Forum:The New Forums

Opening post
Crossposting my own announcement from Tardis:Temporary forums/Admin announcements:

Hello, all!

We're happy to announce that, with the Forum namespace unlocked, we're finally able to move into some permanent New Forums. Thanks to everyone for how much you've shown up in making Tardis:Temporary forums happen, and helping the Wiki achieve as much as it did in these diminished circumstances. The New Forums are still very much needed — but we've cleared a way a lot of long-running issues and old policy bugbears, successfully catching up with the past few years' backlogs, such that what we are looking forward to does really get to be the fresh start of a whole new era.

While SOTO's still working on finalising the Special:Forum archive, we're taking this chance to officially migrate. The Temporary Forums are moving to Forum:Temporary forums for now, with some cleanup to come brushing it up as a completed archive. In time, we'll have a central landing page for the Forums, linking to all the archives; but this may take a week or more, as there are several important things to prioritise. (In any case, while archiving all data for history's sake is paramount, User:CzechOut, in his contacts with us active admins, did wish to express his personal view that a lot of the Special:Forum era material was old enough that, even without new evidence, it was long-overdue for review by the community. Admins don't write policy, and neither does the past: you, the community do. Those other things just help to codify and operationalise it. The spirit of T:POINT applies — don't waste everybody's time, don't restart an old thread unless you have an actually fresh look on its topic — but once new Forum threads become possible for all to open, don't be frightened of a prior ten-message discussion ten years ago. "Fresh" doesn't have to mean "specific new evidence", it can just mean "this is reflective of a decade-old community and view of what the Wiki is all about, we have a strong inkling the current majority does not support that rule, or that it is in spiritual conflict with more recent jurisprudence".)

Don't worry, though: our ongoing discussions are going to move directly into our still-being-built Panopticon. While the Tardis Forum works on restoring its interior dimensions, please bear with us and do not open any new threads for the next few days. (But, of course, feel free to work on OPs in sandbox — and don't worry: the list of proposed threads will be retained at the archived version of Tardis:Temporary forums itself. As we make it through those, given the extraordinary circumstances, we'll do the unthinkable i.e. editing the archived page, so as to note that X or Y thread has been posted in the new forum.

We'll make another announcement when things are fully open for business. For now, you're welcome to come over to Forum:The New Forums to give your thoughts as we restructure, and tell us about any bugs you're noticing. (Just give it a few minutes if it's something new. We might be working on it.)

Well, this is Forum:The New Forums, the first official thread of these restored DPL Forums, transmigrated Tardis:Temporary forums threads notwithstanding.

So… what do you want to see about the New Forums? What did you feel worked about T:TF, and what did you think didn't? Are you seeing, and will you see, any issues with the New Forums on a technical or design level as we roll them out fully over the next few days? Here is the place to bring up your own takes.

To give you some outlines on what the admin team has been discussing, we are:
 * strongly inclined to keep a default time limit on all Forum threads, which could even be semi-automated in due course. This limit may be raised from three weeks (21 days) to a full 30 days, and will, of course, still be flexible in case of discussions which clearly warrant more time.
 * strongly disinclined to keep a Proposals/limited-slots model. We discussed this at length, but in the end, we felt it wouldn't be right to "gatekeep" thread creation now that the one-of-a-kind emergency situation is behind us. Moreover, the time-limit discussed above should suffice to keep an excess of inactive threads from clogging up the system.
 * inclined to restore separate Boards, much as previous Forums before T:TF employed, but shake up the specifics somewhat; some of the old areas such as the Reference Desk have essentially been rendered moot by Discussions, and some of the names may need updating.

We are not beyond reviewing the first two positions in light of a spectacularly good argument, but they are pretty locked-in as these things go, so unless you have a very strong argument to bring to bear in this regard, please don't spend too much time arguing for their completely opposites. Better to focus on the details and the operationalisation. As for the third, of course, it invites suggestions in itself!

Right — ball's in your camp! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:58, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

 * ……Well — here's the first shame-faced update report: yes, yes, all the links at Forum:Temporary forums/Archive are currently (to use a technical term) completely screwed up. It is my fault and will be fixed momentarily. Apologies for the inconvenience. As you were! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:16, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, this is a welcome surprise I must admit. As one of the few active editors who has been online long enough to have contributed to the Forum subspace... Well, it's surreal and weird to be here. It's like visiting your childhood home while it's on sale and being given a tour of the empty crevice inside.

So as per the discussion of how we should group the forums... I'll be candid. I always found the old setup, which we're using right now, extremely confusing.

Here's the minimum we need: a forum space only for debates about validating some stories or categories of stories... A forum just for changing the rules and discussing decades old policy and precedent which might not fit the community anymore... A forum for technical stuff like updating the site's landing page or logo. I'm not sure which of these would naturally be called "The Panopticon," again because I've always found the system confusing. OS25🤙☎️ 23:35, 11 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Oh, also: can we have quick links to the forums? It got so convenient linking and typing out T:TF... Is it too silly to ask for F:PANTO or something like that? OS25🤙☎️ 23:42, 11 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with OS25 above about the organization of the forums. While I only used them a few times back when they were active, I did find them very confusing, and I think that the three boards proposed above are a really solid idea, that could help make them less obtuse & more welcoming to all editors, old and new alike. However, I'm really glad to see we now have proper forums again! Liria10 ☎  23:46, 11 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The thing that always rubbed my rhubarb the wrong way was all of the terrible descriptions at Forum:Index. Look at how the Panopticon is described: "If you have questions as to why articles are named a certain way, or why our various policies are worded as they are, or really about anything having to do with the maintenance of this wiki, go to the Panopticon." Does this not suggest that the Panopticon exists to clarify existing policy, not change it? That a new user should come here to ask how the site works, not to propose a change? Every time I forgot the forum names this tripped me up. OS25🤙☎️ 23:51, 11 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I am against strict time limits on discussions, at least ones as short as this. Ideally my archaeology project will solve some of this issue, but it's important to realize that things in the past happened for a reason, even if times have changed, and if the users present for those decisions don't chime in due to infrequent activity we might repeat past mistakes. (I note that obviously my project will contain with it biases, so it's obviously not a perfect replacement for true institutional knowledge.) Indeed, we had quite a few threads in the Thread:Number days that languished for months, if not years without responses before getting a flurry of activity that catapulted them to, if not affecting policy, nearly doing so. (Consider Thread:137011 in User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon II which had no activity for four and a half years, for instance. Obviously excessive, but even once people started discussing it again discussion continued for over a year with no definitive resolution.) Moreover, some issues might need quite a bit of time to reach consensus, and while the deadline can be extended, there shouldn't be a need to ask an admin to do that instead of just letting it find equilibrium and closing it after consensus has definitively failed to be reached or has succeeded.


 * Might I suggest instead that if a thread goes dead for 1-2 months it's bumped once, then killed if it goes dead for that time again? Not ideal in terms of the precedent I'm citing, but, you know. Trying to make it reasonable. I understand yall're strongly in favor of time limits, but I figured I'd still shoot my shot at trying to stop it.


 * I am also strongly against the proposal/limited slots model, some proposals will be popular but will languish for quite some time without anyone being willing to write up the actual post, and some might be, theoretically, incredibly important but unpopular. Either due to controversy, or just because they're technical pieces of wiki administration that very few people care about. (Note that proposals of this type being placed first in line along with removing a strict time limit on discussions also allows for them to have the extended discussion that they deserve, be it due to the back and forth nature of the discussion that will result from disagreement, or to hammer out the nuances of a new policy.)


 * Support Panopticon / Help / Drax Cave / Time Lord Academy / UNified Intelligence Taskforce / Tales from the Tardis / Happiness Patrol / Matrix Archives / The Wikia Archives. I'd also like to see a second archiving project like Czech did in Forum:Panopticon archives, where he provided brief commentary on threads, if an admin feels up to it at some point, but this is a musing rather than a serious insistence. Najawin ☎  00:02, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

To me, having some set time limit is not just there to make the site efficient. It's there to build a sense of trust between normal users and the admin team. In the "middle forum" era, it was very common to have a forum closed after just days, even ones with long considerate OPs. And that lead to... Well, a hostile atmosphere!

I would go as far as to say this: when this site has a healthy forum system, consensus and precedent are the same. I can't tell you that this was true in the Thread days, because it wasn't.

Even worse, as Najawin as hinted at, would be when users would reach a consensus... But it would never get closed because the admin team either weren't invested or disagreed. Take, for instance, Thread:212365: opened 22 March 2017. Closed 23 September 2018.

Or, Thread:212365. Opened 6 March 2017. Closed... 4 June 2020. It is not acceptable for us to tell our forum users: "Hey, start an inclusion debate! An admin will close the topic in 18 to 39 months! :)"

So indicating that forums have always been naturally closed when a consensus naturally happens is an incorrect statement. And it seems to me that, under Najawin's recommended system... The only way to get a forum closure in an instance of the admin team ignoring the post would be for everyone to choose to say nothing for four months. That's not a good system.

Even in the temporary forums, it was common to extend debates if there was a lack of resolution or any ongoing argument that wasn't just the same talking points in a loop forever. In spite of how people have complained of three weeks being long enough, most of our forums so far have been dormant in the week before they close. So it's my take that 30 days is not only more than we'll need, it's more than we use. If there's really a good reason to extend the forum past 30 days... We can just extend the forum at day 30. Admins have rarely turned out requests to extend forums, even at the least justified request.

I also suspect that limiting forum submissions, if it is a feature in the coming weeks, will only be a technical solution while the forums are perfected. But it's fairly obvious that even if we temporarily do a limited forum run we'll be out of OPs by the end of the summer. I can't speak to all the forum names Najawin has listed because I don't remember what each one is and I don't feel like researching it. OS25🤙☎️ 00:24, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Okay, other implementation notes, we need to change stuff to reflect our new spoiler policies. The panopticon in particular puts a massive emphasis on being spoiler free, it's on the description of the page on Forum:Index, the description of the page itself, and the panopticon header that every forum post gets. A more nuanced statement about how spoilers must be clearly delineated at the start of the thread is probably better. Discontinuity and Timey Wimey aren't even Forums, they're in the Theory namespace, yet they still show up on the index page, as does The Howling. This could be made more clear, only The Howling mentions this distinction.


 * Panopticon description obviously needs to be changed, yes. Both on the index section, and to a lesser extent the page itself. I'm not sure that OS25's comments about Logo/CSS/Design vs Changing Outdated Rules vs General Policy Board are quite apt though. Unless we're constantly updating Logo/CSS/Design, which, hey, we might do, but we haven't decided on that yet, we don't need a dedicated board, it's an exception, not a rule, it would be under the "General Policy" section. As would "changing outdated policy", as that's just a subset of all of our general policy discussions.


 * I'd also recommend that whatever our final design for the front page is (dear lord we need to get some movement on that) should have a link to the forums so people don't have to go looking for it. Make it as accessible as possible for those who want to find it.


 * As for OS25's most recent comments, let me push back on the idea that I ever suggested that threads would have consensus and not be closed. While this happened, this is not the example I referenced. I referenced an example where an incredibly important discussion about how to disambiguate languages went without comment for >4 years sans consensus, Shambala bumped it, and then discussion happened for another year without consensus before the forums shut down. With time limits, what would happen here? "No consensus, closing thread." Similarly, I insist that I never suggested that historically consensus -> immediate closure. You simply won't find this in my comment. It's not there.


 * I'd also like to push back on the idea that we only need 30 days. Sure, maybe we're only using so much time and our threads languish for a week before closing. But why is this? It's because people are violating our forum policy.
 * Replies like "Agreed," "No," "Yes," kudos, or even longer sentences that amount to little more than a statement of being for or against something are usually deeply unhelpful. Unless an admin asks for a simple show of hands on a purely arbitrary matter, it's important to tell us why you feel the way you do. If you don't, your opinion will likely be discounted in the final closure of the thread.
 * A lot of the recent threads have been people showing up, voting, and not actually discussing the issue and hashing out the strengths and weaknesses of the positions at play. I say this even concerning threads I agree with the conclusions of. Sure, if all we're doing is some voting with some arguments on the side maybe we only need a month. But if we're actually going to have real discussion, which is what we should aspire to, we shouldn't assume that a month will be sufficient. Many of the threads in the older eras took longer than a month. It should concern us that everything is happening so quickly now as a symptom that our process has gone awry. (Indeed, I will say that I've actually wanted to respond to some of the threads that were closed just after they were closed.) Najawin ☎  00:50, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Hey, some of my best friends post "agreed" and nothing else in forums!


 * In all seriousness, that outdated and tacky rule made a lot more sense in the days where forum OPs were a sentence or two. I'm working on an OP right now that's going to be longer than our page on Rose Tyler.


 * It's safe to say that these days, a lot of the implications and considerations are already considered by the time these forums actually open for debate. A large series of people saying they agree with a very detailed OP is, in fact, consensus. OS25🤙☎️ 01:02, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Also: maybe this is just me. But forums being open for 40 months because we can't wave an admin our way is a worse situation than someone showing up late to a debate by a few days. OS25🤙☎️ 01:08, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm no stranger to long opening posts! But I think there's always room for discussion and well thought out comments. "Agree" or "Disagree" adds very little to the discussion and encourages people to think of these discussions as simple votes. They're not. Forum threads are carried by stronger arguments, not simply by who agrees - 100 people can agree with the OP, ignoring an objection, but if the objection is strong enough to render it technically infeasible, it can doom the proposal. We should encourage discussion and nuance, thoughtful reflection on issues. Forcing everything to happen in a month means things are more likely to get emotional, more likely to get lost in the shuffle, and more likely to just reframe the entire way we're discussing topics in an unhealthy way, imo.


 * And look, nobody wants to go back to the era you're talking about. I remember it! It was still happening in 2020! But I don't think these are the only two choices. We don't have to wait 40 months after consensus is reached, but neither do we have to force close a discussion when there isn't consensus, even if discussion has stalled, or have a time limit as short as a month. Najawin ☎  01:13, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I just feel very strongly against the idea that those who to come to their forum to give their voice of approval on an idea are somehow failing the system. They are not, they are the reason the system is worth saving.


 * I think honestly I might be more kind to this idea if you just meant non-validity debates, or serious rule changes etc. But realistically, again, if we tell people "Hey, forums last two months by default," guess what's going to happen? The debate is going to last two and a half weeks, then it'll just sit there for another 39 days. OS25🤙☎️ 01:44, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I've repeatedly suggested getting broader community feedback for some of our larger changes! I want feedback! But hashing out the actual details of the issue in depth is a different sort of thing than just providing feedback. Someone showing up, saying they like the thing, then never returning isn't really discussing the issue, and part of why just doing this should worry us is that if someone else comes in later with a strong objection, well, we have no clue if the first person might have changed their mind. They haven't returned to the thread, and we don't know how their reasoning was presented, so we can't evaluate the strength of the rebuttal comparatively. These comments should be something we use to inform our forum discussion, not something that is considered part of it. But this gets into more nuanced details of how to have forum discussions.

Think of it not as the people doing something wrong, but the culture that results from this having adverse consequences. Tragedy of the commons. We should be really concerned that everything is happening in 2 weeks rather than 3. That wasn't normal prior to the closing of the old forums. While some of that is surely the fact that everyone wants to get to work on stuff that has piled up, we should be deeply concerned about making easily overlooked mistakes in our rush to get things done. Najawin ☎  02:09, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * (Oh, and let me note for the record OS25, the very long opening post you're talking about, if it's the one I'm thinking of - I think that's going to need substantially longer than a month to discuss! That's precisely the type of discussion where there's a lot of stuff to hammer out in the thread that could take ages, even among people who broadly agree. I don't see why an admin should have to come around every month to refresh it, with us worrying that it might or might not get renewed, potentially even rushing through bad versions of the end policy that do more harm than good, when we can instead take our time to actually work out the best path forward. Perhaps the great is the enemy of the good, but so too is the slapdash.) Najawin ☎  04:27, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with creating separate subspaces for "inclusion (validity or coverage) debates", "policy changes", technical changes, and additionally querries. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎  05:10, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with Najawin about the time limit. The raison d'être for the time limit on the temporary forums was that the threads were (a) limited in number by the slots system and (b) supposed to address emergency topics which could be fully discussed in three weeks. Since neither of these reasons will still apply to The New Forums, I see no reason for a time limit to continue to exist.


 * I have as much PTSD as anyone from the ancien régime of years-old forum threads with obvious consensus but no admin closing statement to make it official. Back in the day I created a whole sandbox just to track threads like these. But there were concrete reasons for the abandonment of so many threads in that way: we had too few admins; they were overwhelmed by the volume of discussion; and as most of them had joined before the mid-2010s surge in forum activity, reading lengthy forum debates and writing careful resolutions just wasn't really what they'd signed up for. None of these reasons apply to today's forums. We have three very active new admins and a new bureaucrat, and they have demonstrated time and time again in the temporary forums how ready and capable they are concerning crawls through carloads of contentious comments and the crafting of carefully considered compromises. I fully trust them to stay on top of things without us forcing them to review every single thread every single month.


 * While I'm here, I'd also like to very clearly decry the above accusation of forum policy violation. Setting aside the temptation to leave it at that (as would be my right), let me elaborate: Not only is this policy only suited to the old format where every post could be seconded with a thumbs up button, it's never actually been enforced, either in the temporary forums or (as far as I recall) in the old. Which makes sense, because what's the penalty? Simply that you'll have wasted your time, since an admin probably won't be taking your opinion into account in the closing statement! In short, policy violations of this kind are to be identified and enforced by our admins, not by self-appointed "backseat admins", however enthusiastic or legalism-minded we may be. Again, I trust our leadership team to make the right decisions here without our infetterence. – n8 (☎) 14:06, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * To respond to Najawin here, when he says "That long OP of yours is going to take longer than a month to discuss", I encourage him to read it again as I literally wrote that into the damn introduction. And I'm sure an admin will take my suggestion of at least a double time limit to heart, as the admin team have taken most reasonable time limit extensions to heart. But what I personally would not look forwards to is being told "We'll close that when we feel like it" not knowing if that means two days or two years. We need some sense of a promise that A) admins will not close forums against consensus in the first days of a forum, and B) admins will not leave forums open for literal years due to a lack of investment in the topic. I do not think we can really do this with at least a soft deadline - and a soft deadline is really what is being recommended right now. OS25🤙☎️ 16:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * To be fair Nate, it's not like I said anything until OS25 insisted that we won't need the time we have. I'm not going into threads and accusing people of violating it, insisting that they must elaborate on their opinions because of this policy. (Though I do ask them to elaborate.) My point is merely that simple votes take less time, but they're supposedly actively discouraged by this wiki, and that I think they're a mistake and a poor replacement for real discussion.


 * Well "substantially" does imply more than just an extra month, so I'm not sure what your objection is here. But you're missing the point. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, is suggesting that threads just sit and languish for a year after consensus is reached. The timescale I suggested on its worst case is four months, and on the best case is two, but by design it's flexible, and the timescale was for discussions without consensus. At best you can accuse me of this because I want to leave threads open to comment after apparent consensus is reached for a bit if older users haven't commented - but: A) If some of them have commented this isn't an issue, and B) the timescale involved still doesn't have to be years. The cure you're asking for is worse than the disease, and it's to a problem that no longer exists. Najawin ☎  16:58, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * With regards to forum lengths, I personally think that different threads need different lengths of time to discuss. Something like OS25's branching narratives OP is going to take several months at the very least, whereas the 10,000 Dawns crossover was simply a "Do you have any objections?", where the three weeks time limit was perfectly adequate. I do think that the time limit on discussions should be indefinite, and it should be up to the admins to decide when either consensus has been reached or none has. Although to be honest, a flexible one month time limit also seems reasonable, so long as this time limit can be easily extended. With regards to the Boards, I would say one for validating/invalidating stuff (also coverage), one for policy changes, and one for miscellaneous other stuff, as these seem to be the three main categories that debates come in, although I'm not sure on the last one there. So yeah, fun stuff. Hooray for the forums! Aquanafrahudy ☎  18:47, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * This is exactly what my belief is as well. From my experience, if a conversation has been incomplete or unfinished by the time the arbitrary deadline comes, admins have had no issues extending a forum two or three times. And as Aquanafrahudy said, I trust the judgement of admins on how much time a discussion needs.


 * Najawin continues to skirt the issue, but it can not be overstated that most of the forums we've started either A) become inactive by the halfway point because consensus has been found, or B) devolve into the same two or three users repeating the same opposing talking points over and over and over again. If either of these are the status quo after four weeks, then an admin should come in and make a judgement.


 * The reason we've all reacted to your claim about other users with such offense is that you clearly wrote that statement with the implication that you have singlehandedly been keeping the forums together, when that's just not the case. And I personally do not think that any of our recent forums have been closed with consensus being the only thing considered with no opposing arguments. Hell, in the case of the recent Speedround forum, we had stories get declared non-valid when no one had argued for that position!


 * I'm not complaining, because I think that's how things should be done to some extent. But I also think that's how things have been done, no admin has thrown out logic and best policy just to blindly things without logic. The Temporary forums were a perfectly fine, genuine forum system where consensus and precedent were established. They are not only as valid as the original forum and thread archives - they are more valuable because they represent current policy in the current userbase. OS25🤙☎️ 19:22, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

How is "the state of affairs you're describing may be true, but this is an indication that something has gone deeply wrong with our forum system and people aren't actually discussing things" skirting the issue, pray tell?

Form is supposed to follow function. If we tell users that things have to happen quickly, that there's a time limit to their responses, that everything has to move fast (and at least so far this has been happening so that new threads can then move up to take the spot, get through as many issues as fast as possible), wouldn't this encourage them to not engage like they should? To not take the time to think things through, to have the back and forth necessary? The form we've chosen suggests a radically different function, so can we be surprised when people act in this manner? Insisting that because of this, because people have acted in a certain way in a very abnormal situation in a system designed to make them act a certain way, they are naturally inclined to act in this way outside of these situations and so we should continue with the same system? Well, perhaps it's not question begging, but it's surely a questionable inference. It's even more questionable to take this behavior as a given, rather than to critically examine it.
 * you clearly wrote that statement with the implication that you have singlehandedly been keeping the forums together

For the life of me I can't see how. It seems to be another chapter in the long list of procedural notes I make, (and not even one I'm being especially aggressive with, just one I noted when you brought up the fact that we weren't taking a lot of time, I just tried to diagnose the reason why) which I have deeply engrained reasons for caring about.

But quite frankly I think that comment is where I take my leave for at least a few hours. If not substantially longer. Najawin ☎  19:54, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * To come back around to the topic of how the forum need to be designed, I think that one thing I feel strongly about is the internal rules of the inclusion debates.


 * Back in the old days the rule was you couldn't change rules when arguing for a story's inclusion. So, if I wanted to validate Attack of the Graske and started a post in the inclusion debates, an admin would close the forum and say "We have our rules." If I moved to whatever forum was dedicated to changing the rules and said "we should change the rules to validate Attack of the Graske," it would be closed for being an inclusion debate. Do you see the frustration?


 * Furthermore, I think the inclusion debate should also be a space where we can discuss the greater difference between the three tiers - NOT COVERED content, NON-VALID content, and valid content. So, for instance, I should be able to make a forum arguing in the inclusion debates for a NOT COVERED story to have non-valid coverage without being required to argue for it to be a valid source. And so-on. OS25🤙☎️ 20:05, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Honestly, I strongly agree with OS25 above: the temporary forums did a wonderful job, and frankly I think we should really look to them, and how succesful they've been at having very involved discussion with much more answers and back and forth than, dare I say, 90% of the old forums to decide on how we will run these new forums.


 * Frankly, I feel that some sort of time limit is needed, otherwise we end up with either endless discussion that go round and round with little progress, or discussion that lay dead for years without ever reaching a conclusion or being able to move forward. Now, I also agree with the idea of leaving it open for the admins to decide if a topic needs more (or less!) time to reach a proper consensus, and I wouldn't be against extending it to more than 30 days as well. Just, having a time limit has been a genuine good idea from the temporary forums, and while of course adjusting it to fit our needs for the more long term forums is important, I think we ought to keep it in some form.


 * Also, I would like to disagree with the idea that giving simple answers like "I agree" isn't engaging with the discussion, because sometimes the best thing you can do is be short & concise, and especially as those debates are resolved through consensus, someone who reads through and finds that all the points they have to add have already been spoken simply replying with that fact is already engaging in the discussions. Sometimes, there's simply no more points to make, and wanting to repeat the same thing simply for a longer message is not something I see the point of.


 * Overall, I really respect the work that has been done over the past couple of months. We found a temporary system that worked, and managed to create active & engaged threads about various issues on the wiki, and we've made good changes & progress thanks to those. Our changes to policy made through these are not only valid, but a good reflection on how the current active userbase feels about the wiki. I also agree with the idea of being able to discuss policy changes through inclusion debates, it seems like something the wiki needs to be able to go forward. Liria10  ☎  20:09, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, with regards to the boards, it would probably make more sense to have all the discussions in one place, don't you think? We could just keep Panopticon, or possibly rename it, and everything else would seem to be covered by the Discussions. Seeing as validity debates and policy changes have become somewhat intertwined, that is. Aquanafrahudy ☎  19:51, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Well, my experience is that when we have a proper forum system, most of the forum posts are inclusion debates. This often burns people out and causes low interaction, so I think we need that separation - that is, when we have a new forum post which isn't an inclusion debate, it should be in its own place so people can easily find it and it won't get lost in the mix. OS25🤙☎️ 23:26, 18 May 2023 (UTC)


 * That's a fair point, though it's also worth bearing in mind the point you made at Forum:Non-valid Continuity sections, categories, and prefixes with regards to the fact that we are slowly but surely exhausting the backlog of overdue inclusion debates. There will be more, I'm sure; but we may never again see the like of the "rash" of such debates which existed for a while, to rather unproductive results, in Special:Forum.


 * At any rate, I think that one the whole there is at least a clear justification to have different places for technical bug-report type things, and policy discussions. And on the whole, if we keep the Boards system at all, I do think we could stand to keep a separate "Inclusion debates" subspace (though with the understanding that the definitions are fluid, and it's no problem if by the time the thread is closed, it winds up in both categories). Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:33, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Here are the boards that I think are needed: Bongo50  ☎  21:35, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The Panopticon or similar for policy debates
 * Somewhere for inclusion debates. These could potentially just be done in the Panopticon
 * Forum:Tech notes or similar for technical announcements and discussions
 * Somewhere where editors (particuarly newer editors) can ask for editing help or clarification on policies and procedures
 * Somewhere for admins to make announcements


 * So, now we've sorted out the boards, are the new forums officially up and running, or do we wait a bit longer? Aquanafrahudy ☎  08:09, 21 May 2023 (UTC)


 * They're not ready yet; SOTO is still hard at work setting everything up. When they're ready, an admin will clearly indicate it. Bongo50   ☎  09:11, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Alright, coming back to this a week later, let me just note Liria that my comment is "I agree" can be a misleading statement. Suppose Person A argues against position X in a lecture, and during the lecture brings up position P as an aside. Now, P implies notX, but so does Q. You then go up to person B and ask B, do you agree with A's lecture? B holds position Q, doesn't think that P is super relevant to the overall thrust of the lecture, and says that they do. You ask C the same question, they think that P is integral to the argument being made, and since they hold P, they also agree. Then, person D stands up, and argues against position P. Both B and C think that D has refuted P, but A does not, she isn't convinced. So A and B still hold notX, while C now thinks X.

Merely having the information that B and C "agreed" with A previously doesn't tell you about their positions later on. You need to have them elaborate on the specific reasoning they agree with or disagree with. If ultimately you agree with someone on their entire reasoning, just stating that with an extra few words would be fine with me! I just would like a little more clarity than "I agree" or "I agree completely", as both of these are vague imo. Najawin ☎  21:42, 24 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Firstly, the letters of A, B, notX ect are very confusing. But anyway. I can see you're point with "I disagree", but if someone says "I agree completely" of "completely support", it is perfectly rational to presume that they, uh, completely agree with everything that person said. Of course, the statement should instead be something like "I agree with the Opening Post", of "I agree with what OS25 has said so far". Making your opinion an entire essay when someone else has already done that 1. Needlessly takes up space, making the thread harder to navigate and 2. Takes time a lot of us don't have. Sometimes in life I'm too busy to properly forumulate my opinions on a policy into a long paragraph, but I very much would not like it if that prevented me weighing in on the thread at all.

Or, in other words, I disagree Cousin Ettolrahc ☎  05:14, 25 May 2023 (UTC)


 * But even in the example given B and C might consider that they agreed with A completely - they understood the argument differently. Insofar as B understands the lecture given by A, P is a tangential point, not part of the argument. But C thinks it's a crucial part of the argument. This confusion is, again, avoided if they merely elaborate slightly on their understanding of the issue. A long paragraph? Surely not necessary. A single sentence or two? Assuredly sufficient. (As for the hypothetical, I'm not sure what you propose that I do to simplify matters. Would you prefer our old friends Alice and Bob rather than A and B? P Q and X are still going to be there.) Najawin ☎  05:43, 25 May 2023 (UTC)


 * This isn't even hypothetical: in the Subpage policy thread, plenty of people wrote "I agree" without elaborating on which of the (many) parts they agreed with, and as a result of this lack of clarity, only the core parts of the proposal were passed, with the rest having to wait for Subpages 2.0 thread. – n8 (☎) 19:33, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Nitpick, but shouldn't this thread live somewhere other than Tales from the Tardis? It's definitely more than just an announcement, and if people ever want to revisit it (say if someone suggests further alterations to the board categories) the "admin announcements with no discussion" board might be a slightly counterintuitive place to try and find it. Starkidsoph ☎  23:51, 10 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Eh. This occasionally happened in the 2013-2020 forums. You'd get discussions under announcements. It was rare, but it happened. Najawin ☎  00:15, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Conclusion
Alright — there is something very poetic about the fact that, despite our leaving it open for longer, this thread in fact died out on its own precisely one month after it was started, given one of the main points of disagreement within the discussion.

But the fact is that I think it’s time to close this. The immediate points that sprang to mind have been gone over, there was a nice bit of back and forth; the New Forums are firmly with us now, no longer “the new thing”, and if further issues or suggestions pop up as time goes on, they would be better-served by their own threads than by a free-for-all brainstorming area like this thread.

Three main points were set up by the opening post: the 30-day limit, limited slots, and boards.

In the end, despite some people’s concern, the 30-day limit as a default is affirmed, alongside the refusal to revert to a limited number of slots. The truth is that we needed *one* of these to keep the Forums running smoothly, and the 30-day limit was simply the most natural. As many people have noted and this very thread demonstrates, a month or so is a natural lifespan for most threads as it is. Officialising it as a default (while leaving the door open for extensions on a case-by-case basis) is just a good way to ensure dying threads are given robust closing posts instead of simply disappearing down the “Newest topics” list until they’re forgotten.

Opponents of this policy brought up a few cases of threads which went silent for months of years, but then ended up whirring back to life later down the line and only then coming to a satisfying consensus; but look… if some people two years later have more to say, well, as I have said many times before, they are and should always be allowed to start a new thread to relitigate based on their new argument or evidence. T:POINT is meant to stop bad-faith disruptions to the Wiki’s proceedings, not good-faith attempts to bring new light to old problems.

Does a time-limit encourage rushed discussion? It’s a fair concern, but not, to my mind, a compelling one. As much as we got some context-less ”I agrees”, the Temporary Forums also got some of our biggest and most rigorous threads, and generally had a high standard of discussion for every post that *wasn’t* a mere “I agree”. As User:OttselSpy25 said:

"The Temporary forums were a perfectly fine, genuine forum system where consensus and precedent were established. They are not only as valid as the original forum and thread archives - they are more valuable because they represent current policy in the current user base."

- User:OttselSpy25

Moreover, the default-time-limit needn’t promote an atmosphere of hurry, even to the degree that such a thing existed in the Temporary Forums; a better way to put it is that  the 30-day mark is when an admin should review the thread to check whether a consensus has emerged yet, and rule on whether it should be closed now or extended. The possibility of an extension should be a normal and expected part of a process; people can and should open threads in the confidence that they will last beyond 30 days if that proves necessary. The 30-day “deadline” is just an assurance that the thread won’t languish if it goes dead or otherwise starts to go in circles; it's not a ticking clock that the thread will have to be closed on that date no matter what.

This area of discussion touched upon the validity of posts expressing completely context-less agreement or disagreement. It is true that except for cases where a show of hand has been explicitly called for, “context-less agreement” posts are bad forms— though I would not say they are against policy per se under current practice; merely inadvisable to the same “thanks for trying but we’d like you to try harder if you can” degree that a poorly-written but basically-policy-compliant Wiki-page write-up would be inadvisable. A sentence or two, trying to put into words what parts of the argument are agreed with, and in what light, is generally a good thing to aim for even if you don’t have anything new to add. However, precisely because — as User:Najawin rightfully argued — this isn’t a very great imposition, I just don’t see that a deadline encourages one over the other. Thirty days isn’t so much a time-crunch that someone could have the time to say “I agree”, but not to say e.g. “I agree because I found the bit about [X] especially compelling, and I don’t see anything wrong with the rest of it at first glance” (or some other enlightening clarification of similar length).

Finally, the Boards: this one has essentially been resolved already, some weeks ago now. In connection with suggestions within the thread as well as discussion among admins and just plain old creativity, User:SOTO created a roster of boards. They are listed at Forum:The Cloisters, with lengthy explanations both there and on their own hub-pages describing their contents and clarifying any gray areas such as the distinction between a Panopticon thread and an Inclusion Debates thread. Let us also remind ourselves that in a DPL Forum like this, it is very much possible to file an archived thread in multiple categories, even if while it was live it could only exist within one board: a given thread might wind up in Category:Panopticon archives and Category:Inclusion debates simultaneously.

As always, thank you to everyone who participated! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:09, 23 June 2023 (UTC)