Aether22

Page created for Aether22

The following posted at the request of Aether22 (see talk page for details)

Jimmy Wales vision

Newcomers are always to be welcomed. There must be no cabal, there must be no elite, there must be no hierarchy or structure which gets in the way of this openness to newcomers. Any security measures to be implemented to protect the community against real vandals (and there are real vandals, who are already starting to affect us), should be implemented on the model of "strict scrutiny."

"Strict scrutiny" means that any measures instituted for security must address a compelling community interest, and must be narrowly tailored to achieve that objective and no other.

For example: rather than trust humans to identify "regulars" correctly, we must use a simple, transparent, and open algorithm, so that people are automatically given full privileges once they have been around the community for a very short period of time. The process should be virtually invisible for newcomers, so that they do not have to do anything to start contributing to the community.

"You can edit this page right now" is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred.

Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity. A person with a complaint should be encouraged constantly to present problems in a constructive way in the open forum of the mailing list.

The above is all from Jimbo's user page, here are a few other Gem's of Wikipedia policy I have found:

Assume good faith on the part of others. Be open and welcoming.

Assume good faith; in other words, try to consider the person on the other end of the discussion to be a thinking, rational being who is trying to positively contribute to Wikipedia. Even if you're convinced that they're evil reptilian kitten-eaters from another planet, still pretend they're acting in good faith.

Particularly, don't revert good faith edits. Reverting is a little too powerful sometimes, hence the three-revert rule. Don't succumb to the temptation, unless you're reverting very obvious vandalism (like "LALALALAL*&*@#@THIS_SUX0RZsammygoo", or someone changing "4+5=9" to "4+5=30"). If you really can't stand something, revert once, with an edit summary something like "(rv) I disagree strongly, I'll explain why in talk." and immediately take it to talk.

Ignore all rules - rules on Wikipedia are not fixed in stone. The spirit of the rule trumps the letter of the rule.

If a user treats situations which are not clear vandalism as such, then it is he or she who is actually harming the encyclopedia by alienating or driving away potential editors.