User:Darkfrog24/Downturn

(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.

The following is a proposed conflict resolution technique.

Although we all share the goal of providing our readership with quality content, sometimes we disagree about the best way to do that. Sometimes long, spirited conversations are fun and productive and sometimes they are not, but they can produce lots of posts that appear under the "Recent changes" link where it is possible that they may distract or bother other participants, especially on smaller Wikimedia projects.

One way of keeping things to the point and drawing them to a close may be to say I request downturn.

What is downturn?

• When downturn is in force, every post must have fewer characters than the one before it. Posters may write whatever they like so long as their post is shorter than the one to which they are replying.
• No one may post twice in a row.
• When one post falls under 100 characters, the participants may, if they choose, restart with one no-limit post.

This will have the effects of...

• Forcing the participants to focus on the parts of their discussion that they think are most important.
• Cool the heck on down without having to shut the heck on up.

Since one of the goals of downturn is to prevent the discussion from negatively affecting others, anyone may request it, whether they were participating in the discussion or not.

But how would we enforce this?

We don't. It's voluntary.