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I am trying to be honest, no reassuring. We are continuously trying to solve this problem, but have not been able to do so, and likely won't be able to either, but that doesn't mean that we will stop trying.
Our staff members are unpaid volunteers who are helping out our community just because they are trying to be nice, but there is just too much work for us to handle. Our calc group and wiki edit patrolling teams currently seem to be able to (barely) manage to keep up sufficiently, but we need many more discussion moderators and translation helpers, as we cannot expect people to destroy their lives for no pay over a hobby. So some gratitude to our staff members for helping out at all wouldn't hurt.
Anyways, an issue that's overlooked is that there's no clear way to track progress on CRTs and the like, there's quite minimal limitations for users to make them, and much higher standards to conclude them, meaning that the influx of work is clearly much higher than the manpower available to actually handle it, so this will be an issue even if we somehow got twice as many trustworthy staff members.
Because of this, I'd suggest to raise the bar so that only a certain amount of non-concluded CRTs in general (rather than just per verse) can be up at any time, as well as organizing the flow of CRTs so that those concluded are archived (and don't clutter / hide actual pending CRTs). Encouraging the title of CRTs to highlight the amount of progress so far (for example, "Mario is 1-A [Approval 0/5]") would also go a long way to further ensure that they go somewhere.
This'd demand a ton of maintenance to set up, as well as being a drastic shift to how things are handled right now, but it's some food for thought, and I can also testify that it works as I've seen this work in another forum with a XenForo framework that does voluntary indexing work, ultimately it depends on if there's enought will from the mod team to be the change they want to see in the world.
If I may be so bold, why do we not actually look at one of the root problems from which every other here named issue arise from? Why do minor or self explanatory CRT's need staff signing in the first place? Take the CRT's @Shadowslash125 has linked in their thread; Of the 6 CRT's, half of them can and should have been signed off right of the bat but were allowed to rot for months on end for no good reason other than bureaucracy. Do we really need rainbow users to waste their limited time signing off multiple "Add fire manipulation" threads a day, a job a ape could do? Or would we rather they spend that time looking at threads that actually require Staff presence, such as statistic changes, additions of esoteric abilities or tier 1-0 shenanigans?
This is shit real life has "solved" already. Look at all those minor laws that are set in place, like street crossing for example. Its OBVIOUSLY against the law to jaywalk (Which is crossing the street while its red for you), but you don't see the police scanning every possible street crossing in search of jaywalkers. Nor will the police follow up on phone calls reporting jaywalkers. Nor will they persecute EVERY instance of jaywalk they do catch. Its unfeasible to do so and even if it WERE feasible, they probably still wouldn't allocate those possible resources to do so. Why? Because its not that big of a deal. If you did your due diligence and made sure that you can safely cross while also not inhibiting traffic, why would that be an issue outside of breaking that law?
Another example I would like to bring up is the concept of payment with reservation. My professional background lies in the German banking system, and in Germany (I don't know if other banks operate the same), we have something we call payment with reservation. What it basically boils down to is "if you give us a good reason to believe that a payment of a certain amount is coming in, we will deposit that amount into your account even before the actual money hits your account". This is to ensure that even if the money is certainly going to take a while before it hits your account and you have a legally binding document ensuring that that money is going to hit your account in x amount of days, we will give it to you now so you can work with it today, instead of having to wait for weeks. We reserve us the right to take it away if your deposit did not come in though. This is a system of trust that ensure the honest people get a smooth experience, while not leaving us completely at the mercy of scamers. Its a risk worth taking based on experience, which gives us higher amount of costumer satisfaction vs risk of lost money.
Incredibly long way to say that trusting the user base just a little bit more would help immensly. I propose a system of classification, maybe even a additional CRT subforum, in which CRT's can be classified as minor, normal and major. Minor CRT's should be ability additions of low complexity (Think elemental powers and other self evident powers), cosmetic formatting changes and supporting evidences for already accepted tiering for stats. Anything above that should be like how we treat normal or major CRT's today.
Minor CRT's should get they own subforum, in which only minor CRT's are posted and handled the following; Other than normal and major CRT's, minor CRT's are allowed to be concluded by majority vote. Once concluded as accepted, they have to remain untouched for a week after the conclusion has been reached. Once that week has passed, they are allowed to be applied to the profiles, but HAVE to be marked in the title with a "applied". Once applied, the changes have a grace period of 30 days in which a staff member can take a look and either formally accept them, ending the grace period, ignore it and have the grace period run its full 30 days, or strike it down and argue it out in the original CRT. Once 30 days are passed then the CRT is considered accepted, marked as such in the title and be treated as part of the current status quo of the page; Removing it would require a CRT.
Benefit? Allows for more progress, shave off a portion of the staff work and rewards lawful behavior. People will try pass of normal and major CRT's as minor to sneak in wank/downplay? Make it a reportable offence. Bl*e names manage to turn a formatting CRT into a controversal slugfest? Treat it like a normal CRT. Minor CRT's kept being posted in the normal section? Good on the users for being cautious, allow staff members to move it down to minor and be done with it.
If I may be so bold, why do we not actually look at one of the root problems from which every other here named issue arise from? Why do minor or self explanatory CRT's need staff signing in the first place? Take the CRT's @Shadowslash125 has linked in their thread; Of the 6 CRT's, half of them can and should have been signed off right of the bat but were allowed to rot for months on end for no good reason other than bureaucracy. Do we really need rainbow users to waste their limited time signing off multiple "Add fire manipulation" threads a day, a job a ape could do? Or would we rather they spend that time looking at threads that actually require Staff presence, such as statistic changes, additions of esoteric abilities or tier 1-0 shenanigans?
This is shit real life has "solved" already. Look at all those minor laws that are set in place, like street crossing for example. Its OBVIOUSLY against the law to jaywalk (Which is crossing the street while its red for you), but you don't see the police scanning every possible street crossing in search of jaywalkers. Nor will the police follow up on phone calls reporting jaywalkers. Nor will they persecute EVERY instance of jaywalk they do catch. Its unfeasible to do so and even if it WERE feasible, they probably still wouldn't allocate those possible resources to do so. Why? Because its not that big of a deal. If you did your due diligence and made sure that you can safely cross while also not inhibiting traffic, why would that be an issue outside of breaking that law?
Another example I would like to bring up is the concept of payment with reservation. My professional background lies in the German banking system, and in Germany (I don't know if other banks operate the same), we have something we call payment with reservation. What it basically boils down to is "if you give us a good reason to believe that a payment of a certain amount is coming in, we will deposit that amount into your account even before the actual money hits your account". This is to ensure that even if the money is certainly going to take a while before it hits your account and you have a legally binding document ensuring that that money is going to hit your account in x amount of days, we will give it to you now so you can work with it today, instead of having to wait for weeks. We reserve us the right to take it away if your deposit did not come in though. This is a system of trust that ensure the honest people get a smooth experience, while not leaving us completely at the mercy of scamers. Its a risk worth taking based on experience, which gives us higher amount of costumer satisfaction vs risk of lost money.
Incredibly long way to say that trusting the user base just a little bit more would help immensly. I propose a system of classification, maybe even a additional CRT subforum, in which CRT's can be classified as minor, normal and major. Minor CRT's should be ability additions of low complexity (Think elemental powers and other self evident powers), cosmetic formatting changes and supporting evidences for already accepted tiering for stats. Anything above that should be like how we treat normal or major CRT's today.
Minor CRT's should get they own subforum, in which only minor CRT's are posted and handled the following; Other than normal and major CRT's, minor CRT's are allowed to be concluded by majority vote. Once concluded as accepted, they have to remain untouched for a week after the conclusion has been reached. Once that week has passed, they are allowed to be applied to the profiles, but HAVE to be marked in the title with a "applied". Once applied, the changes have a grace period of 30 days in which a staff member can take a look and either formally accept them, ending the grace period, ignore it and have the grace period run its full 30 days, or strike it down and argue it out in the original CRT. Once 30 days are passed then the CRT is considered accepted, marked as such in the title and be treated as part of the current status quo of the page; Removing it would require a CRT.
Benefit? Allows for more progress, shave off a portion of the staff work and rewards lawful behavior. People will try pass of normal and major CRT's as minor to sneak in wank/downplay? Make it a reportable offence. Bl*e names manage to turn a formatting CRT into a controversal slugfest? Treat it like a normal CRT. Minor CRT's kept being posted in the normal section? Good on the users for being cautious, allow staff members to move it down to minor and be done with it.
To expand this, this is where Solution 3 can come in handy, with the minor staff level rank to be created in order to deal with these crts without requiring any higher level staff. Obviously, some sort of screening should happen, though it should be far more lenient that whatever CIA/FBI style recruitment the average staff has.
I hate to dump some shit but the thread is kinda insensitive to the idea that people legitimately CAN and DO have lives outside of the wiki as well. Me personally I work a job full time, I have a very active social life outside the wiki, I'm in a healthy 4+ year relationship and enjoy dedicating time to my partner, even outside of work I have a lot of personal responsibilities or goals in other things I spend my real time doing as well off wiki. And then when in-between all of that I do have time for wiki, im both a thread mod and CGM who also supports lots of verses both big and small shit with several verses I solo index and I put lots of time in effort into fixing that stuff for wiki, then still have to evaluate stuff in the verses I support, then finally make my way to my wall unless I've also got requests for stuff on discord as well then those are even more immediate and then I can finally tackle my wall or the few things I can look at in the time I know I have before I'm back needing to do other stuff.
Thats all again to say I'm for us having more staff but forcing staff into a quota system and making it more of a pressure based into a do this or lose your rank ain't gonna ever sit right with me because while I want to help people at my own pace, if it comes between losing my rank and just being a standard user or the other option then im going with the former any day because either I can help people or perform my duties at my own pace and still help some people or ya can treat this like another 9 to 5 and lose someone and now have no help from someone who doesn't have 2~3 hour straight a day to dedicate to the wiki only but still helps when they can
You know what? This is the type of openness I want on the staff walls. Not too open like this one, but give a basic rundown on your status and whatnot. You probably don't care, but I thank you for being clear like that.
Also, just to make it clear, I didn't suggest any sort of quota system, it would bring far more chaos than it should. Might elaborate on that later, but I'm just clearing out the air.
Also, if one would like to find examples of CRTs that took way longer for staff to even touch than they should, look no further than Toku verses like Kamen Rider and Ultraman.
Trust me, I, along with other supporters, have been dealt with the shortest of straws and the shittiest of hands. I'd be happy to elaborate or something, but whatever.
a additional CRT subforum, in which CRT's can be classified as minor, normal and major. Minor CRT's should be ability additions of low complexity (Think elemental powers and other self evident powers), cosmetic formatting changes and supporting evidences for already accepted tiering for stats. Anything above that should be like how we treat normal or major CRT's today.
Minor CRT's should get they own subforum, in which only minor CRT's are posted and handled the following; Other than normal and major CRT's, minor CRT's are allowed to be concluded by majority vote. Once concluded as accepted, they have to remain untouched for a week after the conclusion has been reached. Once that week has passed, they are allowed to be applied to the profiles, but HAVE to be marked in the title with a "applied". Once applied, the changes have a grace period of 30 days in which a staff member can take a look and either formally accept them, ending the grace period, ignore it and have the grace period run its full 30 days, or strike it down and argue it out in the original CRT. Once 30 days are passed then the CRT is considered accepted, marked as such in the title and be treated as part of the current status quo of the page; Removing it would require a CRT.
And as a side note to what's already been said, yes we all have lives here, and this is a hobby, I am online a lot but that doesn't mean I have time to spend evaluating CRT's. I think it's fair to say I have personally made the most verses on this website, and quite frankly keeping up and revising them on its own is itself a task. So of course a lot of my time is dedicated to stuff I am invested in.
I would also say I am probably one of the fewer staff who attends to CRT's I know nothing about. Imo there really aren't that many benefits to being a staff besides some neat editing rights, nothing that would be incentivize me to spend hours just going through all the CRT's I am constantly being requested of, I would drop being a staff and focus primarily on my hobbies over that any day.
But yes, it is very frustrating not having your CRT's evaluated, so if we can implement some solutions to make things better, we should try to do that, but nobody should feel forced to do anything.
I also agree with a lot of things Bambu and First Witch said, these are problems a lot easier said than done and we can't just force staff to be more active. Lots of us have RL stuff to take care of. Also, the reason it's been getting harder to find staff is due to lots of other reasons; we used to have lower standards for promoting staff who basically turn out to be the definition of "Agenda scalers." We have promoted a lot of people who turned out to be bad apples over the years and it was even harder to finally convince higher up staff that "It was time to demote these people." And there was specific case where a former thread moderator was so spiteful about their demotion, they threatened to do something crazy. And same with banning people, it has historically been people who were former staff (Before they were demoted) who get far too much special treatment when they have either done or said plenty of things that warrant a ban.
There are some things I do agree with, staff should be more willing to help out with verses that even they are unfamiliar with. And there are plenty of staff members who are more willing to evaluate niche or obscure verses considerably more so than the popular/mainstream verses. And some verses are kind of so popular, it's basically impossible to evaluate reasonable without getting dogpiled by fans. And I agree that staff shouldn't be afraid of propaganda, the fact remains is that it happens to often and far to quickly to the point where we also still can't force staff to deal with that sort of backlash that would otherwise be guaranteed to happen. Moreover, I also think staff should be more willing to actually enforce some important standard wiki protocol rules instead of giving those protocols the blind eye and just agree with whatever is trending and/or mass agree with a verse revision project that was talked about on Discord groups or something. But we can't force staff to avoid Discord entirely, nor can we force them to agree with a collective majority. I have even written a post here indirectly calling out that there were at least 2 staff members who like blatantly knew that what they were doing was strictly against protocols here that were supposed to be common sense, with several other staff members more jumping on bandwagon while once again giving blind eyes about the standard wiki protocol.
There are likewise common double standards yes, there are plenty of staff who mainly direct their complaints about "Verses with exaggerated statistics ratings" and they mainly seem to say that about verses they do not know very well. Which I do not deny that stuff like that perhaps happen more often then we would like, however, it should also be equally acknowledged that a lot of verses get severely downplayed based on popularity. Which the most common things that lead to it is of course people taking game mechanics far too seriously, or collecting 130+ anti feats that most are either game mechanics, scripted escape room events, or running gags. And the worst part is, lots of those verses actually have plenty of cosmic tier feats that have been overlooked. Which you might as well downgrade every character who "Has been hurt by bullets" all the way down to 9-C by the above logic.
But as divided as staff tend to be, it can be acknowledged that almost anyone could be looked at as "An agenda scaler." And we can't just force staff members to change their consistent views for the majority's sake or even the higher up authority's sake. Should there be more unity among staff and community? Absolutely. But is it realistic to enforce? Not really. We probably do need to recruit more thread moderators even if we supposedly have plenty, but lots of them are not as active. And it's also becoming common trope period where we often have people who were super active as regular users, but the moment they get a staff promotion; the seemingly abandon most of their activity and focus exclusively on upkeeping their favorite verses if they're active at all. Which may or may confirm that some of those people we promoted were indeed "Agenda scalers" as what is commonly complained about.
Well, if we want to make it a proper sub-forum, we basically just need to wait for Ant to communicate with the forum manager to implement it. I don't think it would be hard, but I'm not that tech savvy. So at least that particular point should be good to go, pretty much
Where were you when we had to deal with kamen rider shenanigans /s
Joking aside, DDM hits just what I ultimately want to convey (based on skimming, will read in-depth when I awake). The thing is that we have to look at both sides of the coin to try and solve this problem. I called this the most controversial staff thread because even I know that this isn't some cut and dry, black and white problem we can just wish away. Both sides have their grievances, and we really should try and compromise so that both sides can benefit equally without either side having to give something up just for the system to 'work'.
Well, if we want to make it a proper sub-forum, we basically just need to wait for Ant to communicate with the forum manager to implement it. I don't think it would be hard, but I'm not that tech savvy. So at least that particular point should be good to go, pretty much
We would also need to prepare all proper rules and the public instruction text for the new sub-forum. I think that @Agnaa , @DontTalkDT , @Qawsedf234 , and @GrathOfLux are usually good at defining them properly.
We would also need to prepare all proper rules and the public instruction text for the new sub-forum. I think that @Agnaa , @DontTalkDT , @Qawsedf234 , and @GrathOfLux are usually good at defining them properly.
Before I sleep, should be best to tell them to read through the thread as well. The more staff input the better, so that we can know more about the other perspectives
I also feel that Damage and Vietthai can chip in or something (due to being very active staff, in fact the most active ones out of everyone imo), so mayhaps call them in again or something.
We would also need to prepare all proper rules and the public instruction text for the new sub-forum. I think that @Agnaa , @DontTalkDT , @Qawsedf234 , and @GrathOfLux are usually good at defining them properly.
Should they be implemented like First Witch suggested, with mere majority approval, or like LephyrTheRevanchist suggested in his link, with one staff member approval?
Edit: I will add that First Witch's proposal seems like something that would need a CRT on its own to hammer out. Why? For example, because we will need to decide on a list of powers that are allowed to be added by minor CRT. Our current rules regarding that rely on common sense on staff side. With staff out of the equation we will need to make and maintain a precise list.
Should they be implemented like First Witch suggested, with mere majority approval, or like LephyrTheRevanchist suggested in his link, with one staff member approval?
Edit: I will add that First Witch's proposal seems like something that would need a CRT on its own to hammer out. Why? For example, because we will need to decide on a list of powers that are allowed to be added by minor CRT. Our current rules regarding that rely on common sense on staff side. With staff out of the equation we will need to make and maintain a precise list.
Do it the other way around. Define what should require staff input and work from there. "The addition/removal of these abilities require Staff input" and everything else just falls under minor.
Should they be implemented like First Witch suggested, with mere majority approval, or like LephyrTheRevanchist suggested in his link, with one staff member approval?
Edit: I will add that First Witch's proposal seems like something that would need a CRT on its own to hammer out. Why? For example, because we will need to decide on a list of powers that are allowed to be added by minor CRT. Our current rules regarding that rely on common sense on staff side. With staff out of the equation we will need to make and maintain a precise list.
My addition pertains strictly to self evident revisions, which already only need 1 staff approval. The idea is to make a sub forum/thread so people can suggest the changes directly and literally just takes a single staff to look at it to make sure is applicable and thus the change can be applied quickly.
The other stuff Witch raised would indeed need a more thorough discussion to hammer out completely.
Edit: Though, given the original proposal Ant and I had also included things like the intelligence rating of profiles and the like and the removal of abilities, maybe it is best to have the more in-depth discussion regardless.
I agree with First_Witch too (As much as my former staff opinion is worth)
In my opinion part of the problem is a staff member's input is really only worth so much when it's a series they don't know (Unless it's a truly obvious CRT, at which point a staff member should not be needed anyway).
I personally would lean towards a more knowledgeable members based approach rather than staff based, at which point trusted knowledgeable members act as staff-lite (For the series they know) for the purpose of revising a series.
I am not sure how to go about doing it in logistical terms, but i think it would help alleviate the core problem (Which is, there are way more series in need of CRT than admins willing to tackle them, and forcing staff to review CRTs thet do not want to tackle imo is a terrible idea as it invites burnout)
How about we introduce a quota system? There should be a public list on how many points a thread/admin staff have based on how many CRTs they participate. The staff with the highest points has the most chances of getting a promotion but the lowest would possibly get a demotion or role removal. If a staff participates and provides input to a thread, they can get one point.
However, I noticed a lot of staffs only decided to participate a thread if there's already another one who gave their input first just to FRA train which brings ungenuine behaviour. I suggest staffs that provide the first input to a CRT, should get 3 points at least so it encourage others participate threads that haven't been touched yet.
So hypothetically speaking, I become a thread mod. Does this means I can just get away scot-free with not contributing to the wiki or the site as a whole while I only evaluate one verse that I genuinely have an interest in while ignoring every other verse?
Because that's what I mean. What if other new recruits follow these exact steps? We may have more manpower, but it'd be for naught if everyone just does what I said above.
To an extent... yeah. You're still an autonomous human being, and we won't demote you if you're still helping, even if it's just* on a verse you like. We wouldn't recruit someone in that position, though, since a major criteria is whether they work on external verses or not. We don't want that outcome, it's just what happens at times-- people eventually begin to do things they like to do.
The * here is that we would still require, for example, contribution to non-CRT related matters. Staff polls and discussions and so on.
As for "what if others do it", then we're in a bad way. We won't turn away help, but you're right, if suddenly nobody was willing to work on CRTs outside of their immediate interests, that would be bad indeed. In my view, that specific hypothetical has no real solution, barring things outside of reach for this volunteer website.
So I proposed this before but hopefully it can be taken into consideration more.
Was how I wrote it in sandbox, it can of course be reshaped.
I'm sure many others have had moments where weeks to months pass before their CRT gets looked into by a mod. There's nothing wrong with this, necessarily; I am well aware that everyone has a life. People also have a limit to how much text they can read before exiting the site and heading to TikTok or YouTube for something fun. I am also aware people are disinterested in other verses they do not know or like. So, I am proposing a new staff role: Verse Moderators.
TM = Thread Mod
VM = Verse Mod
My goal is to create a smoother experience for verses that currently lack dedicated TM, while also reducing the work placed on TM and Admins.
Although this proposal is centered on verses, I understand that not every verse can realistically have its own moderator. The focus, therefore, would be on large verses without adequate moderation. Well-established verses such as Bleach, Naruto, or One Punch Man, which already benefit from numerous staff involvement, are not the intended focus of this role and should be excluded from consideration in this context.
As an example here are popular verses that can benefit from VM.
Fire Force/Soul Eater: While it has Nierre and Damage, they shouldn't be expected to do it alone and also they interact with several other verses which can take focus away. Dandadan: The only staff is Damage. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End: Another popular verse, only has one TM. Jujutsu Kaisen: It has mainly one TM, that being Catzlaflame who is also an Admin. While Duedate is also a TM, he has been inactive for some time, leaving the verse with just 1 TM. The God of Highschool: I noticed several mods in this verse have retired here so it could also benefit from active knowledgeable members.
A couple issues I've thought of and can address:
1. "How many mods?" Going by verse CRT only being 4 as a limit, I think 2 VM is fine to tackle them. This amount eliminates the scenario where one VM can be outvoted by the other VMs in the verse. Where the case of opposite votes happens, this is where TM/Admins step in as the deciding factor.
2. "Who has more power?" This doesn't change, Admins and TM votes are still going to be taken over VM. The only case is where a vote is very obviously being done in bad faith or for ulterior motives. This doesn't lessen their role as they are here for doing the important stuff like covering regular crts such as simple new abilities added on pages or new upgrades.
3. "Mods become overly bias" Similar to number 2, a VM being biased in their vote or rules placed on verses for something not reasonable and completely going against majority of the voters can be remedied through TM and Admins. Wanting a subtopic banned when the supporters are fine with it would be one example.
4. "Can a TM also be a VM?" No. This places more power where it isn't needed, and also devalues the idea for a VM, as someone who does what the TM isn't mainly needed for. It also just creates an extra role on an already big role as a TM.
Here's a short description for how Verse Mods would look, pretty much identical to Thread Mod, they would only specifically have vote power within a certain verse. There is an issue of biases but that is common within such a community and shouldn't be a reason against this, I also covered it above. Additionally how one would be nominated for the role can easily be done through the "knowledgable supporter/member" section on verse page. This removes the issue of finding competent mods, as everyone generally respects and or acknowledges their experience and knowledge on the verse as opposed to a TM who may not have equal experience in a verse.
Another thing is the idea of much smaller verses: It's simply a trait of how the site is, but the addition of VM lessens the burden of the job TM are doing, making them capable of focusing on general crts and smaller verse crts while VM tackle verse specific crts.
So my position is the same as the last time I heard this: I think we would just make any prospective Verse Mod a Thread Mod. We would want approximately the same level of trust in them, all this does is permanently reduce their abilities to just that one verse. Perhaps more people would be willing to take up the mantle with reduced labor involved, but it doesn't really seem to solve the problem of the thread, which is that too many staff are dedicated to verses they like already.
I would also fear the implications of intent when receiving such a role; while I view something as Discussion Mod as a service, a theoretical Verse Mod would introduce motive (e.g., I can become a staff member whose only expected role is to vote on a singular verse, and now I can influence the ratings for the verse I like); obviously it would be in our interest to recruit people who do not appear to be like that, but it would be a greater concern than with a Discussion Mod, who at the very least is then expected to deal with staff discussion threads in addition to CRTs; if there is a pattern of voting with one verse over others, it can be more readily identified.
Last issue, I think, is that this then becomes a distraction from other recruitment efforts. We would spend the same amount of time, get more middling results (since more staff members would be unfamiliar with users solely dedicated to singular verses), and have less slots per recruitment for general staff. This may be mitigated in some ways, but it can't be excised fully.
TL;DR it solves some issues and concerns but adds others and doesn't seem productive to introduce.
I don't think it's like a secret society? Publicly do good and you tend to fall into the system by a matter of course. Wiki management threads, notable staff threads where you contribute meaningfully and gainfully, etc. Hell, you can even recommend yourself.
If I may be so bold, why do we not actually look at one of the root problems from which every other here named issue arise from? Why do minor or self explanatory CRT's need staff signing in the first place? Take the CRT's @Shadowslash125 has linked in their thread; Of the 6 CRT's, half of them can and should have been signed off right of the bat but were allowed to rot for months on end for no good reason other than bureaucracy. Do we really need rainbow users to waste their limited time signing off multiple "Add fire manipulation" threads a day, a job a ape could do? Or would we rather they spend that time looking at threads that actually require Staff presence, such as statistic changes, additions of esoteric abilities or tier 1-0 shenanigans?
This is shit real life has "solved" already. Look at all those minor laws that are set in place, like street crossing for example. Its OBVIOUSLY against the law to jaywalk (Which is crossing the street while its red for you), but you don't see the police scanning every possible street crossing in search of jaywalkers. Nor will the police follow up on phone calls reporting jaywalkers. Nor will they persecute EVERY instance of jaywalk they do catch. Its unfeasible to do so and even if it WERE feasible, they probably still wouldn't allocate those possible resources to do so. Why? Because its not that big of a deal. If you did your due diligence and made sure that you can safely cross while also not inhibiting traffic, why would that be an issue outside of breaking that law?
Another example I would like to bring up is the concept of payment with reservation. My professional background lies in the German banking system, and in Germany (I don't know if other banks operate the same), we have something we call payment with reservation. What it basically boils down to is "if you give us a good reason to believe that a payment of a certain amount is coming in, we will deposit that amount into your account even before the actual money hits your account". This is to ensure that even if the money is certainly going to take a while before it hits your account and you have a legally binding document ensuring that that money is going to hit your account in x amount of days, we will give it to you now so you can work with it today, instead of having to wait for weeks. We reserve us the right to take it away if your deposit did not come in though. This is a system of trust that ensure the honest people get a smooth experience, while not leaving us completely at the mercy of scamers. Its a risk worth taking based on experience, which gives us higher amount of costumer satisfaction vs risk of lost money.
Incredibly long way to say that trusting the user base just a little bit more would help immensly. I propose a system of classification, maybe even a additional CRT subforum, in which CRT's can be classified as minor, normal and major. Minor CRT's should be ability additions of low complexity (Think elemental powers and other self evident powers), cosmetic formatting changes and supporting evidences for already accepted tiering for stats. Anything above that should be like how we treat normal or major CRT's today.
Minor CRT's should get they own subforum, in which only minor CRT's are posted and handled the following; Other than normal and major CRT's, minor CRT's are allowed to be concluded by majority vote. Once concluded as accepted, they have to remain untouched for a week after the conclusion has been reached. Once that week has passed, they are allowed to be applied to the profiles, but HAVE to be marked in the title with a "applied". Once applied, the changes have a grace period of 30 days in which a staff member can take a look and either formally accept them, ending the grace period, ignore it and have the grace period run its full 30 days, or strike it down and argue it out in the original CRT. Once 30 days are passed then the CRT is considered accepted, marked as such in the title and be treated as part of the current status quo of the page; Removing it would require a CRT.
Benefit? Allows for more progress, shave off a portion of the staff work and rewards lawful behavior. People will try pass of normal and major CRT's as minor to sneak in wank/downplay? Make it a reportable offence. Bl*e names manage to turn a formatting CRT into a controversal slugfest? Treat it like a normal CRT. Minor CRT's kept being posted in the normal section? Good on the users for being cautious, allow staff members to move it down to minor and be done with it.
I think this has merit, but I pause at a few points. "Minor" is a subjective thing, I get told this is a "minor" or "self-explanatory" CRT all the time, only to then learn it is, in fact, Neither. I also don't feel this is much like the jaywalking thing; more like filing one's taxes. Even something blatantly straightforward may need oversight. Otherwise, things slip through, and my fear is that this sort of idea would be used to let Many Things Slip Through; by the time we noticed, the wound would be very deep. Trusting the userbase has burned us before-- we have vandalism most every day. We are not a fundamentally rule-abiding society.
I think elements of your proposal are very good. I would readily approve of a dedicated board for minor CRTs-- my feeling on this is that it would allow staff to contribute without getting into the weeds. A staff member may feel less discouraged to just evaluate half a dozen CRTs if they know the entire list might take 15 minutes in total and includes only the blatantly obvious. I think I would find myself opposed to literally no review. We can then move CRTs to and from this board as we find them. I think this, at least, is a Good Idea, and one I see no obvious downsides to at present.
I agree with First_Witch too (As much as my former staff opinion is worth)
In my opinion part of the problem is a staff member's input is really only worth so much when it's a series they don't know (Unless it's a truly obvious CRT, at which point a staff member should not be needed anyway).
I personally would lean towards a more knowledgeable members based approach rather than staff based, at which point trusted knowledgeable members act as staff-lite (For the series they know) for the purpose of revising a series.
I am not sure how to go about doing it in logistical terms, but i think it would help alleviate the core problem (Which is, there are way more series in need of CRT than admins willing to tackle them, and forcing staff to review CRTs thet do not want to tackle imo is a terrible idea as it invites burnout)
Overall TL;DR- From the proposed ideas, I think Witch's is good, though I would agree more with Lephyr's specific proposal of one staff member being necessary. Still, a board strictly for these easy-to-parse threads would, I think, partly solve the problem of blatantly self-evident threads being drowned out alongside their kin. I doubt some staff would balk at having to do the minimal legwork to run through some CRTs that can be easily handled.
Flattered to hear my name thrown around so much, but:
My system is good for me because my availability is very on and off. Sometimes I can sit down and do a dozen CRTs in a day, sometimes I can only do a couple, sometimes (like now) I'm sick and don't want to do any at all. I'm also forgetful, and this is the only way I don't lose track of what I've already looked at or not.
Unlike what the OP suggests, though, it is not exactly a 'fair' system in that the time and effort it takes to evaluate a CRT depends entirely on the CRT itself. That is to say, sometimes a dozen simple CRTs which would require just a glance are backed up because one person posted a monster that requires me to do hours of research and takes up the entire day before them.
From that perspective, I think it makes more sense to diversify a little. Some staff handle specific verses which need a lot of support, some go through the slop in order (like me), and some prioritize the easy ones so they don't sit for a long time for no reason.
And on that note, that's sort of what's happening- but the bottleneck is obvious, there's not enough of us.
People vastly underestimate how much work this actually is. That multiple hour example I said above you might think is a rare occurrence, but often it seems like literally every other post is like that.
Bottom line: we have far more work than we can possibly do. No change in focus will fix that.
For reference, when I did actually keep up with my wall, it took me spending like 1/3 of my day everyday doing requests. The current massive backlog got worse because I was sick, but it extended to five pages just from me doing something more reasonable like a few requests a day.
We need to either increase our ability (more staff), or decrease our burden (Like First Witch suggests), or both.
Compared to most platforms, I think our standards for hiring staff are extremely strict and slow.
I've managed many large communities in the past, and in my experience there's two distinct fates that tend to lead to their end:
One: You don't trust enough, and the work piles up until no sane person wants to even tackle it, or one person has to quit and it collapses everything.
Two: You trust too much, and some bad actor(s) take over everything and turn it into a crypto scam or something.
The fabled middle-ground is very hard to balance.
Ultimately, I actually really like the idea of giving more power to the people. I've been part of big debates here before on that topic, I even suggested that the 'popular vote' be considered a real vote. Furthermore, this is how other large wiki-esque projects function and thrive.
That our current hiring process is akin to getting admitted to a secret society is valid, and a complaint I also have.
I think as a compromise, the idea of a lesser position which gains voting rights on a specific verse and nothing else is actually a really good idea.
Practically, we kind of do that anyway. How often is a verse held up entirely by a blue name that we staff ultimately just trust to give us good information? In my experience dealing with lesser verses, quite often. Giving them a little badge that says "we trust this person on Ninjago specifically" and count their vote in my head would require much less consideration, and could be given a lot more freely than a full universal Thread Moderator position.
The idea of having a subforum where issues can pass by lack of opposition isn't terrible either, especially since we know we can always contest and change things later. I'd rather have a couple pages end up with inaccurate information than hundreds be outdated because we can't evaluate simple revisions fast enough.
TL;DR: I would support a verse-specific position that gives voting rights and nothing else. "Verse Mod" implies moderation, though, so I'd aim for something more like "Advisor".
I would also support this proposed sub-forum for minor revisions to be democratically passed after a long period of time without staff intervention.
I would support just hiring more staff in general (particularly Thread Mods), but not anything which forces a quota or certain way of handling requests.
Flattered to hear my name thrown around so much, but:
My system is good for me because my availability is very on and off. Sometimes I can sit down and do a dozen CRTs in a day, sometimes I can only do a couple, sometimes (like now) I'm sick and don't want to do any at all. I'm also forgetful, and this is the only way I don't lose track of what I've already looked at or not.
Unlike what the OP suggests, though, it is not exactly a 'fair' system in that the time and effort it takes to evaluate a CRT depends entirely on the CRT itself. That is to say, sometimes a dozen simple CRTs which would require just a glance are backed up because one person posted a monster that requires me to do hours of research and takes up the entire day before them.
From that perspective, I think it makes more sense to diversify a little. Some staff handle specific verses which need a lot of support, some go through the slop in order (like me), and some prioritize the easy ones so they don't sit for a long time for no reason.
And on that note, that's sort of what's happening- but the bottleneck is obvious, there's not enough of us.
People vastly underestimate how much work this actually is. That multiple hour example I said above you might think is a rare occurrence, but sometimes it feels like literally every other post is like that.
Bottom line: the amount of work we have to do is far beyond our ability to do it, regardless of how we divide it up. No change in focus will change that.
For reference, when I did actually keep up with my staff wall, it took me spending like 1/3 of my day everyday doing requests. The current massive backlog got worse because I was sick, but it extended to five pages just from me doing something more reasonable like a few requests a day.
We need to either increase our ability (more staff), or decrease our burden (Like First Witch suggests), or both.
Compared to most platforms, I think our standards for hiring staff are extremely strict and slow.
I've managed many large communities in the past, and in my experience there's two distinct fates that tend to lead to their end:
One: You don't trust enough, and the work piles up until no sane person wants to even tackle it, or one person has to quit and it collapses everything.
Two: You trust too much, and some bad actor(s) take over everything and turn it into a crypto scam or something.
The fabled middle-ground is very hard to balance.
Ultimately, I actually really like the idea of giving more power to the people. Famously, I've been part of big debates here before on that topic, I even suggested that the 'popular vote' be considered a real vote. Furthermore, this is how other large wiki-esque projects function and thrive.
That our current hiring process is akin to getting admitted to a secret society is valid, and a complaint I also have.
I think as a compromise, the idea of a lesser position which gains voting rights on a specific verse and nothing else is actually a really good idea.
Practically, we kind of do that anyway. How often is a verse held up entirely by a blue name that we staff ultimately just trust to give us good information? In my experience dealing with lesser verses, quite often. Giving them a little badge that says "we trust this person on Ninjago specifically" and count their vote in my head would require much less consideration, and could be given a lot more freely than a full universal Thread Moderator position.
The idea of having a subforum where issues can pass by lack of opposition isn't terrible either, especially since we know we can always contest and change things later. I'd rather have a couple pages end up with inaccurate information than hundreds be outdated because we can't evaluate simple revisions fast enough.
TL;DR: I would support a verse-specific position that gives voting rights and nothing else. "Verse Mod" implies moderation, though, so I'd aim for something more like "Advisor".
I would also support this proposed sub-forum for minor revisions to be democratically passed after a long period of time without staff intervention.
I would support just hiring more staff in general, but not anything which forces a quota or certain way of handling requests.
I don't agree with your solutions (I've already talked about them) but I do think there is an under-appreciation for how much a complicated CRT can take to handle.
What is your opinion on trial moderators, by chance? Dark_Soul suggested them somewhere above; I perceive issues with that, but prefer it to Verse Moderators.
I don't agree with your solutions (I've already talked about them) but I do think there is an under-appreciation for how much a complicated CRT can take to handle.
What is your opinion on trial moderators, by chance? Dark_Soul suggested them somewhere above; I perceive issues with that, but prefer it to Verse Moderators.
Well I can only speak from my own experience, but "Trial Mods" were an extremely common and used thing for Minecraft Servers, and we were no exception.
That said, I can't honestly say someone's performance during a trial period was ever indicative of their final performance.
Plenty of people acted like diligent angels while they were 'on trial' then immediately ghosted or abused their power the moment it was made 'official'.
We had a lot more success simply having an interim position with much less power, we called them 'Helpers'.
Helpers could do some basic chat moderation, but no moderation for the actual game itself.
In that sense they had real, but very specific power where it was easy to evaluate how they acted during situations and determine if they handled things reasonably, modestly, and objectively. When it was time to hire a new moderator we'd look at our helper pool first.
That is to say, explicitly telling them 'this is the time where we watch if you behave, prove yourself' led people to simply try extra hard at the start before showing their real colors. Giving them a lesser, but real role, with no inherent implication they'd necessarily be promoted, gave them a chance to demonstrate what they do with real power without risking anything too important.
Now, this is fundamentally different in that there isn't a 'main system' and a 'sub system' like the game/chat, so there is no 'less important' thing you can entrust someone with.
However, I think just having voting rights (and maybe the ability to ping) along with a badge, might give people a sense of authority enough that they would either be a genuine help like they couldn't be before, or out themselves as untrustworthy before too much is given to them.
Tl;dr: I think having Trial-Mods is good in theory but useless in practice, especially since it includes a silent promise they'll definitely be promoted if they just behave temporarily.
Oh, also: we eventually did live interviews, and the vibe checks from that ended up being really effective in weeding out bad fits.
Well I can only speak from my own experience, but "Trial Mods" were an extremely common and used thing for Minecraft Servers, and we were no exception.
That said, I can't honestly say someone's performance during a trial period was ever indicative of their final performance.
Plenty of people acted like diligent angels while they were 'on trial' then immediately ghosted or abused their power the moment it was made 'official'.
We had a lot more success simply having an interim position with much less power, we called them 'Helpers'.
Helpers could do some basic chat moderation, but no moderation for the actual game itself.
In that sense they had real, but very specific power where it was easy to evaluate how they acted during situations and determine if they handled things reasonably, modestly, and objectively. When it was time to hire a new moderator we'd look at our helper pool first.
That is to say, explicitly telling them 'this is the time where we watch if you behave, prove yourself' led people to simply try extra hard at the start before showing their real colors. Giving them a lesser, but real role, with no inherent implication they'd necessarily be promoted, gave them a chance to demonstrate what they do with real power without risking anything too important.
Now, this is fundamentally different in that there isn't a 'main system' and a 'sub system' like the game/chat, so there is no 'less important' thing you can entrust someone with.
However, I think just having voting rights (and maybe the ability to ping) along with a badge, might give people a sense of authority enough that they would either be a genuine help like they couldn't be before, or out themselves as untrustworthy before too much is given to them.
Tl;dr: I think having Trial-Mods is good in theory but useless in practice, especially since it includes a silent promise they'll definitely be promoted if they just behave temporarily.
Oh, also: we eventually did live interviews, and the vibe checks from that ended up being really effective in weeding out bad fits.
I've moderated Minecraft servers in my youth, I am familiar with the concept of a Helper, hah
Duly noted. So you would support this lesser role idea; is this something you have a laid-out idea for or just a concept? In concept, I'm not strictly opposed, but in the minutiae is where my opinion would really be born.
I've moderated Minecraft servers in my youth, I am familiar with the concept of a Helper, hah
Duly noted. So you would support this lesser role idea; is this something you have a laid-out idea for or just a concept? In concept, I'm not strictly opposed, but in the minutiae is where my opinion would really be born.
Not included: any kind of moderation privileges (like threadbans, closing threads, replying to RVRT, approving posts, etc.)
Badge could be like: "Advisor (One Piece)" or "Advisor (OPM/Naruto)"
Or just "Advisor" with the specifics listed elsewhere, maybe on the staff list.
Requirements basically the same, but verse-specific and more forgiving (like instead of 'intimate familiarity with the site's rules and regulations' maybe just 'familiarity with site rules and regulations as relevant to the verse(s) they advise.')
Naturally we'd consider this position faster and with less scrutiny than a full Thread Moderator position, and someone being a successful Advisor for a while wouldn't guarantee becoming a Thread Moderator later but definitely look good on their resume if it were proposed.
My kidney still tries to leave my body sometimes, and I've mostly just been playing Rimworld (though we finally got an appointment for next Thursday.)
So, no, I haven't had much time to draft up full concept.
But if I were to start now, I'd imagine like:
Not included: any kind of moderation privileges (like threadbans, closing threads, replying to RVRT, approving posts, etc.)
Badge could be like: "Advisor (One Piece)" or "Advisor (OPM/Naruto)"
Or just "Advisor" with the specifics listed elsewhere, maybe on the staff list.
Requirements basically the same, but verse-specific and more forgiving (like instead of 'intimate familiarity with the site's rules and regulations' maybe just 'familiarity with site rules and regulations as relevant to the verse they advise.')
Naturally we'd consider this position faster and with less scrutiny than a full Thread Moderator position, and someone being a successful Advisor for a while wouldn't guarantee becoming a Thread Moderator later but definitely look good on their resume if it were proposed.
This seems to make sense to me however i'd suggest Advisor's to only have voting rights in the self evident threads (like fire manp, ice manp very clearly visible on screen and don't really need TM or Admin approval).
Also, I hope you get well soon and I looking forward to having you back with us as cheerful and healthy as we like you to be.
This seems to make sense to me however i'd suggest Advisor's to only have voting rights in the self evident threads (like fire manp, ice manp very clearly visible on screen and don't really need TM or Admin approval).
Bottom line: we have far more work than we can possibly do. No change in focus will fix that.
For reference, when I did actually keep up with my staff wall, it took me spending like 1/3 of my day everyday doing requests. The current massive backlog got worse because I was sick, but it extended to five pages just from me doing something more reasonable like a few requests a day.
We need to either increase our ability (more staff), or decrease our burden (Like First Witch suggests), or both.
To add on to this, when I was a thread mod, I also tackled absolutely every request that people left on my wall without any limit. It got to a point that one day I logged on and had well over 90+ notifications, half easily coming from multiple very different threads and had to essentially speed read those threads to be able to get back to a manageable position and focus on the most important tasks. It's simply a no-no, and why I straight removed my wall message about leaving requests. I just tackle them at my own pace and that's that. If the threads are resolved when I get to them, cool. If not, I can add to it.
People just really need to realize, at a certain point, wall requests alone can easily take half a day to go through, even when just leaving superficial messages like "looks good" (which I also dislike doing too much, personally, as it gives the impression the staff only want to get the thread closed and not properly evaluate) making sure everything in the thread follows the standards.
When you also combine this with the fact many staff just don't really have the availability to engage with a verse they know nothing about and that users frankly make it harder to properly engage with it (I see a lot of complains about Tokuhatsu verses being left unresolved; my personal experience is quite simply, I do not understand what standards and revisions have let to them getting away with stuff I would disagree with just on reading that specific thread, and don't have the time to read many many adjacent threads to get all necessary context to have my mind changed, and this applies to many other verses I am asked to engage with, for the record, I straight dislike evaluating things when I am not able to give proper thoughts, personal standard of mine), then it gets to the point, there's really nothing much that can be done beyond asking reeeeeeeeeeeally nicely for staff to engage (which I frequently do once I do evaluate something, I feel I am annoying sometimes with asking certain people lol)
Edit: Like, people, keep in mind, thread mods not only evaluate revisions. They also, you know, moderate threads and users. That alone can easily snowball into taking a lot of time, specially if you're like me and actively follow many different discussions at once and keep an eye on certain things.
Well, the obvious problem is that how exactly should we maintain security for the reliability of our wiki statistics if just a very limited number of members (our bureaucrats and likely our super moderators) should routinely have to hand out lots of verse moderator positions to members we would mostly be unfamiliar with or only half-remember. We wouldn't get the security buffer of the memories of most of our staff evaluating whether they remember if a potential staff member seems reliable or not, and also much more limited benefits, given the much more limited reach, and I strongly doubt that AKM would be able and willing to practically handle staff recruitment surveys more frequently than once every 3 months or so as currently.
This seems to make sense to me however i'd suggest Advisor's to only have voting rights in the self evident threads (like fire manp, ice manp very clearly visible on screen and don't really need TM or Admin approval).
That seems much more sensible, yes, but I still don't know how we should appoint the verse moderators. Should any bureaucrat, super moderator, or administrator be able to appoint new verse moderators on their own without any safeguards?
I'll try to give some more complicated thoughts later. I'll just say for now that while I haven't been very active for a long time now, I expect to be able to do a lot more wiki work in the coming weeks and plan to review a lot of the pending workload at high levels.
To add on to this, when I was a thread mod, I also tackled absolutely every request that people left on my wall without any limit. It got to a point that one day I logged on and had well over 90+ notifications, half easily coming from multiple very different threads and had to essentially speed read those threads to be able to get back to a manageable position and focus on the most important tasks. It's simply a no-no, and why I straight removed my wall message about leaving requests. I just tackle them at my own pace and that's that. If the threads are resolved when I get to them, cool. If not, I can add to it.
People just really need to realize, at a certain point, wall requests alone can easily take half a day to go through, even when just leaving superficial messages like "looks good" (which I also dislike doing too much, personally, as it gives the impression the staff only want to get the thread closed and not properly evaluate) making sure everything in the thread follows the standards.
The cause is obvious. There's a lot more of them than us, and the result is a publicity lose-lose.
If you put your heart and soul into a huge CRT, you can bet five other people are doing the same thing, and moderators get handed all of them almost at once. At the same time, a hundred people are posting 'minor' revisions. That's just the random verses. The popular ones on their own gain enough work to keep someone busy the entire day.
If you ignore the minor ones to do the major ones, then all the people making minor revisions will say it's ridiculous that it took three months to say 'looks good' to a simple ability addition. If you ignore the major ones to do the minor ones, the people who made the major revisions will say it's ridiculous that all their hard work was wasted because staff don't want to evaluate something complicated. Furthermore, if you have a verse you really care about, and it requires constant attention, and you ignore other verses to help that one you're accused of being biased and not caring about the others.
Now, this is indicative of a real tangible problem we're having, but I'll agree with some of my peers above that OP is unfairly putting the blame on the tactics of specific moderators, when in reality we're all drowning no matter how we go about it.
It's from that perspective I don't really support a forced quota or method- it fundamentally doesn't address the real problem.
If we can't get everybody's CRT, then somebody's is going to be stuck. Simply changing which CRT that is won't help.
This is a number's game, and we need a solution which actually shifts those numbers.
I think this has merit, but I pause at a few points. "Minor" is a subjective thing, I get told this is a "minor" or "self-explanatory" CRT all the time, only to then learn it is, in fact, Neither.
I can assure you that we have the same idea of what constitute as "minor" CRT, it isnt a hard to grasp concept, especially once you formally ironed it out. Users lying to your face about it shoudnt be the roadblock that prevents 10 other users using the system truthfully.
I also don't feel this is much like the jaywalking thing; more like filing one's taxes. Even something blatantly straightforward may need oversight. Otherwise, things slip through, and my fear is that this sort of idea would be used to let Many Things Slip Through; by the time we noticed, the wound would be very deep.
insert joke about how 90% of the userbase here probably have never filed taxes in their life
I mean, its funny that you mentioned taxation considering that the IRS is facing the same problem that VSB is facing right now, that is an extreme lack of manpower (As to why that is and how Americas taxation system is a ******* nightmare is a topic unsuited for the wiki so lets not dwell on this example).
But more importantly, what most Taxation agencies doe across the globe isnt far off from what I'm proposing. You shoot your shot and if they find something that dosnt add up, you get a letter detailing so. And things have and will slip through, just pick a random Caleb Hammer financial show episode on youtube and be amazed about the amount of people who file only half of their income or just dont do it period. Shit like this happen. And in both situation its okay if it occasionally happens. Its okay for the IRS as having 5 middle class families slipping through with incorrect taxes, as this dosnt change the state book by any metrics (It would be peanuts compared to the money they would get from the rest of the middle class) and its okay for us because... Its revertable. Its traceable. And the things that slip through is minor stuff, so things that end up being wrong is like... Adding fire manipulation where it doesn't belong?
I dont consider the rabble that can create 50 Fandom accounts in a single day as part of the userbase. I'm talking about about the Forum users, many blue names who have contributed and participated in the wiki for god knows how long, some who have witnessed the Forum move or have dozens of accepted, well done CRT's. I dont say you should put your trust in the 5 message andys or in random Fandom accounts, and this trust lies solely in the honesty of creating good CRT's, but also in the communitys ability to spot bad faith CRT's and bring them to Staffs attention. I didn't propose grace periods and proper titling just to sound clever, but to create safety mechanics that don't collapse if a staff member didn't look at it for 3 days.
Grace periods to allow objections if they exist. Titling to keep track of CRT's that may need checking. Turn self evident CRT's into receipts, turn the theoretical minor CRT forum into a book. What limited functions both the forum and the wiki have, needs to be used to its full capacity if you want solutions that are practical and substantial.
I think elements of your proposal are very good. I would readily approve of a dedicated board for minor CRTs-- my feeling on this is that it would allow staff to contribute without getting into the weeds. A staff member may feel less discouraged to just evaluate half a dozen CRTs if they know the entire list might take 15 minutes in total and includes only the blatantly obvious. I think I would find myself opposed to literally no review. We can then move CRTs to and from this board as we find them. I think this, at least, is a Good Idea, and one I see no obvious downsides to at present.
The way I see it, solutions need to have tangible positives that benefit both Staff body and userbase. You could continue to run the wiki as it is, or even better, tighten it up further and it would objectivly not be a bad position to have, this is what real businesses have to do if they can't expand in their manpower, they have to downsize (Or AI-shittify) their productions. But this is a community driven space, decisions should be done with that communities well being at the utmost priority. So instead of downsizing, how about you shift the focus of the manpower that you have. Again, a example of the banking world. Decades ago, if you wanted to make a money transfer, you would had to speak to a bank teller. Nowadays, you can do 90% of your average banking services through online banking, like heck when was the last time you spoke to a banker for anything but investments, mortgages or credits? You simply dont have the manpower to do everything for your costumer and even if you had, is this really where you want them used? And in this example, money is involved. So like, real hell is going to be raised if something went wrong but this is still industry standard, because the positives far outweight the potential negatives. In our case, the negative is a shit tier CRT being applied, something that can literally reverted with the undo function.
I think this is simply the best solution that dosnt require that VSB gets a uptick of reliable staff members who also will probably wane off VSB 2 years after their promotion, as they go from school, to college, to work. Gotta be realistic here.
Can somebody address the relevant points I brought up in my last two posts above please? A combination of a new sub-forum for self-evident revisions, and only giving verse moderators authority over them seems more reasonable than other suggestions I have seen here, but we would need to figure out the appointment issue.
Now, this is indicative of a real tangible problem we're having, but I'll agree with some of my peers above that OP is unfairly putting the blame on the tactics of specific moderators, when in reality we're all drowning no matter how we go about it.
It's from that perspective I don't really support a forced quota or method- it fundamentally doesn't address the real problem.
If we can't get everybody's CRT, then somebody's is going to be stuck. Simply changing which CRT that is won't help.
This is a number's game, and we need a solution which actually shifts those numbers.
I think this is simply the best solution that dosnt require that VSB gets a uptick of reliable staff members who also will probably wane off VSB 2 years after their promotion, as they go from school, to college, to work. Gotta be realistic here.
That seems much more sensible, yes, but I still don't know how we should appoint the verse moderators. Should any bureaucrat, super moderator, or administrator be able to appoint new verse moderators on their own without any safeguards?
I think so but it can be contested by the staffs who are knowledgable on the verse (or atleast their opinion will be appreciated). They will be evaluating straightforward CRTs anyways and complex P&A like concepts/BDE or tiering will be out of their reach.
Yes, we are definitely drowning in work, especially those of us, like myself, who are attempting to help out with our wiki and forum at the same time, and are attempting to balance real world duties on top of that, so again, it wouldn't hurt if our members realise the practical realities here rather than unfairly assigning blame on people who are just trying to help for no pay.
If I may be so bold, why do we not actually look at one of the root problems from which every other here named issue arise from? Why do minor or self explanatory CRT's need staff signing in the first place? Take the CRT's @Shadowslash125 has linked in their thread; Of the 6 CRT's, half of them can and should have been signed off right of the bat but were allowed to rot for months on end for no good reason other than bureaucracy. Do we really need rainbow users to waste their limited time signing off multiple "Add fire manipulation" threads a day, a job a ape could do? Or would we rather they spend that time looking at threads that actually require Staff presence, such as statistic changes, additions of esoteric abilities or tier 1-0 shenanigans?
This is shit real life has "solved" already. Look at all those minor laws that are set in place, like street crossing for example. Its OBVIOUSLY against the law to jaywalk (Which is crossing the street while its red for you), but you don't see the police scanning every possible street crossing in search of jaywalkers. Nor will the police follow up on phone calls reporting jaywalkers. Nor will they persecute EVERY instance of jaywalk they do catch. Its unfeasible to do so and even if it WERE feasible, they probably still wouldn't allocate those possible resources to do so. Why? Because its not that big of a deal. If you did your due diligence and made sure that you can safely cross while also not inhibiting traffic, why would that be an issue outside of breaking that law?
Another example I would like to bring up is the concept of payment with reservation. My professional background lies in the German banking system, and in Germany (I don't know if other banks operate the same), we have something we call payment with reservation. What it basically boils down to is "if you give us a good reason to believe that a payment of a certain amount is coming in, we will deposit that amount into your account even before the actual money hits your account". This is to ensure that even if the money is certainly going to take a while before it hits your account and you have a legally binding document ensuring that that money is going to hit your account in x amount of days, we will give it to you now so you can work with it today, instead of having to wait for weeks. We reserve us the right to take it away if your deposit did not come in though. This is a system of trust that ensure the honest people get a smooth experience, while not leaving us completely at the mercy of scamers. Its a risk worth taking based on experience, which gives us higher amount of costumer satisfaction vs risk of lost money.
Incredibly long way to say that trusting the user base just a little bit more would help immensly. I propose a system of classification, maybe even a additional CRT subforum, in which CRT's can be classified as minor, normal and major. Minor CRT's should be ability additions of low complexity (Think elemental powers and other self evident powers), cosmetic formatting changes and supporting evidences for already accepted tiering for stats. Anything above that should be like how we treat normal or major CRT's today.
Minor CRT's should get they own subforum, in which only minor CRT's are posted and handled the following; Other than normal and major CRT's, minor CRT's are allowed to be concluded by majority vote. Once concluded as accepted, they have to remain untouched for a week after the conclusion has been reached. Once that week has passed, they are allowed to be applied to the profiles, but HAVE to be marked in the title with a "applied". Once applied, the changes have a grace period of 30 days in which a staff member can take a look and either formally accept them, ending the grace period, ignore it and have the grace period run its full 30 days, or strike it down and argue it out in the original CRT. Once 30 days are passed then the CRT is considered accepted, marked as such in the title and be treated as part of the current status quo of the page; Removing it would require a CRT.
Benefit? Allows for more progress, shave off a portion of the staff work and rewards lawful behavior. People will try pass of normal and major CRT's as minor to sneak in wank/downplay? Make it a reportable offence. Bl*e names manage to turn a formatting CRT into a controversal slugfest? Treat it like a normal CRT. Minor CRT's kept being posted in the normal section? Good on the users for being cautious, allow staff members to move it down to minor and be done with it.
Well, the obvious problem is that how exactly should we maintain security for the reliability of our wiki statistics if just a very limited number of members (our bureaucrats and likely our super moderators) should routinely have to hand out lots of verse moderator positions to members we would mostly be unfamiliar with or only half-remember. We wouldn't get the security buffer of the memories of most of our staff evaluating whether they remember if a potential staff member seems reliable or not, and also much more limited benefits, given the much more limited reach, and I strongly doubt that AKM would be able and willing to practically handle staff recruitment surveys more frequently than once every 3 months or so as currently.
This is a valid concern, but one that exists no matter how sure you are in your hiring process.
For example, now that I am a Thread Moderator, what's stopping me from just solo-approving a ton of minor revisions that are obviously wrong?
I know for sure that most of them aren't seen by any other staff, so the answer becomes: the community. Supporters of the verse would argue with me, and if I ignored them, they'd surely bring it up to my superiors.
That is to say, we already place a lot of trust in the community, especially since they end up being our real source of reliable information anyway for any verse without an active staff supporter.
I'll say this much: if your major concern is the reliability of our statistics, then consider that outdated information is also inaccurate.
If we can't address tons of revisions, it means that tons of profiles are not changing even if they should.
But that's all an argument on principle. I'm sure you want a practical answer: how can we mitigate the risks while maximizing the benefits?
If we make the process as strict as it is for Thread Moderators, then hiring an Advisor would serve no purpose, we might as well just get more Thread Moderators.
However, we can't just hand positions out willy-nilly, because it's a huge security risk. So we'd find a middle-ground.
Suggestion: Have the appointment discussed among staff, but less formally. More like: "I'm considering promoting X to Advisor for Y because Z. Thoughts?" If those thoughts are mostly positive or neutral, it's probably fine to try. If they're mostly or loudly negative, that's a red flag. Then they can make their decision based on that feedback, rather than any lengthy voting process.
If they ultimately do abuse their position, it'll be a lot less severe than if you had wrongly hired a Thread Moderator. It'd amount to a number of faulty revisions that can be reverted about as easily as we already do regularly for vandals.
The risk is some increase in the possibility of a bad hire, but the benefit is potentially fixing a fundamental problem with the wiki as a whole, and allowing for countless profiles to actually be updated rather than fade into outdated obscurity.
