UESPWiki talk:Consensus

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Archived discusssions about Consensus guidelines

Nephele 1Edit

This guideline was written in response to discussions at the community portal. However, I have made some changes, that may have moved the guidelines away from the community's previously expressed opinions. So I'd like to explain the changes and try to convince everyone that they make sense (and in the process maintain my reputation for being long-winded!)

The problem I was having with this policy is what should be done in ambiguous cases: if an editor is in doubt about whether an edit is controversial, should the editor start a discussion or just make the change? And after thinking about the possible consequences, I think it's overall safer to err in favour of just making the change; that also seems to be in line with wikipedia's Be bold guidline.

If the guideline says "when in doubt, start a discussion", the worst case scenarios I can envision include:

New users are made to feel that that they have to ask for permission before making any edits
A new user may start a discussion, never get any feedback, and infer that their ideas were not welcome
A user can start a discussion, then completely forget to ever make the suggested changes. I'm sure all of us can think of cases where this has happened to us: if you wait a week you lose momentum, move on to another project or just plain forget about the idea completely.
Nobody notices the discussion, so the change gets implemented, and only then do people react and chime in to the discussion. The upshot being that the change only ends up being discussed after the fact any way; all that starting a discussion achieved was wasting a week or two while waiting for input.
The wiki can turn into a place where things get discussed so much that nothing ever gets done

On the other hand saying "when in doubt, make the change", results in worst case scenarios like:

A disastrous change can just be reverted in seconds by reinstating the old version of the page. It is much much easier to undo a change than it is to do the change in the first place.
A discussion can be started after the fact while leaving the change in place. It may result in some inconvenience (if people don't really like whatever the change was), but if it really was a bad idea, the upshot of the discussion will be that the change gets undone, and long term there's no harm to the wiki.

It's clearly important to enable discussion of changes after the fact, because ultimately the wiki content and format should be based on consensus. But I don't think it's always necessary that consensus be explicitly reached before any changes are made; consensus can be established at any point in the process.

Of course, in the spirit of consensus, I'd like to know what everyone else thinks, and find out what the community thinks the guideline should be. --Nephele 01:21, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Dynluge 1Edit

Aggreed-It makes sense, is well written, and is very useful. I am for the idea that any change can be reverted, and that a discussion should start if the change meets the following guidelines:

The change is disputed.
The change is not in clear violation of any wiki policies. (Reverting vandals does not merit a discussion).
It is not clear whether the change belongs. (If the change is incorrect, it should be removed, if it is speculated or unknown, a discussion should be started).
During the discussion, the change is removed from the article page and moved to the talk page. One of the main arguments in the discussion on the IP vandal's page was whether or not, during the argument, the change should have stayed. Removing a change that belongs does not cause a major problem, as the wiki went along perfectly fine before the change was made. However, keeping a change may result in a problem if the information is incorrect or otherwise problematic and is read by people.
- Another solution would be to add a template that mentioned the change was disputed. The downfall of this is that it takes up space and that it would need to surround the change. I don't personally like this idea.
- Finally, the change could stay as long as it could not possibly cause a severe problem. Unfortunatly, there might be too much dispute over whether or not it was a severe problem.
Consensus involves everyone who is involved in the discussion. There are no majority votes, and no actions are taken until everyone aggrees or one side is severly underspoken (not nessicarily outnumbered, just not very active in professing why they believe their side).

If this could be possibly followed, then I can't see any severe downfalls to a consensus rule. -- Dylnuge(talk · edits) 17:39, 12 January 2007 (EST)

Wrye 1Edit

Agree No objections at all. Very nicely written!

Responding to Dylnuge...

I don't think that a general rule of move it to the talk page is desirable. Sometimes that may be desirable, other times it won't, other times it won't be practical. (E.g., you can't remove a change to the crumb trail to the talk page.) Also, it's generally more efficient to leave the change in place (discussion could go either way, but if the change doesn't reach consensus support after being discussed for a while, it gets removed). OTOH, there are likely to be some cases in which removal to the talk page is the best choice. So, in general, I would leave the change in place, but I recognize that there are going to be enough exceptions so that this should be an "editors best judgement" call rather than a fixed rule.

The edits of the spammers talk page (that was the immediate cause of my dispute with Aristeo) are actually not covered by this rule, since they were edits on a talk page, not on an article page or one of the special pages which govern general configuration. Editing talk pages is a separate issue.

--Wrye 23:56, 14 January 2007 (EST)

I understand that moving the content might not be desirable, and I thought hard about this. The problem is, if it is moved, people who want it there complain, and it it is not moved, people who don't want it there complain. Having to reach a consensus on where something will be before a consensus is made would be very difficult, not to mention, paradoxical (would we have to reach a consensus on where it would be while we reach a consensus on where it would be, and so forth). Therefore, it is absolutly nessicary to decide here where it would go (stay, moved, etc.). The problem with keeping it is that if it could cause a problem being there, it will. However, if you think about it, the page survived well without the change, and can survive for a little longer while the change is discussed. Although, when you mentioned the bread crumb trials, I thought of this a bit diferently (I was not thinking of style changes). Perhaps it could be tooled so that certian changes, such as style and design, would stay, while changes that could cause a problem, like those that are being argued on grounds of factual standing, should go. I see the sides to both arguments, but in the end, it boils down to why the item in question is in question. -- Dylnuge(talk · edits) 11:40, 15 January 2007 (EST)

How about saying that if any person who disagrees with the edit feels that reverting it is necessary, the edit should be reverted; if so, the change should not be reinstated until a consensus is reached. But that doesn't necessarily mean that every edit must be reverted until a consensus is reached. I don't see that such a policy would lead to ambiguity or debate over what has to be done before a discussion can even be started. But it would also allow for the possibility that there are alot of cases where undoing the change isn't immediately required. --Nephele 16:29, 15 January 2007 (EST)

I'm wary of the any editor solution, since it means that if a change is made, then any editor can say "I dislike it, remove it and discuss it." (E.g, consider our favorite vandal popping in and then objecting and demanding a removal of whatever changes he feels like just to cause trouble.) Probably it's better to not have a hard and fast rule about immediately removing or not removing the changes to the page. (Hmm... Perhaps Wikipedia's 3R rule is relevant here.) --Wrye 21:25, 15 January 2007 (EST)

Good point; it wouldn't be good to get hamstrung by a policy if a vandal tried to exploit it just to be annoying. I'll look at this a bit more later.

But first, I wanted to point out that I just made some changes to UESPWiki:Namespaces to start to address the point that consensus does not apply to talk pages, and in more general that the rules governing talk pages are different from those for article pages. Comments are welcome! --Nephele 02:58, 16 January 2007 (EST)

UESPWiki:Namespaces: Perfect. --Wrye 14:51, 16 January 2007 (EST)

Ratwar 1Edit

Almost Totally Agree

The only issue that I can see is the "Deletion of a substantial fraction of a page." part. In some cases, it is obvious that the change needs to be made (For example, removing Alchemy Apparatus from the Morrowind:Rare Items page, since they were covered else where on the site). Perhaps an exception should be built into that rule. --Ratwar 00:06, 15 January 2007 (EST)

Well, as she said, Therefore, this a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis by each editor based on their best judgement. Some cases where consensus is generally needed beforehand are...' In other words, the list that immediately follows is a rough guideline, not a rule. --Wrye 00:29, 15 January 2007 (EST)

Yeah, but I still only see really obvious things here. I mean, if you're even slightly worried about consensus in a large deletion, I'd say there's no reason to do it. I mean, if there's any possible way the information is still useful, it needs to be kept, right? Of course, since you pointed out the gray area in the rules, I'm a bit against that as well. If we're going to try to define consensus, I'd rather see some hard rules that eliminate the gray area as much as possible. Obviously, the gray area will always be there though, but that list is going to be taken as rules by new editors, and I'd hate to see people asking for a consensus every time they want to delete a paragraph or something. Still, I think this is a good starting point, and that the issues that may or may not exist in these rules can be modified as if and when they start causing problems. --Ratwar 00:43, 15 January 2007 (EST)

Well, I'll admit that of the guidelines, that seemed the weakest to me -- after all a single large deletion is easily reverted. So, either in or out is okay with me. --Wrye 02:43, 15 January 2007 (EST)

Would rewording from "a substantial fraction of a page" to "more than half of a page" work better? I didn't mean to imply that just deleting a paragraph needs to be discussed, I was thinking more about cases where a page is drastically shortened. One bit of reading that made me add that item to the list was wikipedia's "Be Bold" policy, where they emphasize that editors should be bold in adding content, but be more cautious in deleting content. But the bottom line with any of these suggestions is that when in doubt, proceed with the edit. As Wrye says, anything can be easily reverted. --Nephele 16:29, 15 January 2007 (EST)

I think that would be good. I knew what you meant, but I'm just trying to strive for the clearest wording possible, and I was attempting to read it from the viewpoint of an outsider just starting to edit the UESP.--Ratwar 22:08, 15 January 2007 (EST)

Aristeo's RewriteEdit

I made a rather large modification to these guidelines in order to try to address some of the concerns above and to make the article more realistic and based more on current practices. I also removed a lot of the procedure-based stuff that a lot of the negative feedback seemed to be based on. Let me know what you think of the article so far.

--Aristeo | Talk 17:43, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Aristeo's change seems to be a complete rewrite of a policy that was already well accepted. Accordingly, I've moved his change to UESPWiki_talk:Consensus/Aristeo_Rewrite. Discussion of his changes should be made here. --Wrye 19:24, 21 February 2007 (EST)

That's fine. Doing that should make the two versions easier to compare. --Aristeo | Talk 19:31, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Please note that I moved UESPWiki_talk:Consensus/Aristeo_Rewrite to UESPWiki:Consensus/Aristeo_Rewrite. --Aristeo | Talk 21:58, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Ratwar, Nephele, WryeEdit

Well, after reading both through several times, I think both the original article and the rewrite have good points and bad. Like I favor the 4 bullets of the original article for discussing when a change needs to be discussed before hand over the three bullets in the revision. I also think that the revision ought to mention compromise in the bullets section of Building Consensus, though I think this exclusion is just an oversight, and not a difference in policy. I think the revision is, overall easier to read, but it does seem to lack some of the substance of the original, which adds to increased gray area. Gray area is great for experienced editors, since they should know the difference between a controversial edit and a run of the mill one, but for the inexperienced editor, if they're looking at this page, they want advice, so I think the page shouldn't be shy about giving it. Of course, I doubt the experienced editors need this page to define the gray area.--Ratwar 21:50, 21 February 2007 (EST)

It would help me compare the two versions more easily if I understood more clearly the purpose of the changes. The reasons you've provided so far are quite vague and I don't see how the reasons you have provided are related to the changes made to the page:

"to address some of the concerns above". But the existing comments consisted largely of agreement with as far as I can tell, with only two necessary changes (based on Dylnuge's comments, expanding one paragraph; based on Ratwar's comments, changing two or three words). I don't see anything in the existing comments that suggests that the page needed to be completely rewritten.
"to make the article more realistic and based more on current practices" More details on what you feel is unrealistic or out-of-sync with existing practices would be beneficial to everyone I think. If there are specific parts of the existing article that you disagree with, spelling out the issues so that everyone can provide feedback would be more productive in terms of establishing what the community wants as a policy. Since these changes were made as part of such a substantial rewrite of the page, it is nearly impossible to identify what exactly was done.
"removed a lot of the procedure-based stuff that a lot of the negative feedback" Again details on what specifically needed to be removed and why would be useful. In my opinion, most of the discussion on the page highlighted issues where editors are currently uncertain about what exactly should be done. Given that one of the main purposes of the page is to address those types of uncertainties, I would think that keeping those sections on the page would be a high priority.

I think in terms of helping the community to establish its desired policies, having a choice of "article A" vs "article B" doesn't seem to be most the productive approach. It would be more useful to have a list of specific revisions to consider, and then be able to decide point by point what is preferred on each of those specific issues. However, the sweeping extent of this rewrite makes it impossible currently to identify what specific changes to policy are being proposed. --Nephele 22:58, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Yep. Specific criticisms, potentially leading to changes in existing text is a better approach -- especially since the existing text already has had 3/3 agreement statements for over a month. And Nephele has already responded to specific criticism with changes, so this approach seems to work fine. --Wrye 23:44, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Aristeo 2Edit

Sure, I would be more than happy to go into detail about my viewpoints on the article.

Lead section – Although this lead section does give a decent glance over the article, it fails to explain what consensus is. Consensus can mean different things to different people and in difference context, so it's important that we identify the subject – especially since the article should be about consensus and not about discussions in general. A lead section should be concise, but it should never be this vague.

In addition, "all decisions are made based on the consensus of the community" on the second paragraph conflicts with "Most edits are not controversial and do not need to be discussed ahead of time". I think you mean that all actions are based on a preliminary decision in that second paragraph, but it comes across as if we need consensus before we can do anything. I also don't feel that we need a preliminary decision before we do anything on the site – this makes editing very inconvenient and not fun.

When Consensus is Needed – I think the veteran editors will tend to like this section because answers a lot of potential questions about when to start a discussion. However, it was difficult for me to read through because of the excessive use of bullet points – they prevent the article from "flowing" the way it should. And if it's difficult for me to read, I doubt that our target audience is going to take the time to read it when they can just ask a knowledgeable editor. Nevertheless, I did read through this section, and I have some input to give on some of the bullet points.

"A change that is likely to be controversial." – Agreed, although this could be expanded some.
"A change that requires edits to multiple pages or otherwise will be difficult to undo." – Agreed.
"Deletion of a substantial fraction of a page." – Strong objection, I sincerely doubt that this guideline will be followed at all. I can think of way too many instances where a substantial fraction of a page would need to be to be removed without prior discussion. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
"A change to site policies, guidelines, or features." – How come? You can revert these pages just like any other. As long as the editor adheres to an established consensus, I don't see a problem.
"Do not assume that by completing a change you have a 'fait accompli', or that your suggestion is otherwise more likely to be accepted just because it has been put in place.[...]" – I had to look up "fait accompli" on Wikipedia. This is an English wiki – none of our readers are expected to know French. ;)
"The only cases where content should be deleted without a discussion is in cases where content is clearly inappropriate" – I deleted some comments left on a user's talk page that were clearly inappropriate, and I was unreverted and those comments exist to this day. Under this guideline, I can go back there and re-remove the comments and possibly block the editor if he repeatedly tries to undo my revert. This obviously needs some expanding, or possible removal if it doesn't reflect current consensus.
"A change that is left unedited or is not otherwise commented upon is assumed to implicitly have the community's consent." – I think this sentence needs a lot more attention and supporting sentences than it currently has because the vast majority of edits fall under this "silent consensus" process.

Reaching Consensus – The introductory paragraph focuses solely on how administrators may have more pull than other members, and although this is important, it's not an overview on how to reach consensus. I loved the bullet points in this section, although a few of them could have been turned into paragraphs. They offer some good pointers on how to engage in discussion. As for the final bit about the IRC channel, it should be noted that IRC is supposed to be more of a hang-out room where we can take a breather from editing or talk to each other when we need to talk. Because of recent events, I don't think anyone feels comfortable with making any sort of wiki-related decision in the channel.

My Conclusion – I like the pointers, but I do not feel comfortable with making this a policy. If it is already a policy, then we need to degrade it to "guideline" status. --Aristeo | Talk 03:20, 22 February 2007 (EST)

At this point we'll need to figure out if we want to use the new version or the old version. Both articles will need some expansion and improvement, so a big factor in this decision will be to choose which one will need the least. Either version is fine with me. --Aristeo | Talk 17:01, 22 February 2007 (EST)

Wrye 2Edit

First, I've looked over Aristeo's modification and see no reason to switch to it. I find the writing to be much worse than Nephele's (once again) well written text. I'd rather not take a couple of hours to criticize it in depth, so I'll forgo that until I see someone other than Aristeo supporting its changes.

However, one major note... Aristeo's rewrite treats Consensus as being fundamentally a process (as is made abundantly clear by his off-putting managerial diagram). This is wrong. Consensus is fundamentally an attitude. It's about looking for ways to work together, to not get in other people's way, and to resolve conflicts with a minimum fuss and most benefit to the most people. This attitude means that in the vast majority of cases, you don't need guidelines -- you just make the effort to not bump other people. (E.g., in this particular case, at a minimum it would have meant not completely overwriting an existing, approved policy.) Having this attitude means that editing is a lot more fun, and time spent on conflict resolution is greatly decreased.

Consensus guidelines should largely comes down to (an adult version of) "First, Play well with others! Okay, and here's how we're going to share the crayons." And that's pretty much what Nephele does. (Vs. Aristeo: No mention of playing well with others, but here's a complex wall chart of how we're going to resolve disputes over crayons.)

--Wrye 01:24, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Note: This was originally part of my response to Aristeo below. However, since that response got off the immediate topic of proposed changes to the page, I've moved the immediate-on-topic part here, and left the somewhat-off-topic response below. --Wrye 20:43, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Nephele 2Edit

There are clearly a lot of issues that have come up, both in Aristeo's feedback and in Wrye's comments below. I don't want to rush myself and respond without taking the time to read everything carefully and thoroughly. What I've tried to start tackling tonight is incorporating Aristeo's suggestions about the style of the article. I value his input on the shortcomings of the introduction, and the excessive use of bullets in the first section. I've read through both versions a few times, and I spent some time debating whether to just copy and paste Aristeo's introduction. In the end, I decided instead to try rewriting mine. I realize that decisions about writing style do often just come down to personal preferences, and I know that my writing style will not be preferred by everyone. But it was easier for me to work starting from my version than starting from Aristeo's. Overall, I would like to start by addressing the stylistic issues raised by Aristeo. The article should of course be as clear as possible and should provide all necessary background information on the subject. I see the changes I made tonight as just the first step in this process; I paused and saved mainly because it's well past 1 am for me, not because I thought it was complete. However, apart from the stylistic issues there are many other issues that have to do with the basic content of the article and the specifics of the policies covered by the article. I think at this point (given that the existing policy had for the most part been approved) policy changes need to be discussed before being incorporated. I am working on my feedback on specific policy changes but, as I said above, I don't want to rush those responses. --Nephele 04:46, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Well, I didn't know that it was an actual policy, since it did still have the proposal tag on it. I thought we were still in the "Yeah, I support, as long as we make this change over here" stage. So I made a small change that turned into a big change that turned into a complete rewrite of the article. Well, I withdrew my proposal, so hopefully we can come up with something that doesn't re-make the article as much. And don't worry about the article going to waste, I have plenty of opportunities to use it elsewhere.

I'm tempted to help you out a little with the article because I would much rather fix the problems instead of making complaints, but I'm afraid that I would get a little carried away again and re-write the whole article again. If there's something specific that you need help with, I can try to assist you.

Thank you very much for your support, Nephele. :) --Aristeo | Talk 12:32, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Wrye 3: Deletion/UndeletionEdit

Aristeo had deleted his page of proposed changes. While I take it this means that he's not actively promoting it anymore (and instead is going through the process on this page), that page is still part of the immediate history of this discussion and should have not have been deleted for that reason. In addition to that, contrary to the reason given by Aristeo, the page does not meet any of the criteria for speedy deletion.

Now, back to the discussion at hand... Since Nephele is actively considering Aristeo's suggestions, I'll go back and review and comment on Aristeo's proposed changes. This will probably take an hour or so... --Wrye 14:59, 24 February 2007 (EST)

I was pretty sure when I wrote the deletion policy that I added an "author's request" section, kind like on Wikipedia. Now on closer examination, it appears as if I only made it valid when in user space. Would you agree to a proposed deletion then? --Aristeo | Talk 17:43, 24 February 2007 (EST)

No, I do not agree to a deletion. Regardless of whether it fit the speedy deletion policy, it's part of this active discussion and so should not be deleted. There are other reasons for keeping it around, but that's sufficient. --Wrye 17:53, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Wrye 4: Nephele's Recent ChangesEdit

Review of Nephele's recent changes: I've looked over Nephele's recent changes (without yet reviewing Aristeo's comments), and I disagree with almost all of them -- the earlier draft was better. In order of reverse size of comment:

"Deletion of more than half the page." is a bit debatable but, in context, okay I think.

Unbulleting of "When Initiating discussion..." is worse. I found the bullets easier to read. Also I thought that the earlier lead in "When initiating discussion..." was better, partially for reasons given below.

Section titles/flow. The flow of the earlier version was: 1) Some general principles about consensus. 2) When Consensus is Needed: I.e., how to identify a situation where you, as editor, will need to try to reach consensus. 3) Reaching Consensus: Now that you've identified that point at which consensus is needed, how do you go about reaching it.

The altered headings in the newer version degrade this flow. "Imitating Discussions" is bit stilted, and implicitly skips past the major point which is that in many/most cases, it's not necessary to initiate discussions because it's not necessary to go through a process of seeking consensus (thankfully, most changes do NOT require discussion). "Building Consensus" by itself sounds better, but the original "Reaching Consensus" was paired with "When Consensus is Needed" and that juxtaposition works more naturally. I.e., the point is not to be forever "Building" but to actually "Reach" consensus so that the page gets completed.

Introductory Section: The major problem with the new version is that it's too long. Secondary problem is that the language is now much more stilted, e.g. "The wiki software is designed to facilitate this consensus-building process." As a general principle, text that is more accurate and covers more bases is inherently longer -- which intimidates people into not reading it -- which is self-defeating because greater accuracy is not good if people don't read it. (I'm particularly sensitive to this since I'm frequently on the receiving end of this complaint for Wrye Mash/Bash docs.) Friendly, more casual language is no less important, since it subtly gets across a point -- consensus is not primarily about rules, but rather about having fun, working together.

Again, it's important to get across the point that, in most cases it's not necessary to seek consensus agreement. The older version did that beautifully in the final paragraph of the introductory section. The newer version stretches this out so much, breaking it across two paragraphs, making the language more stilted that the major point just ends up being lost in a sea of words.

Summary: "Deletion of more than half the page." is a fine. Otherwise, the previous draft was better.:) --Wrye 17:56, 24 February 2007 (EST)

--Wrye 17:53, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Nephele 3Edit

Given the various developments today (User talk:Wrye#Offensive Comments, UESPWiki:Community Portal#Request that Aristeo be returned to Editor Status), trying to fine-tune the wording of this page is now looking to me like a relatively low priority. If this is going to be shifted to the back-burner, it seems like it perhaps makes more sense to go back to the almost-accepted version of the page (perhaps with the "more than half the page" modification, which was in direct response to Ratwar's comments much earlier in this talk page). That seems like a safer version to keep accessible if there's not going to be too much forward progress here in the near future, and it's always trivial to bring this version back from the page's history if the situation changes. I'm not trying to sweep the discussion under the rug or ignore any of the feedback. It's just that it seems better to wait until there are fewer other big debates draining everyone's energy.

Unless there are any objections, I'll go ahead tomorrow and change this page back yet again. --Nephele 01:18, 25 February 2007 (EST)

I'm happy with going back to the old version. Seems like the easiest thing to do. Then we can come back to it later. :) --Aristeo | Talk 12:28, 25 February 2007 (EST)

Wrye's Reaction to AristeoEdit

Sigh, try to write a short response and this is what I get...

Note: Since this response got somewhat off the immediate topic, I have split out the on-immediate-topic part that was here and moved it up to Wrye 2 above. --Wrye

Third, while Aristeo has repeatedly characterized the UESPWiki:Community_Portal/Principles_Controversy as a thuggish attack by myself on him, the actual point was that Aristeo was completely disregarding consensus decision making -- not just once, but repeatedly. This was exactly my point, and it was the point that won the day. It is Aristeo's repeated, complete disregard for consensus that makes him worst possible person to be writing consensus policy for UESP.

But beyond that, what makes Aristeo's activity here particularly bizarre, is that after finding himself unsupported in his authoritarian approach, he "left" UESP to form Wikiscrolls, where he is in charge of defining policy. Moreover, he is consistently negative and critical of UESP's state and other administrators (e.g., myself, Nephele, Lurlock) and repeatedly states the need to start over with a new blank slate. So why is he here wasting our time with frivolous objections? Wikiscrolls, Aristeo's own project, presumably has a ton or work to be done (and has already missed several launch dates), and Aristeo is still over here spending time on this site which he publicly abhors so much. How does that make sense?

BTW, for some choice comments by Aristeo, see:

Wikiscrolls IRC Meeting logs. Note in particular, his attack on Nephele and myself and his criticism of "crowdsourcing" -- aka consensus.
UESPWiki:Community_Portal/Wikiscrolls_Project "However, it seems that recently things have changed. UESP has somehow gone in the wrong direction. People don't get along anymore, they seem to maximize the damage of others by making huge controversies out of little problems, and they act like mud-slinging politicians instead of like friends. Everyone has to make a point instead of work together. It makes me sick, and it ruined this place. "

In regard to this last, my personal experience during January, when Aristeo had left: a sigh of relief. Things were so much quieter. The only contentious conflicts that I've seen on the site since then has been entirely associated with Aristeo's inability to resist coming back here to stick his face in the management of a site that he continually criticizes, and which he claims to be leaving. Frankly that brief period of peace reminded me of the good old days -- before Aristeo was around that is.

Aristeo, face it, the disputes that you saw on UESP were entirely your doing. It was the natural reaction to your attempt to completely disregard consensus and do whatever you felt like doing, and slur whoever you wished to slur.

You think I'm wrong? Prove it. Take Wikiscrolls and do what you promised to do with it -- make it a better place than UESP. After all, neither I, nor Nephele, nor Lurlock is there. That should resolve all of your problems, right?