Proud Refactorer

Boasts about how much he has reworked on Wiki that day in the pub each evening.

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I believe that we do need to learn - a great deal - from those who have refactored Wiki over the years. That I think means we need to talk more about refactoring at the time we do it. That probably meaning signing and thus making ourselves more accountable to the rest of Wiki. So far I agree with what DavidSaff says on HumbleRefactorer.

Where I disagree with David is that I think that most recording of refactoring decisions or issues on the page(s) concerned gets in the way of the clarity one is aiming for in doing the job in the first place. Adding a signature only makes this worse. So there do need to be a few pages where people who are serious about doing or learning to refactor/rewrite/edit/reduce/delete (call it what you like) meet up and discuss the issues and uncertainties, as well as the joys and triumphs.

Pages that might become used for this at present are RefactoringNotes, PagesToRefactor and WikiRefactoringDiscussion

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One strange piece of self-doubt I've had, as I've worked my way through all 55 reported uses of DeleteMe, intending to do just that wherever I could figure out how, a number of pages have popped back into RecentChanges that

• were a useful reminder of how there's still some good stuff in the WikiIceberg, despite RecentDrivel?
• were well worth doing some quick, decisive work on, around the place that DeleteMe badge was invoked, or in some cases across the whole page.

Realising that real good was being done not only made me a ProudRefactorer but did cause me to question briefly my dislike of WikiBadges in general and DeleteMe in particular. Don't get me wrong, I still strongly believe that no self-respecting Wiki contributor should ever put DeleteMe beside their words. It's wet, it's pussyfooting. Either say what you think or don't. Plus some of the DeleteMes I removed today have clearly been around almost from the time Ward opened the first Wiki page that said "Write in me". Please don't say it if it's going to take that long for anyone to do it.

Yet ... there has perhaps been some correlation between this badge and pages that benefited from some attention from me this month. (Though KeithBraithwaite avers that any WikiName with around 55 references would have exactly the same property and maybe he's right.) What Keith and I wonder is whether we should strongly discourage DeleteMe but have a general purpose WikiBadge called FixMe that can be put by anyone on any part of any page that they think needs attention.

-- RichardDrake

In GentlyReduceWikiBadges I suggest using EditHint rather than FixMe. The important point is using only one such badge.

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CategoryWikiMaintenance