Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Wiki Project => Topic started by: TopAce on August 09, 2008, 09:54:28 am
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There are some articles that are copied from one source into the Wiki in their entirety. If the authors consider editing their articles a sacriledge, something like this could be used to differentiate them from the "Editable by all" articles.
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Typical_mistakes
This one was taken from kara's website - or an HLP thread, doesn't matter - and the main text has not been edited ever since its insertion into the new Wiki despite its formatting mistakes. If we want such articles to remain in the way they were submitted or editable only by their respective authors, I propose a) giving credit to the author(s) and b) tell other FSWikipedians to refrain from editing.
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While I agree with the sentiment I actually gave permission to the community to take whatever they wished from the FAQ for the wiki. That pretty much goes for anything I post that people deem worthy of inclusion in the wiki (For instance my advanced FRED tutorials might be worth adding).
My sentiment at the time was "Do whatever you like, just don't ask me to do it!" ;)
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Archival articles
I think it depends on how the outside source is being used. If the point of the wiki article is to archive the outside source, because the outside source is inherently itself valuable, then editing should only be performed by the original author (and even then should be discouraged). For instance, you don't try and correct spelling or grammatical errors on the US Constitution because the thing itself is a historical document and has intrinsic value in and of itself. However, it should be made clear that the outside source is outside the purview of ordinary wiki review and may contain opinions that are not widely agreed upon or controversial.
This gives the original author the freedom to have his or her opinions expressed in the original form, without "clarification" or "correction" by other users that may or may not represent what the author originally intended. However, it also gives the wiki to distance itself from certain statements that might not go hand-in-hand with other wiki policy, like if the original source contains an editorial on "Why TVWP should be considered semi-canon..."
General wiki articles
If the point of the article is factual accuracy rather than archival reasons, then it should be opened up by modification by other users besides the original author for the original source. Putting a new article on the wiki should be understood to be an implied consent to the modification of the article by any other users, unless the aforementioned disclaimer is added so the article falls into the first category.
I don't think special treatment should be given to people just because they wrote an article in the wiki, unless the article was put in the wiki without their consent. Otherwise it opens the door to people stating whatever they want ("Inferno is canon!"), and then claiming that it can't be changed because they wrote the article.
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I support WMCoolmon's classification.
One thing to add, basically a third category:
Tutorial pages
Written and chiefly edited by one author. It's different from Archival articles on two fronts: Tutorial pages are for tutorial purposes (Archival articles try to impose their writers' views on the readers); and grammar can be changed by all Wiki users.
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What about an editing policy for pages coming from other sources?
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That's what we're talking about right now.
If you mean information from multiple sources on the same page, I don't see any reason that any of the classifications can't be extended to cover those, except you'd have one author per section for archival pages, rather than one author per page.