User:Raidarr/An essay on policies, support and essays

As more volunteers become interested in writing documentation, putting down unwritten convention and so forth, there becomes a need to do this in an organized way. There are several things to consider, including
 * Pages in the mainspace will be taken as official from Miraheze by anyone unfamiliar with the layout, possibly even when marked with a bold sentence as a work in progress
 * There needs to be consistent levels in page creation so it is clear to other contributors what the status of a page is and from what perspective it represents
 * There are multiple levels of community acceptability; essay indicates single or a small handful of opinions without wider recognition, a grey zone exists where things are documented and considered fact/taken officially yet collaboratively written by various authors, and outright policy has of course been voted in by community process.
 * The flow of information is typically thus; the community determines policy, help pages supplement the policy from a neutral point of view and using commonly accepted facts + presentation, and essays present takes, tangents and drafts as well as information which may be too niche for a full support article. I do believe 'drafts' can be handled better from this formula.

It is my belief that pages should start and remain drafted in a userspace with a message inviting open contributions until it is fully complete and ready to be taken officially by those coming across the Meta community. In particular, 'mid level' guides that directly supplement policy and offer common conventions should have a level of common agreement before being fully ratified, even if they would not be actual policies and should indicate such on their pages. Still to be improved, but not overhauled without discussion or notification. This is why I believe the message that has since been removed here is actually useful - it paints the necessary distinction between community article and outright policy, while still having the standards of a neutral and comprehensive page rather than the loose standards attributed to essays. Perhaps an Essay namespace could be made to further achieve this end, where pages are clearly marked for what they intend to achieve. If not, I can see room for the essay template itself to be improved. Either way as information expands and more people become involved, there is a greater need than ever to do this in an organized way. Therefore, communicating at each stage is essential for pages to be formed properly and have a minimum of contention as they move from personal beginnings to content that will represent Miraheze itself.

Either way there is clear willingness to put forth information and add technical content to help organize it, but in my opinion there is also a clear lack of bigger picture thinking to how this process is performed, and this essay would ask that the people who regularly review Meta and will inevitably come across this page consider it, and indeed discuss it either here or even on the Community Noticeboard as a topic pertinent to the image of Miraheze itself. Thank you for your consideration. I leave this message as a rather solid topic for its own merits and this page as the presentation of an opinion, therefore I do not believe it is topical to be placed and eventually filtered out of a particular noticeboard. Consider it the informal vein of a WP: type article.

--Raidarr (talk) 15:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)