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Revision as of 09:31, 8 February 2007 by Radiant! (talk | contribs) (a simple solution is this.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) | This page documents an English Misplaced Pages ]. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page. |
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On Misplaced Pages, it's sometimes difficult to draw attention to an idea, proposal, debate, complaint, edit war, or experiment, because our discussions take place in many different forums in both the project and talk namespaces, and even on mailing lists. The one forum intended for use by all Wikipedians, Misplaced Pages:Village pump, has been fragmented into five pieces to increase organization, increase time between archivings, and deal with excessive edit conflicts, among other reasons.
But this has also led to a problem where contributors seeking to draw attention to an idea will often post their idea to multiple forums, especially where it seems to not fit especially well into any one of them. A common example is posting to both Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals) and Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy).
Don't do this. It fragments discussion of the idea, creating two discussions in two separate places with no interchange of ideas. This is rarely desirable. It also leads to redundant effort where an idea that has already been adequately addressed has to be considered all over again.
Instead, solicit discussion in only one location. It's fine to advertise that discussion in other locations using a link to the central location, but in those other locations emphasize that discussion should only take place in the central location, to avoid this frustrating fragmentation of contributor effort.
Under some conditions, the best central location for a discussion might be a new project page of its own. This is normally done for serious proposals for a change of process or frequently recurring and lengthy discussions, in order to retain context over time.
- See also: MeatBall:ForestFire
What to do if you find multiposted content
If you find content that's been posted in multiple locations, follow these simple steps to centralize the discussion:
- Choose one location as the central location where all discussion about the issue will take place, ideally the most relevant one for the comment. This may not necessarily be one of the existing locations and may even involve creating a project page.
- If there are already comments in multiple locations, merge all comments to the central location. Don't delete any comments.
- At all non-central locations, remove all comments and leave a link to the central location.
Example
You might place this section on Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals):
Hamsters
I think hamsters should be able to edit Misplaced Pages. Why do you hate hamsters? HamsterLover 00:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
At the same time, you place this on Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy):
Hamsters
At Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Hamsters, I'm discussing a new policy that would allow hamsters to edit Misplaced Pages. Join the discussion, but please do not post any comments here. HamsterLover 00:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
You might even post to the more sympathetic forum Talk:Hamster:
And the hamster still is not free
I rally you, my fellow hamster-lovers! Come and support me in my proposal to give all hamsters the same rights as men at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Hamsters. Please limit discussion to that page, however. HamsterLover 00:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)