Talk:Rules and standards discussions

This is the talk page for Rules and standards discussions. It is intended to be used to discuss what is happning on that page, how to format items, archiving, etc. Substantive discussions go on the page itself.

Archive

 * I just archived a number of older sections (about 33 sections) from the project page, because it was getting rather large. -DES Talk 03:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I just archived 45 sectiosn from the main discussion page, and 12 substantive discussion sections the formerly lived on this talk page. I am also going to move the two most recent discussion sections 9threads) from this talk page to the current discussion page, where they will eventually join the next archive. -DES Talk 11:58, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

discussion talk page?
Is there intended to be a systematic distinction between the contents of the Rules and standards discussions page and the Rules and standards discussions talk page? Does anyone but me find it confusing to have these two pages being used for (AFAICS) the same thing? -- Dave (davecat) 18:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think we're here (mostly) because of the "+" button. That's it. BLongley 19:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I've added a link with the equivalent function. I think.  I'd add the tab if I knew how. -- Dave (davecat) 20:42, 22 April 2008 (UTC)  (I'm trusting that if there was a good reason not to have such a tab on that page, someone will just remove my addition.  I just can't think of one off hand. Dave (davecat) 20:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC))


 * Thank you for the new link thing - yes, I started thread here because of the lack of a + link. Actually, I don't like wiki-chat pages at all as I can't remember where there are pending discussions I'm interested in.  I can get into weeks-long periods where I don't have time for ISFDB meaning every few days I may check in but even then only do a very fast scan. I've tried the watch list, manually constructing lists of links to places where I had an ongoing conversation that I should follow up on, etc.  I'd MUCH rather use an e-mail interface as I can filter by subject, mass deleting threads I'm not interested in, and the read/unread indicator allows me to leave for a while and then know exactly what's needed to catch up. The wiki interface forces me to keep rereading stuff, parsing through history diffs, etc. Marc Kupper (talk) 07:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Recurring topics
moved from the "Standards discussions" thread on the primary page. -DES Talk 00:05, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I am worried that this page is getting to be a drag on the overall project. By now, we all know our software's limitations and the way we would like it to behave if we had our druthers. We also know each active contributor's opinion about the way(s) to overcome these limitations using increasingly elaborate "hacks" and "kludges". Trying to follow these never-ending discussions can be quite tiresome and time consuming, yet I (and, judging by other editors' occasional appearances, others) feel compelled to keep track of them since we don't want to miss potentially far reaching changes to the ISFDB data entry rules which we will then have to live with.

This can be a Bad Thing (tm) because we all have a limited amount of "ISFDB time" and the time spent on trying to follow these discussions is the time that can't be spent on data entry, verification, data cleanup, moderation, scripting or any number of other useful activities. Besides, spending a big part of your "ISFDB time" on things that are "not fun" makes the whole experience frustrating and can drive editors away.

Clearly, we don't want to stop all rules and standards discussions, but perhaps there is a way to create a sandbox (a sub-page or even sub-pages?) where certain well known and understood issues could be listed and debated? We could then agree not to escalate them to the main Rules page until we have a well defined proposal with agreed-upon lists of pros and cons. Ahasuerus 02:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That might be a good idea. I'll be happy to create the sub pages if others agree with the concept, and just what ought to be on the sub pages. Wikipedia used to have a section of the "Village Pump" for "Perennial discussions" ideas and proposals that kept being raised. -DES Talk 05:09, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Funny, I thought that was the purpose of this page. Things do sometimes go off on tangents, but what's to prevent that from happening on any newly-created page?  Lately, I tend to glance over certain discussions and decide whether it's worth my time to put in my two-cents-worth.  More often than not, I simply let it go.  In the case of the Binary Stars discussion, I laid low until it involved a pub that I verified.  Until then, my time was better spent doing the tasks that Ahasuerus listed.  I've even had time to clear off some items on my "To Do" list! MHHutchins 05:43, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * We all chose how much time to spend on things and if something seems unproductive we move on. The recent threads on this page are likely hard to follow but also seem productive with the main pain for me being is I really don't like the wiki-talk format for longer threads.  For a short discussion that never branches it's fine but long discussions and/or branching discussions are a real pain, both in figuring out what's been added recently, its context, and when writing I loose my place in both the upper window and the edit window when they get too long.


 * It seems on Wikipedia most of the threads end up being append-at-the-bottom only and it's rarer that stuff gets inserted in the middle. I've never looked at some of the Wikipedia rules & policies threads and those may well be like what you see here. --Marc Kupper|talk 23:27, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * On the other hand - maybe separate pages for some threads would be good. Right now there are eight edits to this page to what looks like three separate threads by five different people since I last checked the page meaning I'm stuck with some rescanning of text already read trying to figure out how and where replies were inserted. The real fault is that it's convenient to insert stuff in context but that also creates huge hassles for anyone that's only watching a page casually. --Marc Kupper|talk 23:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Trust me, Wikipedia policy discussion threads often make ours seem like a marvel of clarity, and a marvel of good fellowship and common sense, too. (The also tend to have far more active participants chiming in more often. 20 active participants in a single thread is far from unheard of.) Article talk discussion threads are usually simple "add at the bottom of a section" discussions, but wait till you get to something that impinges on middle east politics, or polish/german/russian arguments over who did what to whom 100 years ago and who is now an unbiased and reliable source on the subject. Arrgh! It is often a good idea in a long discussion to use the history tab and its diff feature to see just what has been added. -DES Talk 23:42, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Separate pages for specific recurring topics might also have the advantage of being able to start with a list of links to archived discussion of the subject, and not need to be archived as rapidly as the main Rules and Standards page. They could also have subsections where the arguments for particular points of view are laid out fully and need not be restated over and over.
 * But it is just a matter of convention and organization. We can do it however we choos. Strictly speaking, this thread really ought to be on the talk page, as it is about how to organize this page, not about the bibliographic standards themselves. -DES Talk 23:57, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I just spooled though the diffs. I found that long responses, such as Bill Longley's are harder to follow in diff form but it works great when someone injects a one or two sentence response.  One annoyance is when in diff form it's not easy to jump to display form other than copy/paste some of the new text into the search buffer, click on the right arrow thing on the page that takes me to the thread section and search for the new text. That though seems to give me a version of the page that does not include follow-up edits. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:01, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Page archived
As the page was getting so unwieldy I started Rules and standards discussions/Archive/Archive06. As we don't have a Resolved indicator it was difficult to tell which items are "open." Rather than staring at each one and deciding I archived everything up to early July and also checked that none of the archived items have August 2009 edits. --Marc Kupper|talk 08:55, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Archive 07 created
I archived the July and august 2009 entries because the main page was much too large. -DES Talk 00:13, 18 August 2010 (UTC)