Regarding the Deletion of Profiles

[GalaxianAegis]

In recent times, I've noticed an issue with how profile deletion is being handled. Currently, the Destiny community on the wiki is working on getting profiles up from the verse, and we've had some of our profiles be deleted almost immediately.

For example, I recently created the page Xol, Will of the Thousands. As most will be able to see, this profile was deleted for "unreliable statistics." I personally, find this notion quite absurd for a few reasons.

1. The majority of the verse has the same ratings as the first key, 5-C with a 4-B rating attached. The 5-C rating scales throughout the verse for numerous different feats on the other profiles. Same reasoning above for the 4-B ratings, except that the 4-B rating actually has a calc on Oryx's page for the exact value. All of these statistics are already accepted on these other pages that are standing now.

2. The 2-B rating on the profile scales to another tier of characters in the verse which has a linked profile with a 2-B in the justification explaining that the character scales from another already accepted on the site.

3. The Whisper of the Worm rating is appropriate as it does scale to whoever is using the weapon and has no true tier of its own.

Now, the community mostly operates through Discord because it's far more efficient to use as a form of communication when it comes to discussing feats and lore. We have a very stringent process when it comes to the review of the profiles we produce, and many of them take weeks to months to be fully complete to uphold the best accuracy possible. This includes being reviewed by Wokistan, our knowledgeable staff representative, as well as everyone else. I for one find it incredibly disheartening to take so much time and effort into ensuring a quality profile adhering to the wiki's guidelines only to have it deleted hours afterwards for being "unreliable" without any communication to myself or anyone else knowledgeable on the verse. With a simple conversation, both myself or any other member of the Destiny community could offer insight and explanation for a character's ratings.

This method of profile deletion seems completely antithetical to other means of wiki quality control. For example, the verse audit process that was undertaken a while ago has a specific protocol which involves contacting a verse's supporters and knowledgeable staff to resolve an issue with a profile when it is flagged. In my opinion, this process needs to be extended to all Content Moderation duties.

It sounds completely reasonable that upon a staff member finding an issue with a profile, that they should first consult those that know more about the subject than themselves and seek to find a solution. I know this has recently happened with Destiny, but if it's happening to other verses and their supporters on the site then it absolutely needs to be changed as soon as possible. We are all people here and we should be afforded the respect that we will be contacted and a dialogue will be opened if there are statistical problems with a profile.

I would note that if there are more egregious errors that completely violate the wiki or FANDOM's policies, the Content Moderators should have the power to remove that offensive content from the site immediately. Despite this, honest people creating profiles to the best of their ability should have the opportunity to fix their mistakes before just getting thrown into the aether.

 

[LordGriffin1000]

That's odd, I thought that's what we already did?. If someone creates a profile that is bad, someone either fixes the errors themselves and or contacts the person who created it and go from there. Some are brought straight to the deletion thread but we still discuss whether it is worth fixing or deleting and I could have sworn we contact the person who created it and allow them to explain.

I don't know if this happens to other verses though. However we do outright delete joke profiles and ones that are specifically not allowed.

 

[DarkGrath]

This should probably be brought up with the person who deleted the profile itself.

I can't say for sure, but typically this kind of thing would be brought up with the relevant people first. If it wasn't brought up with anyone before it was deleted, then it's worth contacting the person who deleted it to ask for their reasoning.

 

[GalaxianAegis]

The person who deleted the profile was Antvasmina, and he deleted another profile named Pahanin which was created by another user on the wiki as well. My point here being that if a Beauracrat is not following the same guidelines as the rest of the staff, that leads to some inconsistency on how this is handled across the board.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, perhaps I made a mistake in this case then, although the reasons for the statistics were evidently not described clearly enough for me to notice.

Anyway, the problem is that I am ridiculously overworked, and likely the only one who constantly monitors all suspicious new edits every single day, so for the sake of efficiency I simply do not have the time to start a discussion for every single poor quality newly added profile that I encounter. It simply isn't realistic.

You should just have mentioned this profile to me via my message wall though, so I could have restored it for you.

 

[WHYNAUT]

The thing is that Xol's profile was not of poor quality or suspicious and even if you didn't seem to think they were clear enough, it did have justifications for the statistics.

 

[Antvasima]

Then you could just have mentioned it to me directly. I have repeatedly restored profiles that I mistakenly deleted in the past.

Don't try to cripple my ability to carry out my work by creating some kind of confrontation though. Given how ridiculously much of it that I do, a few mistakes here and there are bound to happen, but if I am informed about them, it is usually easy to fix afterwards,

 

[Antvasima]

Is it fine if I close this thread, and we continue to talk on my message wall instead?

 

[Cropfist]

Not likely, pages belong to the wiki and are not the property of the page maker to discuss privately. We did not do this with composite human.

 

[DarkGrath]

There's no need to start some kind of drama over this. Nobody is seriously at fault here. Just discuss whether the profile should stay or not and act accordingly.

 

[Antvasima]

@DarkGrath

Agreed. That is what we have always done in the past regarding newly created deleted pages, and it has worked quite well.

@Cropfist

Composite Human is a very popular well-established page. This is not. There are regularly hundreds of pages created in this wiki, and I systematically check up all of them to see if they have proper structure and justifications, or seem blatantly lacking in these areas. If I make a mistake, the page creators tell me about it, and I restore the deleted page(s). That is how we most efficiently tend to handle this.

 

[GalaxianAegis]

I want to be clear, I'm not condemning Ant for an honest mistake. That's unproductive.

I'd be fine with talking about this specific profile on your wall @Antvasmina. I only made this thread as a means to get everyone on the same page on how the process should work because even if we fix the problem here, there's no real reason it wouldn't happen in the future.

This especially seems possible as some members above seem to think that there's an entirely different process we should be following. All I am literally asking is that if a staff member comes across a page that might be considered for deletion, just inform the creator on their wall before it gets destroyed. I don't think that's unreasonable, and if Antvasmina is overworked with this task it seems that there is another issue entirely.

Ant should 100% be supported in managing the created profiles. If he's not currently, then more work needs to be delegated to Content Moderators and Administrators in my opinion anyways.

 

[Antvasima]

I wrote a longer response to this, but Fandom ate it.

Anyway, I will try to repeat a small part of what I said in my first message.

The other staff members are generally busy IRL, so I cannot demand more work from them than they already do, and if I leave messages on members' walls, they will not always reply, in which case I will forget, and the bad page remain in the wiki, which is not practically workable.

In addition, I almost always only delete new pages that blatantly do not fulfill our requirements in the wiki, and when I occasionally make mistakes, I get requests to restore the pages, and am reasonable in this regard.

As such, it isn't realistic to handle my work in another manner than currently for the sake of practical efficiency.