Bronze Shortsword

Forums: Village pump → What should the forums be for?

It seems that different people have different ideas of what these forums should be used for. Since I have an inclusionist philosophy, I think that if the topic is WoWWiki or Warcraft related, as long as it isn't directly violating our other policies, it should be okay. Others don't like certain types of topics for reasons, I personally can't understand, but maybe it can be explained to me. I may post a poll here, if I can think of a good set of choices. --Beware the sneaky smile! Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:05 PM PST 27 Oct 2009

This continues from Forum:New Feral Druid form? (Ideas...). Forum:Forums too forumy was a discussion about if the WoWWiki forums should work like other forums. I do not think any forums have been unjustly deleted before.--SWM2448 22:04, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

From my reading of Forum:Forums too forumy, no specific exclusions were laid out. Kirkburn just made some general statements of intent that got into WoWWiki:What WoWWiki is not (although I'm re-thinking my stance about not reverting some of the changes). Unfortunately WoWWiki:What WoWWiki is not appears to speak for the community, when it is really mostly the viewpoint of a particular user and just that most of us don't disagree with most of what is said.

From looking at the deletion logs not many forum posts have been deleted, but a couple appear to be deleted for strange or inexplicable reasons. Since there is no forum policy, I suspect WP:DNP would get trotted out as the excuse, but that policy has been stretched by alot of admins. --Beware the sneaky smile! Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:37 PM PST 27 Oct 2009

When I wrote What WoWWiki is not, I tried to take statements from policies, guidelines, and statements made around the wiki. I did not just write down my viewpoint. What parts of it do you disagree with? Also, what were the strange or inexplicable reasons the forums got deleted for?--SWM2448 00:09, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe there is anything in any policy or guideline that would suggest forums "are also not for general lore discussion". Is there?

As for inexplicable or strange deletions, I'll give a short list:

• Forum:New Feral Druid form? - I suppose you could try to discuss this under Talk:Druid or Talk:Feral, but I'm not sure you can truly justify it's deletion by any policy.
• Forum:Is there any way for a non-dk to get into acherus? - Deleted because answer was given on asker's talk page, but I could see other folks wondering what the answer to this question would be, so the forums seem an appropriate place.
• Forum:Wow quests - This was a general question about what quests people may have done in Northrend when Wrath came out. Again something that seems fine for the forums, if perhaps needing a rename.
• Forum:Druid Tank - Deleted for supposedly being WP:DNP "Not a suggestion forum for new ideas" even though there is no such policy statement.
• Forum:Where to post questions about macros? - Reason was "Housekeeping", but really seemed like, "I'm annoyed by this question and I don't like it in the forums."

--Beware the sneaky smile! Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:24 AM PST 28 Oct 2009

Stuff that actually is DNP (like people talking about cars or something) is over the line. I deleted Wow quests above because the external link in it violated WP:EL and WP:DNP. I think the rest look fine from your synopses, I didn't look again at the others too much. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:47, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

What does "look fine" mean? --Beware the sneaky smile! Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:22 AM PST 28 Oct 2009

They shouldn't have been deleted, they were fine to be posted. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 04:25, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

Forum:Is there any way for a non-dk to get into acherus?, I deleted yes, cause not only did I answer his question I also put the answer on the actual page Acherus: The Ebon Hold. So if the info is on the main page, I didn't see a need for a forum post on it anymore. Same goes with Forum:Where to post questions about macros?, I wasn't annoyed by the question, I gave a simple answer "Where you are now." He then proceeded to make a new post Forum:Warrior macros (need help), which I later moved to Forum:Macro help, to ask his macro question. I then cleaned up the older one, which is why its marked as HOUSEKEEPING. Maybe you shouldn't assume what people are thinking until you have all the facts Fandyllic.Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! (^Sssss/_Slithered) 05:46, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to know all that you have explained from the minimal explanations given in the logs. Without proper information, I have to assume. Am I supposed to be psychic? --Beware the sneaky smile! Fandyllic (talk · contr) 8:44 PM PST 28 Oct 2009

Individuals could be asked for clarification. Assume good faith?--SWM2448 22:31, October 29, 2009 (UTC)

Assume good faith is also a good reason to not delete stuff without some kind of prior notice. You can use {{delete}} and {{speedydelete}} on forum pages too. --Beware the sneaky smile! Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:56 PM PST 30 Oct 2009

I think every single topic (save pure spamming and radnomness) should be allowed.

Then, I know there's a good amount of topics that, well, are nearly useless. For those, I'd propose to create a general thread, where they can post all of them. That way, we get all that useless topics merged into a single one's section.

Then, I'd vote for creating general discussion threads, like "fanfic" thread and things like that. It would serve as an index of the users' material, and we would be able to remove the links to them from the main space.--Lon-ami (talk) 17:22, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

Myself, I feel that a number of those forums listed by Fandy should have been considered proper subject matter for the General forum, and moved there instead of being deleted if they were under some other heading.

I'd also go for an Offtopic section, with some sensible rules (Maintain Decorum, topics deleted after 1 month of no posts or like that). Note that subjects like the aforementioned Druid Tanks forum aren't offtopic, they're "World of Warcraft" at worst, and possibly "General", IMO.

We can at the very least (try to) get a de-facto set of criteria for "what goes here, what goes elsewhere, what goes not at all" from people who have in fact been deleting forum posts and comments. You can't feel that "General" is overused if you don't define what IS 'general'. This ties in to SWM's request for policy definition in Forum:Inclusionist versus exclusionist.

Coobra stated that he deleted forums because he posted the answer elsewhere. Again, recent experience applies:  [Reins of the Bengal Tiger] was deleted as "not an item". I found a fair amount of evidence that it is a topic still being talked about. Deleting it means that someone else upon encountering it is likely to try again. Contrarily, posting the fact that "it is not so" actually provides useful information. I recreated the page to state this, it has so far survived.

Similarly, deleting a forum because information is available elsewhere ignores the fact that someone looked to the forum for an answer. Maybe they'll find it on the updated page, maybe they won't. Again, my opinion is that a better result would have been to a) provide the answer (and say that the page had been updated), b) provide a link to where the answer was.

On "Necro-posting" - I'm torn on this. Some topics (such as policy discussions) DO carry on for months. And sometimes the answers change. Others don't. But saying "you can't talk about this here because nobody has done so for a long while" is circular; what is (often) really meant is "don't stir that up again!" However, it might be useful for old forum topics to be given an article management tag along the lines of

• This topic has not been added to for more than 3 months and is considered dead. Consider carefully whether to reopen it or to open a new discussion.

Lastly: it is mechanically possible to lock pages. This applies to forum pages as well. I would recommend that (formal) policy be that forums only be locked if a) the discussion became hostile and unproductive, continuing the thread would not produce useful results, or b) the topic of the thread has passed beyond all possible continued relevance. Remember that once a name is used, the only way to re-use it is to archive the previous discussion under some altered name. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 19:19, November 18, 2009 (UTC)

Only problem with putting a tag on a dead forum post, stating that its dead, is that it will cause the post to go back to the top of the list as "updated". Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! (^Sssss/_Slithered) 08:23, November 20, 2009 (UTC)

What about a templated subpage, which is included since the first post is put there?

This way, when the post goes dead, we edit the subpage, and the post changes without updating.--Lon-ami (talk) 12:28, November 20, 2009 (UTC)