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How meta can we get at SL, discussion
   

2003 November 1

(Moved from MessagesToPeopleCurrentlyPresentInTheLibrary)

Fhayashi: Is it my imagination, or have there recently been a lot of new pages with little to do with go? Perhaps some of these things are best left in the already existing discussion pages, such as here. SL is a wiki about go, not a wiki about discussion.

dnerra: I apologize for creating the page Men. It was meant as a subtle hint that certain similar pages might be equally superfluos. But I regret that it has now been used as an anchor for yet another go-unrelated page.

(Sebastian:) I don't want to start a discussion here, now, therefore briefly: You have a point. But most was meta discussion, which is germane to SL. If anybody knows of a wiki that offers solution to our questions, please let us know, we could learn from them. One such site may be [ext] http://meta.wikipedia.org/ - any better links?

Fhayashi: By meta discussion, if you mean discussion about discussions about go, I don't think it's germane. Let's keep it to discussion about go. Meaning pages should be about go. Discussions about the pages should either be on the pages, or in pre-existing pages, such as this one. May sound strict, but if certain restraint is not exercised, there will soon be more pages about pages about go, rather than pages about go.

(Sebastian:) The last few days had indeed a high proportion of meta talk. But even for these days, your statement is far fetched. In the last 3 days there were 4 meta pages created. Contrast this to the following numbers:

 Right now Sensei's Library contains 7612 pages.
 55 pages edited during the last 24 hours.

New pages created since Oct 29:

This is:

  • 9 pages directly about go
  • 6 culture pages
  • 4 homepages
  • 4 meta pages
  • 1 computer page

You can do the math yourself, but it should be obvious that there's no danger of meta pages taking over, even if we assume the rate of the last few days goes on.

Fhayashi: On October 31st, there were 91 edits, 54 of which were on 'meta' pages. Ominous, isn't it?

Charles I think things go better when contributors contribute, rather than discuss what other contributors do; try to write well, rather than discuss the language used by others; and edit in such a way as to make SL more useable, rather than discuss editing. That said, I'm not happy with the whole development over recent months. Some superficiality and even silliness has taken root here. As if the attention span of the readers had halved. 'Things were better in the old days' - well, maybe not. Older pages here don't individually look great, always, when you look back. On the other hand I'm mostly interested in good technical articles appearing: they are rarely enough written for other media. And there are not many more of those.

Fhayashi: This is what I mean. I come to SL to read articles on how to play go well, and to have my and other's questions answered by similarly strong players. We should all keep in mind that SL is really about go. Some people seem to enjoy discussion for discussion's sake, which is fine, but I'm not sure this is the place for it. SL should be about go and discussions about go, and not much else.

Charles But another way to look at it is that the core material, for example the pages accessed from GuidedTours, are the real Library. The RecentChanges can now only make quite small increments, per day or even per month.

Arno: I think that the recent rise in meta discussions has to do with the growing number of contributors. They are still coming to terms with editing a wiki and what is appropriate and what isn't. I think that in a short while (after they have exchanged ideas and meta discussed) they go back to contributing. After all, the wiki is not shaped by talking, but by acting. The current state of SL has been reached not by talking, but by contributing in a respectful manner. In short, you should not feel compelled to add comments to every discussion. Even if you do not edit a meta page for a week you will see that life still goes on :o)



This is a copy of the living page "How meta can we get at SL, discussion" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.