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Good evening, everyone. I want to draw your attention to this thread for a few minutes, and I want to make a case for why wiki staff should ignore precedent in the case of Harmony/Roget's articles http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-14007108/town-hall-meeting:mass-deletion-request#
Before I begin, I want to make one thing clear - I don't intend to litigate Harmony's mental state. I believe she has made some irrational and harmful decisions recently, and do not believe this action is being made in good faith, but I'm not a professional.
The specific issue here is whether or not wiki staff should capitulate to the desires of a user who is requesting that they delete over 300 pages, many of which are intertwined with the works of other, unaffiliated authors. This, in my opinion, would be a terrible mistake.
A lot is being said right now about the rights of authors, but part of writing on the wiki is understanding that Creative Commons requires you to give up control of your work as soon as you post it. Everyone there should know this, as it's a fundamental part of the SCP experience
Staff has capitulated to the desires of authors to delete their works in the past twice - once with Fishmonger, and once with Von Pincier. Both times, the authors pulled their articles out of spite, and both times staff capitulated due to not wanting to cause a scene.
To be clear, I don't think staff was necessarily in the wrong here. It's not unreasonable to want to just give these people what they want to make them go away, and in both cases the authors were fairly low impact (despite what has been said about fishmonger's contributions).
However, I feel this case is different. Depending on where you stand on this issue you may feel as if I'm being unkind here, and while I respect your ability to think that I urge you to really consider the implications of capitulating on this issue once again.
I want you to imagine that Dr. Gears came to the wiki one day and requested that staff fully remove everything he'd ever written. That would include the core of several GOIs, articles like 682 and 882, fundamental pieces for a variety of stories.
What that would cause is a creative wash that would disrupt the greater community's ability to both tell and experience a cohesive story. If you wanted to know why it's such a big deal that 682 is dead in 2935, you suddenly would not be able to go and figure that out.
I believe there is a responsibility that you take upon yourself as a contributor when you participate with such volume in a project like the Foundation. Your works become part of the greater cultural makeup of the site. Your contributions become the bedrock for other stories.
Harmony/Roget, like myself, and like Gears, and Bright, and Clef, and everyone else, should know this. Not only is nuking your articles detrimental to your legacy, but also detrimental to the lives of hundreds of thousands of others, people who have done nothing to deserve it.
Staff has no legal obligation to remove anything posted on the wiki, and has only done so in the past out of desire to avoid conflict. Unfortunately, the conflict here has already happened. I do not believe staff should reward that conflict with capitulation.
In her author page post, harmony clarifies by saying this: "You are getting everything I ever wrote as a free gift to do with as you please. Yes, you specifically the person reading this. You own everything. It belongs to you. Do whatever you want to."
It should be clear that the author's intent here is to turn these works over to the community as a whole. Even if I wanted staff to intervene here (or rather, not intervene), I believe their participation is unnecessary. The author has made her desires very clear.
This is why I believe staff should hold a vote to determine whether or not the articles stay, or are deleted. By the author's own admission, these articles have been turned over to the community. Let the community decide what to do with them.
If, after that vote, the community has decided that the best course of action would be to capitulate to Harmony's demands, then so be it. At least in that case it would be a decision made by those who this would most affect - the community.
But, if the community decides against deletion and prefers to keep the articles, then they should remain as they are, by the community's decree. It is my sincere hope that this would be the consensus decision.
A lot is being said right now about author autonomy, and the right of authors to do with their works as they will. I still believe in autonomy, and have argued it time and time again in regards to my works and the works of others.
However, in this case I believe that those most affected by this rash decision should be the ones who have final say on what is to be done. I would expect staff to hold my articles to the same standard, if one day I suddenly demanded everything I've written to be removed.
Please, if you do not wish to see the wiki upended over the desires of a single user, a user who has by her own account handed control of her works to the community as a whole, please comment in that thread and show your support for this initiative.
Lastly, please do try to be kind to staff right now. I have voiced my displeasure with them many times in the last few months, but even I recognize the monumental and heartbreaking task in front of them. If nothing else, they deserve our collective patience.
Thank you. Long live the SCP Wiki.
