UserPreferences

DoNotEdit


Withdrawn: If an author's text is signed and marked with DoNotEdit, do not edit, move, or archive it.

Issues with DoNotEdit

Signing

Signing a text is inherently an indication not to edit.

But what about correcting spelling, updating moved links, or updating terminology?

A recent example of updating terminology is finding out which of "attribute" or "property" was more widely used, and going through all pages to change "property" to "attribute".

Moving

Refactoring is a benefit of a wiki, a definining characteristic.

We can choose to discourage that, which DoNotEdit does, but where's the rational?

The rational behind refactoring is to make a topic as concise, complete, clear, and simple as possible. Seperating out sub-topics from a main topic is factoring, not "archiving".

"Moving" isn't clear. It's common in [Wiki]ThreadMode to address a reply directly to the text in question, thus "moving" someone else's text "down".

Similarly, it's common to break up long threads into subthreads, and rearrange accordingly, seperating by a horizontal rule (----).

Archiving

Re "ArchivedDiscussion", those discussions are not "archived", they're not mothballed and they are not "concluded" by indicating that discussion of a topic is a seperate page from the topic under discussion.

Redundant and Vague

This proposed policy is vague and redundant and should be dropped. There is already a policy in place, "Please don't delete each other's comments (portions of text identified with a person's name)." That covers it.


  1. DoNotEdit . . . . 3 matches
  2. ArchivedDiscussion . . . . 1 match
  3. WellFormedEntryByExample . . . . 1 match