Last night there was quite the discussion about conspiracy theories and whether the language in the FAQ was appropriate and sufficiently clear. A few thoughts on the issue, and some related things:
(Surgeon General's Warning: This is a meta diary. Excessive consumption of meta diaries can be hazardous to your mental health. This label required by law.)
Firstly, I'd just like to say that it amused me to no end to see text that I had written being slung around like Holy Writ in an argument. It was even funnier to see
both sides using the same chunk of text, and arguing interpretation. Now I think I have a glimmering of an understanding of how schismatic religious wars start. Also, I don't think I've ever been referred to as a "guru" before.
Secondly, I'm Just a Guy. I have no special privileges on this site, beyond that of a run of the mill TU. I have been given no under-the-hood knowledge, either by Markos or by front page posters. Everything in that FAQ comes out of public statements by Markos or by observing how the community functions.
Now, on to the FAQ. The diarist last night requested a more explicit warning about the likely consequences of posting a Conspiracy Theory diary. This was also requested when I asked for FAQ suggestions last week, and was on the to-do list. My thanks to ek hornbeck for putting Markos's policy statement into the appropriate section of the FAQ.
There have been other requests, both in last night's diary and elsewhere, to have the FAQ contain a list of verbotten diary topics. This, I personally do not want to do. For starters, the list would never be complete, and there would be endless arguing about the contents. Secondly, I don't think it would make any difference; hard-core conspiracy theorists would either ignore the list or try to find loopholes. I'm less worried about newbies who see something on the web and excitedly post a diary on WTC-7 or whatever; they'll get a quick education in the issue and will probably take the lesson to heart.
A related issue is one that comes up repeatedly: when is it appropriate to use troll ratings? This is a contentious issue, to put it mildly. When I wrote the sections pertaining to the issue, I deliberately kept the guidelines vague, essentially leaving the decision of when to troll-rate up to each individual TU. Some may say that this is dodging the issue, to which I would reply that leaving this decision to individuals is the essence of the community moderation system that we have here.
Another question that came up last night was the issue of who can edit the FAQ. The short answer is "anyone who wants to". All you need to do is create a dkosopedia account, go to the FAQ page, and click on the edit link. That's the mechanics of it, but what about content?
My opinion is that if you want to do minor edits (to take one example at random, a while back someone added a paragraph about a dkos IRC channel), go right ahead. If you want to do anything major, such as a wholesale revision of a major section, I would ask that you follow my example and post a diary here asking for feedback before you make the edits. It's also probably a good idea to then post a note in the FAQ Talk page (go to the FAQ page, click on the 'discussion' tab at the top) containing a link to that diary. I would love to see additional authors/maintainers contributing to the document.
I'm not particularly concerned with vandalism; the wiki software has a good set of tools for undoing vandalism. By vandalism, I don't mean "stuff I disagree with". I mean things like "wholesale deletion of sections", "adding mass amounts of profanity" and the like. Vandalism will get reverted. Repeat vandals are likely to get their dkosopedia accounts blocked. Repeat vandals who register under multiple names will have their IP address range blocked. And, if I ever find that ass who went by the handle 'Curps' a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to give him/her/it a liquid nitrogen enema.
One other thing: People have said on occasion that there are things that they'd like to see in the FAQ, but are uncomfortable editing the document themselves. In that case, I'd suggest leaving a note in the Talk page linked above; that's the place where requests are most likely to be seen.
-dms