Wikiversity talk:Community Review Policy

Rewrite, and explanation
I added a large amount of items to this policy today, most of which were discussed on IRC since I added them, but I added the "clarifications" and "statements" sections after those discussions in an attempt to interpret the sense of what was said on IRC.

As requested by someone on the channel, here's the gist of what the reviews are about:
 * 1) User-conduct reviews are what we've mostly been doing so far. As far as those are addressed here, it's just a clarification that when a consensus is reached, it has the weight of policy.
 * 2) Scope or appropriateness this has come up to a lesser extent, but a method of clarifying this would do wonders.
 * 3) Requests for clarifications recent issues that might fall under this are the unlicensed images discussion on WV:C, and what the community wants to do about "usurpations of usernames" (mikeu and I have been handling those requests, and we'd like to know what the community wants us to do). A clarification of whether the IRC channels should be logged would be nice too. And perhaps a policy on editing policy proposals in the middle of a vote.
 * 4) Requests for statements among the things that came up today on IRC was the "no-biggie-ness" of custodianship... I think a statement of clarification would be good for the benefit of new contributors. Statements of appreciation for the efforts of some contributors might be nice too: for example, I'm by no means alone in wanting to make explicit that JWSchmidt's contributions are deeply appreciated, despite some things that might lead him to feel unappreciated. "Official" statements of appreciation for Mirwin and McCormack are also worth being said.

Another thing about this policy that was discussed on IRC today was how this can give us a bit of breathing room, and maybe keep things more relaxed when it comes to getting the other policies through. We had a big push for policies last fall and winter (referring to northern hemisphere seasons there), and they all got bogged down by "yes, but what if comes up?" I think letting the community decide on individual cases as a stopgap measure is important, and that's what this policy does. We shouldn't let the lack of a policy prevent us from doing what's right for the project, and we shouldn't let a policy get in the way of doing what's right for the project. I don't think any of us (even collectively) are wise enough to write a policy that will account for every idea (good or bad) that someone will have tomorrow or 5 years from now.

"In a nutshell", this policy says: we need to be flexible. I strongly believe we need flexibility to move forward. --SB_Johnny talk 22:06, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Passage discussion
There's been a lot of discussion about this policy on our IRC channel over the past several days, so let's see if we're ready to wrap up and move on:

Please comment expressing your support or opposition below:
 * - seems ready to go with, and the flexibility it provides seems to me a great asset in the goal of passing further policies. --SB_Johnny talk 09:04, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * - this looks a lot better. I have separated proposal into three distinct parts to correspond to the instruments: policy guideline process. See next topic. --CQ 14:27, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * - the current wording is straightforward and clear, this policy will simplify our other policy efforts in not needing to create endless exceptions to rules, etc. --mikeu talk 14:34, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * - Good enough. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 18:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Marked as policy 12:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC), open for review (since, as a policy, this policy says all policies are always open for review). --SB_Johnny talk 12:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Policy, Gudeline or Process
proposal:

policy

guideline

process

One of the big problems at Wikipedia was that everything was lumped together in a bureaucratic glob. Here at Wikiversity, we have the opportunity to discover a process for consensus based on what we learn from Wikipedia and other wiki experiences. Community Review would have taken place on the Community Portal, but our founders decided to create an enigma called a Colloquium. What we have is an expanding set of "places" and a more complex "process" for democratic interplay. Community Review is yet another. Now is community review a policy, guideline or process. Why, it's a process of course. --CQ 14:38, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Communitas and Universitas
Altera vista brought up an important distinction on the Colloquium. We are one of many sisterprojects of the Wikimedia metacommunity. Our distinction is that we are ostensibly an academic entity with a set of educational aspects overlayed upon a wiki-driven process. The process can (and should, in my opinion) easily be parsed by a newcomer. I propose that the Community Portal be revived as a "place" for less formal gathering of ideas and processes that are familiar to Wikipedians and Wikimedians.

The lofty colloquial aspects of the Universitas paradigm can and should (again, my opinion) be distinct from the less formal Communitas mindset. Both interfaces (the colloquium - universitas and the community portal - communitas) should also contain consensus mechanisms that allow dissent, perspectives, points of view, disclosures, and other cavaats and idiosyncratic elements. VOTE is designed to be portable and adaptable as an instrument for up-down voting. I'm proposing POLL as another instrument that will allow a set of proposed elements to be consensually arranged, prioritised or selected, for instance in deciding on featured content. --CQ 15:10, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Quick feedback
I just read over this (for the first time I think); it looks pretty good to me. A couple of words and phrases I thought could be tidied up, e.g., the two words which stood out for me were "sanctions" and "unclear" - i.e., I thought more description/detail might be helpful in relation to both. Clearly we need somewhere other than Colloquium for review of issues and WV:CR seems to have been that place at least in recent history. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 15:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, I think "unclear" is pretty clear ;-). Policy X says Y, but we're not sure how that applies to A or B.
 * "Sanctions" would I suppose only apply to user conflicts or problems, e.g. "user A needs to stop doing X, and might face a block if she continues". Hopefully (and in all probability) that would be very rare, since there would need to be a consensus to take such an approach, but if it did get to that point "sanction" is probably the most descriptive word for such a decision. It's certainly not something to be taken lightly, so the discomforting qualities of the term may help us keep that in mind. --SB_Johnny talk 17:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the word "unclear" is clear too. However I think some clarifications of some of the sections would make it clearer. What is a "community statement"? What is the purpose of a "community statement"? How are questions about Wikiversity's scope or appropriate different from requests for clarification? I agree in principle with this proposal, but I am unsure I understand what a community statement is or what purpose it would serve, or why requests for clarifications mentions only clarifications about how tools are used or whether the tools were used appropriate, and not other things like requests to clarify Wikiversity's scope. Requests for clarification should be for all requests for clarification. Would that not be clearer? I think it would keep things simple. -- dark lama  18:44, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think those are some good questions/points, Darklama. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 19:02, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ditto, but frankly there's really not much difference between any of the 4 "types"... all community reviews are essentially going to be about clarifying something that's in contention. I think the undercurrent of my own thoughts when I put those sections in is that sometimes there's contention in an "internal dialog", for instance I'm really not sure what to do about one particular SUL request.
 * The most important strength of this policy (or process, or whatever it is) is that in the short term it gives us leeway to deal with emerging situations while the other policies are being developed, and in the future will give us an avenue to override a policy if it ends up (perhaps unexpectedly) getting in the way of what we're trying to build.
 * I think part of the reason we've had so much trouble over the past 3 years in writing policy is that we're afraid that putting policy on the top of a page is equivalent to writing it in stone. I also think that part of the reason we've had such a rough ride the past 12 or 13 months is that we've had a hard time setting limits without something in stone to refer to. CR can serve as a way to mitigate both of these problems by writing "flexibility" into stone. --SB_Johnny talk 19:26, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess in my mind the difference between user conflicts and requests for clarification is that the first involves discussing a person or people, and the second involves discussing Wikiversity. I think that is enough of a distinction to cover even the possibility that discussions might be about both people and Wikiversity. I guess the way I read the current proposal it sounds like if you wanted to request clarification on SUL requests this wouldn't be the place to do it and I don't think that was intended. How about "If you have any questions about rules, procedures, processes, expectations or community norms that you would like the Wikiversity community to help clarify you may ask for community feedback at Community Review. An announcement should also be made on the Colloquium and in the sitenotice if most people could be effected by the result."? -- dark lama  20:39, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, discussing "Wikiversity" is discussing what people are doing at Wikiversity. Discussing "what people are doing at Wikiversity" is discussing Wikiversity. I realize that's reductionist, but it's, well, true :-). There's really no way to separate the content creators from the way content is created on a project like this. --SB_Johnny talk 22:00, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I posted a prototype for a process template at the Colloquium. I personally prefer an environment out from under the foreboding atmosphere of the policy cloud. --CQ 01:31, 4 September 2009 (UTC)