Neighborhood Improvement

My house is my house, my home page is my home page. I don't go around putting up signs in my neighbors' yards or repainting their trim to something other than that vomit pink. If I am not as obsessive about cutting my grass as another, it's their problem if they pop a vein. Get over it. -- StevenNewton

Alas, but Ward owns all the houses on this block. He has expressly given permission for the community to modify as they see fit. That is Wiki. Why come here if not to collaborate?

See WhyNotRefactorHomePages on whether Ward is best viewed as ThomasJefferson or the WikiPharaoh?.

Collaboration requires cooperation. Cooperation requires social norms. One of our social norms here is that we don't mess with other peoples home pages. It's really not cool to be destructive here -- it's allowed, but it's still not cool. -- PhilGoodwin

Wiki is not a neighborhood. It is a conversation and, as such, you can't say "this is mine and you can't disagree with or change or add to or explain what I say, because it's mine". If you do that you end up with what we have had in the past, too many WikiButchers and not enough WikiMasters. And don't just respect signed posts, anonymous posts are where wiki gets most of its signal. You shouldn't delete anything unless it is irrelevant or rude and offensive, not just because you disagree. (See DisagreeByDeleting.)

I agree with this emphasis against "ownership" and respect for anyone's post, signed or unsigned. I don't think though that we should keep every post. Wiki conversation has in the good times been greatly improved through cooperative editing and that is something that has made it unique among net forums to many of us. Meantime, it'd be very sad if Wiki practice began to put off those who normally prefer to contribute anonymously.

I just read something by (someone claiming to be) Ward implying that it could be better to delete the worst 16k of a 32k page rather than to refactor it. But it seems reasonable to respect home pages.

CategoryCollaboration