A gentle part of the proposed Gentle Reductionism program. Now being updated. Thanks to Robert Di Falco and Phil Goodwin for their input, and to Ole Andersen and others for their actions.
Wiki Badges are of five types:
Categories and topics - propose that the current review is a good idea. See Please Please Dont Categorize Every Page On Wiki and Category Category.
2 Those informing about a refactoring after the event - propose only:
Deleted Page. Pages for the rest to bow out gracefully using no more than four words of plain English.
3 Those indicating that a page, or section of a page, might usefully be refactored in future - propose only one:
Edit Hint. Others such as Replace Hint, Delete Me, FixMeTag, Refactor Me and the like would simply say "Defunct Wiki Badge"
Links about links, like See Also and FromWhere - propose disuse and gradual undoing of past use. The community launched an unexpected extermination campaign for See Also in the second half of 2000. Only a few are now kept in captivity (such as on this page), for reasons of science, history or nostalgia. Their pages should succinctly explain why their use is discouraged.
"Wiki's version of text-based emoticons" (Robert Di Falco below), such as Rudeness Objection, Boring Objection and perhaps even Irony Warning and Piss Take - propose that these are used creatively for the enrichment of Wiki
Details
Refactored And Archived is more general purpose than Deleted And Archived and anyone can see if there's only a small amount of text left. Deleted Page protects against inadvertant destruction of Edit Copy, if the old content is not considered worth being independently archived.
As explained in Proud Refactorer, the experience of going through all Delete Me badges and trying to remove as many as possible through sensitive refactoring convinced me there was value in a single badge, more general purpose in name than Delete Me, that would indicate areas where tidying up could do good. Just using Edit Hint would make it easier for Humble Refactorer to search for new work, and it's trivial to use Plain English around the badge to make clear the kind of edit suggested, see Move Me To for one example. This would make badges like Move Me To redundant (one of many that has never been used).
I'm saying that less is more for Wiki conventions. And that we should think of the whole "field" of Wiki Badges (as linguists would say in what's called Field Theory in semantics) rather than proposing individual badges in an ad hoc way in the future. This is now probably most important for categories.
Discussion
Wiki Badges all come with instructions so they never have to be memorized.
Edit Hint or anything like it doesn't or shouldn't need instructions. Only Refactored And Archived and Deleted Page do.
The class of badges in number 5 is interesting - Wiki's version of text-based emoticons. In fact, they are like emoticons on steroids since they are terse, but you can also click them to learn what they mean. As such, it is more debatable whether they add value or not. I sort of think they do. Anyone can quickly and tersly convey a feeling and the uninitiated user need only click on it to get a more detailed description of what is meant. While you may not like the idea of BoringObjection, people will still write this even if they don't have a Wiki Text Emoticon to say it quickly. In fact, this class of Wiki Badges are almost an evolution in language. Think about it. They allow the initiated to exchange ideas and feedback much more freely and rapidly while providing a path of discovery to the uninitiated (through their links). Anyway, this is just another way of looking at the topic. Right now, I think I am in favor of these WikiTextEmoticons. -- Robert Di Falco
It seems to me that changing the text of the referenced pages only makes the problem worse. Those pages ought to have meaningful descriptions so that if anyone ever finds themselves there they'll have a clue about what is going on. The real solution to the problem would be to find all of the referring pages and change them to use Plain English. Perhaps some discussion could be added to those pages in order to indicate that some people don't like the convention. For instance maybe See Also could read something like this: "Introduces a list of pages that are related to the current topic.". In general the best way to deal with a convention that you find unappealing is find ways to edit it out of pages that use it, be respectful of those who disagree with your changes, and endevor to find common ground. -- Phil Goodwin
We don't need no stinking badges!
See Category Wiki Tag for further tag links
See original on c2.com 