Guideline for wiki participation in forums and subforums

Neither members nor Forums Staff (“Foru.ms Staff&#8221 may exclude any other member from editing forum or sub-forum rules or policies with the single exception that an individual forum or sub-forum wiki may exclude members which are not participants in that individual sub-forum.

For example, the congregational forums may choose to disallow congregational forum wiki edits by anyone other than their particular members.

Under no circumstances may Foru.ms Staff restrict participation in sub-forum wikis, such that only Foru.ms Staff can edit them except it be done by Erwin’s mandate or design. Wiki's are not to be closed or protected at any time with the exception of short cool-off periods due to troll attacks, wiki-wars, or for maintenance activities.

Foru.ms Staff shall use the snap shot of the sub-forum wiki as protocol, policy, or rules in its entirety, and Foru.ms Staff shall not vote as to which parts they wish to apply. Foru.ms Staff are not permitted to modify wiki snap shots, other than to add a date / time stamp and/or revision identifier.

Members of Foru.ms Staff are encouraged to contribute, vote and discuss the rules, policies, and protocols within the wiki. It is unacceptable for staff members be the last to modify a wiki just before taking a snap shot, thus preventing member commentary about such edits. This section does preclude adding a time/date/or revision identifier to the wiki article just before, or upon taking a snap shot.

For purposes of this guideline, all wiki's relating to staff teams, groups of forums, or individual forums are considered sub-forum wikis.

This is a site wide mandate, and it applies to all forum and subforum wikis, and is effective immediately.

Currently, there exists some wiki's which only allow for staff edits. Such statements in the wiki articles are to be removed immediately. While the existing snap shots will still contain text to that effect, they are now non-enforceable as far as staff only edits, and new snap shots should be taken within the next 20 days to rectify such matters.

This however, is just a starting point. It may be that members want to further expand and clarify parts of this document. They should feel free to do so.

Some suggestions presented while the document was under development included.
1. Define who should take the snap shots
2. Define how snap shots should be made
3. Allow for staff to be the last to edit, with the criteria that a snap shot can only be taken, if 24 hours has passed since the last edit by a staff member. Thus, allowing time for members to make edits etc.
4. Never allow for staff to be the last to edit the wiki article immediately before taking a snap shot.
5. Create an oversight process of some nature

All of these suggestions could be useful, and there are probably many more as well. However, such issues are within the domain of the members to determine. We wanted to provide a framework with as little intereference as possible, yet still ensure the wiki process would remain member driven, rather than staff driven. It is up to the members to determine what if any further detail they prefer.