Deleting usefull information from the Wiki

There was an uproar in the german sub-section of this forum, because Arthur Wolf, creator of smoothieware/smoothieboard, decided to delete several pages of competing closed source hardware in the wiki.

He stated, that:

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The page has been flagged as advertising for an invalid reason:

This page is found to exist for the sole purpose of Advertising, This page will eventually be removed.
Reason: no sources, does not comply with lowest common denominator of opensource

I feel something wrong with deleting usefull information out of a 3d-printing wiki (be it open source or not) and many more I talked with do, too. So I am here to talk about it.

The user microfortnight said something months before, better than I could say it on my own now, so I just quote him here:

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microfortnight

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Dark Alchemist

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microfortnight

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Dust
Personally I think removing it just because it doesn't comply with open source is very silly

I also wouldn't remove these entries. It's a good opportunity to brand these boards as not open-source.
It already saved me from buying one of those boards.

That is why I said to mention it BUT label it as closed source and any information needs to be had from the seller or the manufacturer.

I think nobody removed these pages until now because it doesn't make much sense, only few people care and it is some editing work involved.

Here's a different view on this topic:

RepRap is also about Open-Source Software, there are a lot of firmware implementations around.
This board is well supported by open-source firmware implementations.
So I still think it's not a good idea to remove any valuable information from the Wiki.


In this specific case there are two pages for this board.
MKS_BASE_1.0, no flags at all
MKS_BASE not open source, advertising

There were some edits after one page has been flagged as advertising.
Both pages contains some configuration hints for Marlin, some advice on VCP drivers, a lot of useful information I guess.
So I don't think there actually is advertising on these pages.

The page has been flagged as advertising for an invalid reason:

This page is found to exist for the sole purpose of Advertising, This page will eventually be removed.
Reason: no sources, does not comply with lowest common denominator of opensource


In my opinion, it would be better to merge these pages and improve the Wiki:
1) Remove the reasons for the advertising flag (cannot see any)
2) Remove the advertising flag
3) Keep the not open-source flag
4) Repeat for other boards/shields, at least for the popular ones like RADDS, etc.

Maybe you should collect some more opinions before deleting these pages.

So, I looked it up and there are no guidelines and rules about what should be in the wiki and what not. There is also no rule, stating the information published has to be open source. There are a couple threads here with the same topic, and not a single one got it really explained "why" the articles need to get deleted.

True is, that this forum is way beyond "reprap" - the self replicating 3d-printer - already. There are so many different printers out there, and they are getting so good, that you can't compare them to the good old mendel anylonger.

In my opinion, this forum made a transition from a reprap-community to the biggest 3d-printing-community in the world, long ago. In conclusion, the wiki of such a big 3d-printing-community should be about all the things related to it, no matter if it is makeable via DIY or needs to be bought at the next 3d-printing onlinestore.

Deleting information and knowledge out of the reprap-wiki is like the book burning of the third reich; all that is representing ideologies opposed to the one in charge needs to get destroyed - especially, if it is done by someone, who is clearly prejudiced.

This way, I vote for all the information being available in the wiki, not only information "that is allowed".

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Der 3D-Druck ist tot, lang lebe der 3D-Druck!

Schreibt mich nicht mehr an, ich hab das drucken an den Nagel gehängt.

I'm with Arthur on this one - at least in principle, not necessarily with the way it was done which I know nothing about. While I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with having information on the wiki about how to use closed-source products (e.g. BLTouch) as long as they are clearly flagged as such, I do object to promotion of hardware or software that is a derivative of open-source software and /or hardware (Smoothieboard in this case) but that is in flagrant violation of the open-source license, and therefore a parasite on open source developers.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2017 12:32PM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

I'm with Arthur too.

I did'nt found any common rules on the wiki pages. It could be a good idea to clarify the rules for writing pages or if are where any rules it would be great to find them at the entry site.

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Piepiep (CoreXY) 290x300x205, ArduinoDUE, RADDS, TMC2100, Z-Riemenantrieb, Raspi3

So take the page of the RADDS for example. What is the reason for deleting the whole article, including it's translations?

Sure, there is missing the one needed gerber file to recreate this on your own, but why not just alter the description then? Naming it "closed source".
Maybe the american continent isn't that familiar with the RADDS, so the users there probably don't even care. But in europe, the RADDS is rather wide spread and several open printer designs rely on the RADDS, like the sparkcube or the hexagon V6.

There are probably other things that aren't "open source" and still have a large impact in 3d-printing. E3D for example, not open source. Bad though?

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Der 3D-Druck ist tot, lang lebe der 3D-Druck!

Schreibt mich nicht mehr an, ich hab das drucken an den Nagel gehängt.

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dc42
I'm with Arthur on this one - at least in principle, not necessarily with the way it was done which I know nothing about. While I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with having information on the wiki about how to use closed-source products (e.g. BLTouch) as long as they are clearly flagged as such, I do object to promotion of hardware or software that is a derivative of open-source software and /or hardware (Smoothieboard in this case) but that is in flagrant violation of the open-source license, and therefore a parasite on open source developers.

I don't want to blame Arthur because these pages have been flagged for deletion for a long time and now he did it. That's OK, but ...

Wouldn't it be enough to flag these products like before?
For example like traffic lights, green for Open-Source products according to common RepRap standards, yellow for Closed-Source or missing documents and red for clear license violations (no advertising links allowed) and so on...

Now that's just a silly idea, but there are users which...

• just don't care about it
• didn't know and got one of these boards in a kit
• will soon learn their printers are not open-source

Users can learn from these flagged Wiki pages that companies stole open-source ideas and put their trademark on it.
That's why I say let's keep these pages.

Also I still believe that most people here just don't care, otherwise these pages would have been deleted a long time ago

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Best regards / Viele Grüße
Till

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Skimmy
So take the page of the RADDS for example. What is the reason for deleting the whole article, including it's translations?

I don't think I agree with deleting information on RADDS, because it isn't a parasite on open source the way that MKS SBASE is. But the fact that RADDS runs RRF may be influencing me unduly.

Ultimately, I think it's up to the admins to decide what the policy is, publish that, and then to enforce it. I do find it strange that pages have been "flagged for deletion" for years. Rather than just open/closed source I see at least 4 categories that should be considered:

1. True open source hardware. No argument about this.

2. Hardware that isn't fully open source but isn't a parasite on open source development. RADDS falls into this category. At least they publish the schematic and the board layout, which makes hardware and firmware hacking easy.

3. Hardware that is closed source and is patent-protected. This isn't a parasite on open source development unless the patent is for something that has been talked about in this or another forum, but patents are decidedly unfriendly to the open source movement. BLTouch falls into this category. But AFAIK there isn't a BLTouch wiki page, so we're not arguing about it.

4. Hardware or software that is derived from open-source hardware or software, but isn't open source itself, and is therefore in violation of the original open source license. I am fairly certain that MKS SBASE falls into this category.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

... it seems, there aren't many of the core team "deciders" around to join this discussion

I've reactivated the RADDS page with a (bright) notize on the page and in the talk section to start the discussion about a "reorganization" or categorizing articles between OS and comercial - so this could be the place to get a better view on the current situation ...

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

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VDX
... it seems, there aren't many of the core team "deciders" around to join this discussion

I've reactivated the RADDS page with a (bright) notize on the page and in the talk section to start the discussion about a "reorganization" or categorizing articles between OS and comercial - so this could be the place to get a better view on the current situation ...

No, sorry Victor, Arthur deleted it again. Probably to get rid of competitors for his own smoothieboard2 release...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2017 02:29PM by Skimmy.

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Der 3D-Druck ist tot, lang lebe der 3D-Druck!

Schreibt mich nicht mehr an, ich hab das drucken an den Nagel gehängt.

Accusing me of doing this because I make Smoothieboard is dishonest and outrageous, I was a part of this community long before I started Smoothie ( including in some moderate admin capacities ), and I did not decide anything, just apply a well established wiki ruling. Additionally, quite a few of the Reprap admins have projects and products related to the Reprap project, it's what happens when the same people are active in a project, *and* actually design things, they'll end up both being volunteers and having companies. It's normal. If you think this page shouldn't be deleted that's fine, we can debate that, but accusing me of being dishonest is just not cool. Not cool at all.

This has been marked as Closed-Source and advertising for *well over a year*, with a message saying it would be deleted in march 2016 if the source wasn't released. This is nearly a year later.

I only applied a well established rule here, I didn't decide anything by myself, the page was supposed to be deleted, but the wiki admins don't have enough time to do it all, so I took care of it, that's it.
Because of my position both as a volunteer and as the creator of Smoothie, I actually take great care of what i do on the wiki, and I try to only apply rulings others have made, or when I actually take a decision by myself, I make sure I have a lot of data and thinking backing me up.

Closed source hardware has nothing to do on the reprap wiki, this has been long established by this community ( search the forums ), the reprap wiki isn't for advertising closed-source stuff, even if it happens to be compatible.

The project even has an extremely liberal definiton of what Open-Source is.
Most companies, states, projects, associations, the UN, etc, have a definiton of Open-source similar to [www.oshwa.org] but the Reprap wiki goes as far as just saying "sufficent to make a copy" ( if it forbids you from selling it, or modifying it, that's ok apparently, which I find dumb as hell, but that's another subject ). That's incredibly wide and permissive definiton. If a project can't fit a criteria this wide, it doesn'vt have it's place on the Wiki of a major Open-Source project.

Closed source projects can document their stuff on their own website. Any useful information you want to find, you can find there, you know how to use Google.
Putting it on the Reprap wiki if it's not a part of the community effort, just means it's advertising, and that's not what the Reprap wiki is for ! The reprap wiki is documentation for the reprap project, and the community of volunteer's efforts. It's for Open-Source stuff by Open-Source folks.

The wiki rules say if it's not open-source, it gets a warning, and if it doesn't become/prove it is open-source, it gets deleted. The page has been around for this long only because the admins are too busy to apply all the rules. You just got used to something that was supposed to be temporary. Now that has been fixed. End of story.

This is the Reprap project, if this is upsetting you, you probably just don't understand what Open-Source is, and how the project came to be.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2017 03:02PM by arthurwolf.

It seems to me that the "core team deciders" aren't active anymore. There is a big layer of dust on the wiki and some minds.
RepRap moved forward and the wiki looks like a museum.

It is time to be up to date.

There should be a place in our wiki for that non-parasite hardware.
Flag it, or do something else with it.
But, please, don't delete this. That it is not the idea of a wiki.

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.. and finally my very own opinion:
There should be a rule that is not allowed for commercial active users (examp: arthur/smoothie) to delete or modify entrys by other commercial active users (examp: angelo/radds).
It leaves always a bad baste when this happens.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2017 03:21PM by toolson.

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Lars - Blog, Thingiverse, Git

_{After successfully ignoring Google, FAQ's, the board search and leaving a undecipherable post in the wrong sub-forum don't expect an intelligent reply.}

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toolson
.. and finally my very own opinion:
There should be a rule that is not allowed for commercial active users (examp: arthur/smoothie) to delete or modify entrys by other commercial active users (examp: angelo/radds).
It leaves always a bad baste when this happens.

As far as I know, that description matches a lot of the people who actually wrote the wiki, so if your rule existed, we pretty much wouldn't even have a wiki ( or it'd be much less useful ).

And you are making a false equivalency here. You make it sound it's "commercial vs commercial", but the truth is I spent three years of my life working on Smoothie full time as a volunteer ( and some more before that on Reprap-related stuff ), before earning my very first cent from Smoothie. And even then I only sold the boards because I was asked for it by *hundreds*, mostly as a service. All profits from the sales of Smoothieboards, once expenses are covered, go to actually pushing the project forward ( free stuff and payments to contributors mostly ).
So no, it's actually "Open-Source vs commercial".

Also again, I didn't delete or modify anything by myself, I only applied a deletion that was decided nearly a year ago by the community, as part of a larger series of edition aimed at making the wiki clearer and less polluted with advertising.

The reprap admins actually want to delete *a lot more* than this, but just don't have the ressources to do it.

Who cares if this information is useful btw ? Information on using makerbot machines or on colon cancer is useful too, but do we want that on the wiki ??

It's not like it has to be on the Reprap Wiki or it will be nowhere else on the internet : it can be on the RADDS' website, you can find it there. The only reason people insist for it to be on the Reprap wiki is to advertise it ( which was admitted here ), and that is simply not what the wiki is for.

The reprap wiki is not for advertising. If the wiki had enough man-power, the page woudn't have existed in the first place, you just got used to an anomaly, that's it, end of story.

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arthurwolf
Accusing me of doing this because I make Smoothieboard is dishonest and outrageous, I was a part of this community long before I started Smoothie ( including in some moderate admin capacities ), and I did not decide anything, just apply a well established wiki ruling. Additionally, quite a few of the Reprap admins have projects and products related to the Reprap project, it's what happens when the same people are active in a project, *and* actually design things, they'll end up both being volunteers and having companies. It's normal. If you think this page shouldn't be deleted that's fine, we can debate that, but accusing me of being dishonest is just not cool. Not cool at all.

Not accusing. Getting you in this thread with a provoking statement was what I did It worked Don't be cross with me.

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arthurwolf
This has been marked as Closed-Source and advertising for *well over a year*, with a message saying it would be deleted in march 2016 if the source wasn't released. This is nearly a year later.

Who wrote that message and based on what rule?

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arthurwolf
I only applied a well established rule here,

Again: What rule that is written down where? And at what time was this rule made?

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arthurwolf
I didn't decide anything by myself, the page was supposed to be deleted, but the wiki admins don't have enough time to do it all, so I took care of it, that's it.
Because of my position both as a volunteer and as the creator of Smoothie, I actually take great care of what i do on the wiki, and I try to only apply rulings others have made, or when I actually take a decision by myself, I make sure I have a lot of data and thinking backing me up.

You sure do.

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arthurwolf
Closed source hardware has nothing to do on the reprap wiki,

That is decided by who? The Community? Guess why this thread is open?!

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arthurwolf
this has been long established by this community ( search the forums ), the reprap wiki isn't for advertising closed-source stuff, even if it happens to be compatible.

collected information is not advertising.

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arthurwolf
The project even has an extremely liberal definiton of what Open-Source is.
Most companies, states, projects, associations, the UN, etc, have a definiton of Open-source similar to [www.oshwa.org] but the Reprap wiki goes as far as just saying "sufficent to make a copy" ( if it forbids you from selling it, or modifying it, that's ok apparently, which I find dumb as hell, but that's another subject ). That's incredibly wide and permissive definiton. If a project can't fit a criteria this wide, it doesn'vt have it's place on the Wiki of a major Open-Source project.

Like I stated above, we are far beyond rerprap-style. This would be right at 2007. But we are at 2017... Ten years later.

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arthurwolf
Closed source projects can document their stuff on their own website. Any useful information you want to find, you can find there, you know how to use Google.
Putting it on the Reprap wiki if it's not a part of the community effort, just means it's advertising, and that's not what the Reprap wiki is for ! The reprap wiki is documentation for the reprap project, and the community of volunteer's efforts. It's for Open-Source stuff by Open-Source folks.

The wiki is a part of the biggest 3d-printing community and should reflect their interest.

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arthurwolf
The wiki rules say if it's not open-source, it gets a warning, and if it doesn't become/prove it is open-source, it gets deleted. The page has been around for this long only because the admins are too busy to apply all the rules. You just got used to something that was supposed to be temporary. Now that has been fixed. End of story.

Please share these rules.

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arthurwolf
This is the Reprap project, if this is upsetting you, you probably just don't understand what Open-Source is, and how the project came to be.

Sure I understand. And I have an oppinion. And again, this forum, this community here is more than reprap-only since years. It is time for a little adjustment.

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Der 3D-Druck ist tot, lang lebe der 3D-Druck!

Schreibt mich nicht mehr an, ich hab das drucken an den Nagel gehängt.

Hi folks,

We have had many discussions in the past about rules for wiki pages. Please refer to these discussions to understand how policy has evolved over time:

• When is a design sufficiently open source to be considered a "development" in the wiki and how to handle edge cases. (Dec 14, 2014)
• Suggestions for Improving the RepRap Wiki (Nov 28, 2014)
• Rewording the front page (Sep 26, 2014)
• Is RepRap a link lister, a shopping mall, or should it try to support/strengthen development? (Aug 08, 2014)

Even with all the discussion, it looks like we never finalized these rules and put them on their own wiki page. The closest we have to a "rules" page on the wiki seems to be this one: Category Not Open Source

In the past I have placed warnings on user talk pages like this one. But as of now there is not a formal policy for when to do this. The warning text, if you don't want to click on the link, goes like this:

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example warning text on wiki
It appears that the only edits you are making to the wiki are to add links to your business. This contributes nothing of value.
Furthermore, when you add commercial links in the middle of non-commercial projects it significantly devalues the wiki, such as this edit you made to the Delta page.
Please do not add commercial links to a page unless there is already a well established section of that page with the express purpose of listing commercial links.

We can put together an official rules page and link to it from the wiki sidebar. If anyone can find other rule-like pages on the wiki that I am not aware of, please let me know.

Regarding the pages up for deletion, it is my personal opinion that they should have a big notice saying "not open source" but they should not be deleted. There are indeed vendors that provide terrible support for their products, and then rely on reprap.org for free advertising and free tech support. It is not fair that closed-source parasite companies can get as much free resources from reprap.org as open-source symbiotic companies. However, sometimes a compromise must be made and we have to tolerate unfairness until something better can be worked out.

We want reprap.org to be useful. So if that means compromising sometimes and keeping useful information on the wiki, even if it relates to non-open-source products, then so be it.

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Skimmy

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arthurwolf
Accusing me of doing this because I make Smoothieboard is dishonest and outrageous, [...] Not cool at all.

Not accusing. Getting you in this thread with a provoking statement was what I did It worked Don't be cross with me.

You definitely did accuse me, what you did it for doesn't matter. And suggesting you have to insult me to get me here, is *also* insulting.
If you don't know me, don't assume I'm a bad person doing bad things for bad reasons.
I don't do it to you, don't do it to me.

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Skimmy
Who wrote that message and based on what rule?

It's more than a message, it's actually a template that was created by the Reprap community a few years back, after several large conversations on the subject. Removing advertising from the wiki was actually something that was discussed by the community. If you were not part of that conversation, it doesn't mean it's less valid.

I'm not going to do the work of finding that information for you, I have better things to do and after the way you treated me I really don't feel like doing you a service ... You are welcome to search for it, or contact an admin.

I believe that specific message ( template ) was added by thejollygrimreaper about a year back in a very large batch of such additions. ( and again, if you bothered to look it up instead of expecting others to do the work for you, you could go see that for yourself in the page's history ).

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Skimmy
That is decided by who? The Community? Guess why this thread is open?!

I believe this thread is open because you like complaining about things more than you like looking up the rules that justify those things.

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Skimmy
collected information is not advertising.

By that definition, nothing is advertising ... Absurdities are not going to help things move forward here.

If that "collected information" can be hosted somewhere else, then the fact it is hosted on the reprap wiki instead of somewhere else is by itself advertising.

If you can't see that, you are not lucid about this issue.

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Skimmy

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arthurwolf
The project even has an extremely liberal definiton of what Open-Source is.
Most companies, states, projects, associations, the UN, etc, have a definiton of Open-source similar to [www.oshwa.org] but the Reprap wiki goes as far as just saying "sufficent to make a copy" ( if it forbids you from selling it, or modifying it, that's ok apparently, which I find dumb as hell, but that's another subject ). That's incredibly wide and permissive definiton. If a project can't fit a criteria this wide, it doesn'vt have it's place on the Wiki of a major Open-Source project.

Like I stated above, we are far beyond rerprap-style. This would be right at 2007. But we are at 2017... Ten years later.

What does « we are far beyond rerprap-style » even mean ??

The reprap project you are using today is still built on the 10 years of volunteer work by the community. It's a continuous thing.

And it is *still* an Open-Source project. It wouldn't even *exist* if it weren't Open-Source. The reason it has grown so much is *because* it is Open-Source.

If the way you are thinking was popular 10 years ago, the project wouldn't be as successful as it is today. And if we apply your way of thinking today, it will not be successful as it should be 10 years from now.

The Reprap project has been built on Open-Source contributions by volunteers ( and later on also by companies ), over the years. Non-open-source derivatives of the project are essentially "dead ends" taking away precious ressources that would otherwise be used to push the project forward.

I actually a year or so back, started contacting a lot of major contributors to the project ( including Adrian ) to get their thoughts on the project, and they were pretty unanimous. I hope I find the time later on to actually do a proper survey of most major contributors and write a report on the findings, but the conclusion I take from the answers I have so far is : what makes the Reprap project so awesome and succesful is that it is Open-Source, and whatever makes it less so is hurting it.

If you don't understand that, you don't understand how and why you have the things you have now, and that's just sad.

Without the Open-Source part of this adventure, 3D printers today would still be something you can only dream about using/owning. If they are not it is because of sharing, and Open-Source, and the awesome volunteers.

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Skimmy
The wiki is a part of the biggest 3d-printing community and should reflect their interest.

It actually isn't. This isn't "general 3D printing talk.com"

This is the Reprap wiki.

There are other forums and wikis that are about the 3D printing community "in general", including it's "closed-source" components. Go put information on those wikis.

Just because you want this to be something else doesn't mean it is.

Actually centering this wiki more on "only" reprap thing would actually make it clearer, less prone to "spam"/advertising, and easier to maintain, this is what the admins were trying to do with the deletion warnings you are now complaining about.

And that did not happen 10 years ago, that happened just a year or a bit more back, after *years* of advertising ( like the RADDS page and worse ones ) ruined the wiki, and the community decided to do something about that.

It was decided that if it's not Open-Source it can go document itself *somewhere else*. And that was with an incredibly permissive definiton of Open-Source. I really think that's fair.

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Skimmy

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arthurwolf
The wiki rules say if it's not open-source, it gets a warning, and if it doesn't become/prove it is open-source, it gets deleted. The page has been around for this long only because the admins are too busy to apply all the rules. You just got used to something that was supposed to be temporary. Now that has been fixed. End of story.

Please share these rules.

Please bother to look them up, they are in the forum, and not difficult to find.

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Skimmy

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arthurwolf
This is the Reprap project, if this is upsetting you, you probably just don't understand what Open-Source is, and how the project came to be.

Sure I understand. And I have an oppinion. And again, this forum, this community here is more than reprap-only since years. It is time for a little adjustment.

That ( the fact that closed-source stuff is invading the project ) is actually a bad thing for the project. The fact you don't care doesn't change that.

And an adjustment would be an even worse thing, it's a terrible idea, and I'll work very hard to make sure you don't get your way.

This is an awesome project made by awesome people, it's one of the proofs Open-Source works and is really great, and people like you, who don't care, are the only real danger that could make it go away. Not going to let that happen.

And if like me you care about the Reprap project and the fact that it is Open-Source and should stay that way, please help by talking about it here, and going to the wiki to check if things are actually open-source or not, and adding the proper tags ( just copy existing pages with it ) if they are not.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2017 06:01PM by arthurwolf.

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arthurwolf
Please bother to look them up, they are in the forum, and not difficult to find.

I guess you know something I don't, Arthur!
Can you please share these rules and where to find them?!?!?

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MattMoses
Regarding the pages up for deletion, it is my personal opinion that they should have a big notice saying "not open source" but they should not be deleted. There are indeed vendors that provide terrible support for their products, and then rely on reprap.org for free advertising and free tech support. It is not fair that closed-source parasite companies can get as much free resources from reprap.org as open-source symbiotic companies. However, sometimes a compromise must be made and we have to tolerate unfairness until something better can be worked out.

We want reprap.org to be useful. So if that means compromising sometimes and keeping useful information on the wiki, even if it relates to non-open-source products, then so be it.

I don't think that information should be on the Reprap wiki, even if it's useful. Again, should makerbot be there ? It's useful ... We deleted the makerbot pages from the wiki for a reason ...

However, if users are looking for it, the page can contain the banner *and* a ( non-clickable ) link to the documentation on an external site.

I think it's a good compromise because : 
* It prevents the non-open-source project from profiting from the Reprap project for SEO purposes ( which a page "talking" about it does, or a clicable link too ). It still offers a bit of advertising, but less.
* It still allows users that want to find the information ( for example because the page was linked to in the past ) to find it, *but on an external site*

If your ( talking in general here, not to MattMoses ) complaint is "users should be able to find the information", then pointing to the external site for this project does adress that complaint. If this isn't enough for you, I believe what you are looking for is advertising, and that's just not ok.

I feel a bit awkward about deleting anything that people took some time to contribute, because I respect other people work and time, even when I don't especially need / enjoy it.

If we need to, I'd be ok with removing non open source products information from the wiki provided that :

- We clearly state that rule on a page any new wiki users cannot miss to read => warn people not to waste their time.
- The existing information which can help users exists somewhere else.
- We replace the deleted content by a link to the external location of that information.

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

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DeuxVis
I feel a bit awkward about deleting anything that people took some time to contribute, because I respect other people work and time, even when I don't especially need / enjoy it.

If we need to, I'd be ok with removing non open source products information from the wiki provided that :

- We clearly state that rule on a page any new wiki users cannot miss to read => warn people not to waste their time.
- The existing information which can help users exists somewhere else.
- We replace the deleted content by a link to the external location of that information.

That sounds super reasonable to me.
I'd add a provision though. For non-open-source project that have been relying on the Reprap wiki to provide information, they should transfer that information to their website. We can give them a year to do so like we did before. After a year, we delete the info and replace it with a link to their website ( or they do it themselves ).

Hi arthurwolf,

Please do not remove any additional information on your competitors' products (or any other information, for that matter) from the wiki until the rules issue is sorted out. I reverted your recent edits on the RADDS and AZSMZ_Mini pages. I also felt it necessary to protect these pages because you have reverted not only my edits but also those of another admin (VDX).

Please allow me to make a few observations:

1. The wiki still does not have a clear and public policy regarding when pages should be deleted. So even if a page is advertising (or "not open source" or whatever), we can't point to a rules page that says they should be deleted.
2. Earlier in this conversation you indicated that such rules "are in the forum, and not difficult to find." I asked you to support this claim, but you have not done so. I am not aware of any official rules regarding advertising on the wiki, and personally I don't think such rules exist at this point. We need to agree on and publish the rules before we go around deleting pages.
3. You are deleting pages that describe your competitors' products, so you clearly have a conflict of interest here.

Just for the record: I do not care if RADDS and AZSMZ_Mini are ultimately removed from the wiki. However, we must develop and publish a consistent policy before doing so.

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MattMoses
Hi arthurwolf,

Please do not remove any additional information on your competitors' products (or any other information, for that matter) from the wiki until the rules issue is sorted out.

That's fine.

The reason I was deleting those is because nobody is taking care of removing advertising from the Wiki.
If somebody takes care of it, that's great for me, less things to do.

I fear that's not going to happen though, some of those pages have been marked for deletion for over a year ... I would have expected no matter if I'm a competitor of anyone, me doing work that has been tagged by others would be fine.

Note I was deleting those based on the rules as I'm aware of those.
If you now think we need a discution to change those rules that's fine, but I can't be blamed for not respecting the new rules when they don't exist yet and i'm applying the old ones.

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MattMoses
I reverted your recent edits on the RADDS and AZSMZ_Mini pages. I also felt it necessary to protect these pages because you have reverted not only my edits but also those of another admin (VDX).

I wasn't aware those were made by admins, most such edits are traditionally made by the advertisers so I didn't feel the need to check.

Also note a lock isn't necessary *at all* ... I'll gladly comply to any decision admins make here ( I even currently comply to some decisions I despise ), I haven't shown any kind of sign i'm some sort of rogue editor, I'm just applying previous decisions made by others.

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MattMoses
Please allow me to make a few observations:

1. The wiki still does not have a clear and public policy regarding when pages should be deleted.

When pages have a tag saying "make this open-source or we'll delete it past date X" for over a year, I would expect that's clear enough.

Apparently the folks who made those rules and applied them aren't much around anymore, but that doesn't change those rules existed and were applied. I was just following up on that.

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MattMoses
So even if a page is advertising (or "not open source" or whatever), we can't point to a rules page that says they should be deleted.

I'm all for such a page existing, but nobody writes it and the meantime the wiki is infested with advertising ... has been going on for a *long* time. I would advise *until* such a page is actually written, actually removing advertising should be fine ( wikis have history tracking ).
Because if the rule is "until we write up rules on advertising, advertising is fine", you are going to end up with an ad-filled wiki, which is what is happening right now. So much so that some users are now upset when advertising is removed, because it's become something they are used to.

Don't get me wrong I'm all for "let's figure out the rules before deleting", but historically that has been a horrible idea, because people say they are going to do things and they don't do them. That happens a lot ... volunteers and stuff.

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MattMoses
2. Earlier in this conversation you indicated that such rules "are in the forum, and not difficult to find." I asked you to support this claim, but you have not done so. I am not aware of any official rules regarding advertising on the wiki, and personally I don't think such rules exist at this point. We need to agree on and publish the rules before we go around deleting pages.

I really don't have time to look those up, I had a lazy try at it and didn't find them, but the forum's seach function isn't really as good as I expected. I remember the conversation involved at least two other admins so I would have expected those admins to step up and remind everybody of those. But apparently they aren't active right now, so sure, do whatever you want.

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MattMoses
3. You are deleting pages that describe your competitors' products, so you clearly have a conflict of interest here.

Ok, don't make me laugh. Current wiki editing policy was decided mostly by Traumflug ( well, him and general apathy ), who sells the Gen7 stuff.
( and my pages have been edited/ruled on by Traumflug many times besides his obvious conflict of interest. )

That's why the Reprap wiki has this incredibly stupid rule where CC-BY-NC is considered "open-source" ( Gen7 "happens" to be -NC ). That's laughable to anyone else in the OSHW world I have talked about.

Have the reprap wiki actually have the same definition of Open-Source as the rest of the world, then you can lecture me on "conflict of interrest". You know what ? If this farce of a definiton is fixed, and *actually enforced*, I'll gladly promise never to edit the wiki ever again.

In the meantime, this is an incredibly hypocritical comment.

Not only that but it's also a completely unfair accusation. *Because* I created Smoothie, and i'm aware that this could cause conflicts of interrest, I actually took great care of not making any decisions *on my own*, and I only *applied* decisions others have made.
And even that is too much ? That's a conflict of interest ?
And now because nobody takes care of cleaning up the wiki, we are a year after those decisions, nobody remembers them, and applying them means i'm accused of a conflict of interrest. Stupid.

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MattMoses
Just for the record: I do not care if RADDS and AZSMZ_Mini are ultimately removed from the wiki. However, we must develop and publish a consistent policy before doing so.

Anyone want to bet that's not happening ? Reprap history says it's not going to ...

... there weren't many of the core team members active or around - on the admins mailing list only Adrian answerd my "who's there alive" post.

So it seems, we have to discuss this in a much smaller group now ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

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VDX
... there weren't many of the core team members active or around - on the admins mailing list only Adrian answerd my "who's there alive" post.

So it seems, we have to discuss this in a much smaller group now ...

Or a much larger group ?

Communities like this loose core members all the time, it's normal ... Reprap has been around for a decade, you'd expect some folks to go do something else.

When that happens, the idea is you want to talk about it publicly, and bring some new people in ( "the larger group" ).

If we were collectively able to decide on what we want the Wiki/Forum to be ( rules, general objectives in term of content ), I'd definitely be up for helping with rewrites/re-organisations/admin tasks. I'm sure others would be too.

Also, the wiki is ugly as hell ( and that's very easy to fix ), and super slow ( I'm pretty sure if we ask a few of the thousand companies that wouldn't exist without reprap they'd participate in paying for better hosting ).

A little off topic, sorry, just telling for your information :

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VDX
... there weren't many of the core team members active or around - on the admins mailing list only Adrian answerd my "who's there alive" post.

There might have been an email problem with that mailing list because :

1) I didn't get your original question there.
2) I received Adrian answer, and then replied myself.
3) Two other people replied that way (Chris Bate, Matt Moses) but you (Viktor) didn't receive it apparently.

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

... yes, didn't get a notification or answer others than from Adrian

Who's responsible now for the lists and the forums software?

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Quote
VDX
Who's responsible now for the lists and the forums software?

Nobody feels responsible, so nobody is responsible. It just happens to run. As far as I can see, forum and wiki software is untouched for several years now. With one exception, somebody turned off the two-hourly backup a year ago, making it a daily backup.

I can't even recommend to engage more than with a couple of simple tasks (like small wiki edits, spam deletion). All you can earn is hate, like we can see in the posts of a particular user above. If you do something small, people suddenly try to make you responsible for everything. "You're responsible" is a shortcut for "Hey, I'm too lazy to do my work on my own, so I'm searching for a reason to get you into doing this". Community backing for engaged people simply doesn't exist. A vision for the future of RepRap doesn't exist either. Interest in the community is too small to get something simple like an election with a noticeable number of votes onto track.

If there's community backing, it's for those doing no community work at all, but selling something cheap. That's how life is.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

... I don't see this that negative - do some sort of the forums "house-keeping" since 2007 now ... but only on the forums software, not on server level.

But could be, it's only my special sort of "endurance", as I'm thinking and planning for longterm ranges -- developing and using "additive manufacturing" on my own since around 1990

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Hi Everyone.

I created a new Policy page for the RepRap wiki. It is here: Policy

Please take a look. Tell me what you think. Feel free to edit this page as much as you like. Let's see if we can get some input from multiple users. I hope we can get a somewhat stable consensus for the policy page, and then start to apply it.

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MattMoses
I created a new Policy page for the RepRap wiki. It is here: Policy

Excellent. I added two points to the deletion policy:

- Ask for a link to a place of discussion.

- Explicitly allow to edit the page during the discussion period. This may be not obvious to everyone.

If you don't like this, please revert it.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

... a pretty big chunk of valuable information

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Thanks for your input guys.

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Traumflug
I added two points to the deletion policy

Looks good to me!

I also added some text suggested by Adrian (via email) regarding suitability for children, and a few lines discouraging weapons.