Thread:MasterMachine/@comment-1370845-20140825220425

Yes, they do. Wikia staff set guidelines across all wikis which they do not enforce, but they trust the admin team to. One upon a time, there were plenty of Wikia "learn to admin" pages, giving general guidelines, and of course, they did give guidelines on when to settle disputes. Because the ones with the banhammer have the responsibilities to do that. A dispute settlement is not a subjective thing between a few people, it's an objective, site-wide disruption that should be resolved not by taking sides, but by preventing it from going further.
 * Wikia defines the problem

In particular, these guidelines were set for edit warring. Edit warring is when two or more people disagree with the layout/information contained on an article, and begin reverting one another's edits or constantly changing to suit themselves, instead of getting on the talk page and discussing it. An admin's role here, of course, would be to lock the page to prevent editing, and then if the discussion involved one side spouting insults targeted at the opposition's mother, then obviously that side is merely around for causing arguments over nothing. 3 day block. And then suppose other side takes it so personally that they caps lock rage and call their opposition "mentally retarded"? 3 day block for them, too. Makes sense, right? Then after the block is over, they can come back, and make an actual decision. Otherwise, page remains locked, and in the state it was before the edit warring begun.

No, it is a wiki problem. If there are disputes about the way things run, this community is running incorrectly. The entire point of a wiki is that it is a MediaWiki database. This means that it is:
 * It's a community problem, not a wiki problem
 * 1) Collaborative, anyone can edit.
 * 2) Runs on MediaWiki software, making it easier to edit.
 * 3) Makes everyone equal, other than a few users - often those with most contributions and most trusted - which can keep things in check.

The latter two we fill. The former, we are detrimenting. There is no collaboration if we have conflicts between sides. The Fiction Universe in itself is very collaborative, it fits within the philosophy both of the game - Spore - and of MediaWiki in general. But these philosophies do not involve any sort of conflict or mistrust; only the former does, and that is all in-universe canon, or friendly competition between creators.

Now, more related to a wiki in the traditional sense, we have very few users who actually contribute to the mainspace. And yes, fitting with both philosophies again, should come first. The philosophy of MediaWiki again is geared to one primary namespace, the one with no prefix, the mainspace, which it is designed to be a database for. We have had almost no contributions to it. Other than Hachiman and The Randomness, I've seen no one really take interest in it either. The reason why, collectively, people are not interested? Because it's comparatively boring. No, nothing is wrong with the Fiction Universe taking precedence in terms of garnering a lot more interest, but if no one understands the "traditional" wiki, they often cannot carry it over. Other than, again, Hachi and the Randomness, and now that he's no longer an admin, Xho as well, there is very little understanding of that. Hm, maybe Imperios can join that list.

There is very little care for the wiki itself. Or little awareness of how one functions. And yes, that does stem from lack of interest in the mainspace. Take my example in the second paragraph with edit warring. You can find a parallel to that in the Fic Universe. Multiple, probably. The basic moral of that story was: blocking is not a punishment or a means of spite, it's a tool to prevent vandalism and/or threats to what the Wiki actually is. In the Fiction Universe, there is too much self entitlement. This results in the "old users are hurting new users!" argument. In my edit warring example, then let's say that only the first party was the one who cursed and insulted someone's mother on that talk page. If admin tells them they are blocked for doing that - ie, causing disruption - then in this context, it's like them then whining about the block and saying "but admins are elitist and user their power to take sides :(". The admin blocking did not take a side, he/she was against both sides. That is an extreme case, but here you see how, when you take out the fact that people own fiction pages and look at the wiki as something that is shared, then you see that this is an objective issue, not a subjective one.

Finally, to conclude this novel, we did see the first bit of collaboration and discussion between parties on the wiki today I've seen on this wiki in ages. It was the Warfare page. People talked it out and shared ideas. And, other than Monet, didn't rage at each other. They just chilled out and chatted about it, then stuff was done. Isn't that neat? That is what should be happening. That, or just leaving one another alone. If the two users I mentioned edited articles about different subjects, then there is no problem. 