Bitcoin Wiki talk:Editing privileges

I suggest a codification of the rules of the wiki.

We who are prolific editors should discuss these rules amongst ourselves and make sure we agree with them. Once we all agree the rules should become official. We should try to make sure everyone has seen the rules before they come into effect. Once you read these rules please add your own comments to the comments section even if its just to say "I've read the page and will think about it more before saying anything".

Written rules will be useful to ask new editors to read them, also if someone breaks a rule we can say "see rule 2)".

The rule page is split into rules, principles and discussion. Principles talks about the underlying motivations, rules are concrete lists of what you can and cant do, discussion is a longer list of why the rules are the way they are.

Rules

1. Try not to take personal ownership over an article, if it's here it will likely be edited. The original author has no more rights than any other editor.
2. Avoid listing sites or services which make their own income (e.g. exchanges, marketplaces, hardware wallet manufacturers etc).
3. Altcoins are to be avoided if possible, or confined to their own pages (e.g. comparison of altcoins). The bitcoin wiki is a space for bitcoin maximalism.
4. Try not to engage in edit wars, use the talk page instead, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_warring

Principles

1. The wiki is for advancing the principles and aims of bitcoin. Anything that helps bitcoin is allowed, anything that harms bitcoin is not allowed.
2. The wiki is run by volunteers who are bitcoin enthusiasts.
3. Wikis work well when as many people as possible are encouraged to get involved and can easily edit the pages, subject to constraints of spammers and vandals.
4. These rules were created by discussion amongst bitcoin enthusiasts and wiki contributors. The rules follow from these principles.

Discussion

1. The wiki seems to be funded and hosted by theymos and cobra, who have shown to be very pro-bitcoin historically. Although this is centralization it doesn't have to require trust. If the owners ever became evil then the contributors can easily mirror the site to another server and carry on editing.
2. Regarding business which make their own income. We wiki editors are not at all against bitcoin businesses, but we just want to use our volunteer resources efficiently. Once one site is mentioned all the others will naturally want to be mentioned too. As this wiki is run by volunteers we are not able to curate this. Businesses with an income can spend resources on search engine optimization (SEO). That is how most customers find the services they want anyway, via SFTW not looking at long unsorted lists on the bitcoin wiki. The technology behind a search engine already exists and can do a much better job than us here. Specific names could still be linked if it would greatly improve the article as an example (e.g. hold your own private keys because if a MtGox situation happen again you wont lose your money).
3. The bitcoin wiki is naturally a place for bitcoin maximalism. Altcoins can create and maintain their own separate wiki and that's perfectly fine, but bitcoin wiki is not the place for that. Especially since almost all the time altcoin enthusiasts feel they must attack and spread FUD in an effort to show their own altcoin in a better light. This just wastes volunteer time so the best solution is to ban them outright.
4. The wiki is sometimes similar in content to bitcoin.org but there can be roles for both. The wiki is much more easily and readily available to edit, so the wiki might be aimed at more general articles and tutorials while bitcoin.org will probably end up being more about authoritative detailed technical articles.
5. The scalability drama was made worse by the historical overemphasis on free on-chain transactions, the bitcoin wiki was full of this misinformation.

Comments

I wrote this page and am happy to take on board comments. I'm aiming to help us use our volunteer resources more efficiently.

Soon I intend to write some articles about altcoins, the network effect and other such things. I've had enough tedious discussions with altcoiners in real life and it would be good to squash those on the bitcoin wiki. Also the rules should be a step towards cleaning up the big lists of bitcoin businesses which really should just focus on SEO instead. Also all those business owners end up asking for editing rights to add themselves, and its a waste of volunteers time adding them.

Belcher 14:59 21 September 2017 (GMT)