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. Articles here will likely be edited by other people. Try not to take it personally.
2. Avoid listing sites or services which make their own income (e.g. exchanges, marketplaces, hardware wallet manufacturers etc). At some point, it is likely that commercial listings will be globally deleted.
3. Avoid altcoins and especially scamcoins when possible, or confine discussion of these to their own pages (e.g. comparison of altcoins). The bitcoin wiki is a space for bitcoin.
4. Do not engage in edit wars: use the talk page to find consensus, 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 specifically on-topic for this wiki.
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

• 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.
  • In any event they have never exercised any control over the contents of this wiki. Midnightmagic (talk) 23:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
• There's no mechanism for enforcing these rules except actions by editors, so for any system of rules to work it has to reach broad agreement from most of us.
• Regarding businesses 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).
  • It is very likely that all commercial listings on this wiki will be removed in the near future. The original point of listing businesses in here was to promote the broad acceptance of Bitcoin and highlight those businesses who had taken the first step. Virtually no new reputable businesses list here anymore. Mostly it's just SEO scum coming in here now, and the level of scum and thievery represented in here is to my view intolerable. Midnightmagic (talk) 23:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
• The bitcoin wiki is naturally a place for bitcoin—and specifically bitcoin. 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 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.
• 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.
  • They're separate efforts entirely. In some ways it's not really important what they put on their pages. In my view the bitcoin wiki "is what it is". Here random developers can correct pages themselves without pushing through PRs in a semi-formal process. Midnightmagic (talk) 23:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
• The scalability drama was made worse by the historical overemphasis on free on-chain transactions, the bitcoin wiki was full of this misinformation.
  • We should kill such references to free transactions except as an historical note. Midnightmagic (talk) 23:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

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)

Sounds good to me, I think it is good for the wiki to have such explicit rules and goals. Ruling out linkdumps to paid services also makes sense, it puts unreasonable burden on wiki moderators to vet them - Wumpus (talk) 18:44, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

• I agree. I've modified the nature of the discussion section to use the normal method as on Wikipedia. I've changed the wording a bit in the rules. Comments appreciated. I've removed the term maximalist because it is used as a denigration form by the paid astroturfers. Please when you comment, as wumpus has done, sign your comments and statements in the discussion section so we know their origins. In my opinion the principles don't need to be on the same page as the rules. This discussion page is enough to explain how we arrived at the current state. Midnightmagic (talk) 23:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)