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Staff Discussion rule addition (noncontroversial)

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You know, Ant, I think deleting the other thread was not at all a necessary measure (And I'm sure everyone who's laid eyes on it thinks the same), but since there's nothing to be done regarding that, I'll just copypaste what I said there:

Hopping in here for a moment to say that, as far as the Universal Veto system goes: I am firmly of the opinion that it, if at all, it should only apply to changes that actually objectively impact the entirety of the wiki. That is to say: Changes to site rules, changes to the Tiering System, changes to general discussion rules, and so on and so forth, would all fall under that umbrella.

What wouldn't fall under it would be: Verse policy issues (i.e Discussion and/or site rules that are only applied to specific verses, not to the whole site), Staff Discussion threads that are basically just CRTs that have been moved to another board to avoid chaos, and etc. Extending the Veto system to these matters creates an environment that's more than perfect for power abuse to take place, and overall it's preferable that any insinuations of absolute power on the part of the bureaucracy are minimized as much as possible.
Click to expand...
 
Well, I reverted the minor clarification change, and considered the other thread to be extremely unnecessarily incendiary, subversive, and drama-inducing which I do not have the time and energy to deal with.

Anyway, I consider the bureaucrat ability to veto potentially dangerous and/or destructive policy changes to be absolutely crucial for even remotely being able to properly manage this wiki and its community, and not just throw up my hands in complete exasperation and leave it to crumble and disintegrate without my continuous and relentless work ethic to support it.

Also, it isn't like it is a new addition. We have had this policy for many years, and just put it down in writing via this thread, but since it seems to have been accidentally worded in a way that could be misunderstood, whether deliberately or accidentally, I want to make a slight clarification, and would greatly appreciate some measure of loyalty and support in this regard, even if it might benefit a few of our staff members short term for their personal projects if they try to cripple me in this regard.
 
Maverick_Zero_X said:
Strongly agree with Ultima. Site wide policies are one thing but it’s completely illogical to apply the veto system to revisions centered around individual verses.
Click to expand...
But this is not intended to be about regular content revisions, just actual rule and policy pages, and we already decided to put this preexisting policy down in writing above.
 
Policy revisions means exactly that, anything written about our official standards, policies, and rules, including rule pages for significant individual verses, along with any major changes to our wiki as a whole. That's it.

Being able to veto these types of potentially dangerous and/or destructive changes is all that makes my management of this community even remotely manageable, rather than forcing me to throw up my hands into the air in exasperation and completely lose my motivation to continue, regardless if some staff members consider it personally beneficial to cripple me in this regard.
 
Antvasima said:
Policy revisions means exactly that, anything written about our official standards, policies, and rules, including rule pages for significant individual verses, along with any major changes to our wiki as a whole. That's it.
Click to expand...
That's what Ultima is saying. That this veto should be about site policies and not be applicable to a singular discussion thread or verse-specific CRT.
 
Verse-specific changes (even the addition or alteration of, for example, discussion rules regarding that verse) should not be privy to a bureaucrat's wishes alone, and so I am also against extending the veto to this. It makes sense for bureaucrats to possess some level of veto ability for site-wide changes: you are the highest authority of the site, and it is ultimately your role to maintain the site. However, you should not be the inherent final authority when it comes to verse changes- these decisions should be made collectively by supporters of the verse. The appeal of VS Battles is the democratic processes by which we come to our verse-specific conclusions- extending the veto rules to individual verses puts this notion in jeopardy, one feels.
 
But this is not about regular content revision threads, in our staff forum or otherwise, this is about important official rule pages.
 
They are not solely decided by us. We cannot change them on our own, only veto what seem to be very destructive changes to them.
 
Dread said that she wanted to post here, so I unlocked this thread for her. Except for her, only high-ranking staff members are supposed to comment here.
 
Antvasima said:
They are not solely decided by us. We cannot change them on our own, only veto what seem to be very destructive changes to them.
Click to expand...

For all practical purposes I think that using your veto in order to keep the status quo the way it is, is no different than using your power to change the rules to something new.

If for example fifteen staff members though it was appropriate to remove a verse-specific rule and you vetoed it, then it is a matter that has become "solely decided by you" unless the other two Bureaucrats are in disagreement with you.
 
It has greatly helped as a safeguard to keep our community from completely collapsing into constant insane experiments rather than sticking to what has already thoroughly proven to work well.
 
Since I got permission from Ant to fix it. And I apologize for the thread, I suppose it was better to continue it here, rather creating a new one.

We all agree (as in all administrators and staff members) that
  • any verse-related staff discussions (which is extended to discussion rules, cosmology discussions, specific aspects) is not included.
The resolution to this issue lies in our comprehension of the definition and interpretation of this specific portion of the text modification. However, I can empathize with the source of the confusion; while we perceive it as "Staff discussions about Changes in Verses" your perspective aligns it with "CRT but in any category."

@Antvasima Are we not misinterpreting this part? If you agree, then the draft should look like this:
For changes that have a significant impact on the entire wiki, and/or concern official policy issues, additional safeguards are in place. Only the most trusted and experienced staff members will evaluate the proposed courses of action. Please note that this version incorporates a universal veto, which allows any single staff member (bureaucrat) with veto power to block a proposed decision, even if it has the support of the majority.
  • Staff discussions that pertain to individual verses (which also encompass discussions about rules, cosmology, and specific aspects etc.) are excluded from this.
Click to expand...

And we can add this part into VSBW Glossary, to not get into any issue in the future.
Official Policy revisions: It encompass all written documentation concerning our official standards, policies, and regulations. This includes rule pages for important individual sections, as well as any significant modifications made to our entire wiki.
Click to expand...

Any suggestions to reword the draft is welcome. But I hope I did not misinterpret anyone's position.

For transparency’s sake: Staff discussions for examples are those: (@Deagonx no offence, but since those are recent :3)
It's a content revisions thread that has been placed in the staff-only category. This decision was made due to the need for thorough moderation and precise evaluation.
 
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Antvasima said:
It has greatly helped as a safeguard to keep our community from completely collapsing into constant insane experiments rather than sticking to what has already thoroughly proven to work well.
Click to expand...
For the most part I agree with the existence of the veto itself, for the record. I agree with this statement.
 
Well, as I have repeatedly tried to explain, the veto applies to changes to official rules, standards, and policies, as well as other changes affecting our entire wiki, not content revision threads, regardless of which of our forums they are placed in. That's it.
 
Then, I suppose you agree with the draft that I submitted, mind confirming?
 
If you only refer to the following, yes:

"And we can add this part into VSBW Glossary, to not get into any issue in the future.
Official Policy revisions: They encompass all written documentation concerning our official standards, policies, and regulations. This includes rule pages for important individual sections, as well as any significant modifications made to our entire wiki.
Click to expand...
"
Or do you want to make any further changes?
 
I added this part to avoid misunderstanding:
  • Staff discussions that pertain to individual verses (which also encompass discussions about rules, cosmology, and specific aspects etc.) are excluded from this.
Click to expand...
 
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I am not sure about your intentions with that addition. Please explain further.
 
Everyone agreed (including you) that verse-related staff discussions are excluded. I added this part to make it clear and official that we also exclude these types of discussions.

Is my wording confusing?
 
ImmortalDread said:
Everyone agreed (including you) that verse-related staff discussions are excluded. I added this part to make it clear and official that we also exclude these types of discussions.

Is my wording confusing?
Click to expand...
Excluded from what, exactly? Being vetoed?
 
Damage3245 said:
Excluded from what, exactly? Being vetoed?
Click to expand...
This is the whole rule. It is confusing, if we simply separate the sentence, I can understand fully.

For changes that have a significant impact on the entire wiki, and/or concern official policy issues, additional safeguards are in place. Only the most trusted and experienced staff members will evaluate the proposed courses of action. Please note that this version incorporates a universal veto, which allows any single staff member (bureaucrat) with veto power to block a proposed decision, even if it has the support of the majority.
  • Staff discussions that pertain to individual verses (which also encompass discussions about rules, cosmology, and specific aspects etc.) are excluded from this.
In short, veto applies to official policy revision (the definition will be added to VSB Wiki glossary), but it won't apply to [Verse-related staff discussions]

If it is that confusing, I can think of an alternative, but in my opinion, it is still understandable, no? (if we know the context of the sentence)
 
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The "Exclusions pertain are granted" part threw me off. It might be simpler to word it as:

  • Staff discussions that pertain to individual verses (which also encompass discussions about rules, cosmology, and specific aspects etc.) are excluded from this.
 
Sure, I suppose my wording is a bit formal (as rules should be, in my opinion).

I will edit this part in the original post, by any chance, I don't think you disagree, but mind confirming?
 
I actually think it's weird to interpret the rules, as written, as only applying the Bureaucrat veto to general wiki policy threads.

It's formatted as:
  • In wiki policy revision threads, bureaucrats have voting and veto rights.
  • For changes that have a significant impact on the entire wiki, additional safeguards are in place.
Why would the safeguards be described as "additional" if they only apply to wiki policy revision threads, where they already have established veto rights?

I also think that if something like this is controversial, then it'd be hard to draw a proper line between "entire wiki" and "a single verse". Would changes to how high tiers operate that only practically effect two verses be treated as effecting the "entire wiki"? I'd say it should be. I think determining whether two verses should have a heavy and arbitrary restriction on what pages can be made, is such a fundamental part of wiki processes, that it should to some extent be thought of as a policy revision.

I think the sort of thing being discussed here goes well beyond an ordinary discussion rule; those can be bypassed by just getting new evidence, or the arguments evolving to actually now be acceptable. They don't actually need to be removed before threads violating them can be made. Hard-coded standards banning certain characters from getting pages goes well beyond that, imo.
 
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Antvasima said:
Given that the previous wording seems to have given rise to misunderstandings, I want to make the following slight addition highlighted in bold text below that attempts to clarify the first sentence of the regulation text below. I would greatly appreciate support from our administrators in this regard.
  • In wiki policy revision threads, bureaucrats have both voting and veto rights. Administrators also have voting rights, and all staff members are welcome to comment in these threads, regardless of whether they have evaluation rights or not.
  • For changes that have a significant impact on the entire wiki, and/or concern official policy issues, additional safeguards are in place. Only the most trusted and experienced staff members will evaluate the proposed courses of action. Please note that this version incorporates a universal veto, which allows any single staff member (bureaucrat) with veto power to block a proposed decision, even if it has the support of the majority.
Policy changes was obviously intended to refer to our official wiki rule pages, not grant exceptions to a few of them.
Click to expand...
I think the proposal looks good; and of course it's wiki wide revisions is where Bureaucrat approval is needed. Of course, not verse specific topics as a few Bureaucrats who know little to nothing for a verse shouldn't override and overwhelming majority including lesser staff. And for some verses, I think there need at least some verse knowledge to propose heavily opinionated debates such as Outliers and PIS.

But veto rights are valid for revisions that could impact the entire wiki and especially ones that are risky to the point of "Potential destruction of most of the wiki" levels of controversial. Such as cases of tiering system revisions.
 
My thoughts here echo those of Bambu and Ultima.
 
I think everybody is on the same page regarding the wiki policies.

And I agree that things like veto shouldn't be a thing in verse-specific CRTs.

Verse-specific discussion rules like the ones listed here should be decided by the agreement of staff and community: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Discussion_Rules

However, a policy about a certain type of media, like this one: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Power-scaling_Rules_for_Marvel_and_DC_Comics
as of now, isn't considered the same as the normal verse-specific discussion rules mentioned above. As far as I am aware, this falls under the wiki policy. But I guess more discussion on this can happen since most of the confusion is regarding this only, as far as I can see.
 
I believe the central question here is:

Where do we distinguish between staff discussions involving Marvel/DC (or any other aspects such as rules, cosmology, scaling, etc.) and staff discussions related to other verses?
  • Is it determined by its importance within the community?
  • Or perhaps by its popularity?
  • Alternatively, is it based on its material size?
Considering that it is, by all means, still an individual verse like any other objectively speaking, is Nasuverse also included? It is comparable in both size and popularity. If we don't simply state the requirements for an individual verse to be treated as a 'policy revision', then we would be creating an exception, which should be noted.

I think this question requires an answer, or at the very least, we need to establish where we should draw these boundaries in the future. Additionally, we should identify the factors that need to be considered when categorizing a staff thread.

@Agnaa thanks for pointing out the small significant issue in the draft, I fixed it: (it is also redundant since we clarified what is policy revision in general)
In wiki policy revision threads, bureaucrats have both voting and veto rights. Administrators also have voting rights, and all staff members are welcome to comment in these threads, regardless of whether they have evaluation rights or not.
Click to expand...
For changes that have a significant impact on the entire wiki, and/or concern official policy issues, additional safeguards are in place. Only the most trusted and experienced staff members will evaluate the proposed courses of action. Please note that this version incorporates a universal veto, which allows any single staff member (bureaucrat) with veto power to block a proposed decision, even if it has the support of the majority.
Click to expand...
to (I removed redundancy and repetition from the draft)
In wiki policy revision threads, bureaucrats have both voting and veto rights. Administrators also have voting rights, and all staff members are welcome to comment in these threads, regardless of whether they have evaluation rights or not.
  • Staff discussions that pertain to individual verses (which also encompass topics about discussion rules, cosmology, and specific aspects etc.) are excluded from veto-enforcement.
Please note that this version incorporates a universal veto, which allows any bureaucrat to block a proposed decision, even if it has the support of the majority to prevent a potential damage to the community.
Click to expand...

And everyone agreed with this definition (including @Antvasima and @AKM sama), it should be placed in VSBW Glossary
Official Policy revisions: They encompass all written documentation concerning our official standards, policies, and regulations. This includes rule pages for important individual sections, as well as any significant modifications made to our entire wiki.
Click to expand...
 
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ImmortalDread said:
I believe the central question here is:

Where do we distinguish between staff discussions involving Marvel/DC (or any other aspects such as rules, cosmology, scaling, etc.) and staff discussions related to other verses?
  • Is it determined by its importance within the community?
  • Or perhaps by its popularity?
  • Alternatively, is it based on its material size?
Considering that it is, by all means, still an individual verse like any other objectively speaking, is Nasuverse also included? It is comparable in both size and popularity. If we don't simply state the requirements for an individual verse to be treated as a 'policy revision', then we would be creating an exception, which should be noted.

I think this question requires an answer, or at the very least, we need to establish where we should draw these boundaries in the future. Additionally, we should identify the factors that need to be considered when categorizing a staff thread.
Click to expand...
As I said, I don't think the difference is "It's Marvel! That's a big, important verse!" I think the difference is that we've imposed on that specific verse unique rules for page creation which don't apply to any other verses.

It's not an agreement on what's canon or non-canon, which is backed by evidence and can be changed by further evidence, like a bunch of other verses have.

It's not an agreement on what a character should be rated at, which is backed by evidence and can be changed by further evidence, like a bunch of other verses have.

It's a specific restriction on how much a character has to appear before they can be indexed, which applies to no other verses, and is based on concerns of quality for the wiki as a whole, rather than evidence from the series itself.

I don't think a general bureaucrat veto for all Marvel/DC threads threads for those verses is suitable. But I think the topic of adding/removing unique restrictions on page creation not particularly based on arguments from the source material moves into wiki policy territory.

The only other thing on the site I can think of which gets close to this is how articles on the SCP wiki can't be used unless they have net 10 upvotes or higher.
 
So I re-wrote this post currently (totally not stolen from Agnaa, jokes aside, thank you)

This is the new draft for “policy revision” definition which also matches what Agnaa has stated (which I agree with it in the principle)
Official Policy revisions: They encompass all written documentation concerning our official standards, policies, and regulations, excluding those largely informed by evidence from specific verses which only apply to those. This includes rule pages for important individual sections, as well as any significant modifications made to our entire wiki.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah. While I disagree with the existence of the veto (I don't think that bureaucrats are uniquely wise in comparison to the rest of the admins, and I especially don't think they are in a way which can't be communicated, or which the admins won't listen to), if it does exist to cover wiki policy, I think that's a good faith definition of wiki policy.
 
Well, as AKM said above, the issue here is that from my perspective the Marvel and DC Comics rules page is not intended to contain regular verse-specific discussion rules (which are not covered by the bureaucrat veto), but rather important official wiki policy safeguards to not have those verses collapse into complete unreliability, due to their extremely different nature compared to regular "linear storytelling by a single author for a much more limited period of time" verses.

However, I can understand that the line likely gets blurry here, and I obviously made two mistakes in my management of this situation, due to being stressed out at the time, and having limited social competence given the autism.

I will try to be as reasonable as I can manage in our specific discussion about the number of required character appearances to get pages here.
 
Alright, since everyone has given their stance on the matter, may we come to the conclusion?

This is the new version:
In wiki policy revision threads, bureaucrats have both voting and veto rights. Administrators also have voting rights, and all staff members are welcome to comment in these threads, regardless of whether they have evaluation rights or not.
  • Staff discussions that pertain to individual verses (which also encompass topics about discussion rules, cosmology, and specific aspects etc.) are excluded from veto-enforcement.
Please note that this version incorporates a universal veto, which allows any bureaucrat to block a proposed decision, even if it has the support of the majority to prevent any possible potential damage to the community.
Click to expand...

And for our VSBW Glossary:
Official Policy revisions: They encompass all written documentation concerning our official standards, policies, and regulations, excluding those largely informed by evidence from specific verses which only apply to those. This includes rule pages for important individual sections, as well as any significant modifications made to our entire wiki.
Click to expand...
 
Well, I do not personally mind your wording, with the exception that I do not consider the Marvel and DC Comics rules page to contain regular much less serious verse-specific rules, but to be our only bulward against the wholesale destruction of the reliability and manageability for the two most notable verses in our entire wiki. I do not want the most overzealous fans to organise in private to quickly completely dismantle it. So I personally consider it significant enough to count as containing policy instructions.

Also, your suggested addition to our glossary will turn much more publicly noticeable if we include it slightly further down in the same section of the same rule page as the rest of your text above.
 
Your concern regarding DC/Marvel rules is already included:
Official Policy revisions: They encompass all written documentation concerning our official standards, policies, and regulations, excluding those largely informed by evidence from specific verses which only apply to those. This includes rule pages for important individual sections, as well as any significant modifications made to our entire wiki.
Click to expand...
So they are under this definition as an official policy revision.

Antvasima said:
Also, your suggested addition to our glossary will turn much more publicly noticeable if we include it slightly further down in the same section of the same rule page as the rest of your text above.
Click to expand...
You think so? You mean, like this – All at once? Well, I don't mind personally.
In wiki policy revision threads, bureaucrats have both voting and veto rights. Administrators also have voting rights, and all staff members are welcome to comment in these threads, regardless of whether they have evaluation rights or not.
  • Staff discussions that pertain to individual verses (which also encompass topics about discussion rules, cosmology, and specific aspects etc.) are excluded from veto-enforcement.
Please note that this version incorporates a universal veto, which allows any bureaucrat to block a proposed decision, even if it has the support of the majority to prevent any possible potential damage to the community.

Official Policy revisions: They encompass all written documentation concerning our official standards, policies, and regulations, excluding those largely informed by evidence from specific verses which only apply to those. This includes rule pages for important individual sections, as well as any significant modifications made to our entire wiki.
Click to expand...
 
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1) Okay, but it is hard to understand the intentions of the way you worded your sentences.

2) Yes, but without the bolded text, and written as: "Official policy revisions encompass..."
 
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