UDWiki talk:Administration/Policy Discussion/Unbiased Group Listings

Discuss

I'd like to know how to word it better, and if anyone has any suggestions on this before it is submitted for official discussion/review. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tyx94 (talk • contribs) 20:01, 10 February 2011.

Should be moved to UDWiki:Administration/Policy_Discussion/Unbiased Group Listings if you actually want to bring it up as a policy. If you just want to polish on it before bringing it to the wiki public, it should go to your userspace. Regardless, mainspace is the wrong place for it. -- Spiderzed▋ 20:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't comment

Because I'm waiting for both parties to agree to an arbitrator. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:02, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I can comment

And I think this is a completely unnecessary policy proposal. There absolutely should not be a wiki policy concerning where a group should or should not be listed on suburb listings. If there is a dispute (such as the dispute that arose today) then it should be worked out between the involved parties or brought to arbitration if a compromise cannot be worked out. ~ 20:17, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

OR we could use what's already the practice and leave arbies alone entirely. 20:19, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I mean really, who cares? -MHSstaff 20:23, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I nodded my head furiously to all the points made under this header. -- ϑ^anceϑ^anceℜ^evolution 22:14, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I disagree (obviously). Look, the wiki is supposed to be a source of information for people to use, correct? As long as I've been on this wiki, suburb pages have always supposed to have been neutral. You aren't supposed to be reporting heavily biased news (I've seen said news deleted before). For all intents and purposes, suburb pages are supposed to be usable by all, which means keeping all bias out of them. That includes the group listings. Either they need to be unbiased categorizations of each group, or we should just throw the categories out of the window. Because any newbie using that page should be getting unbiased, neutral information, and not what certain groups want him to see.--tyx94 22:21, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

But this proposal is fundamentally biased. For example, the most prominently 'unusual' listing is that we at the Philosophe Knights list as a survivor group, yet actively and openly condone PKing - the underlying principle being that the act of 'educating' the weak links in the survivor metagame the hard way goes to encourage better overall play by discouraging things like trenching and the 'master race' bias of the survivor side. If this was to pass, the pro-survivor Knights would probably be forced to list as 'hostile' by a misguided third party, essentially sabotaging the overall goal simply through the bias of a few wikizens. The same goes for other groups, with different agendas, and it's inherently biased to assume that groups under any one heading must behave in a certain way, decided by someone outside of the group, in order to list themselves there. This policy is, therefore, a heap of ass. 22:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

PK did it first, but a lot of groups now are trying their hand at more contemporary, left field designations rather than going with "the big three". In fact, that's probably why a lot of active groups don't even add themselves to the sidebar group listing anymore. -- ϑ^anceϑ^anceℜ^evolution 22:42, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

If you want to change the way info is displayed on the suburb groupings, fine. Take it to Open Discussion or some other project page. You don't need to clog up the adminstrative pages with worthless policy. If this god forsaken policy proposal makes it off the ground, I hope the community realizes its pointlessness and votes accordingly. ~ 22:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not even the one who put it in the administration policy discussion... I didn't put it here, I believe Spiderzed did that. I did actually take the matter to arbitration, but was advised that a policy for the matter would be the best route to go. My apologies if you don't agree with that, I was just taking the advice of several wiki-experienced others.--tyx94 22:34, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry if that sounded harsh. These are my opinions and anybody is free to open a policy discussion if they feel a need. I think everyone got worked up over the arbies case and jumped the gun in creating this propsal. If people want to push it as a policy, they're free to do so but I honestly don't think it merits a new policy. ~ 22:38, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

If you want an official proposal to be taken seriously it must be taken to policy discussion, else nothing will be done about it. And I don't mean that as a jaded grouchy regular, I mean NOTHING will be done about it. Because our policies can only be changed via A/PD. -- ϑ^anceϑ^anceℜ^evolution 22:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

We've always allowed an increasing amount of leeway for roleplaying. We've had NPOV policies made regarding wiki suburb content etc attempted before, but the community has never come to a consensus. -- ϑ^anceϑ^anceℜ^evolution 22:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

A lot of talk about NPOV

You need to start by defining the range of this policy. Would it apply to all groups? If not, how would it be enacted? How would the neutral persons be selected? How would the decision be carried out? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:19, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Make it simple

Groups who feel their membership is generally >50% human most of the time go into "Human." This will probably include traditional "Survivors," and "Pkers/Gkers/Whatever." Groups who feel their membership is generally >50% zombie most of the time go into "Zombie." This will probably include traditional "Zombie hordes," and maybe "Life/Death cultists" depending on how they swing. Have a third category called "Other" as a catch-all. Basically remove the stigmas associated with "Survivor," "Hostile" and just divide how the game divides players now. You are either a zombie or a human at any given time. Otherwise, you might as well throw out categories since any definition based on "Helping the Survivor Cause" or "Helping the Zombie Cause" or "Helping the Hostile Cause" will be interpreted differently by different groups who want to be associated with a given stigma for certain reasons.-MHSstaff 20:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Otherwise, I'd just punt on it as it's not worth doing. -MHSstaff 20:26, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Right

First things first, where is this going - your userspace while you work out details, or off to policy discussion so that it can be discussed and refined as a policy? Second, the wording here is incredibly vague. It essentially demands arbitration for every dispute, which is pretty much what we have now. What's more, not many third parties are active in all areas and soforth. If this is going to go to PD, it needs to all be nailed down.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 20:54, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Something more along the lines of what MHS is saying could also work - three categories being "Human" - personally I'd prefer "survivor", because PKers are survivors too, and if you remove hostile then it all gets lumped in together, and "human" implies zombies aren't, which has been frowned upon before - "zombie", which is all zombies, and finally "Other" - which deals with those that aren't either e.g. OXIII, or other DN groups. All currently Hostile would become survivor, and everything else would stay the same. I think that's going to be one avenue worth investigating.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 20:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I still think it's better to just add Dual Nature as a category... --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 21:00, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The only reason I said other (and I assume MHS did too) is because it encompasses more ground than just Dual Nature. E.g. Pacifist groups or Radio groups who don't do anything towards the fight between zeds and survivors.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 21:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Surely thats a different question. Changing the titles does nothing about the issue this policy is supposed to deal with, it just moves the argument.--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:03, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Since the issue has been almost entirely about survivor and hostile, merging them would make it a moot point, imo.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 21:15, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Dead, Alive, Other? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:19, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, those names would probably be better.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 21:19, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Ditto.-MHSstaff 21:34, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Should probably list DN as a forth category. Dead, Alive, DN, Other. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 21:48, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Covered by other. By listing DN as a separate category, we would also be encouraging the creation of other categories as well, which would make this cumbersome. -MHSstaff 22:02, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Best idea I've head all day. THIS, I think, is the best solution to the problem. It removes any negative associations that go along with the current categories, and eliminates any benefit from listing a group in a certain category.--tyx94 22:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Would it even need a policy? Surely its just a template discussion? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:57, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Like I said before, I was just following the advice I was given. I'm honestly not the person to answer that.--tyx94 23:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a template discussion. However, I do think it should be voted on.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 23:15, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Something trying to become law as hard as this belongs in policy discussion. It just needs to be better written. -- ϑ^anceϑ^anceℜ^evolution 23:17, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Just do it

Withdraw the policy, start a wiki community project on defining a better criteria for group listings, and just change the template based on what the active community decides. Worst-comes-to-worst, some hero comes along, reverts the template change, edit-war starts, and you sea-lawyer it through in arbitration. -MHSstaff 23:29, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's hear it. Is this what everyone wants? I think a template discussion is probably the best idea. Do we want to try and change the template to 'Alive, Dead, or Other'?--tyx94 14:03, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

no ----sexualharrison ¯\()/¯ 16:31, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I think template discussion is the place to move the discussion. I'm not convinced a change is needed however. I'm all for improving the wiki and may be for a change if it is done right. I'd approach it cautiously though since it would obviously have an affect on all currently active groups. I'm leaning towards "it's not necessary" at the moment since this seems to only stem from an isolated indecent. The {{SuburbGroups}} template has been around for some time now and there have not been a whole hell of a lot of complaints about it from what I can see. Perhaps something can be added to the template's guidelines about striving to maintain NPOV or using discretion when adding oneself to a listing. ~ 17:54, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

We should let the community decide on the template discussion page between a couple of name changes or maintaining status quo. And this has creeped up before I think (ZALP?). Right now, there is no guidance on group listing, and if you think about, the current system actually isn't NPOV. It's defined from the viewpoint / default for survivors, otherwise there would not be a hostile (i.e. hostile to survivors) category. Replacing with "Other" and simplifying the criteria would cut out a lot of pointless bickering about who helps survivors and what not. At least IMO. -MHSstaff 18:10, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Moving discussion to Template talk:SuburbGroups. ~ 18:21, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I've thrown up a discussion and nomination discussion on the template page and posted it to the news. You guys can do what you want with a policy. -MHSstaff 19:11, 11 February 2011 (UTC)