User:Slakr/Sandbox/Wikipedia for Nerds

Wikipdia for nerds is a rundown explicitly written for people with extensive backgrounds on the internet and particularly community stuff (like forums, IRC, and newsgroups), such that the "common sense" of internet etiquitte will allow this article to bypass some of the more obvious guidelines and policies. Also, it won't be watered down for the traditional "newbie," and it'll use more common internet language and concepts, clarifying later the wikipedia version.

The rundown

Backend

Wikipedia is a project by Wikimedia (check out their site), and there are a bunch of other ones including a dictionary. There's also the commercial side of things called Wikia, which hosts adwords-supported wikis. They all run on mediawiki, though the individual projects have a hodgepodge of backend extensions off of the software itself, based on the needs of their individual communities.

Depending one your realm, you'll probably see a lot of inefficiencies in certain aspects of the backend, but the general consensus here is that we shouldn't worry too much about performance.

Frontend

• Every page has a page history with diff ability using the ratio buttons or fulltext retrieval by clicking on the date. These are termed revisions in the lingo. The diff ability is important, as whenever proof is required, it's up to you to show diffs, since there aren't any version numbers (like in CVS/SVN).
  • Know your way around the page history. It's the cornerstone of everything on the site. Before making changes, be sure to check recent revisions for any vandalism. The undo link becomes your friend.
  • In cases of vandalism over multiple revisions, you can pop open one of the old revisions, click the edit link, commit the change, and essentially restore that version of the page.
  • Also, because the page history can get crowded, it's a very good thing to use the edit summary to describe the changes you've made-- especially if they're potentially controversial. Keep summaries objective and avoid attacking editors/revisions.
• People who haven't registered can edit, but their IP address shows up instead of a user name. They're frequently called anonymous users or anons, even though they're obviously not anonymous.
  • Open proxies, including Tor, are banned on sight-- even if someone is registered.

• Pretty much nothing gets deleted from the database. Old revisions are gzipped and decompressed on the fly if they're ever requested, and when site admins (also called sysops) delete images/text, it's hidden (but still visible) to admins.

Terminology changes

• "Users" are frequently called "editors," because many editors don't have user accounts. "Editors" aren't synonymous with "editors" of newspapers—there is no power associated with being an editor other than that of being able to change things everyone else (also "editors") can change. In fact, no one person truly decides on a "right" version—everything's open to collective discussion and change.
• "Bans" are called blocks, and they only prohibit an IP address or CIDR range from editing-- they never prohibit someone from accessing any part of the site. Complete banning (wikipedia's ban), is applied to actual people. So, on wikipedia, an account can be blocked, but the person behind the user can be banned such that all accounts he creates are subject to being blocked.
  • Blocks can prevent IP edits but still allow people who are registered and editing from that account to edit freely, or they can also block registered users as well.
  • Blocks aren't arbitrary, are frowned upon, and usually are only placed when all other forms of warning/negotiation have failed.
  • Blocked users can request unblocking and a separate admin will determine if a block is valid or should be lifted.
  • Blocks usually have expiry times, but can be permanent (called "indefinite"); though, those are usually used on non-legitimate editors who like to vandalize and with bad nicknames (called user names).
• "Deletion" actually only hides data from the public and from being included in the database dumps. Deleted content is still able to be undeleted.
• "Admins" are actually more "moderators." In terms of traditional internet role structures, they are more similar to moderators and ircops than "administrators." Certain admins are flagged for additional, more admin-like permissions, like completely deleting data ("oversight") and checking which IPs are used by which accounts ("checkuser").
• Pages can be fully protected (only admins can edit them), semi-protected (only established registered users can edit them), or not protected (anyone can edit them).

Editing syntax

Wikipedia allows the use of HTML, but it has a unique form of bbcode that is preferred.

Rules

• Most of the site policies are common sense, so as long as you know how to be polite on forums/IRC/whatever, you'll probably do okay.

• There are a also editing guidelines that tend to go hand in hand with policies de facto, but are de jure not law of the land. They are, however, what editors will fall back on when trying to make difficult decisions over content and behavior.

• Policies and guidelines tend to be descriptive—not prescriptive, but the descriptive aspect is the end result of consensus-building between site regulars. This is in contrast to pretty much everywhere else on the internet (i.e., usually a site's owner or legal operators dictate rules, and everyone's expected to follow them or leave). Contrast that with Wikipedia, where the vast amount of content on so many topics negates the ability to truly establish any solid, 100%-applicable rules. The general approach is to go ahead and take action, but if someone disagrees with it, they'll revert it. From there, you patiently and calmly discuss your concerns with fellow editors on the article's talk page.

• You can't game the system or try to bend policy in your favor—the rules are flexible in both directions, and just like exceptions are made for something that would technically be prohibited, exceptions are made for things that would technically be allowed, too.

Nuances

• Consensus is long-run, but not necessarily short-run democratic.
  • In the long-run, the community, at large, participates in multiple forms of democratic discussion over policies and guidelines, ranging from informal discussions on the various article talk pages of policies to community-wide referendums and centralized discussion.
  • In the short-run, discussions made at things like articles for deletion (AFD) are usually democratic, as those involved in the discussion usually do have a decent understanding of the various policies and guidelines, but are occasionally not democratic due to the inherently self-selected participants in the discussion. The final decision/verdict of an AFD, for example, is entirely up to one person: the closing administrator. Hypothetically, there could even be a 10:1 ratio of people clamoring to keep something that's glaringly against our guidelines, and it could still get deleted. Usually that doesn't happen, but can easily be the case when someone tries to rally external "help," believing a particular process to be vote, when it in fact is not. Usually the closing administrator checks to see if the people commenting on the discussion are accurately justifying their beliefs based on what the community, as a whole, has already decided.
  • As a general rule of thumb, a person's experience and diversity will appear to be directly proportional to their enfranchisement in a given discussion. The more experienced a person is in understanding and dealing with diverse, wiki-related problems in a manner that accurately reflects community consensus, the more likely their "vote" will concur with the final outcome. This has plenty of exceptions, though.
• All administrators are chosen and confirmed by the community. Although someone like the founder technically can override any community decision, he never does—the community effectively chooses those in power for all levels of power and consequently governs itself.
• Everything can be appealed, from deletions to blocks and bans.
• An official policy is to assume good faith, and as a result, we are extremely forgiving.