We can make a few templates available for various purposes, too, if we wanted.

Xander_Steelmind posted some pretty great suggestions for adding to 914's log. Any chance we could get something up? I'd love to have something out there that people can consult for ideas/inspiration rather than staff just stepping in and explaining everything every time there are prunings.

Their post is here: http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-88429/experiment-log-914#post-2661908

I like their Golden/Silver rules. Some of their stuff is 914-specific, but we can incorporate a lot of their suggestions into a handy "here's how to approach this" reference.

But yeah, tl;dr, we could defs use more manpower keeping an eye on collab pages. Some of them are just… crazy long and unwieldy, though. They kind of feel like dump pages after a point.

I believe Rewrite has full purview on this. I'm also willing to help out with this from time to time.

EDIT: I also keep forgetting how firmly staff rely on the 'collaboration' tag in cases like this. We should probably get on fixing up how we use that tag…

I think this issue is ripe for alternate solutions that make everyone happy.

Such as crafting a (friendly) invisible notice to add to the text of open collaborative SCPs/logs. We could even specifically require it for open collaborative SCPs or logs, in the same way we require rating modules.

In fact, I personally would like this quite a lot because it might encourage people to post new collaborative SCPs with better guidelines that don't get super wanky like some of the old ones. We can make a few templates available for various purposes, too, if we wanted.

Such as options to give staff curation purview by default or not; requirements to only add things within certain guidelines (which staff can use to judge curation after you're gone); caveats such as "please contact X people if they're still around for permission & guidance"; etc. [!-- Using this hidden message format so everyone sees it. --]

If so, my bad on that. My usual action for Series I stuff, given the oft-targeted things that trolls seem to favor, is "if staff had to revert twice or more, lock the page and put a notice". I didn't check up on that page given how many fires I was putting out on the site yesterday. Sorry about the misstep on 458.

imagine if TV Tropes stopped linking people to other articles in most cases past 2010, and locked all those pages down so people couldn't keep expanding them because too many newbies added bad entries. …That's what we did!

If we had more people keeping an eye on collaborative logs (also, when was the last time there was a collaborative page pruning?) and telling people hey, heads up, we don't need your entry that's the same as someone elses/consisting entirely of Zalgo/giving your Supes cool OC a speshul item/shouting out to an unrelated popular media thing/etc. etc. that'd be great… I almost want to suggest writing up a guide for collaborative log entries since staff essentially has to do that anyway when things are pruned, but as with the site as always, the people who need to read those things tend to be unlikely to read them in the first place.

But yeah, tl;dr, we could defs use more manpower keeping an eye on collab pages. Some of them are just… crazy long and unwieldy, though. They kind of feel like dump pages after a point.

I'm going to be harsh here, because I think this is serious. Please forgive me.

With SCP-458, the original author's last edit in 2008 was:

Further testing on SCP's may reveal some odd characteristics about the SCP's themselves, and is suggested.
-Dr. Kreign

And from the discussion:

Palhinuk 14 Feb 2009, 19:41
sure, feel free to add anything to the list you'd like, keeping in mind that the box can't, or won't, use human elements in the pizzas

It's starkly clear that the author intended for people to be able to add new logs to this.

Yet, here are some posts from that discussion thread, from staff:

This is to note a revert from the previous edit by user cormac596, where an entirely new footnote has been added onto the article. That would count as an edit in content, which is not permitted (unless with staff deliberation). Only edits in grammar and spelling would be acceptable under normal circumstances.

Noting that a recent edit by 5tr4 was reverted, as it introduced new material without permission from the original author or staff. Editors, please keep in mind that we only allow grammar/spelling/formatting fixes to be made without permission.

Now: All the staff here have good motivations. Zyn's actually trying to find a middle ground in the quote above, suggesting that people could suggest new additions in the comments, but in every previous case we've tried that, see: 682 termination test log — there's a chilling effect that prevents good additions along with bad, and staff often simply ignore suggestions because it's low-priority; most people won't go through the effort of dealing with so many barriers, which contravenes the wishes of the original author. So I can't agree with the suggested solution.

The problem is twofold.

First, staff are responsible for killing much of the collaborative aspect of the wiki, by overstepping our powers in the past. That's why Series 1 is permanently enshrined as the most important part of the wiki; not just age, but the wiki-walk only leads within the ancient parts of Series 1, with few exceptions. Like… imagine if TV Tropes stopped linking people to other articles in most cases past 2010, and locked all those pages down so people couldn't keep expanding them because too many newbies added bad entries. …That's what we did!

So the least we can do is not make that worse by locking down older articles like this.

But even if you disagree with me… second: We don't have the right to do this. In fact, with this SCP, as with several older SCPs like this (and plausibly more I don't know about — are we going to have to go through and check?) — staff have overstepped their bounds, repeatedly, by going against the original author's wishes to keep this page open for new additions.

We've long established that staff can edit or remove shitty new entries to old SCPs when the author is absent. We can still maintain quality control. Same way we can edit articles to change them to metric or assorted improvements via the rewrite team.

But we do not and never have had the right to forcibly remove collaborative aspects from existing SCPs.

I suspect that this was totally unintentional, just overworked moderators and operational staff trying to get the job done and keep things smoothly with a minimum of fuss. (I know for sure Zyn fits here. <3 Zyn for all the incredible amounts of work you do.) In that case, no worries, let's just please be more careful about this.

However, if this is not the case — if any of you guys want to grant ourselves the power to override clear author wishes on classic-style open collaboration logs, you're going to have to actually use an official policy discussion to make that happen.

Until then, I'm unlocking SCP-458. Additionally, if there are other SCPs or logs like this, please unlock them as well.