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Rules, Commitments and Expectations

• anonymous comment and edit allowed (R) -though comments are deprecated except for beginners
  • talk pages are also only for beginners who can't debate by edit - User:Michael_Pilling
• one uniform content dispute? procedure (R)- relying primarily on debate by edit.
  • argument against: in practice, dispute mechanisms, rules, and guidelines mimic common law - precedent?s are established and supported by those in authority.
  • argument for: there are legal code?s that work more top-down, e.g. German law?, Napoleonic code?, etc.
• apparently-real names always validated (C)
  • argument for: people debating George_R._Jones as they use their own bodily name have a right to know that Mr. Jones may simply disappear at any time, being a sock puppet of someone else.
• only "trolls and roles" use pseudonyms (C) - limiting play ethic w.r.t. identity
  • argument for: anyone debating Feroshus_of_Trolls knows damn well that they are not debating a person using their real name, so there are no administrative requirements here to protect anyone from the consequences of that.
  • argument against: a case can be made for designating a special status/permission set for those who have verified identities, but it is difficult to argue that creative usernames should not be allowed for those people who have verified their credentials. Some visual cue could be provided however, to indicate whether the user in question is verified real or not.
  • argument for: creativity is not a universal good, for instance in accounting?.
  • argument against: users in virtual environments often adopt multiple personas. Only one could be real?
    • Editors note: one real name to sign things, as many troll names as you want. It's simply distracting and diluting to "sign" every correction of every spelling error.
• clear, explicit, standards of evidence (C)
• neutral precedent?s (C) - based on global best practices i.e. GFDL corpus namespace.

• factions/groups may validate group credentials (C)
• contrasting points of view protected by senior editors (R) (e.g. when in doubt they facilitate the minority viewpoint)
• diverse under-represented views solicited (R)
• rudeness discouraged but not forbidden (C)
  • ad hominem given additional scrutiny
  • argument against: service wide terms of use must be administered to protect users from intimidation, coercion, threats, abuse.
    • counter-argument: intervention using administrator guidelines doesn't 'protect' anyone, politics itself is composed mostly of intimidation, coercion, threats, and abuse, from some ideology's point of view: Abuse of the word abuse, of the word threat, are far more common among administrators than are incidents where these things actually happen.
    • counter-argument: who watches the watchers? Any code of conduct is an open door to abuses, e.g. use of phrases like unparliamentary behaviour? to shallowly justify emergency meetings and suspension of elected Councillor during GPC Council Crisis. Politics can't tolerate such arbitrariness.
• deletion/blocks only by fair due process (R)
  • no deletions ever (R) except for strict liability?
    • argument against: inadequate for spam which requires particularly draconian actions
      • counter-argument: spam is a liability in every sense, to permit it actually facilitates clearly illegal activity, it's covered by 'strict'
    • argument against: given rules re who can annoy appearing in law, liability is very easy to construe as meaning literally anything
  • due process to officially ignore pages or remove them from view. Editors note though not from retrieval and reference, except for spam which should simply disappear.

• expertise is a function of (internal) community recognition. e.g. if the title sticks (R).
• don't confuse clarity with advocacy (C)
  • argument against: idiots can't tell them apart
    • counter-argument: this ruleset isn't for idiots
• don't advocate measures you don't support (initially E later changed to C)
  • argument against: unenforceable, and not sure why it matters.
    • counter-argument: a legitimate position should have a sincere advocate and will not be fully represented if the insincere advocates take over, no matter how "objective" they are, or how "dispassionate" they appear to be.
• maintain point of view discipline (C)
• prefer locality to ideology: ecology, neighbours (initially E later changed to C) - limits diversity with respect to living bodies in proximity.
  • argument against: - unenforceable
    • counter-argument: - force does not come from the centre it comes from cooperation at the edges, ideology is not a way to enforce anything it merely changes the excuses; ultimately the force must be expressed at the edge anyway and the most you can centralize is the instructional capital and the training of enforcers, which has a bad track record, e.g. School of the Americas?.
• abstain on decisions that affect you too closely (C)
  • develop conflict of interest policies
• avoid making decisions that don't affect you at all (E later changed to C)
  • argument against: - seems to contradict previous.
    • counter-argument: - a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, clearly a dialectic applies in which someone must be close and affeted enough to understand and act responsibly but not be so uniquely singled out that they panic or lie or protect their friends or are suspected of that
  • require decentralization of decisions to those affected or in a position to do something
    • usually meaning to localize to bioregional scale - see Sharing Water.

• clear, simple, improving process vocabulary (R) - get the words right! especially all control verbs
  • argument against: - vocabulary by fiat would contradict reflexivity,
  • argument against: senior editors should limit parallel page creation and prevent silly verbal disputes which waste time.
• assistance is available to anyone excluded (R)
  • argument against: umm, and who would pay for that?
    • counter-argument: limits to all kinds of administration, editorial and technical assistance are imposed by the constraints of any one project; it's no more onerous to guarantee this than it is to guarantee a web service stays up against malware?
  • argument for: users can be motivated by various forms of status, titles, roles, or even revert currency, to assist other users, it isn't necessarily financial capital used up in this provision
• commands and content easily translated (C)
  • argument against: umm, and who would pay for that?
    • counter-argument: Irrelevant as the requirement is that it can be "easily translated" not "has entirely been translated". Satisfying this may be as simple as having ordinary users review babelfish? output to see if use of certain words is inhibiting machine translation.
    • counter-argument: Even if paid interventions were required, it is fairly easy to justify these or not based on donations contingent on the support of certain groups, etc., it's among the most easily accountable of the requirements.
• degrees of consensus explicitly defined (R) - consensus decision making
  • argument for: voting/decision making software developed, yes.
    • counter-argument: this has nothing to do with software, see agenda protocol, it does not require any software to be developed
  • argument for: without this, it all devolves to groupthink eventually no matter how well meaning people are.
• political virtues taught and encouraged (R)
  • argument against: hard to make a rule
    • counter-argument: other users who aren't involved can usually tell when there is a particular lack of a particular virtue in some dialogue, and could use dialogue mapping? or something to make this more objective.
• clear process to "take over" the service (R)
  • clear process to franchise or fork the service (R)
    • argument for: critics should feel free to start their own service.
  • clear process to remove particular persons from posts, e.g. fire Michael Pilling? or fire the spin doctor when they are not doing their defined jobs.
    • argument against: Pointy Haired Bosses will redirect any service to their own ends.
    • argument against: Michael Pilling in particular, who added "You wish. :-)" to this requirement, arrogantly refuses any check on his own power, very similar to Jim Harris, and even canned OP steering committee just as Harris killed GPC Council during the GPC Council Crisis. These guys are peas in a pod.
  • clear process to remove Open Politics Foundation as prime arbiter of the content or source of key pages if it fails to respect the rules of open politics in force or fire those who resist or attempt to censor or 'spin' these.
    • open politics in force is a proposal. Lets not get ahead of ourselves. - User:Michael_Pilling.
      • counter-argument: participation isn't increasing, nor are all issues getting reliably documented, so it's time to consider new organizing options.

• legal terms used only in their legal sense (C)
• criminal accusations made formally?, or not at all (R)
• privacy protected well beyond legal requirements (C)
• share-alike content at least to nonprofits (R)
• transparent and responsive governance (C)
  • unlikely without the provisions to "take over"
    • evidence: Michael_Pilling?'s arrogance as openly stated in the above.