Board Thread:Site Discussions/@comment-24014422-20160917140241/@comment-167456-20160918113524

I said something like this on the previous thread: If we have fewer active editors than we used to, then the only viable solution is to remove the hard requirements for community engagement, which are now acting as a barrier to change. For discussions, this means removing the requirements for a certain number of people to have commented, and the only way that works is by taking a default assumption of consensus in the event that nobody responds.

My personal recommendation would be to assume consensus is in favour of change unless demonstrated otherwise. This means, if someone wants to make a change, and nobody tells them not to, they should consider that they have explicit permission to make that change. After all, be bold is still the first item on our policy page.

Some people might feel uncomfortable doing this, but they shouldn't. Nothing anyone can do will damage the wiki irreperably. I'm going to repeat that: There is nothing anyone can do that will irreperably damage SNN. Nothing. (Deletions are more awkward to reverse, but not impossible.)

That being the case, people should feel free to experiment. If nothing else, if they don't test the changes that they want to make, how will people make an informed decision about them?

There should ultimately be more editing and more reversing of edits. Reversing edits doesn't necessarily mean they shouldn't have been made in the first place, it means that something was tried and it was subsequently determined that it wasn't working. That's fine! That's how wikis are supposed to work!

And if you want to encourage people more people to edit, stop actively discouraging them and throwing barriers in their way. The Welcome message that is posted on new users' message walls doesn't even tell people that they are allowed to edit! There is no encouragement there whatsoever, just a list of things they should do before contributing and a list of things they should never do. If you want a culture shift, that Welcome message is a good place to start.