The Panopticon/Talking about the FP thread

Hey all :)

Some people have been angered or confused by my recent closure of the Faction Paradox thread. I'm sorry to have upset anyone during the holiday season, and I apologise for it. I'm hoping, though, that the dismay comes from misunderstanding rather than implacable disagreement, so I wanted to talk through a few points that have been raised over the past day or so.

How discussions are closed here

One thing some seem to dislike is that I closed the thread with a single comment, and then didn't allow response after that. Those who don't regularly use our forums may see that as a "shocking" disregard of the community, but it's completely commonplace. Once a discussion has attracted a broad range of views, it has to be closed somehow. The method we've adopted around here is modelled after one in use at Wikipedia. We try to find an admin who has not yet participated in the discussion to write up the conclusion that closes the thread. This is as near as we can reasonably come to objectivity.

Unfortunately, we can't do it all the time. At any given moment, some admin may be on hiatus, and we may not have the luxury of choice. That's just a consequence of having a volunteer admin team and the need to make a call and move on.

But the choice was available here. SOTO, Shambala108 and PandP had handled some recent closures, and — having missed the early conversation — I was simply next up on the docket. The thread had already amassed 127 responses, was beginning to load slowly on mobile devices, and had participants who were seemingly begging for closure, anyway.

Let me hover on that 127 for a second. For those who don't regularly use our forums, but who are just interested in this one particular discussion, 127 responses is an astronomical number. Anyone experienced with Fandom would know that there are only a handful of genuine discussion threads across the entire Fandom network of wikis that ever get to triple digits. Beyond that, the word count on many of the most substantive posts was extraordinary. These were well-reasoned, dense arguments — not just a series of one-word responses. So it's completely fair and safe to say that we had a "good conversation", and that it was in no way premature to close it.

Finally, it's standard procedure that the closing admin also ends further comments on the thread. The Matrix Archives has lots of threads where that's demonstrably the case. Nothing exceptional, untoward, or "sneaky" has been done here. If you don't close the discussion at the same time as you issue the final findings, then that just means you've joined the conversation and have made it more difficult to achieve an objective closure at a later date. So many admin had already participated that this was a genuine concern.

(Indeed, it is why, for instance, I can't close the debate about Scream of the Shalka and wasn't the one who closed the Vienna conversation. I'm fully a part of both of them.)

The decision itself

I think the reason some are treating the routine closing of this thread so negatively is because my closing statement has been misconstrued as rejecting Faction Paradox in the face of an overwhelmingly good set of arguments. And if that were the case, I could understand the negativity. But I didn't reject FP as a valid source.

When you boil down the 127 responses, they come to this. NateBumber put forward two pathways for FP inclusion: re-merge to Tardis or build the content at FP Wiki. I accepted the latter, because I felt the technical realities of Fandom/MediaWiki software made that the more reasonable, practical, and copyright-protective option. Moreover, the integrated nature of wikis here on the Fandom platform presented an opportunity to curate the FP material well, but still make it easily-accessible to any Tardis reader.

In my read of things, Nate never proposed something like "keep the status quo", so maintaining the invalidity of FP material wasn't even on the table. The question he ultimately advanced was, "Now that I've proven that FP is valid, do we re-merge the material from FP Wiki, or do we build it at FP Wiki?" Since his proposal inherently included the notion of FP validity, and everyone was agreed to that, it didn't occur to me that I needed to adjudicate it. The question was merely one of where it would happen, and what might be the technical, realistic considerations involved.

Why the FP wiki is good for FP fandom

Although I mentioned interwiki linking in my closing argument, maybe I assumed everyone knew what I was talking about and didn't explain it quite as fully as I could have. So I'm gonna take a Christmas do-over here.

Consider Barry Allen at the DC Database and Barry Allen at the Arrowverse Wiki. Ask yourself what's the point of Yoda at the Muppet Wiki, Yoda at The Clone Wars Wiki and Yoda at Wookieepedia.

The same subjects, at different wikis, allow for articles to be curated from different perspectives.

Some readers don't care at all what The Flash is like in comic books; their Flash fandom is really just about Grant Gustin's Barry Allen. So they avoid DC in favour of Arrowverse. That gives them deeper information about the part of DC they love. And, yes, The Clone Wars is a valid part of the Star Wars continuity, so there's obviously a page at starwars:Yoda. But if what you're really interested in is the way he was depicted during the events of the Clone Wars, you may find that the better article — for you — is clonewars:Yoda. It can delve deeper into that time period, and it won't have Wookieepedia editors excising material because they're making a good faith effort to balance the article across all of Yoda's life.

Going forward

And that's the promise of the main curation being done at FP Wiki. Yes, obviously, Nate has proven the point that FP material is valid here, and T:VS will be re-written to reflect that.

But having deep, rich content about FP at FP is not only technically easier, but better for the content. Take, for instance, an article on London. At FP Wiki, you'll be able to explore fully the London described in FP works. Give readers the entire deal. Meanwhile, back here at Tardis, you can give a short summary of FP events involving London — but put up a little note that tells readers to go to the FP Wiki for more information if they want. It's easy. That way, Tardis articles don't end up unbalanced towards FP content, but rich FP content — well-linked to Tardis — has a place to grow to its natural limits.

I think understanding this has encouraged Nate to apply to be an admin at the FP Wiki. He seems enthusiastic about this, saying last night: ". . . this wiki has lots of potential. I'm willing to work very hard in every way to help it grow into something great! Please consider me in the eager running for admin here."

His application was accepted promptly, and he is now an admin there. And Tardis admin will be working with him in the days ahead to give greater detail to the ties between the two wikis.

Of course, you don't need to be an admin to do great work there. No article, policy page, or part of the front page has ever been locked down there. As far as I can recall, all of the copy there has been freely editable since the day it was put up, almost five years ago. That's because all of it was just starter copy — a placeholder for people who would come later. None of it was ever meant to last this long or to be any sort of immutable "truth". Absolutely none of it was any sort of deep, personal statement on my part. Especially not P:CAN, the page that seems to flummox several people. That thing is so old and wrong that I've already suggested to Nate it should be one of the first things he fixes.

Help Nate grow FP Wiki and then link the material back here in all sorts of creative and intelligent ways.