MEpedia talk:About

Please review and edit
A new version of this page has been drafted in order to address the issues raised on this discussion page. User:Canele and User:JaimeS, please review the draft at User:Pyrrhus/About. In a week or two I will ask Kmdenmark to copy over the final version. Thanks! Pyrrhus (talk) 23:43, August 5, 2019 (EDT)

Add a “Contact us” section
Since our website doesn’t have a “Contact us” page, we should probably have a “Contact us” section on this page. All it needs is the postal address and the email mepedia @ meaction. net (we could have a contact form instead of listing the email address, but that’s probably too much work) Pyrrhus (talk) 18:42, 27 April 2019 (EDT)

Add a brief “Disclaimer” section
We should probably include a brief note explaining that MEAction is not the author of the content on MEpedia, for people who don’t quite understand how a wiki works. We can link to MEpedia:General disclaimer for more information. Pyrrhus (talk) 21:59, June 27, 2019 (EDT)

Needs a Rewrite
Since this is supposed to be a public-facing summary ‘About’ MEpedia, shouldn’t it include a brief history of MEpedia and the impetus and initial purpose of the project? Maybe just a paragraph or two describing the historical timeline, a paragraph or two about goals, and a paragraph or two about core principles? Any rewrite should be careful to use the objective tense in this page. Instead of saying “our symptoms”, it should say “patients’ symptoms”. Instead of saying “we want to be transparent”, say “MEpedia strives for transparency”. Etc. Generally speaking, it should make the page more “public-facing”, rather than “contributor-centric”. Tagging page editors for discussion: User:Ollie User:Brettz9 Pyrrhus (talk) 02:03, 26 January 2019 (EST)

The existing "Core Principles" section can be divided into public-facing statements and contributor-centric statements. The public-facing statements would be kept and the contributor-centric statements would be moved to the "Editorial Guidelines" page or the "Science Guidelines" page, as appropriate. Pyrrhus (talk) 21:47, 14 March 2019 (EDT)

Perhaps this page should be merged with the MEpedia page. It seems to serve the same purpose. Pyrrhus (talk) 21:07, 26 March 2019 (EDT)

The core principles have now been merged into the MEpedia page. Pyrrhus (talk) 19:11, 7 April 2019 (EDT)

Hearing no objections, I am going to request an admin to make this page a redirect to MEpedia. Pyrrhus (talk) 12:01, 12 April 2019 (EDT)
 * Hey Pyrrhus, sorry, late to this. The only reason I can see to have two separate pages would be that eventually, the MEpedia entry in mainspace would be a page sourced mainly for third-party coverage of MEpedia--including possibly even criticism!--so it might be worthwhile to retain a page the project solely controls to describe its ambitions and a related discussion page for any queries/comments/suggestions about the mission, since the mainspace entry's discussion page wouldn't really be an appropriate place to discuss that. Thoughts? Canele (talk) 13:41, 12 April 2019 (EDT)
 * Thanks for the feedback! That makes sense, except that no one has expressed an interest in writing a separate "About" page and the current page is plagiarized from facebook and contains many problems.  If anyone wants to write a separate "About" page in the future, they can simply remove the redirect.  Besides, if MEpedia is truly about transparency, then we shouldn't mind a little criticism in the "About" page...
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 13:55, 12 April 2019 (EDT)
 * Yes, for sure I think any significant third-party criticism should be accounted for in the mainspace entry--as it would be (ideally) in any mainspace entry.
 * It is a quandary, what to do about this project-space page though. It def needs improvement but no one's working on it in part because page protection means (almost) no one can; and even if that were lifted, there's still usually not anyone around with sufficient authority approve revisions... Still I kind of think this is a worthwhile venue to preserve so in the event of bigger conversations among editors about mission...
 * What would you think of, instead of redirecting this page, for now simply pointing the main page's "About" link to the mainspace MEpedia entry? Am I correct to think that link is the only reason this page is public-facing and otherwise this would just be another projectspace page that only contributors are likely ever to stumble on? Canele (talk) 14:31, 12 April 2019 (EDT)
 * We could certainly link directly from the main page to the MEpedia page as you say, but that would make MEpedia:About an orphan page. Then the page will likely be forgotten about.  If we link directly from the main page to the MEpedia page as you say, then we should definitely delete the MEpedia:About entirely.  But I'm fine with either a redirect or a direct link with a delete.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 15:38, 12 April 2019 (EDT)
 * I'm not sure it's preferable to delete than leave it in case of eventual interest in updating it--it seems valuable to have some location that's meant for conversation about mission (which the mainspace really shouldn't host--it definitely is unhelpful to muddle debate about how to describe the project with debate about what the project should be). Also, I suspect it's less likely to be forgotten than (if deleted) recreated as a new page--anyone coming from another wiki will look for such a page (à la: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About). Hm. Perhaps blank the page with an "Under construction, join the conversation on MEpedia_talk:About" note and leave this discussion page open for that construction? Canele (talk) 16:38, 12 April 2019 (EDT)
 * It would be tremendously embarrassing to have a blank page when people click on the "About" link. It sounds more and more like a redirect is the only viable option, which would preserve this discussion page for the future if someone wants to pursue this further.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 17:05, 12 April 2019 (EDT)
 * Hm well it sounds like we just don't see it the same way. Maybe others can weigh in. I'd rather leave it as is for folks to suggest improvements to than direct a projectspace page to mainspace. Canele (talk) 17:23, 12 April 2019 (EDT)
 * That makes sense, let's do that. Thanks for all your thoughtful input!!!
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 21:30, 12 April 2019 (EDT)

Broken link -- EscapeTheFog (talk) 21:20, June 10, 2019 (EDT)
The "would love your help" hyperlink is broken. Not sure what the correct URL should be, so I couldn't fix it myself.