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The Vs. Battles Wiki Problem

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Honestly all this discussion is way over my head but I think I got the gist of it, tbh I just really hope this doesn't divulge into staff Vs regular users, my perspective of fiction/standards is better than yours, passive aggressive spite towards certain users/verses etc. (All leading to branching threads that just cause more headaches everyone).

Also sorry if I'm bringing up a dead topic but Pokémon isn't just 2-B because of games sold but due to branching universe theory thanks to the reflection cave, ultra wormholes, parallel dimensions, dream world/entralink etc.

Either way I honestly don't know what else I do to contribute to the discussion, but let's keep it civil and try to find an appropriate resolution I guess?.
 
It isn't just Staff vs regular users; there are way too many instances where staff have problems with other staff, and problems with regular users having hostile debates with other regular users. And it's especially fanbase wars that are prone to causing drama. There are plenty of obvious examples that could be said across multiple mediums; not just HST stuff or Game Console wars ect. But a lot of fanbases in general are really bad and there are people who don't even try to avoid creating bad blood. It's understandably annoying that the same people made a thread trying to get another verse downgraded right after those same people literally did the opposite thing for another verse without truly addressing the in depth reason and context. I can name plenty of regular users who are definitely more polite and reasonable than several staff members.

That being said, disagreeing with statistics ratings isn't harmful at all. What is harmful is when people are super aggressive about it. And liking verses better or worse should have 0 correlation for statistics ratings which I know there are some people who are legit reasonably unbiased. I never use my taste on a verse as my motivation for upgrades or downgrades, I just go by context, reason, balance of out system, and consistency. It doesn't stop people from making accusations and it's hard prove motives, but drama is sometimes unavoidable for that reason.

I do agree that staying a civilized, united community with no discrimination or bigotry of any kind is the most important thing the wiki needs.
 
I agree with Medeus.
 
> The thread's state right now

It was only a matter of time before it devolved into this pile of drama & nonsense, really. As I said, this was far, far from the best time we could have picked to discuss this.
 
Antvasima said:
I am also worried about that Sera seems to imply that she will leave soon, as we are quite dependent on her good sense of judgement rearding important wiki policy issues.
Click to expand...
I'm not leaving. Eventually I will retire though (not any time soon), but I do need to spend even less time here than I already do (I'm a mother of two after all).
 
@Sera

Okay. Thank you. That is quite understandable.
 
We have too many staff who do what any regular member can do. Most don't review CRTs other than those of verses the like or are knowledgeable on. Let's go back to assuming good faith in the community, and let those with good arguments be trusted members, not just colored names. Staff should be decreased in number and be managers of the site only.

This actually hit me pretty hard, as I realize that outside of HR matters I don't particularly do much in the way of *proper* site management, edit monitoring, and CRT evaluation for verses I'm unfamiliar with.

So as a staff member who admittedly has the issues described in this talking point, I think I'd like to elaborate more on why they exist.

Meaningfully commenting on the matters of a verse one is unfamiliar with absolutely requires that the individual makes themselves familiar with the verse in question. Admins and calc members often don't have all the relevant information provided to them on a calc or CRT, which usually means one of three things happens:

  • The admin doesn't want to invest themselves in a series they aren't familiar with and likely don't care about. They opt not to evaluate the CRT due to a desire to have a lengthy, meaningful comment. This happens a lot.
  • The admin doesn't want to invest themselves in a series they aren't familiar with, again, however they opt to evaluate the CRT or calc regardless of this, and give a very small approval or disapproval of the points presented in the CRT without research. This also happens a lot.
  • The admin invests themselves in a series they aren't familiar with, which typically requires multiples of hours to get all the relevant context on a feat, moreso if the context is needed for wide-spanning series revisions. They continue to do this until they burn themselves out doing this (I will add in that this has happened to me quite a few times), and opt to do one of the previous two options.
We kind of make this issue ourselves, as very few other VS sites have users whose role is like this; other wikias which require admin oversight of series interpretation and information are usually dedicated to a single series, and other battleboards don't typically have admins who are required to determine if an interpretation of a series is valid or not, but admins who just perform oversight and enforce rules of debate and discussion.

Regular users are under no such burden, and can attach themselves to single verses and often just have more disposable time to research and discuss that verse than staff. Which does bring into question why we have one of our staff's major roles as approval or rejection of revisions, when they should logically have less expertise in a verse than a dedicated bluename in everything but the site's baseline standards and rules, purely because of time constraints and expectations.
 
I think this is a good a place as any to give my official statement of resignation. Before you blame Sera and the thread for my sudden and abrubt decision, hear me out.

Sera's words have really spoken to me on a level I coudn't quite articulate myself. Clearly, I agree with Sera in some or for the most part, otherwise I wouldn't have resigned on this thread. I guess you could say I've been harbouring these thoughts and feelings for quite some time now, and Sera just said what I was thinking.

Look, when it really comes down to it, I'm not doing anything different from when I wasn't staff. Besides a huge confidence booster and the ability to close threads, I have not done anything different from what I did prior to staff. I don't participate in wiki difining/breaking projects like the tier change or High 3-A revisions. And when I do speak up, I'm drowned out or ignored because of my inferior knowledge on the subject. Staff threads have become a joke wherein anyone not derailing the thread can voice their opinion. I used to respect staff threads. I used to respect staff. But we've blurred the line between staff and user that I don't feel any difference between the two.

Do you know why I keep shilling Agnaa for staff? Because he ******* deserves it way more than I do. Agnaa has balls. He isn't afraid to say no, and give a subjective opinion. I respect the **** out of him and wished more people did too. When I think staff, I think Agnaa, and I think we have all forgotten that staff waves the bigger stick in the end. Yes, the opinion of bluenames matter, but the big decisons still need to be made by people of character, and not the voice of the many. Character, I feel, is what separates bluenames from staff.

I don't think it's wrong to say that I'm not that big a deal on the wiki. I look out for the little guy. I work on verses almost no one else does because someone has to work on them. The God of High School, American Gods, Dark Souls, Sekiro, Knack, and so on. These verses barely have any CRTs and are usually in serious need of work. Meanwhile Bleach or Naruto get 10 CRTs every week. Look, I'm not saying it's wrong or bad that these verses get more attention than others. What I'm trying to say is that I've been doing this since before I was staff, and I'll damn sure do it after I'm demoted.

There's just no need for me, and I'm taking up a spot someone else deserves.

For what it's worth, I was genuinely happy when I got staff. Hell, I even told my parents. I was proud of being a credit to this wiki. But now I realize, I can do what I normally do without being staff. The magic is gone. The work remains. I hope this doesn't upset anyone.
 
I think Sir Ovens has articulated the points better than I ever could, but for similiar reasons, along with a few more (mainly the huge number of complaints against my attitude in threads), I'll be leaving my staff position as well. I have already contact Promestein regarding the topic, and P.S. Sera's thread has very little to do with it considering I had discussed resigning to Antvasima prior as well.
 
It's really sad to see you two step down so soon, but I understand.
 
I too hope you guys at least stick around, but yes; even retired staff are often valued as staff.
 
Yes. I would also much prefer if both you and everybody else currently on the staff continue to be a part of it. I personally think that both of you do a fine job and seem to be trying the best that you can with the time that you have available.
 
Ovens and Zark, understandable and good luck. Like Sera and Medeus, I hope you, guys, stick around.
 
I just want to reiterate, leaving staff is my own decision. Sera's thread is just saying what I was already thinking. I would never say something like this out loud by myself, which is what made me consider resigning. We need more people like Sera who say "no" to be staff. I just nod to whatever I think is right and can't speak up about big things that are wrong because I lack proper knowledge or skill in the area of discussion.
 
Personally on the thread, I did disagree and too many about obsure verses and I think the audit system is a good solution. I do overall agree with other points in the OP. On the reviewing CRT, I do admit I am not active as I used to be last year; I aimed to improve my efforts there.
 
@Sir Ovens

Well, I think that you are too hard on yourself. Just try to help out to the best of your ability, and things should work out.
 
@Sera Ex

Just to be sure, if you weren't implying the solution would be to have staff resign or to have obscure verses removed from the wiki, what did you mean by the following then :

> Staff should be decreased in number and be managers of the site only.

> Obscure high tiered verses need to be banned. Period.

I'm confused. Or is there bad wording?

(please don't kill me I mean no offense *sweats*)
 
I really hope that several staff don't resign due to this thread. Just to be clear, I appreciate all of their help, definitely don't want them to leave, and do not expect them to do more than their real life duties allow.
 
I forgot about those statements and didn't notice them in the thread. But some of those should be better written. Though Sera noted some parts were outdated and that the thing felt rushed and other details seemed hyperbolic.
 
Seeing both Zark and Ovens step down hurts.

... Though, at the same time, the work they contribute is not lost. Salutes to you two, and keep up the good work where you can.
 
I hope to convince them to stay. I think that they have been helping out fine, and that there is no good reason for them to be so hard on themselves.
 
I've read the whole thread. There're still some things that the others're missing.

1. Having too many pages due to our staff's pitiful unwillingness to cull the number of pages in favor of our popularity and fear of workload. We value quantity over quality.
Because our wiki's topic is so enormously wide that it'd have many million or even billion pages at the very best, assuming that we add profiles on every single profile-worthy character from every single notable verse. The number of our profiles grows swiftly — we get used to it long ago. Nothing we can change the process with. And we, nevertheless, keep an eye on low-quality content, deleting it when necessary.

Having too many staff members despite only a few actually doing what they are positioned for, and some having admittedly lost interest (just retire then). Having this many staff is unneeded as mass editing is a community effort or can be done by bots. Despite not needing over 70 staff, we still do.
We have so many staffers for a reason. It's normal for a community to extend their staff when they become too big to be administrated by a handful of people. Look at Wikipedia: they currently have ~500 admins (Not even counting mods!), which is still far superior to us. Yes, not all of them are equally active and hardwoking, but this is also true for our staff too. If nothing bad happens for us, and our high pace of development doesn't decrease, we may reach ~500 staffers approximately in the next 20-30 years. Again, not all of them will be equally active and hardwoking for sure, thus it'd be basically the same thing as of today.
 
> Nothing we can change the process with.

Well, there are possible solutions.

Taking the audit process for example, we could take pages for a verse has been rated as Red (as in falls far below our standards) and delete the verses which haven't shown any signs of improvement.

Right now there are about 25 such verses which have been judged as being very low quality. Culling them (possibly backing up their old versions into a sandbox or something) would help towards reducing the overall number of pages.

Eleven verse pages have already been deleted for having virtually no content as a result of the audit process.
 
I agree with Ogurtsow.

Also, again, I really hope that Zark and Sir Ovens would please reconsider, as I think that they have been helping out fine as Discussion Moderators.
 
I agree with Ogurtsow actually, imagine if our site somehow ended up becoming as big as Wikipedia; then that's all the more reason to be overstaffed. Never going to go that far, and Wikipedia has I'm pretty sure gone through way more drama than we have. As talking about politics, or religion, Creation Vs Evolution, terrorists attacks, and many other stuff is way more controversial than some cross fictional character punching each other in the face.

So in other words, Being overstaffed really isn't as big as an issue as some people are making it out to be. At the end of the day, everyone who's currently staff here is going to retire eventually and there's always going to be new replacements.
 
Medeus is correct in my opinion.
 
I am not leaving because of the thread to be frank, it's more of a scenario of me being too unfriendly and confrontational in threads where other users get intimidated and form a bad opinion of the staff in general, alongside that, the new Tiering System has alienated me to many high tiers topics so I can't reliably comment on threads, alongside my growing frustrations regarding hypocrisy in many verses' scalings which weren't being addressed in a reasonable way in my opinion.

I am ashamed to tell that for the past few weeks I had been purposely avoiding new threads for the above reasons, and I sincerely doubt I can pretend anymore to be capable of a staff position when I am met with bias on every front while my own words are, less than precise.
 
The God Of Procrastination said:
This reminds me, how's the audit going?
Click to expand...
I'm sad to say, that progress has slowed down a lot. Out of the 10 groups formed only one is still consistently auditing verses, and a few specific misc tasks haven't been done for quite a while (posting all the currently evaluated verses and their categories to the audit hub thread).

I can't be too mad as I am one of the people not doing anything, and because no progress here doesn't really hurt the site as it's just a return to the prior status quo, but it is a shame.
 
Listen, the only people I recommended to actually retire are those who admittedly lost interest in helping the site and aren't contributing in any productive manner (their actual actions are often, counterproductive). Don't continue to do something you don't want to do. By no means was I suggesting those who aren't as active as they could be to retire (that'd be hypocritical of me, since I'm still here).

At the same time, the decision is ultimately up to you. No one should try even in their hardest to stop you. Of course we appreciate everyone's contributions but damn it their contributions aren't tied to their position. For example, call him whatever you want (honorary staff, staff lite, etc.) Agnaa leaving the site imo would be just as disheartening as if Wokistan left, even if Agnaa isn't staff. This is because of his contributions and personality, not his position (or lack thereof).

Be it five months or eleven, I will retire from the site for reasons most of you should know already, and I wouldn't want anyone constantly asking me to stay. And after some time later, I'll be gone for good. Be mindful of others' feelings and aspirations. Every bird had to leave the nest eventually. We have lost many great members in the past (both staff and non-staff) but we've always got more. New people join, old normies become some of the best staff we have, the cycle continues. Keep that in mind.
 
Well, I just don't want any staff members to quit because they think that they are not doing a good enough job, even though I value their input and think that they are helping out fine. This includes Zark and Sir Ovens.
 
@Zark

You are not expected to be perfect or know everything just because you are a member of the staff. Just try to be unbiased and help out in the areas that you are comfortable with.
 
Yeah, I too am starting to feel like Audit group consists of me and Elizhaa. Not that we mind given that we respect everyone being really busy. And Sera is absolutely right, unless staff members simply are uninterested in being staff, no one should be forced to step down. And yeah, Sir Ovens and Zark were both really great IMO. Not going to force them to come back one way or the other, but just keep in mind that you're always welcome to come back if you change your minds.
 
Agreed. It is wholly unnecessary for them to resign.
 
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