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In the next few days, we'll start applying the to some of the questions on meta.

The nature of meta is that heavily upvoted posts become law. It's the vehicle by which the community decides what are the rules that will govern our site. Questions with the FAQ tag are questions that we feel have reached a status important enough to be elevated to the rank of official policy. (Note: FAQ-tagged questions still can be challenged on meta, if deemed necessary.)

Since those questions will be official policies, they will be cleaned up. We want those questions to be clear and to the point, like the ones on Meta Stack Overflow.

Expect to see the following changes to those questions as they get elevated to FAQ status:

  • Turned into Community Wiki to remove ownership.
  • Edited to remove the specifics, be more concise or clearer.
  • All but one answer deleted.
  • Have all comments deleted.

The purpose of this post is to explain the decision, so that people don't think it's some evil attempt at censorship. It isn't. We just want those questions to look good as they will be heavily linked to.

Feel free to use the answer section to propose questions you think deserve the tag.

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  • Questions that become FAQ don't appear to be cleaned up on meta-stackoverflow. I disagree with the deletion of non-top answers - contrary view points and comments should be allowed to co-exist
    – Casebash
    Apr 9, 2011 at 1:05
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    @Casebash: As I said, the questions that become FAQ are elevated to official policy. At that point, contrary views become irrelevant to the users who will benefit from that page. That's why they are removed: so the message is clear and concise.
    – Borror0
    Apr 9, 2011 at 1:26
  • I still disagree with it. This policy is too close to censorship for my tastes
    – Casebash
    Apr 9, 2011 at 11:31
  • I can't edit here on Meta.Skeptics, but the tag:faq needs to be meta-tag:faq to point to the correct tag.
    – Nicole
    May 17, 2011 at 4:05

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I don't understand how questions look good if minority opinions get deleted. They just look undisputed, not good - good is a very subjective category for a skeptics place.

as they will be heavily linked to.

isn't a real argument too; the 'as' is just a conjunction.

For the people who come later, it looks as if there hasn't been a discussion, so they might ask the questions/repeat the opionions, which got deleted, again and again.

Why don't you create new faq-pages, which link to the discussions? This would give you an ordered, disputeless faq-page while the discussion would form a kind of archive for the discussion process.

And why is this announced so shortly before performing the action without discussion?

You're very right in your sorrow, this might look like "some evil attempt at censorship". Of course it does, and of course it is always announced as a cleaning process.

And who is the "we" of the first sentence? The 3 moderators?

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  • The problem with separate FAQ pages is that 1) keeping a non-FAQ page is confusing. It has to be clear that there is a consensus and 2) we want the existing links to the question on the main site to point to the FAQ question and most definitely not to the discussion question.
    – Sklivvz
    Apr 11, 2011 at 12:39
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    a) You, too, are using the word consensus in the wrong way. What you call 'consensus' is a majority. Consensus is, if all agree. b) How is keeping a non-faq page confusing? People, who participated in the discussion would remember the discussion. For everybody, there could be a small note, explaining that the FAQ evolved from -> that discussion, and that the discussion lead to -> this FAQ. How is that confusing? For me, it is confusing to read something which looks like a consensus, but is flagged as discussion, and is cleaned from dissent. It's annoying.
    – user unknown
    Apr 11, 2011 at 14:59
  • a) groupfacilitation.net/Articles%20for%20Facilitators/…
    – Sklivvz
    Apr 11, 2011 at 15:11
  • b) it is confusing to new users.
    – Sklivvz
    Apr 11, 2011 at 15:21
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    a) Your quote: For group facilitators, consensus is most useful as a term describing the process of making decisions collaboratively. So who made the decision to hide dissent? You, Borror0 and Fabian I guess. You 3 had an consensus, yes. I didn't even knew about a decision going on.
    – user unknown
    Apr 11, 2011 at 15:33
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    b) An unjustified claim without any evidence. I can as well claim the opposite, and I do so.
    – user unknown
    Apr 11, 2011 at 15:34

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