With the help of the Wikidot Tribal Council (the folks who built and manage the Community site), I've put together a set of guidelines that are meant to help keep controversial discussions healthy and constructive.

In any discussion where people express conflicting needs, there is going to be emotion, and eventually, argument. We've seen it on this blog (more than once) and as Wikidot grows, it'll probably happen in more places too.

To be honest, reaction from the Tribal Elders was mixed, some were against the WCPG and some for, though over the last ten days we've arrived at what looks like a good version. Some people argued for a simpler informal "we'll delete stuff we consider disruptive" approach but for me, any guidelines need to be explicitly spelled out, or we fall into accusations of "censorship".

So here are the key points:

• It is up to site admins to voluntarily apply the WCPG to their own sites. No-one else will impose these, and certainly not Wikidot.com.
• We define what is considered as "seriously disruptive" activities.
• We define a set of recommendations for constructive posting, mostly common sense and politeness.
• We define a simple process for intervening and banning users when necessary.

I'm applying the WCPG to this site, and similarly, to the projects forum. These are the two forums I'm admin of, and which we've been using heavily over the last months in the Wikidot "hot zone".

Let me know what you think, and whether you'd apply these to your own forums.