After some thinking, I've gathered my thoughts more.
How We Got Here
It's important to recognize that how the Wiki operates in the modern day, and our grants and process is almost completely incidental, and can be traced back to the day the wiki made the jump to Wikidot (thanks Fritz.) The relevant bylines, author autonomy and the the site's ability to preserve works, are as follow:
Right to delete one's own work
This is, for lack of a better word, a consequence of both the Wiki's permission setup and the culture around negatively rated works at the time, and we've just never revisited it until now. I am unable to confirm whether this ability has always existed, or was turned on sometimes around 2010.
Regardless, deletion and deletion requests were treated as a way to excise low-rated works rather than a principled rights of self (not to say it wasn't used in that way, but the primary culture of the time was to get rid of "bad" stuff quickly, and often with prejudice), and we just rolled with it up until the event of Fishmonger.
Right to preserve the wiki's continuity as a collective project
This technically came with the license (sort of), but was less a unified effort and more a single person's (or two) attempt to centralize SCP's continued existence and not die a scattered, obscure death. Generally speaking, this was exercised once at the start of the current wiki's porting of all works, which was not done with most authors' permission (related: Ode to the Unknown Authors), but was ultimately crucial in how we got here today — SCP-173 and many other ported, are not original copies, which have long been lost to time and link rot.
As a side note, CC BY-SA 3.0 did further lay the groundwork in this regard, but was more or less a retroactive application upon Moto42's release.
Additional thoughts
My perspective on this doesn't have much weight on how the wiki should pragmatically proceed, but I don't find some of these to be compelling arguments on both principled and licensing matters.
If we cannot protect the autonomy of our authors to remove their own works for whatever reason, I feel we're doing a disservice to authors.
Now what should I think be prioritized? Author autonomy, obviously.
When one contributes to the wiki, they already know that they are participating in a large collaborative environment that exists because members have taken care to flesh out and build upon the cumulative body of works that came before, and will be connected to afterwards.
Writing for the SCP Wiki is itself exercising the ability to use pre-existing foundations to platform your own work, which only exist because there is an underlying assumption of courtesy, and to pay that mindfulness forward so that others can do the same. If that assumption no longer holds true, what then?
Additionally, one is already aware that writing for SCP means you must publish your own work under a the same or later license - CC BY-SA 3.0 in this case. This is a free culture license, meaning you consciously submit your work to the larger community to use as they see fit, having waive all the relevant rights that allow for redistribution, remix, etc. with only the two rights fixed, being attribution and share-alike, i.e. acknowledgement of creator and paying it forwards so other can do the same.
The only works I can see this angle be bypassed are those written before the definitive application of the license (before 28 Oct 2013) and those with versions of the license does not have moral rights waived (Japan and the likes.), but this is ultimately an aside to satisfy my observations.
And even then, do you think these articles aren't archived elsewhere? I could always point to those archives for you.
—TroutMaskReplica
I do find it puzzling that the official wiki has no real recourse to preserving their own state of history and third-party archives can.
To be clear, publishing works to the SCP Wiki means you have already willingly ceded part of your authorial autonomy to the will of the community - the rating module is the perfect example of this.
While I do think authors should be allowed to pull their own works, this ultimately exists as a form of gentlemen's agreement which only go an extent that is reasonable (less than Harmony).
Being okay with releasing your work to one of the most widespread copyleft licenses in the world, but not being okay with the wiki exercising the rights afforded by it strikes me as a odd stance.
Comparison and analogues
There is, as far as I can tell, almost nothing else that operates like SCP Wiki in terms of function and scale, so only extrapolations can be served here.
I'm not involved in any other collaborative fiction communities, but in terms of platforms for hosting fiction online more generally, it's very normal for authors to be allowed to remove their work at any time, and would actually be unusual to prohibit that. Although it is collaborative, the SCP Wiki is primarily a platform for hosting individual works of fiction,[…]
—Jerden
I don't agree with this comparison, because the SCP Wiki is not primarily an archive of works like AO3 or Fanfiction.net, and has not been even back in the early days of EditThis. If we were, there would've been no need for Rewrite/Curations, no need for the rating module and no need for deletions policy save the bare minimum of making sure articles isn't in violation of the license or legal areas.
If anything, the site is closer to Wikipedia, fan-run wikis (like Super Mario Wiki), or collections of published anthologies (it's complicated). Those are organized in a way that prioritize collaboration for the collective experience, and unilateral deletions by a single person is unheard of.
Our closest online analogue, the Orion's Arm Universe Project, has this to say on the balance of collective and authorial rights:
Say I change my mind and want to take my material off Orion's Arm, can I?
In the past we have had members demand that we remove their material from the OAUP. To stop this happening in the future we now ask that anyone submitting any materials agree to the Terms and Conditions. As outlined in Section II Part 1 — Grant of Rights.
We do this to protect the collaborative efforts of the OAUP. It is the nature of a shared project like the OAUP to constantly build on earlier material. This can be compared to a number of people cooperating to build a house, and then one person demanding that the bricks he or she laid must be taken out of the walls — despite the fact those bricks are now supporting the bricks laid by other people. If this is something you cannot agree to, we ask that you not submit material for the project.1
So at the very least, we are not alone in this balancing act, even if our current stance directly stands on the other side of that line.
I would like to note that the relevant part of their Terms & Condition (II.2) is functionally identical to CC BY-SA in terms of how the content can be handled, if narrower in scope. This means that the path of OAUP is an option available to us, if we want to take it.
Moving Forward
I am not able to predict the future, so I don't know a decision may affect site's health in the long run. Still, the following should be our guideposts:
- Authors should, in general, be able to pull their own works, within reasons.
- Staff is responsible for the continued functions and health of the wiki.
As you can tell, our current discussion stems from the perceived butting of these two. If you'd forgive my crass language, I do find the way we stumbled into upholding absolute author autonomy to self-deletion fucking batshit insane, and run contrary to how most of the world work (e.g. open-source software, physical publication).
I'll list out some proposals here:
Implementing a OAUP-style user agreement on restricting self-deletions
As previously stated, we'd actually have an easier time with this on a procedural basis given our license.
However, I also recognize the fucking batshit insane way we've run our wiki, and this would be an incredibly stark change to it. To be frank, this is a futile endeavor, and we're in too deep for this to be pragmatically worth it.
Recommend against this.
Modified Bleep-Dagon-Locke method
Grant staff the ability to reserve a recently-vacated URL that is in a locked series or older than two years.
Curations then have the ability to decide what to do with these, including creating a placeholder/splash page for conceptual summary of the deleted work, a redirect to another page, allowing for submission for Rewrite process, or simply releasing it to be filled as normal.
As the consensus appears to be for near-absolute author autonomy, this should hopefully minimize conceptual damage to the SCP Foundation fabric and staff burden, while respecting the wish of authors.
Recommend for this.
Rounderhouse Proposal
Neutral to this, but can supplement other solutions with little conflict.
SCP Wiki Dedication Deed
This is not actually a proposal, but rather an opt-in contractual agreement for myself to copy to my author page later.
I, the Contributor, hereby grant and assign the SCP Wiki and its staff (or their appointed successors, if applicable), henceforth the Beneficiary, the worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive rights to the following, for all of the Contributor's non-co-authored works submitted to the SCP Wiki (of canonical URL scpwiki.com and scp-wiki.wikidot.com) or its appointed successors:
- Upgrade/Port Contributor's works to the CC BY-SA 4.0, a later version of the BY-SA license, or a license designated as a “BY-SA Compatible License” as defined in BY-SA 4.0;
- Reinstate or reproduce Contributor's work if lost or deleted, to a new URL, site or domain if deemed applicable;
- Control of Contributor's works that is not original literature (e.g. hubs, themes) are ceded to the Beneficiary upon the Contributor's death, departure from the SCP Wiki, or if no longer contactable after two years since last known activity.
Control of Contributor's co-authored works are ceded to the respective co-author(s) upon the Contributor's death, departure from the SCP Wiki, or if no longer contactable after two years since last known activity. If no co-authors are available, control is ceded to the Beneficiary.
This Deed and is grant of rights will be terminated in the event of the SCP Wiki and its staff's cessation of existence, if no known successors are appointed.