User blog:RRabbit42/Embrace, don't chase: Don't crush their dreams

This blog, "Don't crush their dreams", could just as easily be called "The lost cause". This is something every administrator is going to come across: the point where you have to make a decision as to whether a user can stay on a wiki. It's the point where harm now could change into potential good.

With vandals and trolls, it's usually easy to see the harm they're doing. The decision that they don't need to be there any more is also easy. If your wiki has a block policy, then you've got a standardized way of dealing with the level of disruption they're causing. If you don't have one, make one. Look at the block policy of the Phineas and Ferb Wiki for ideas on what topics to cover and how to deal with them.

The people that are adding fan fiction may not see what they're doing as harmful or adding false information (lying). They could be just trying to add something they've created to a subject they're a fan of. The point it becomes harmful is when they go past the limits you've defined.

The question is, have you defined those limits? If not, then the steps you take to protect your wiki can appear arbitrary and make it look like you're stomping on them to crush their dreams.

How to handle fan fiction
The first step is to decide how you want to handle fan fiction. Some of the ways you can do so are:
 * 1) Allow it without restriction.
 * 2) Allow it as long as it's marked as fan fiction.
 * 3) Needs to be kept separate on a different wiki.
 * 4) Completely forbid it.

Option one means fan fiction and facts can mix freely on your wiki, but people won't be able to tell what is what unless they're very familiar with the subject.

Option two can be achieved in different ways, such as making sure "(fanon)" is included in the page name, adding a "fan fiction" category, a template of some kind to mark it's fanon, or putting in a request to Fandom to have an available namespaces customized. (Help: and User blog: are examples of pre-defined namespaces. Two can be customized on a wiki.)

Option three means you have one wiki that's for the facts and a different one for the fan fiction. You can be as hands-off as you want and say it's up to someone else to create that wiki, or you can make the second wiki and help run it.

Finally, option four is that fan fiction isn't allowed at all and it's up to everyone else to figure out where it can be.

Create a policy
Whichever option you choose, create a policy to match it. If that policy says fan fiction has to go somewhere else, it will help if you can list one or more wikis people can turn to. If all else fails, point them to the Fan Fiction Wiki or the Parody Wiki. (See Where fan fiction is welcomed for additional wikis.)

The policy needs to include what will happen if people add fan fiction where it isn't allowed. List how harsh or lenient you'll be. Try to gently steer people in a different direction, but have provisions for the ones that will be stubborn. The latter will be covered below.

Once you've got that set up, use the Welcome tool to update the automated greeting everyone after their first edit. Give them a quick summary of how fan fiction is handled on your wiki and link to the policy.

The lost cause
This is the other side of the "Accept it's fan fiction" section of the Getting your fan fiction accepted. The point of these blogs is to show that we need fan fiction because that kind of creativity can be found in everything, from inventions to stories and movies. You can see some examples in "Adaptation abounds", part 1 and part 2

The reality is that there are going to be people who will ignore advice you give them. They will dig their heels in. They will insist what they're adding is real and true. They will get stubborn and try to force their fan fiction on everyone else.

These are the ones who will go beyond being an aficionado or supporter of a subject and into the realm of a fanatic. These are the ones that will keep adding it well past the point of being a nuisance to where it becomes vandalism. These are the ones that you will have to block to get them to stop disrupting your wiki.

It's hard to say that someone is a lost cause. It should always be hard to say that. If it becomes easy, then it's a good idea to take an honest look to see if you're becoming jaded and seeing more than what's there.

Administrators are a kind of teacher for a wiki. Teachers should provide guidance and help their students grow. Stomping on what they say or do without good reason makes the teacher more of a bully than a help. A policy as described above will help show you're not acting arbitrarily and/or to be hurtful. Likewise, if you've made an effort to talk to a person to say "this isn't allowed" or "you need to do this differently" followed by reasons why, it shows you're trying to provide guidance. Then if they're still not following the rules, especially if they ignore you and don't respond to any of your messages, you've got it on record that you gave them chances to adapt their own behavior to something more constructive before a block had to be set.

False information
In simplest terms, false information is lying. But there's more to it when it comes to fan fiction. As stated above, some false information is simply fan fiction that they don't mean any harm by adding. It's an important distinction, so I am going to cover that separately in Fan fiction or false information?

My personal approach
There have been times when I have given people way more chances than I should. I haven't wanted to call them a lost cause. I've wanted to believe that they'd follow the guidance I was providing. Very few have. So why would I go through so much wasted effort?

Two administrators provided examples to me on how not to deal with people. One said that asking for clarification on something and offering to help make it less confusing was harassment, and quickly became belligerent and unreasonable during an attempt to work things out peacefully. They resigned a few months later when the members of the wiki began discussions about removing admin rights due to that person's behavior towards others.

The other admin is very strict about how they want things done on their wiki. A small mistake by a first-time visitor can result in a permanent block because they violated the rules. However, those rules do not seem to be spelled out anywhere. It comes across either as the "beware of the leopard" portion of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the rules are buried where no one can find them but are still used as justification for decisions, or it's the "I had transgressed the unwritten law" from Monty Python where a criminal is defending abusive treatment from a thug named Dinsdale Piranha, and those rules are also not spelled out.

I try not to be like that. I try to give people a chance. But there does come a time where I do have to reluctantly conclude someone is a lost cause. If I've made the effort to explain what is not allowed and why and all I get back is silence, or the answer is, "I don't care. I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing no matter what anyone says", then a block is warranted.

My personal experience
My first experience with going online was the same as everyone else in the 1980s: using a modem to call a BBS. If you were lucky enough to have a 2400 bps modem, you were flyin'.

Speed didn't matter for the game Trade Wars. It was turn-based and you got ten turns per day. Every day, I'd log in, take my ten turns, and the following day, I'd find that my ship had been destroyed. So I created a new ship, tried again and found it had been destroyed the next day. Lather, rinse, repeat.

After two weeks, I posted a message: "Guys, I'm just getting started. Give me a chance. Let me get going for a while."

I never heard anything back and every day the ship kept getting destroyed. I don't know if the other players kept seeing "easy pickings" or if it was some kind of computer-controlled process. There was no explanation of what happened. It was always "your ship was destroyed" and I gave up on the game.

The further result is that any time I've been looking for a computer game, I gravitate towards single-player games. Some of this matches my own interests, but I do wonder if being stomped on so often at the point where I could have really become interested in multi-player games just turned me off of them. I have tried a couple, but they were shut down because the company couldn't afford to keep them running, so that reinforced the idea of if I stick to standalone games that don't require an online connection, they can't be taken away from me.

But what if....

What if a little guy back in the 1980s had just been given the chance to get on a better footing? What if someone had taken the time to give me advice and tips? What if when I asked for help, I hadn't been met with silence that became "Ha, ha! Tough luck, kid. Too bad, so sad."

What if?

The value of fan fiction
The creativity found in fan fiction is kin to the creativity that leads to inventions. Ideas are inspired by ideas, so I try to keep an open mind so that if someone replies and provides a better reason why something should be allowed, I can adapt my own viewpoint.

These blogs are the result of my viewpoint changing to see the value in fan fiction. For a long time, I've treated some fan fiction as a kind of vandalism because of the times where the other side isn't listening and isn't changing their behavior.

But what would the world be like if Alexander Fleming's boss had yelled at him that he was wasting time looking at mold and destroyed all of the samples that would later become penicillin?

What would movies, TV and storytelling in general be like if Gene Roddenberry hadn't pitched his idea for a TV show as "Wagon Train to the stars" while also having the suspenseful adventure stories with morality tales as found in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels? Likewise, what would storytelling be like today if George Lucas hadn't taken elements from religion, philosophy, classical mythology, the work of Joseph Campbell and a whole lot more to create Star Wars? Would Doctor Who have been as successful if they hadn't needed to change the actor playing the title character and came up with the idea of regeneration?

What would computers be like if the graphic user interface had remained at Xerox PARC instead of being adapted by Apple, and then by Microsoft?

Where is the next Michael Jordan going to come from? The next J. K. Rowling? The next Pablo Picasso? The next Ashley Simpson?

They're out there, somewhere. But we'll never get to meet them if we chase them away instead of embracing what they could be. Everything is adaptation. Do what you can not to get in its way. Don't stomp on the little guys if you don't have to. Help them find out what potential for invention and inspiration they have.