Discuss Everything About X-Wing Miniatures: Second Edition Wiki

https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:MisterWoodhouse/Introducing_the_Wiki_Rules_and_Blocking_Policy

Introducing the Wiki Rules and Blocking PolicyCommunity Central

Fandom is doing something I strongly approve of, which is bailing on their "the admin is always right and can ban you arbitrarily for any reason including for their own enjoyment" policy. To be fair, the vast, vast, vast majority of admins on Fandom are fantastic, but a lot of us have heard the stories of admins on power trips abusing bans with wild abandon, and communities fracturing because of it.

Now instead of telling people to go make their own wiki if they don't like the admin, Fandom is setting hard rules on when/why a ban can be issued. As part of that, it's up to each community to define our ban rules.

I originally did this on my User Page, but now is the time to move that to its own article (with a link on the main page) and also revisit the rules & wording.

WazatX-Wing Miniatures: Second Edition Wiki

As listed on my user page, the obvious ban reasons include hostility and flamewars (warning, then suspend them to give them a time out), refusing to end an intractable or toxic argument, belligerent or passive-aggressive behavior toward admins or others, mistreating people for their gender/race/etc, bullying, and of course, insta-ban for spam. A lot of this is in Fandom's general rules or is pretty common across lots of moderated communities.

I'm not sure how popular my two additional rules are, so I wanna put them up for discussion:

Once a rules discussion becomes intractable, it needs to end (take it to Reddit etc instead).
Mainly discuss the games not the movies etc.

I have the following steps, only as needed, to resolve these issues:

Ask people to end the argument and/or move the discussion to the relevant forum/fandom/etc.
Optionally delete posts or the whole thread (especially if things got ugly)
Possibly suspend accounts for a day, or a few days or weeks to let people cool off or take their arguments elsewhere
Ban accounts only as a last resort

Sorry for the length of my explanations, but I wanna be clear about why since I've fought some battles over this before (especially back in the 1.0 days when these battles were so common).

Concern 1: Intractable Rules Discussions

Anyone who's been on the FFG rules forums (while they were around) knows a simple rules question can turn into a 12-page flamewar filled with the most vicious, toxic behavior you can imagine. Why? Because internet. :( But also because people have their in-game success and a good deal of pride hanging on the outcome of the game rule interpretation, and some will fight to the death over it.

When a rule isn't pretty cut & dry or at least well-bounded by precedent, it enters a gray area where the community cannot resolve the ruling satisfactorily. This is what I've termed intractable.

Note you can probably skip: I chose "intractable" because it means the problem cannot be cleanly solved for the general case. This is my programmer brain talking, but if a solution is N ^ N complexity then it'll work fine for small numbers, but will completely collapse as the value of N grows. X-Wing rules problems can often be resolved at the local level by the tournament TO choosing a ruling or by friends just deciding, but general community-wide agreement may be impossible because the rules text is just too loose and interpretations too diverse.

At this point, my attitude has been to end the conversation and say "We of the community cannot resolve this rules question. The main interpretations are X and Y for XX and YY reasons, we can't resolve which is right and each TA or group needs to decide for themselves, and there's not much more to discuss". Or if that's not worth the effort (e.g. because toxicity), I don't even summarize and just tell people to disperse.

Either way this leaves people bitter (sometimes enraged), but it serves three very important purposes:

It ends the argument before it becomes a long toxic flamewar.
It directs people to ask the developers instead of uselessly fighting each other.
It preserves us admins from having an angry, exhausting battle fill up our activity feed.

Back in first edition I had to lay down the law with this rule because of cards like Targeting Synchronizer, which was so open to interpretation and with such a wide swing in effectiveness that hard battle lines were drawn. And after a couple dozen pages of people arguing over individual words and roots of words and niggly grammar, and leveling extremely personal attacks against each other, no progress had been made whatsoever. These same rules arguments spilled over to the wiki, and I quickly decided I was having none of it.

When I sense we're approaching such a situation here, I nope the hell out of it and fling the argument, screaming and thrashing and swearing revenge, into the dark pits of Reddit or beyond.

Friendly, Non-Banny Resolutions

In the past when this happened, I used to direct people to the FFG rules forum, ostensibly so the toxicity would upset FFG and generate change (while keeping it off our wiki). It turned out FFG didn't check those forums, but that was the stated reason nonetheless, haha. The FFG forums are gone so now Reddit gets our detritus. ;) I don't want to send angry people to the Board Game Geek forums because they're such a nice bunch over there, but that's the main rules forum I know of besides reddit (and I don't much visit reddit) so I plan to start directing non-toxic people there too. Note to self: Having a page that lists rules forums for discussing this stuff further would be a good idea.

But also I want us to provide the link to the AMG rules question contact page so earnestly interested people can ask the question straight to the devs, hopefully generating helpful FAQ entries or errata to resolve the issue. The community generally cannot resolve these intractable rules questions, but the developers can. And when the devs officially resolve a rules dispute, that quashes it right then and there and improves the game immensely. So I'd like to get that link and make it standard practice to post it when asking people to end the argument.

Concern 2: Take Movie/Lore Complaints Elsewhere

Again, this may seem counter-intuitive. Why can't we complain about the Star Wars movies on a Star Wars wiki?

Because we're not just a Star Wars wiki. This is a wiki for the X-Wing game.

Anyone who's tried to play a star wars video game, for example, while some guy yells into their ear about X or Y movie or character knows this pain. "I'm just here to shoot storm troopers and capture zones, I don't care about your troubling personal anger issues. I'm just going to mute voice chat and focus on shooting."

As with intractable rules arguments above, people's opinions on star wars lore and specific movies can be... intense. Long rants intense. Sometimes toxic personal attacks intense. Whole Youtube channels devoted to picking apart a movie or character down to the finest detail intense. And intense enough that anyone who shows insufficient enthusiasm for the ranter's opinion might come under attack. In my opinion this is not why we visit this particular wiki, and I want to avoid allowing the ranters to dominate this space. There are literally so many other places on the internet for them to yell and have people listen to them; we're not here for that.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about Star Wars' history knows this is nothing new. There's always been someone who's energetic about star wars. And while that's often good, it can be bad when it either turns toxic or goes wildly off topic and refuses to chill. Someone's opinions on Jar Jar Binks should not derail their high school English Literature class discussion of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Even if that person thought their tangent was totally relevant at the time, very quickly the instructor is going to reel them back to the topic at hand or tell them to leave, regardless of how fair that feels to them. And so it goes here.

We're here to discuss how Sabine Wren's ability in the Lancer-class Pursuit Craft can best be used in the game, how it should be paired with other ships and cards, and its strength in the current meta. We're not really here to listen to how much someone hates Sabine as a character in the series. Rey's gunner ability is on topic, but how people liked her in the movies is not. Especially once that opinion becomes angry or really long.

Too much tangential discussion, or too toxic, will result in a warning, and if necessary, a suspension or ban. Because it just gets to be too frik'n much. We're all star wars fans here, we've heard the Rey Rant, for example, plenty already. Anyone who hasn't can easily find it elsewhere, we don't need to repeat it here. Whole YouTube channels and fandoms are based around this discussion and we don't need to duplicate that here.

Mind you, some lore discussion is fine, actually. Honestly, it can help give context to the ships and abilities, e.g. the developer's reasoning for how he designed Darth Vader's TIE Defender card. However, after a certain point of drifting off-topic we're going to direct people to the relevant fandom or wookiepedia entry so they can do their own reading and ask questions there, so that the article comments, forum posts, etc are not bloated with stuff that is, essentially, off-topic to the game we're here to discuss, ask questions about, etc. This restriction is not meant to be malicious, just to stay focused.

So not bloating the comments with off-topic stuff is the first reason. The second is, once someone gets off on a rant (e.g. the Rey Rant is notorious), it's kinda doomed to become excessive and toxic. It's a bit evil of me, but I'm more than happy to offload all that drama and toxicity to another hapless fandom, wiki, or just to Reddit. It's someone else's problem; we're here to talk about a game. Muahahaha and all that.

That brings me to the final reason, which relates to the first two. As with intractable rules arguments, rants and flamewars are a drag for us admins. They bloat our activity feed with depressing hostility and toxicity as people go back and forth over essentially nothing of consequence, and they drag down the overall spirit of the community. When I'm checking the activity feed multiple times a day so I can spot questions and answer them, I have no tolerance for someone's angry rant filling up the feed and making this harder on me and other admins to do our jobs. Most people are here to ask questions and discuss this game, and I'm here to answer questions and facilitate that on-topic discussion. Once it strays too far off topic, or becomes hostile, it doesn't serve us admins' purposes or the community's, and we need to intervene. For the community's benefit and our own sanity. Stronger admins on other sites will be less bothered by distractions and fights, but it's certainly a drag on me here.

For all these reasons, I'm more than happy to murder the issue early and proactively. My solution has become to abide a bit of lore chatter, but then direct it to the appropriate place once it becomes A Big Deal (tm).

Update 2.a: This isn't the place for politics

This comes up on occasion, and people are shocked that I don't want them bringing their politics to the wiki. I don't care which side you're on, and I'm indifferent to your passion and sense of scandal. Not here. I don't want people dragging the wiki through their politics.

This touches on many of the same reasons above: it's off-topic to the wiki, the hostility and polarization tend to be or become toxic, it's exhausting for us admins to manage, etc. We're all here to discuss the Star Wars X-Wing game, not listen to people needle us or each other on their divisive politics.

You're absolutely free to talk at length about your politics... somewhere else. Again, have you explored Reddit yet? Lovely place.

As with any other off-topic or unwelcome discussion, you'll be asked to stop, then warned, and then we'll just start moderating comments or using suspensions.

And now some quick Q&A:

"I received a warning but I still want to argue and rant about lore and rules, and I'm doing it here!"

Then we'll suspend you for a few days/weeks to let you cool your head and/or direct your inconsolable rage somewhere else.

"This isn't fair! I should be able to talk about and win fights over lore and rules here!"

Whether or not you think so, this isn't the place. Again, have you visited Reddit? Lovely place. Wookiepedia and other fandoms would be great for your hot take on the lore. Other forums are less burdened by your unwillingness to end a rules flamewar.

I don't care where you go, but you can't do that here.

"I'm an American [and/or Duke of Sealand etc]! I have rights!"

That's great, exercise them on Reddit! They'll love that!

But here on Fandom we have additional rules you'll need to follow, just like on nearly all community websites.

"You've suspended me but I'm still gonna argue when I get back"

I wouldn't advise that, because then we'll ban you.

"I'm upset about getting told to stop, or suspended/banned"

Fandom has an established process for reporting admin abuses and getting conflicts resolved. Visit this page for an explanation and a list of options.

Wiki Rules and Blocking PolicyCommunity Central

If you feel I or another admin treated you unfairly, you can post on our user wall to talk about it. I suggest you be calm and composed instead of angry and abusive, as mistreating an admin or just continuing the offending behavior on our wall will make things much, much worse (for example, converting a suspension into a ban).

If we cannot resolve the dispute and you truly feel you've been mistreated, you could try seeking help on Community Central.

Feedback Time!

So this has been the rule of law here ever since I took over long ago... Someone was crazy enough to make me the admin back on the 1E wiki and it's been downhill since. ;)

That said, this may or may not be appropriate in everyone else's view. With Fandom adjusting the rules, this is a great time to sanity-check my intentions and methods. Just because I can argue (dare I say) eloquently about my reasoning, doesn't make it right. I want to get your opinions.

We don't have a ton of activity right now because coronavirus has somewhat wilted the game's real-world activity, it being a face-to-face experience (unless you like Vassal or Table Top Simulator). FFG got a lot better at writing card rules and there haven't been any recent movies that intensely upset people, so we haven't had a major inciting incident recently. So we don't have much of the old rules wars and lore ranting, and I haven't had to flex my admin muscles in a while. But still, I'd like to get feedback on how I and other admins should handle things so we're making this a good community both for those already here, and any newcomers.

Thoughts?

(The actual community rules page will be much slimmer than this BTW, but we can link to this forum post)

-Wazat