Requests for Comment/Window between wiki requests

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

This RfC was created in good-faith, but it was not the appropriate venue to report a problem with user conduct on Meta and cross-wiki. This policy provides for Stewards to address concerns with regard to crosswiki user conduct broadly and generally speaking, and this policy and this policy more specifically provide a means to address problems with users creating wikis, including the frivolous, vexatious, or otherwise Content Policy-problematic wikis by a user. This Steward is well aware of the user who created these wikis, and they have previously had a restriction on creating too many wikis under a previous account. As such, any complaints of this nature, or a similar nature, should be raised at stewards' noticeboard. Aside from this, even if this were procedurally the best venue, this RfC could not be implemented as it's unclear what's being proposed, which is what some of the strong arguments below contend. So, there is a clear consensus against this proposal. Dmehus (talk) 20:06, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

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FAQs states "Miraheze is a non-profit and entirely depends on donations from others". The Dormancy Policy states "Dormant wikis still use server resources (such as disk space for the wiki database), we have to close (or delete) them".

I interpret that to mean Miraheze has limited resources and needs to be used constructively.

An example contributor is not what I consider using Miraheze limited resources constructively

wiki	approved	last edit	period	pages	flagged
pga	13 June	14 June	2 days	1	inactive
pediaworlds	23 June	6 July	14 days	6
accommodations	8 July	8 July	1 day	1
middleeast	17 August	17 August	1 day	7
easypedia	20 August	4 September	16 days	51
quotes	3 September	4 September	2 days	4
traveltheworld	6 September	6 September	1 day	1
freegames	6 September	7 September	2 days	1
sadmovies	8 September	8 September	1 day	2
news	9 September	13 September	5 days	2
westvirginia	14 September	15 September	2 days	3
sixsentencespedia	17 September	18 September	2 days	2
unitedstatesofamerica	23 September

A Wiki Creator had concerns but rejected his judgement by continuing to approve additional wikis.

Fandom has a 90 day rule so that the contributor spends sufficient time on the wiki. I am proposing that Miraheze introduce a similar policy. As wikis are flagged as inactive after 45 days, I consider that is the appropriate period between new wiki requests.

Proposal

Support

1.  Support as proposed - PercyUK (talk) 21:16, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
2.  Support unless there's a better idea. I think it's a needed start to cover this scenario. Perhaps an entity (sysadmins or stewards) can have official jurisdiction to say 'no more' to examples that are this exemplary, regardless of waiting the required time between requests if this is the kind of history that is seen in results. Following third party discussion and second thoughts, I'd rather see if existing discretion can be used for this example; if not, a proposal that lends it reasonably to observant wiki creators and review by sysadmin/steward instead of this. --Raidarr (talk) 16:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
3. Moved to Strongest Oppose  Weak support Agent Isai ^{Talk to me!} 22:30, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
4.  Support This is a reasonable time window, although the above seems good as well. Bongo Cat (talk) 22:39, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
5.  Support --Mazzaz (talk) 01:40, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
6.  Support Anpang (talk) 09:08, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Neutral

1.  Neutral YellowFrogger (talk) 23:36, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Oppose

1.  Strongest oppose This RfC is too vague, inflexible, restrictive, and makes some borderline uncivil comments on a specific user which: 1) bites the newcomer and 2) does not assume good faith. Focusing on the RfC's content, it is too vague on it's purpose (only the very last 2 sentences focus on the proposal). It proposes a 45 day mandatory window but does not address legitimate use cases in which various wikis may be needed (there have been circumstances in which multiple wikis are required by a single contributor). In fact, it does not allow for Stewards or other high-ranking users to create wikis per this strict (or rather, vague) wording. Additionally, does this only apply to requesting wikis (which would affect those without the createwiki right) or also those who can manually create wikis via Special:CreateWiki? Does that count as "requesting" a wiki per this RfC or no? And what if a sysadmin needed to create a wiki to test out something or to reproduce a bug? Per this RfC and the aforementioned question, that wouldn't be possible if this RfCs vague wording affects the manual usage of Special:CreateWiki. Another issue I see with this is that this created additional challenges and hoops for a requester with legitimate need to request a wiki. Where there's a will, there's a way. This will only encourage sockpuppet accounts to bypass this policy and is effectively rendered moot and useless if you can bypass it by simply making a new account and have no explicit punishment defined for doing so. If anything, a possible sanction may be defined through convention but would lead to more headaches than what this RfC seeks to resolve. Additionally, it does not allow for any sort of discretion whatsoever. There are legitimate use cases for multiple wikis and I would rather see some sort of explicit discretion granted to wiki creators to decline excessive wiki requests or a canned response be added to Special:RequestWikiQueue that specifically states that the requester has requested too many wikis and thus their requests have been declined. For these reasons, I must regrettably oppose this. Agent Isai ^{Talk to me!} 16:00, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
2.  Strong oppose This RfC is short. There are no nuances, only a single proposal. It needs and amendment and need to adress the issues pointed by other members. For example the permission wikicreate, the group wikicreator, the timelapse, the amount of wikis and so on. --Avengium (talk) 17:16, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
3.  Oppose I agree with what has been said above. I am not saying that I would not be interested in supporting a limitation to how many wiki requests a person can make but I do not believe that the way this Request for Comment is proposing that works at all. As already said above it lacks enough details to form a binding policy because "I am proposing that Miraheze introduce a similar policy" does not actually say what it is proposing. In my opinion a RfC cannot be adopted without a somewhat clear definition that someone can actually interpret. My proposal would be for the initiator of this RfC to instead create a draft in their personal userspace, ask for advice and suggestions on the Community noticeboard and then come back to the RfC space with clear proposals and alternatives that can be voted on. I would likely be in favor of a cooldown period for wiki requests but one wiki per person right away would be too extreme for me to support at this time. --DeeM28 (talk) 13:16, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
4.  Oppose This is far too inflexible, and doesn't appear to be in response to any particular need, rather the activities of a certain user. Furthermore, a dormant wiki sitting around doing nothing places far, far less load on Miraheze's systems than actual activity does. If a user was blatantly spamming wiki requests, which I wouldn't consider the activity of the named user to constitute, then it would be within the discretion of the wiki creators to deny their request. — Arcversin (talk) 16:53, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
5.  Oppose per above I am opposing this because the proposal doesn't actually clarify what the new policy should be, it says a policy "similar to" which isn't clear enough to actually be a policy. Therefore it's probably best to propose multiple alternatives as a draft in your userspace and then create an RfC rather than one general broad/vague proposal. Reception123 (talk) (C) 14:54, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Comments

1.  Comment: I will note that I overrode my own objections in part because of something the requester revealed on my talk page and also to help further reenforce the idea that he was on thin ice and should *not* use sockpuppets to request more wikis after the compromise we made as noted by my synchronous commentary on Discord and talk page discussion. I only created one wiki after the warning, westvirginiawiki, as the requester promised to not request more wikis if one more was granted. Nevertheless, even after the user was told to not request more wikis, they still did and another wiki creator who did not know approved his additional requests. Agent Isai ^{Talk to me!} 22:30, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
2.  Comment: Did not quite understand. But is it to further strengthen the dormancy policy? I hope not. In my opinion, it was like this: a wiki with many pages (example: over 1,000 articles) cannot close even if it remains unedited for a long time, as it probably won't have much content to update. YellowFrogger (talk) 23:37, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

   The main purpose is to stop users from making countless requests on all sorts of topics with no future at all at seeing them through. Although given the extreme example in this case, I'm starting to think the diligence of a Steward and a report is all that's needed in the end, if necessary any amendment that's needed to give that discretion. --Raidarr (talk) 23:58, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

3.  Comment: if I am looking at the right thing, the Fandom 90 day rule only applies to adoptions and not wiki creation. Further it is worth noting that Fandom lacks a dormancy policy. Miraheze is therefore already significantly more aggressive in closing unedited wikis. ~ El Komodos Drago (talk to me) 12:43, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

   I do not believe that the Dormancy Policy is aggressive. Many people request wikis and then they never even make one edit on these wikis so I do not think Miraheze should be wasting the space on wikis that will never be edited. I also know that Stewards are in practice generous when awarding exemptions to the policy to people who need them. --DeeM28 (talk) 13:18, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

   Relatively speaking El Komodos Drago has a point because Miraheze actively considers wikis which fail to remain active for certain periods of time while Fandom has no equivalent; they only occasionally remove wikis that were simply never edited and are happy to leave up wikis with no additional edits for years on end even if the community explicitly moved off from Fandom. But I think the correct distinction is that Miraheze is not unreasonable (especially with requested exemptions), given it does not have the raw ability to camp on nothing and still have ambient revenue the way Fandom does. It's also worth noting for the example of wikis requested and never edited, Fandom will also remove them after a vague period of time. It's just not as clearly stated or followed on as Miraheze. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raidarr (talk • contribs) 16:50, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

   The only equivalent of Miraheze's dormancy policy (You were not active so we have deleted your stuff. Want it back? Well we don't have it.) I have ever seen is TinyPic's much-maligned file deletion and even that is based upon views, not user activity. ~ El Komodos Drago (talk to me) 10:44, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

   @El Komodos Drago: As DeeM28 mentions abvoe, Stewards are quite generous with exemptions and grant them regularly but I don't think we should be expecting to keep wikis lying around if no one is using them for long periods of time. As to "Want it back? Well we don't have it." - while it's not specified in any policy I myself make regular backups of all wikis and have always provided these backups when users come back after their wikis were deleted. In addition, users can also make backups themselves via Special:DataDump and they should also get emails of when their wiki is closed. There are many ways to avoid one's wiki from being deleted and the Dormancy Policy is not fixed, the community is free to open an RfC to change it and make the time periods longer if that is what it wishes, however in my experience a minority of people come back after their wikis have been deleted. Reception123 (talk) (C) 14:58, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section