Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-5.2.105.85-20170222095120/@comment-188432-20170424215115

Before I close the thread, I wanted to address some of the -- to my mind -- rather unusual stipulations that have been given here so far.

First, there was great fear when this thread was opened that the thread would get immediately closed. That didn't happen. This forum thread has had a reasonable period of time in which to breathe and attract followers. It would not be true or even remotely fair to say that closing the thread would now be premature.

Still, in the more contested debates, participants sometimes disagree over what constitutes a reasonable time limit. Some people will say that the thread should be closed in a few months -- others will cry foul if you wait even a few days.

The important thing to understand about the entirety of the Tardis admin team is that we're really all volunteers, including me. We close things when we have time in our schedule to do it, and when, in our judgement, there's cause to do so.

Relatedly, it's mightily unfair to say that admin "decide it suddenly", just because it may be their first post to a thread. As has been pointed out in other threads, we post-to-close around here because we're trying to act judiciously. In a perfect world -- and there are times when we just don't have the staff to live in a perfect world -- it's better when the judge isn't the prosecuting or defence attorney. They listen to both sides and then make a pronouncement.

It's quite sensible to work that way. It's not always possible, but it is quite sensible.

This is especially true for inclusion debates, which are meant to find an answer. These aren't discussions so much as debates intended to answer the question, "Hey, can we use to write articles around here?" And so at the end of the debate it's up to the closing admin to just decide who won the debate. Other forums at Tardis don't necessarily operate on this principle, and therefore they may have a more conversational style.

So our decisions are not sudden, even if they arise from a singular post. I know that PnP, SOTO and Shambala, just to name the more frequent thread closers, spend a tonne of time working out the consensuses that are drawn in these forum threads.

At the same time, to continue the judicial metaphor, we don't have enough people to have a full appellate system. Sometimes, the same person who ruled on a decision one year may rule on the re-ask years after that. Indeed, there are often great reasons for that. You can't expect all admin to be equally excited about all topics. Nor can you expect all admin to actually own the resources necessary to settle the question from a position of knowledge. Sometimes, as in this case, a particular admin will have put in a lot of research on a particular topic. And therefore they are most qualified to rule on the case.

This year -- for whatever reason -- we've had scores of inclusion debates re-opened. The inclusion debate system was never created in the anticipation of having so many cases opened at one time. Even if every admin dedicated themselves 100% to settling all these open cases, you'd still get some repetition of admin. And let me assure you that there is considerable "inclusion debate" fatigue, at the moment, so we're nowhere close to admin working at 100% on inclusion debates.

Further, it's completely unreasonable to hold a gun to admin heads and say, "You must answer this point and that point and the other point -- or else your close is unacceptable." No, in order to be even mildly effective, we need the flexibility to decide which points are important enough to comment upon, and which to leave to one side. We also require the freedom to introduce a point not yet remarked upon if it is salient to the conversation. Trying to require that the decision be made on a particular basis just isn't realistic. All you can expect is that we admin will try to render a sensible, carefully-considered position.

Finally, it's important to see admin as people whose minds do change over time. I look at the 2012 thread about this, and I'm distinctly aware of the passage of time. Remember, 2012 was a period of transition for us, where we hadn't yet emerged from the notion of "canon". If you base your inclusion arguments on canonicity then narrative discontinuity (or: how crap a story is) is a valid argument against it. That is not how we do things now, and so I don't feel at all bound by those statements from early 2012.