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Comments on Do we have/should we have community wikis?

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Do we have/should we have community wikis?

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Over at Software Development, I've tried to write a self-answered Q&A that addresses the by far most common FAQ of all time in the topics of C and C++ programming.

When posting it on SO, I would have made such a post "community wiki", meaning that I would up all claims & credits for the post and the rep generated by it and let anyone edit it and add further details.

The only benefit of doing so for me as the author, is that I will be able to use the post as a "canonical duplicate" target in the future and close posts pointing at the canonical one. But that might be frowned upon in case I'm partial - it might be regarded as if I use close votes as a way to draw more attention to my own posts.

While what I truly wish for above all, is to have a nice, detailed post that I can clobber down endless FAQ duplicates with. (A bonus if it is better and more detailed than the corresponding post on SO.) I'm certain that similar FAQs exist all across the various Codidact communities.

My questions:

  • Do we have the ability to create community wikis? I can't find anything about it on the site.
  • If we don't have that ability, then should we have it?

I'm particularly interested in scenarios like the one above, to create canonical Q&A that can be used as duplicate targets. And not so much in creating general "good to know" posts/articles/documentation with a wiki separate from Q&A, for the reasons described here.

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General comments (10 comments)
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Update: We didn't do what I proposed here, but we instead created a wiki post type. See there for details.


I wrote a GH ticket based on this suggestion, with the following expansion:

We should avoid the term "community wiki", which was sometimes confusing on Some Other platform too. If we need a name for the type of post that has this designation, we could call it "freely editable" or "shared resource" or something else.

The author of a post should, at creation time or in an edit, be able to designate a post as having this status. The author shouldn't be able to reverse this setting later, so there should be a suitable warning in the UI.

Setting this status should have the following effects:

  • The post is labelled somehow in the UI as being freely editable. (This might be accomplished by having the System user show up as the "author" or might be explicit. Maybe an icon with an informative tooltip?)

  • Anybody with the Participate Generally ability can edit the post without the edit having to be reviewed. Users without this ability can suggest edits.

  • The post does not contribute to anybody's "post score" computation (for abilities) or reputation.

  • MAYBE: change the license type? I'm not sure what would be suitable here. At the very least, "attribution" seems murkier with this kind of post.

To be determined: Should the post remain "owned" by the creator, or should it become owned by the System user? If the latter, should anybody receive edit notifications? (The author would have, but if it's System... that doesn't work.) One way to allow users easy access to their work, without retaining ownership, would be for System to own the post and for the initial revision to show in the author's actions. (All edits should show up as actions regardless; the initial post is the thing that might get lost if we don't take action.)


The GH issue links back to this meta post, so discussion here will be seen by whoever picks up this request.


I see there is some discussion in comments about a "wiki" category versus editable posts. Communities might also want to have wikis, but I think there are also use cases for canonical Q&A that's part of Q&A. Who can edit is orthogonal to what type of post is this, in my opinion. In a wiki category all posts should have this designation; they'll probably also all be articles, not questions and answers. But there might be canonical answers in Q&A that should, unlike all other Q&A, be broadly editable, so that's why I see this as a post-level designation.

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General comments (6 comments)
General comments
Lundin‭ wrote about 4 years ago

I agree that we should use another term. "Free for all"? Or maybe just change the author to a special bot? Then let all posts by that bot be freely editable.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Lundin on your last point, that's what I had in mind with setting the System user as the owner (in my "to be determined" paragraph). I don't know if there are better ways, but that's a way.

manassehkatz‭ wrote about 4 years ago

The author shouldn't be able to reverse this setting later, so there should be a suitable warning in the UI. With the exception that they should be able to reverse the setting if and only if nobody else has edited. For example, OP posts, decides it would be a good "Community Wiki" style article and holds off on updates to see what other people come up with. Nobody else does anything for 3 days, so OP decides to "own it" again and work on perfecting it, based on that feeling of ownership.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@manassehkatz I considered adding that (specifically if there've been no edits). I don't know how much that complicates the implementation (don't count this post for abilities, no do again / move it over to System, no move it back). Maybe only change ownership once there is an edit and the rest is easier?

manassehkatz‭ wrote about 4 years ago

It shouldn't complicate things too much. Only the original author would have that option (revert from Community) and easy enough to check if there have been any later edits. Waiting to change ownership until after there is a non-author edit is more complicated and then doesn't show the "Community ownership to people passing by.

Mithrandir24601‭ wrote about 4 years ago

My vote is for 'owned by system' (if the owner even has to be displayed) but with a list of 'major editors' available somehow (a list of all editors also makes sense, but I don't want to leave it open to pointless trivial edits either)