Talk:Faction

In Anarchopedia, there is currently 10 existing identifying factions. (Red Faction, Green Faction, Pink Faction, Blue Faction, Gold Faction, Friends of Lulu, The Insane, Elves, Trolls, Orcs, GNUs, Black Bloc) The following proposal deals with making these ten factions Administrative-Political factions of Anarchopedia.

See also Talk:Tendency for a proposal that would make a lesser kind of faction involuntary, to help users sort out the bias in what they read.

For identifying purposes, each user should be associated with one (prefferably only one) faction. The factions should internally choose their own power structure, yet each faction should be accosiated with one user, it's leader. Not leader in the sense of telling people what to do and what not to do, but leader in the sense of representative. Each faction should also ideally be represented with a symbol, that allows visual recognition. (A simple example is a stylized tree for the greens, or the hammer and sicle for the reds.) To encourage growth, then, competition. Whenever a page is edited by a user, (exept for a minor edit or, of course, delete), the page is associated with the user's faction. (A possible usage of this would be to replace or (preferrably) merge the black star with the faction symbol.)

Secondly, on polls affecting sitewide issues, that allows for the wideness of alternatives, all alternatives should be brough forward within a faction, and then voted upon with a free vote. Sitewide contests, were applicable, should also be handled factionwise.

Administrative-Political factions is not a tool for reducing democracy on the site, but a tool for simplifying management. Additionally, unregistered users are faction-free, and since unregistered users cannot be barred from the site, neither should it be required to join a faction, merely recomended. A good place for choosing factions would be the preferences panel, with "Undecided" being the default, and explanatory links where applicable. This would involve making a new set of special sites, and a new database field?

Voting suggested, as is implementation while language splits and users are few.

--Anni 07:59, 5 Jan 2005 (CST)

Leaders? Factions?

I don't like this, and I've said it before. I don't like the idea of factions at all, and I believe if they exist, they shouldn't be anarchopedia-sanctioned. If people wanna get totgether and make the, great, but otherwise, why should we force political party structures on an anarchist site? Let people coalesce on their own if they wanna form these things, not have a central force organize them like this.

Furthermore, the idea of representation is antithetical to Anarchism. We believe in delegates, elected to implement specific decisions that have already been made by the collective, for a very short and limited term. Not leaders or representatives, who are elected and then make decisions of their own accord.

I think we should abolish the factions and let people form them as they see fit, as the site grows, not build them for them. As for the edits thing, I don't think it's necessary once factions do appear, people can just put a template on their user pages that links them to the faction, and people can tell their bias like that.--Che y Marijuana 17:38, 5 Jan 2005 (CST)

Clarification

As I mentioned, this is not forcing a party structure on anyone. Anyone who is, or wants to be, an anarchist, can merely fly the No-Faction banner. Also, this is not leader, more of a representative or front figure. The identity of the party so to speak. Of course, this particular part is not strictly neccessary. Also, the leader does not need to be a permanent figure.

Secondly, not all users on the sites are in fact anarchists. (If I were to lable myself, I would be Pink or Green, go figure.) Some are interested in the dictionary part, some are intrested merely in helping the site grow. Of course, all nonanarchists could move of and found a "Democrapedia", a testing ground for Democratic developement, but is there really a need? I think that Anarchopedia could easily, and should be the most colorful dictionary on the net.

Actually, there are many advocates of democratic wiki governance at Wikipedia, (the most prominent right now being probably English Wikipedia Users David Vasquez, and perhaps Adam Carr and Xed) even if they are currently drowned out by technologically-empowered "sysops". Even more interesting, web services like DoWire.org are now paying a lot of attention to the GFDL corpus and its evolution.

In closing, I would like to say that the factions are not hardset, and there is no demands or requirements for entering them. They should also not be used for collective punishment, because this goes against the very concept of Anarchopedia.

Strictly speaking, the dictionary itself is not tied to Anarchy, it's users and content is. As the non-anarchic part of it grows, so should the choise of identities for the users. --Anni 20:40, 5 Jan 2005 (CST)

Alt. proposal

See Anarchopedia:en:direct democracy for a trollish proposal to work as much as possible on direct democracy principles, taking into account the limits of same.

Direct democracy is fine when the issue is well-defined, though, it almost always takes a lot of work by factions to clarify the "sides", and get people to care, or decide what their real values are. Subjecting complex issues to a vote without some deliberative democracy and some factional struggle to clarify issues and points of difference, almost always results in a very bad outcome based only on emotional reaction. There's also the issue of when to hold a vote, what degree of quorum should apply - for more serious decisions one would require more than simple majority, up to and including consensus decision making methods.

Factions and so on

The question is: Who can say what is sanctioned on Anarchopedia? Me? Or some other contributor? I don't think so. I don't think even that anyone or any group on Anarchopedia can say what is sanctioned here. Because sanction is not anarchism.

I don't expect that we would be in the situation where we count faction votes: Greens said "yes", Blues said "no", Gnus said "yes"... It is not anarchism, too.

But, if someone likes to talk only with Pinks, let (s)he talk only with them.

If someone want to make communication at Anarchopedia through factions, let (s)he try. If someone other doesn't want to talk in that way, (s)he can ignore that. Also, (s)he can make some other proposal for the way how to communicate at Anarchopedia. And it should be on the main page, too.

I would like not to build Anarchopedia with liberals, fascists or Stalinists. Also, I don't think that liberals, fascists and Stalinists want to build anarchist encyclopedia :) But criticism of anarchism is also welcome. Of course, bullshit like "Somalia is the example of anarchism" is welcome only in section "bullshits". (Or, if we want to be "civilized" in the section "some lies about anarchism" or something like that.)

But, emotional anarchist speech is not welcome, too; i.e., if someone wants to write about Franco or George Bush, (s)he should not write something like "this asshole, Gorge Bush" or even "Franco is guilty for the beginning of the WWII" or any other nonsense. (Look at the North America article at eng: as an example of emotional speech which should be removed.)

And, the most important thing: I think that Anarchopedia should be encyclopedia of their contributors. I would like that it would be an anarchist encyclopedia, encyclopedia for anarchist and the place where anarchist should test how to make anarchy. (Also, I want to be a part of such Anarchopedia, not some other.) But, if Anarchopedia becomes main stream liberal encyclopedia or "anarcho"-capitalist encyclopedia, or ... -- it would be a defeat of anarchist community (as well as me as a part of that community), not a defeat of Anarchopedia.

But, I think that Anarchopedia would not be a defeat of anarchist community. Friends from FAU took deu: and take a care about it :) I hope we would have similar communities on eng:, fra:, spa:, etc. --Milos Rancic 19:40, 8 Jan 2005 (CST)

Reproposal

As I realize that having a number of factions set in stone by the site, I will change my suggestion to Millosh. Rather than a number of factions, to set up a framework for creating and maintaining factions. Factions should not be required, of course, nor should they be a tool of collective punishment. As mentioned elswhere, Anarchy is not just about yourself, it's also needed to learn to deal with people with oppinions different from your own. And while Anarchopedia is an encyclopedia about Anarchism, it should also be a tool for people that are not necesarrily anarchists. --Anni 04:25, 9 Jan 2005 (CST)

Sorry for waiting... Of course, you are free to make your initiative about Anarchopedia. Write your ideas and link it from the main page from the section About Anarchopedia. --Milos Rancic 13:52, 13 Jan 2005 (CST)

As it is, however, my ideas requires me to be a developer (which I am not) or get help from a developer, because I need (want) to make a number of "special" pages, that automatically generates the user lists of the existing factions taken from database fields, and an addition to the the preference panel that allows users to populate the database with their choises of the existing factions (or create new ones?). I cannot do this on my own. --Anni 03:00, 14 Jan 2005 (CST)

You are developer now. You want to change MediaWiki engine? I think it is better to test it first on http://test2.anarchopedia.org. I think you need shell access for that... Please, send me an email (millosh@users.sourceforge.net). --Milos Rancic 05:22, 14 Jan 2005 (CST)