[WikiEN-l] Mailing list guidelines

Fri Oct 31 15:05:59 UTC 2003

The amount of traffic on wikipedia-l and wikien-l is getting way out
of hand, and so I'd like to propose the following voluntary
guidelines.  By 'voluntary' I mean that I'm not about to start
moderating the lists or kicking people off for failing this, but I do
ask that everyone have consideration for others and try to remember
these.

(And, I should say up front: I've been bad about this myself, and I
admit it, so don't call me a hypocrite!)

1.  Wikipedia-l should be used for *policy* discussions that have
*global* implications, stuff about the general theory of NPOV, stuff
about how the software impacts our actual practices, etc.  There will
often be overlap with topics on wikien-l, but we should still try to
keep wikipedia-l global in scope.

2.  Wikien-l should be used for *policy* discussions that have
implications primarily on en.wikipedia.org.  This includes limited
discussion of individual articles, discussion of particular disputes,
discussion of policies and practices that have arisen solely on en
rather than globally.  Discussions of actual _content_ of articles is
fine, but should be tied as much as possible to a discussion of
general principles -- the place to talk about articles is the article
talk pages!

3.  The distinction between wikipedia-l and wikien-l is sometimes
fuzzy, so let's cut people some slack if they don't do it precisely
the way we would do it.

-------

For *both* lists, check twice before sending -- could your message be
better sent to just one or two people?  Is it just a joke?  If it is
just a joke, it is so funny that you have to crack it to everyone?
(Sometimes this is fine, I'm just saying let's keep ourselves under
control.)

Is your post likely to hurt feelings?  Is it likely to make a bad
situation worse?  Is there a way to rephrase a few words to be kinder,
and to have a better chance of swaying good people to your point of
view?  Are you simply antagonizing a jerk?  Are you simply being a
jerk?

The main thing is: let's keep the lists focussed on our mission, and
keep extraneous junk to a bare minimum.

--Jimbo