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A tightening of our editing restrictions?

Antvasima

Antvasima

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Hello.

Bert Hall, the Director of Fandom's support service, basically our highest available boss, has been talking with me about various issues.

Among other things he is concerned about that I handle such a massive amount of the sum total staff work by myself, primarily the edit-monitoring.

As such he brought up a suggestion that Kavpeny mentioned back when he was still active in the wiki. Basically it would extend the required time that an account has to be active from 4 to 15 days before they can edit profiles, alternately require that they need a 100 forum edits first, or both in combination.

I have already talked with Ryukama and Azathoth about this in private, and they seem to think that extending the time limit is a good idea.

Given our recent problems with a fanatic sockpuppet-using troll vandal, the importance of this issue has come into focus again, and we would also have to ask Fandom to include such a restriction to the wiki chat.


NOTE: STAFF ONLY
 
Extending the time lock: Maybe an extension, but 15 days is half a month, which is pretty big. A week at absolute max imo.

Requiring 100 forum posts: Absolute no from me. Requiring a user to be active on the forums when he/she may just want to edit pages seems wrong. While it would make it harder for socks, it also makes it harder for legitimate users, which I am against here.
 
Well, we could just use the 15 day time limit, but seriously, the alternative is that our rule-violation thread continues to be flooded with reports of vandalism for the foreseeable future, and that the staff will turn constantly annoyed and overworked.
 
I absolutely disagree with making new users wait what is basically half of an entire month to edit. It would surely help against sockpuppets to an extent, but it will also make the wiki as a whole seem extremely paranoid and unwelcoming regarding new users ― A weak at absolute maximum is fine by me

My argument of the 100 thread edit-thingy is the same as Assalt's
 
Even though I just became an admin, I would rather be forced to axe socks and monitor recent edits than have the work of a troll negatively effect the Wiki's normal users. The email requirement is already great, and the vandal edits to the mainspace seem manageable. The chat is being spammed into oblivion, though, so I wish there was something to protect that.
 
@The Everlasting

Given that we are essentially under siege by troll vandals, demagogues, and **** uploaders who hate us, I do not see how we have a choice.

Speaking as somebody who actually has to do a very large part of the practical work that keeps this wiki running, I think that extending the time limit regrettably seems necessary to make our community continue to practically function properly.
 
That said, the exact time limit does not have to be 15 days. We could begin to try with a lower number, and if that does not work out, extend it.
 
@Ant

We're not "under siege". Two or three people have a grudge on us. We aren't being attacked by some formless, devastating force, several people have decided to commit a large portion of their time to attempt to vandalize and troll us.

While monitoring edits is somewhat tiresome, all we need is one click to revert it back and two clicks for a ban.

If you restrict your edit monitoring to the Mainspace, which are the pages most prime to vandalism, you can easily keep track of the most impactful vandalism. There have been 29 mainspace edits since the start of today, and most have been made by trusted users. I think you're making the situation a bit more dire than it actually is.
 
I'm somewhat neutral on the account age; but probably somewhere in between seems good. The 100 edits before they can edit pages seems like a good idea. I was for the most part partaking on discussion boards and had a reasonable amount of edits before I edited my first profile. It also gives users time to notice we demand Source Mode Editor as opposed to Visual Editor among other things.
 
@Dark

That's just you, Dragon. Some users prefer to be out-of-sight lurkers. If we force users to talk and engage on the forums I can guarantee you, without doubt, it will stifle many would-be contributors. Anecdotal evidence or personal opinion is not what we need to use here to evaluate this. We need to be as neutral and as unbiased as we can be.
 
Well, all that I am suggesting is that accounts have to be at most 15 days old before they are allowed to edit the wiki or enter the chat. That is far from tyrannical.

It would give serious users the time to get properly acquainted with our standards, and cause too much trouble to bother for malicious ones.

That said, we could begin to try with 7 days instead if you prefer.
 
i think a week or the current one is best tbh. No one wants to wait a long time to simply enter and edit the wiki. Assalt has a point only the chat seems unprotected which is it possible to implement the same period for chat so it doesn't get flooded with sockpuppets? Just asking
 
Our 4 day time limit has massively cut down on the vandalism that I regularly have to deal with.

I cannot be expected to go from 10 hours of work every day to 14 hours or more.
 
@Matthew

No, it is done due to having to deal with lots of vandalism before it was installed, a part of the wiki work that you do not tend to help out with.

Also, I am getting tired of your repeated aggressive public accusations.
 
I mean no offence, but @Matt, that was rather rude tbh. Ant does live in a country that's falling apart, and these trolls are indeed problematic. I'm okay with waiting a week; and example of tyranny would be the time we planned to just lock the entire wiki so that only Content Mods and above could only edit; which we won't do for obvious reasons.
 
I already find 4 days to be obnoxious to new users, needlessly reclusive and elitist, and build out of an irrational fear of a nebulous threat of trolls / sockpuppets. And this recent event is just a reactionary decision brought out of even more irrational fear, due to one bad day with a single particularly insistant troll who absolutely wanted this kind of Reaction.

People on this website looove to talk about being open, welcoming, kind and united as a community. This is the polar opposite of that.
 
As I mentioned earlier, the 4 day limit was not installed due to paranoia, but practical experience with having to constantly clean up from lots of vandalism.

Just because you do not deal with that part of the wiki work does not mean that you can simply expect it to be somebody else's problem to deal with, mainly mine in this case.

It is not the opposite of a welcoming attitude. It simply gives serious users a little extra time to get acquainted with our standards and practices before instantly posting or editing. It significantly cuts down on our workload, and we still try to treat them decently when they ask questions or talk with us.
 
@Matthew

Okay. Thank you, but I still think that you are overreacting far more than I do in this case, just in the other direction.

We do need some rational safety measures.
 
Also, Bert Hall was the one who brought up the suggestion to me, not me to him.
 
Antvasima said:
It is not the opposite of a welcoming attitude. It simply gives serious users a little extra time to get acquainted with our standards and practices before instnatly posting or editing. It significantly cuts down on our workload, and we still try to treat them decently when they ask questions or talk with us.
Click to expand...
A little? Can we not try to tone down. Expecting 15 days of waitng time, and 100 edits to even begin actively contributing to the wiki is absurd. We might as well turn this into a personal forum and close off all outside access. Are you forgetting we are on Fandom? And that Wikias are supposed to be welcoming spaces for fans to talk and do stuff together? This approach is objectively the polar opposite of that.

And Ant, I don't think the amount of time you put into VBW is remotely healthy. Rather than trying to distort the whole website to make this amount of time tolerant for you, you should probably tone down your time. You spend like 10 hours a day here. That's not good for anyone.
 
1) As I mentioned, I am fine with just making it a 7 days waiting period which includes the wiki chat, and think that you are severely blowing up the problems that this would cause to serious members.

This is not a normal wiki. It has proven to breed massive amounts of antipathy from absolutely fanatic trolls and vandals, on a level that other wikis do not have to deal with.

2) Well, I had the edit-patrolling script set up so other staff members could help me with the edit-monitoring (which is absolutely necessary to keep very unreliable statistics and extremely unprofessional structure out of the profiles), but it hasn't worked out the way that I and Bert Hall hoped.

3) I can manage it fine as long as it is 7-10 hours a day, but eventually start to crack if it goes up to 12 or above. I do not think that wanting the wiki to work in a proper manner on a practical level is a bad thing though.

4) I will talk with you in PM, but there are limits to my time and energy. I am already busy with the daily edit-monitoring backlog.
 
If new users need to wait half a month, they'll just leave. I had the same experience on Discord. As an impatient person, when I get invited to servers that require me to wait just 10 minutes, I leave. While it prevents trolls, it prevents new users as well.
 
I also feel that the proposed method is excessive.

100 forum posts is a tall number. That would easily take a casual user a month to rack up. Even a particularly excited and energetic user would take a number of weeks to be able to do anything of value. I wouldn't have a 100 posts until several months after I joined the site because I simply wasn't interested in making forum posts.

I remember signing onto this wiki because I saw the state of the Digimon profiles and wanted to get to work immediately. I feel that placing a two week wall between new users and pages is alienating because no other wiki does this.

Yes. we're special because of the controversial nature of our content, but it doesn't change the fact that this is a community site. Effectively locking it down and forcing people to queue up for a month on end to even start working is just painful.

Yes, we have a vengeful sockpuppet issue, but that doesn't mean we should lock the wiki out and make it extremely tedious for there to be any real progress or have new users get their feet wet.
 
@Matthew

1) No, the trolls are encouraged by the demagogues who constantly hatemonger against our statistics and tiering system. They have repeatedly told us as much themselves.

2) I have been scouting for more content moderators, as seen in the latest staff recruitment drive, but we already have 17 administrators and 5 content moderators who could all help out with the edit-patrolling script, and most of whom don't, which means that it is up to me to keep the wiki afloat in that regard.

3) If we would get rid of the time limit altogether my workload would increase dramatically due to all of the vandal accounts with instant editing access. That is not paranoia, it is experience, and given the much greater amount of accounts that constantly sign up to the wiki nowadays, the situation would currently likely turn far worse than it used to.

I think that you need to stop taking for granted that the wiki will continue to work properly without dedicated staff members monitoring suspicious edits. It definitely won't.
 
Well, how about trying with 7 days then? We need to diminish the amount of trolls and vandals somehow, and it isn't like the waiting period comes as a surprise. It is explained right at the front page for everybody to see. A slight bit of patience for people who are serious about learning and contributing does not seem like much of a hurdle to me.
 
@Spino

It will make them constantly have to wait for longer periods between their attempts to troll and vandalise, so it renders them far more inefficient.
 
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