[Foundation-l] Wikipedia:Office Actions

[Casey Brown]

It may be best to bring this discussion up *after* we finish the Elections
discussions.  Otherwise, this post will get drowned. :-P

(I know Luna didn't start it, but he had the most recent post.)

Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Luna
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 5:22 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia:Office Actions

On 4/27/07, Peter Jacobi <pjacobi.de at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> In a strange outcome of matters, a German (excerpting) translation of
> WP:OFFICE got AfDed within hours....
>

And kept, at least for now. I'd imagine the three big issues a description
page might deal with are:

(1) how do we tell if something is or isn't an office action?
(2) why are office actions usually performed?
(3) under what circumstances, if any, can office actions be reversed,
discussed, or modified?

Obviously the foundation has this authority on every WMF wiki, implicitly.
In a situation where many new users aren't even aware the foundation
*exists*, however, I believe a description page is less for the benefit of
the foundation, and more for the confused users who will be left with a
smoldering pile of ash where their article used to be.

Not to say office actions are bad. I readily recognize that they're very
important. But to a new user, I suspect they're almost like the act of an
angry god. When dealing with such an entity, it's nice if the deity provides
you with simple guidelines to avoid future smiting, or to generally explain
that what they're doing is in everyone's best interest, even if they may not
always elaborate in full.

If you guys really insist on avoiding a description page on meta, you know
people will only wind up linking to the en.wikipedia version, anyway.

Just my thought,
-Luna
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l