option #3 would lead to less vigorous participation in editing. If I understand it option #3 would create a discussion page automatically whenever a "non-discussion" page is created. So wouldn't that encourage very little editing of the original "non-discussion" page? People would be averse to changing the main page, simply making suggestions on the discussion page. The main page would then have to wait for some sort of master edit after the discussion had settled down. I don't know whether this would be good or bad. It seems likely to me that what would develop is a sort of original page which would be changed very little, and a discussion page which would end up being essentially like regular pages on SL now. Diagrams would have to be repeated on the discussion page so people wouldn't have to switch back and forth.

Bill: I do think that original pages would tend to have less editing. That's not necessarily a problem. For one thing, they would tend to remain cleaner, and less in need of a WME. For another, there would be less of a tendency for editing wars or supposed corrections by editors who did not understand the original as well as they thought they did.

In my experience with conferencing software (Participate) in the 80s, making parallel discussions for topics was customary, and, IMHO, it worked quite well. :-)

Charles I have spent six months actively editing Wikipedia, and its system works well, for its purposes. A difference on SL would be the use of signed edits on 'main' pages.