Talk:Russian Mafia/@comment-422690-20130418015900/@comment-4484220-20130419052336

All right, I did some digging, and here's the full story on the discussions for expert's opinions over the course of this wiki's history:

This very controversial topic of expert's opinions first came up on chat the night (or morning, if you prefer) that the revamping project was started. At some point between 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM on April 29, 2012 my time, me and Arrow expressed our conflicting views on chat regarding expert's opinions.

The only people who were active on chat during this discussion were me, Arrow, and you, Leo. I stated that I believed every battle when placed on a warrior's page should have an expert's opinion, in order to keep consistency and neatness. I also believed that any user should be allowed to write an expert's opinion if there is not already one, or improve it if the user believes that the author fell short. My grounds for this were that I believed that expert's opinions aren't really the author of the battle's property, but rather are meant to reflect the wiki's view on why said warrior won. After all, the victor is decided upon by the voters, not the author.

Arrow disagreed, believing that not only should expert's opinions written by the author stay as they are, but also that one should not be written if the author didn't write one himself/herself. His reason for this, if I recall correctly, was that he felt the expert's opinion is just as much a part of the battle as the simulation, and is therefore property of the author.

You, being the only other person on chat at the time, when asked your opinion, stated at that time that you saw both sides of the argument. In that initial chat discussion, I do not recall any more input from you, me, or Arrow beyond that. I do not have this chat discussion recorded, so you'll have to take my word for it. The point is that our conflicting views had been established in that conversation, but we had not yet reached an agreement.

I then later posted a comment on the revamping blog raising this issue in the hopes of gathering more of a consensus. The only other opinion we managed to gather in that brief discussion was that of Drayco, who shared my views. However, we had still not come to an agreement.

After that brief discussion, I sent Omni a message summarizing what discussions had already taken place, and asked him to share his views. He then wrote me a reply expressing a view similar to Arrow's. It should be noted, however, that he did not specify how he felt about nonexisting expert's opinions.

Then finally on May 19, 2012, the night that we did our initial attempt at instating new admins that included Drayco, Las, and me as admins, RS temporarily resigning as chatmod, and EA and Arrow becoming chatmods, a discussion regarding expert's opinions took place which settled things up until now. I didn't think I had it recorded, but it turns out I do. Here's the debate.

The main part we all stated our agreement towards was: "Existing Expert's opinions should not be edited without author consent, but battles without them can have them added if the author (if active) agrees on the wording". And for inactive users, "innactive user opinions just need admin or three user consent".

Well, there you go. I was wrong. We never did state that they could be added without author's consent. I am sorry that I told you that you were wrong about what we stated our agreement on when in fact I was wrong, and for generally disrespecting you in my edit summary which would have still been a bit unnecessary even if I was correct.

In spite of this, I still wish to make a few words in my defense.

Just in case we are at all unclear, ever since that conversation in May of last year, I have come to respect the fact that existing expert's opinions are not to be edited without author's permission, as well as have undone any edits I saw that violated this. It's only with adding them that I have an issue. Apparently I managed to overlook/forget the "if the author (if active) agrees on the wording", and only notice/remember the "but battles without them can have them added" which comes before it.

I find it necessary to point out that in light of the views expressed by you and Arrow, despite the supposed agreement eleven months ago, there is still much controversy surrounding whether or not expert's opinions can be added for battles without them without the author's permission. I cannot read Drayco's mind, so I may be jumping to conclusions by trying to say that he had a similar misunderstanding of our supposed agreement, but whatever the case is, the fact remains that over the past eleven months, I, Drayco, El Alamein, and maybe even some others have been operating on this wiki under the assumption that you are allowed to write an expert's opinion on a battle without anyone's permission if there was none written.

Dray EA and I have been editing pages over the past eleven months agreeing that this was the way it could be done, and throughout that whole time, apparently nobody who disagreed noticed until now. If you want proof that EA shared this view, see this message he wrote to me on my talk page (my reply, for your convenience). And as for Drayco, after that chat conversation, he went on to write his own expert's opinions, as shown in these histories:

1. Expert's opinion added by Drayco, respective blog post with no expert's opinion, author long since perma-banned.

2. Expert's opinion added by Drayco, [http://deadliestfiction.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Cth22/Brazilian_Militia_vs.New_Marais_Militia. respective blog post with no expert's opinion], author went inactive almost three months before the edit.

3. Expert's opinion added by Drayco, respective blog post with no expert's opinion, author inactive between April 9 and July 14.

4. Expert's opinion added by Drayco, respective blog post with no expert's opinion, author inactive between June 13 and August 31.

5. Expert's opinion added by Drayco, respective blog post with no expert's opinion, author inactive between June 22 and July 8. If that's too short a period of inactivity for you, then recall that Urbancommando hardly ever got on chat. And during summer 2012, I was on chat quite a lot, and I can tell you right now that Drayco didn't come on chat all-too often during that time; therefore, the likelihood that they were both on chat at once for Drayco to ask Urban if he could write an expert's opinion is very low. That, along with the fact that there is no record of such a conversation on Urban's talk page, shows that there is no evidence to suggest that Drayco asked before writing that expert's opinion.

6. Expert's opinion added by Drayco, respective blog post with no expert's opinion, no record of Drayco asking him permission exists on his talk page, and you should know as well as I do that SPARTAN pretty much never comes on chat. Ever. So Drayco definitely didn't ask him there.

Mind you, these aren't all of them. These are just the ones post-May 19, 2012, as ones before then could not be used as a valid argument due to taking place before that chat conversation, and some others it would have been harder to prove that there is little to no evidence that Drayco asked their permission.

Now do not misinterpret what I'm saying here. I am not trying to point fingers and try and lay part of the blame on Drayco and EA. If I had just said that EA and Drayco agreed with me that expert's opinions can be added if the author didn't write one and that they have both been making edits to reflect this even after that discussion where we mistakenly believed we had it settled, then you probably would have asked me to prove it. And in case you are incredulous, here is the proof.

The point I'm trying to make is that not only do three of the four most acclaimed editors of 2012 hold this common opinion and have acted on it for the past eleven months, but also have been believing this to be wiki policy the whole time. Given that there was a tremendous miscommunication, there are still two parties with conflicting views, and there is no written rule on the subject, the right to add expert's opinions is still up in the air. I think there is a need for this to be discussed again, considering that it turns out this was never truly settled.

So let me outline the two different views here:


 * One view is that expert's opinions should be open to editing and being added by anyone.


 * The other view is that expert's opinions should not be open to editing or creation by anyone other than the author of said battle unless otherwise permitted.

If my input on this subject is at all valued, I propose a compromise:

Expert's opinions cannot be edited by anyone other than the author himself unless otherwise permitted, but if there is none, then anyone is allowed to add them.

This is the compromise I thought I was agreeing to pretty much exactly eleven months ago almost to this hour as of the posting of this comment. However, it turns out that what was proposed there was something more restrictive than I felt it should have been, and not very much of a compromise at all on the part of people who thought expert's opinions should be closed to editing. In short, I strongly recommend that this be discussed on the admin talk.

So after that large wall of text, there are just three more things I would like to say on the subject:

1) I am baffled that that there was such a miscommunication going on, and that over the course of eleven months, neither you nor Arrow nor anyone else who shared the same view regarding expert's opinions as you two ever noticed me saying in the edit summary stuff like "Adapted page to new layout aside from the fact that the battle with (blank) needs an expert's opinion", or the occasions on which EA wrote in his edit summary "Here's your expert's opinion, Hayden.", or that you or Arrow never seemed to notice in any of the pages that I've edited, text that said "Please consider a contribution by writing an expert's opinion as to why (blank) won.". This is not meant as an insult; I just find it funny that the events played out this way that that this topic got buried for eleven months and that this discussion didn't happen earlier.

2) If the policy gets legitimately instated as what you and Arrow are saying, then we are going to have a heck of a lot of expert's opinions to remove. Between all the ones that EA wrote over the past eleven months, all the ones that Drayco wrote over the past eleven months, and don't even get me started on all the ones I've written over the past eleven months.

3) Perhaps this will be a lesson to all of us that we should never discuss something like this on chat and not have it written down as a policy.

And lastly, regarding a Rollback's authority, the subsequent sentences do not appear to negate or contradict the first. In addition, there's still what Pach told me. I got onto chat one day and asked Pach if I was going outside of my authority as a rollback by dealing warnings to users for article vandalism, and he told me I was fine. According to Pach from Fall 2012, Rollback rights are not limited to undoing vandalism more easily. So you'll have to take that up with him, if you have not already in the time that it took me to write this.