The wiki editing lock

[Antvasima]

Hello.

You have probably noticed that the wiki is currently locked from editing for regular members.

Given the massive workload to constantly monitor the wiki for bad edits, Bert Hall of Fandom has charitably been trying to help us more easily take care of the wiki, and among other things he offered to lock the regular wiki pages for members that are not either part of our staff, or given trusted member access from us.

I have been considering applying this OBD-style option in the long run, for the wiki to be able to survive when I am no longer able to monitor every suspicious edit 6-8 hours every single day, as they would othervise quickly accumulate, and encourage increasing amounts of the same, which would eventually turn the wiki extremely unreliable.

However, I was planning to talk about it with the staff members one-by-one first to see what they thought of the idea, and so far I have only had the time to talk with two of the bureaucrats.

It seems like Bert misunderstood, and applied this very prematurely.

My sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

NOTE: STAFF ONLY

 

[Golden_Void]

Would that mean in the long run, we'd be getting more content mods? If applied.

 

[Aeyu]

What would it take it acquire this trusted editing status? Many of us, like myself, are only interested in keeping things consistent and doing what has been approved in CT's and by staff.

 

[Arigarmy]

I assume there's something in the permissions/role log that Admins can access from our Contributions pages.

 

[Antvasima]

@UMR

Ideally, I was considering something like admin-locked only being accessible for bureaucrats, admins, and content moderators, whereas the rest of the wiki would also be accessible by discussion moderators, calc group members, chat moderators, and trusted/competent members (possibly by giving them rollback rights), but I do not know if that would be practically possible yet.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I am not sure if this is a good idea. Normal people should be allowed to edit and create pages.

I really don't see this being of any good.

 

[Aeyu]

I agree with Matt, generally speaking. Mods, admins, and other competent members try their best to generally prevent needless edits, and discuss those which might be considered as such in threads first.

 

[The_Everlasting]

No offense, but I feel like this measure is putting too little faith in regular users and preexisting staff.

 

[Antvasima]

@Aeyu & Arigarmy

Bert was suggesting to use the rollback function access for this purpose.

Anyway, it would be a bit messy in the beginning, but basically all members who have proven that they are responsible and know what they are doing, including you two, would keep the ability to edit the wiki.

 

[OishiLover75]

One selfless thing I'm concerned is that you limit access for new people to contribute to the wiki.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I don't want this wiki to become elitistic towards staff and show no good faith or trust to new members. It wil make the website seem oppressive, intimidating and unwelcoming.

 

[Promestein]

This seems excessive...? Any popular wiki deals with things like this and they don't need to resort to such drastic measures. I understand where you're coming from, but it doesn't feel necessary.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I agree with Ever and Prom.

 

[Promestein]

Yeah, I also agree with Ever here.

The fact that OBD does this is part of why we've grown so much more popular. This will gut our userbase and accessibility.

 

[WeeklyBattles]

Yeah i gotta agree with Matt Prom and Ever on this one

 

[Antvasima]

@Matthew & The Everlasting

The problem is that currently the overall wellbeing of the wiki is far too dependent on myself constantly going up every single day to monitor all suspicious edits, and correcting all of the bad formatting, spelling and structure errors, vandalism, unwarranted statistics changes, and so onwards. This usually takes 6-8 hours of work every single day, and there is nobody else willing and able to handle this.

If I were to leave the wiki, or stop monitoring all bad edits, they would quickly accumulate by the thousands, and encourage increasing amounts of outright vandalism.

As such, this would give the staff members an important control mechanism, similarly to the OBD, that would allow them to make sure that the contributions remain reliable.

 

[Golden_Void]

Also, how would we even begin the selection process/vetting of trusted members?

Is there a designated team for this, or simply a edit requirement?

 

[Reppuzan]

@Ant

I understand that the pressure of monitoring all these edits is overwhelming, but at the same time I also think this is excessive.

If this is implemented, it'd worsen the whole accusations of "staff elitism" since only Staff members get to decide what gets a profile, whether or not a verse can be made, or what should stay on pages.

In addition, it would create a whole new logistics issue in how we decide what's "alright". Imagine hundreds of threads flooding saying "Can this profile be made? Can this change be made? What about this? I think this verse should be made?"

On top of this, it locks out other users from actively participating in anything but threads. You yourself said that this is meant to be a fun character indexing wiki. If the users want to do something other than make threads, what are they going to do without getting approval?

I personally became interested in this wiki because I enjoyed doing research and making profiles. Having to slog through what amounts to paperwork for every single little change would heavily diminish any sense of enjoyment I'd get from being here.

Having order is nice, but at the same time making something (potentially, but I personally think this is unlikely) more convenient for the Staff at the expense of everyone else is being overly controlling.

 

[Promestein]

Ant.

While I completely understand where you're coming from, I really don't think that's an accurate summation of things. The fact that you devote so much time to the wiki is unhealthy and self-destructive, something that you've acknowledged on your own several times, so of course no one else is going to be willing to do that to themselves. I am very grateful for all the work you've done for this wiki, but it's not something anyone should be expected to do without payment.

You are gravely overexaggerating the threat. The wiki has a reliable staff and a generally reliable userbase that will deal with outright vandalism as it comes up and, over time, will clean up any poorly formatted pages without your involvement, as has happened many times before. Again, while I understand where you're coming from, you really seem to lack faith in the rest of the staff.

 

[Antvasima]

I am previously aware of all of the bad consequences of this.

However, there is a bigger issue at stake here: The continued survival of the wiki itself.

As it stands, there isn't anybody else willing to work up to 13 hours some days just to keep the wiki running, and this may be the hardest wiki to manage in all of Fandom.

I do not think that you realise quite how much work it takes for me to keep it afloat, so I am extremely concerned that it will quickly fall apart without me around to manage it anymore, whenever I finally run out of energy.

 

[CrossverseCrisis]

This is doing too much.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I am constantly overwhelmed by an ocean of bad edits to keep under control, and I will not be able to continue to do so forever.

When I stop doing so, the probability that the vandalism and unwarranted statistics changes will explode is massive.

This is not at all the way that I wanted this discussion to be forced upon me, as I cannot discuss this issue with the entire staff on my own all at once, especially with my regular workload to take care of on top of it.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Ant. The wiki won't collapse. I mean no disrespect, I understand how you are and how much you care for the wiki, but the wiki won't collapse and there is no need to do such a drastic measure.

Yes, no one works up to 13 hours a day here, but we have multiple Admins who spend like, 6 hours here a day. And through a collective work, the wiki will be kept in order.

 

[OishiLover75]

Instead of having to rely on one person monitoring, it probably would be better to have people act on their own shifts.

 

[Reppuzan]

@Ant

The wiki isn't going to collapse like a deck of cards if no one's on to monitor it for four or five hours. As it stands, the vast majority of times are covered by one Staff member or another at any given moment.

Yes, users will make a ton of bad edits, but we will take care of it. Every other major wiki in existence does the same.

Will it be exponentially harder than other wikis? Of course, but at the same time this measure will just isolate us and render the place stagnant.

We're not trying to all argue against you at once, and I mean this in the most respectful way, but there's a fine line between vigilance and unhealthy paranoia.

 

[Antvasima]

In any case, I immediately asked Bert Hall to remove the editing access lock when I heard about it.

This was intended to be something possibly applied much later after talks with the entire staff, not as a unit, but as individuals.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I mean no disrespect either, but given my workload I am probably the only one in the wiki who fully realises just how many bad edits there are to constantly inspect and clean up.

Basically, we would still allow all of our good contributors to edit the wiki. This would simply sift away temporary vandal accounts and people who have no idea what they are doing.

 

[Reppuzan]

@Ant

Thank you for all your editing work, Ant, but at the same time you must realize how condescending that statement sounds.

Yes, you handle a majority of typos, misprints, and bad edits. But to say that the rest of the Staff is unaware of it is ludicrous.

We all read the editing logs every day. To say that none of us are aware of the magnitude of the threat of bad users is downright patronizing.

But we ca manage. To say that we can't is being ridiculously pessimistic.

 

[CrossverseCrisis]

That and you make it sound like we're lazy and stupid if that's all i'm seeing.

 

[Antvasima]

Anyway, speaking of making our work easier, Bert has found a script that allows us to mark several edits in a page as monitored at once. If the content moderators and administrators of this wiki start to use this when they have inspected a series of suspicious edits in a page, this would allow us to split the workload far more easily, as others would not have to inspect the same edits over and over.

 

[Antvasima]

Again, I definitely do not mean any disrespect, and I greatly appreciate all of the help from the staff.

I expressed myself in a bad manner, but I simply realise that you all have real life concerns to mainly take care of, and to make certain that no bad edits slip by, it is currently necessary to make the monitoring a more than full time job.

The improved monitoring tool that I mentioned may change that, so that it is easier to split the workload, but that remains to be seen.

 

[Antvasima]

Also, again, this was intended to possibly be applied when I am no longer able to continue, definitely not at this point.

I was planning to gradually have individual discussions with all of the staff members one on one, so having the situation forced like this is extremely problematic for me.

 

[Golden_Void]

Also, again, this was intended to possibly be applied when I am no longer able to continue, definitely not at this point.
I was planning to gradually have individual discussions with all of the staff members one on one, so having the situation forced like this is extremely problematic for me.

About how many years is that?

 

[Antvasima]

I do not know. I just wanted to have it available as a backup option for the rest of the staff to have a control mechanism to keep vandals away from the pages.

 

[Reppuzan]

I'd be totally for a new monitoring tool to help divide up the work of managing the typical deluge of bad edits.

I'm still opposed to the whole "lock down the entire wiki" notion unless it's an extremely dire emergency (i.e. we're suddenly besieged by hundreds of socks at once for whatever reason).

Using it as a nuclear option is fine, but I don't like the idea of having it as a first resort.

 

[Amelia_Lonelyheart]

I am very, very much against this. All this will do is cause new users to be put off by this wiki and not contribute here. It may "fix" one problem, but will cause many more. Not to mention the potential divide it could cause between staff members and users, which will bring its own consequences.

There are bots and software that help with these things without resorting to such drastic measures. I have my own, simple bot that helps with cleaning up articles off-wiki for example.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, hopefully Bert will unlock the wiki soon. This was never intended to be applied until much later, after first individually talking with the rest of the staff.

That said, again, without me to constantly correct and/or investigate the bad edits every day, they genuinely will start to quickly pile up and encourage far more and far worse of the same, which would eventually turn this wiki extremely unreliable and badly written. This is extremely hard to avoid.

 

[Ryukama]

I just want to give a little bit of support to Ant, since I know he's completely coming from a place of utmost care for the site and has a different point of view due to an incredible responsibility and burden that none of us come close to understanding fully.

That being said, I cannot say I disagree with most of the concerns other users have brought up. I have even brought some of the exact same things up in private. Honestly if the site was so exclusive from regular users when I joined this site, I can't confidently say I would've stayed.

However, I understand Ant's worries of vandalism that might arise once a tremendous portion of the place he currently has checked is forced to leave his watch. Albeit I have more faith in the staff and less paranoia to think that the site will get destroyed, but I do see Ant's absence as a major concern for the wiki. His solutions, while perhaps not perfect, should be considered and evaluated. Hopefully we can come to some sort of reasonable middle ground.

I also regret that the conversation had to be carried out so impromptu and out of nowhere here instead of the organized private consultation of the staff he had originally planned.

Personally, I think Reppuzan has been by far the best voice of reason throughout this thread. I agree with his open-mindedness towards Ant's solutions if it is a necessary course of action if crap really hits the fan, though somewhat hesitant towards having that be the go to plan.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for the support Ryukama.

Yes, this scenario being suddenly forced upon me has pretty much completely destroyed my ability to properly argue for my case.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I am very, very much against this. All this will do is cause new users to be put off by this wiki and not contribute here. It may "fix" one problem, but will cause many more. Not to mention the potential divide it could cause between staff members and users, which will bring its own consequences.
There are bots and software that help with these things without resorting to such drastic measures. I have my own, simple bot that helps with cleaning up articles off-wiki for example.

Darkanine expressed my thoughts perfectly.