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Perhaps you can use the results here and come to an equally effective conclusion. :^)Antvasima said:
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The wiki editing lock
- Thread starter Antvasima
- Start date
- Status
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If it hasn't been echoed enough already, I am absolutely against this. The threat you are viewing is over-exaggerated. If you spend less time on the Wiki, Ant. It will not just fall apart. While no one denies your incredible contributions, I don't think the situation is as grave a and you seem to fear.
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- #43
Well, I genuinely still firmly believe that if I were to suddenly leave, the wiki actually would eventually attract hundreds of bad edits every single day, which would turn all of my over 10000 hours of building the community to nothing, so I find it very depressing that this completely destroyed my ability to talk about this through private conversations.
Bots and scripts are not able to evaluate complicated edits, such as unmotivated statistics changes, but again, I cannot argue with the expected backlash from the staff accumulating en masse. Things like this have to be handled through calm and rational individual discussion, not through blunt sudden change that causes immediate antipathy from the community.
I suppose that will have to live with that the wiki will eventually turn extremely unreliable, whenever I stop doing an Atlas impression, whether I like it or not.
Bots and scripts are not able to evaluate complicated edits, such as unmotivated statistics changes, but again, I cannot argue with the expected backlash from the staff accumulating en masse. Things like this have to be handled through calm and rational individual discussion, not through blunt sudden change that causes immediate antipathy from the community.
I suppose that will have to live with that the wiki will eventually turn extremely unreliable, whenever I stop doing an Atlas impression, whether I like it or not.
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I, abruptly & unasked, suggest giving the rest of the staff an oppertunity to share their thoughts. So far, scoreboard reads 2-Uncountable. I think those 2 votes are shaken. But everyone needs a chance to speak to make the wiki fair, and not scare normal members and staff away like it has done before.
As someone who personally knew allot of you, I believe you're better than this and can find an agreement that is not dictated by authority or seniority or your feelings. But by democracy, as it was intended.
Sure, a witch hunt is not what I'm suggesting, but we all know the important thing about staff, was that we could hold each other accountable when it was needed.
I wish you all luck. Hopefully my busy, busy life will allow me to return to see the wiki in greater strides.
As someone who personally knew allot of you, I believe you're better than this and can find an agreement that is not dictated by authority or seniority or your feelings. But by democracy, as it was intended.
Sure, a witch hunt is not what I'm suggesting, but we all know the important thing about staff, was that we could hold each other accountable when it was needed.
I wish you all luck. Hopefully my busy, busy life will allow me to return to see the wiki in greater strides.
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A sudden Hop crashes into the thread.
And I agree with him 100%. Such an issue should be resolved democratically.
And I agree with him 100%. Such an issue should be resolved democratically.
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Yes, of course I cannot force the issue if most of the staff are against it, but having this change suddenly forced upon us, rather than talking about it slowly over several months on an individual basis, has completely ruined my chances to make my near desperation concerning this matter properly understood.
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- #49
To clarify, with no offence intended towards anybody, I am being overwhelmed, I will not be able to continue forever, and there is currently no viable alternative to me continuing to keep the wiki on my shoulders.
Basic rational pattern analysis of the current situation suggests that the bad edits will greatly accumulate without me, and encourage increasing and worse amounts of the same once people see that they are able to get away with it, which will eventually turn the wiki into an incoherent unreliable joke.
All that is suggested is that the wiki staff would check up that the regular members seem responsible and rational in the forums before allowing them editing access. This would stop the threat of temporary vandal accounts with a grudge or bias descending on the wiki en masse when I am no longer around to ban them on sight.
In addition, there is the overhanging threat of the message board eventually being replaced with the discussions module, which would initially make it much harder for us to communicate with each other. If I was absent as well, this would greatly improve the staff's chances to keep things under control.
Basic rational pattern analysis of the current situation suggests that the bad edits will greatly accumulate without me, and encourage increasing and worse amounts of the same once people see that they are able to get away with it, which will eventually turn the wiki into an incoherent unreliable joke.
All that is suggested is that the wiki staff would check up that the regular members seem responsible and rational in the forums before allowing them editing access. This would stop the threat of temporary vandal accounts with a grudge or bias descending on the wiki en masse when I am no longer around to ban them on sight.
In addition, there is the overhanging threat of the message board eventually being replaced with the discussions module, which would initially make it much harder for us to communicate with each other. If I was absent as well, this would greatly improve the staff's chances to keep things under control.
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@Ant
I think that much is clear and I'm sorry if I came across as attacking you. But something should be done about the user issue.
Perhaps we should arrange a system (i.e. Admins and Mods work in shifts to monitor edits so no one gets too burned out) to help manage this?
I think that much is clear and I'm sorry if I came across as attacking you. But something should be done about the user issue.
Perhaps we should arrange a system (i.e. Admins and Mods work in shifts to monitor edits so no one gets too burned out) to help manage this?
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- Thread starter
- #51
@Reppuzan
Well, the problem is that there is no way to force staff members to work at specific times several hours every single day when they have real life to take care of.
Bert Hall's new script that allows us to mark edits as monitored far more easily, should allow us to split the work by using the following page though, as the monitored edits will not show up within it.
https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidepatrolled=1&limit=3000
Well, the problem is that there is no way to force staff members to work at specific times several hours every single day when they have real life to take care of.
Bert Hall's new script that allows us to mark edits as monitored far more easily, should allow us to split the work by using the following page though, as the monitored edits will not show up within it.
https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidepatrolled=1&limit=3000
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What makes VS battles different from the OBD is not just the fact that the community here is a bit friendlier but also that we are more open and democratic. I don't think such an edit lock will be beneficial to this wiki in the long run. It will make people see us as elitist as pointed out above.
I do recognize that there is a problem with bad edits and socks going around creating trouble. But an iron curtain being dropped across the wiki might not be the best solution.
And don't worry @Antvasima. Nobody is taking offence here.
I do recognize that there is a problem with bad edits and socks going around creating trouble. But an iron curtain being dropped across the wiki might not be the best solution.
And don't worry @Antvasima. Nobody is taking offence here.
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I agree with Ever, Matt, Prom and Weekly.
There's enough staff patrolling the wiki that it isn't simply going to collapse, and preventing users from editing until they have gained trust and been given the right, while reasonable in principle, would in my opinion be detrimental to the wiki's popularity among the community, as it would make the wiki seem exclusive and biased towards staff to newcomers
There's enough staff patrolling the wiki that it isn't simply going to collapse, and preventing users from editing until they have gained trust and been given the right, while reasonable in principle, would in my opinion be detrimental to the wiki's popularity among the community, as it would make the wiki seem exclusive and biased towards staff to newcomers
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Agreed with what has already been said, one of the reasons i decided to make an account here in the first place is because it was different from other places like the OBD where only a select few individuals can perform edits. This site both encourages users to participate not just in edits but in other various discussions about anything, it's not just a vs match up site, it's a place to hang out.
What's been propose here will give the appearance of staff elitism and that normal users opinions don't matter, which is already an issue here, this will further exacerbate it. Not only that but in place of bad edits, will be i reason a vast amount of threads asking for certain things to be added to profiles or edited, in fact i think this defeats the point of what it will be suppose to do in the first place, which is less workload, this will increase work load massively, just imagine tens or hundreds of threads asking for various major to minor things to be edited, we have an active base of users here, and continue to grow, initially this will probably be impossible to handle anyway.
Of course after a while, we will be able to handle it but that will be precisely cause no one new will be visiting our site cause they can't edit anything, this will castrate our growth, and probably turn this site into irrelevancy, no offense to Ant but i think this idea will a lot of unintended consequences imo. By implementing this the unique aspect of our site of being welcoming where you can just hang out and chat will probably be lost as well i think, as everything will become focused on edits.
What's been propose here will give the appearance of staff elitism and that normal users opinions don't matter, which is already an issue here, this will further exacerbate it. Not only that but in place of bad edits, will be i reason a vast amount of threads asking for certain things to be added to profiles or edited, in fact i think this defeats the point of what it will be suppose to do in the first place, which is less workload, this will increase work load massively, just imagine tens or hundreds of threads asking for various major to minor things to be edited, we have an active base of users here, and continue to grow, initially this will probably be impossible to handle anyway.
Of course after a while, we will be able to handle it but that will be precisely cause no one new will be visiting our site cause they can't edit anything, this will castrate our growth, and probably turn this site into irrelevancy, no offense to Ant but i think this idea will a lot of unintended consequences imo. By implementing this the unique aspect of our site of being welcoming where you can just hang out and chat will probably be lost as well i think, as everything will become focused on edits.
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- #56
@Monarch Laciel
Speaking as the only one who regularly checks up every single suspicious edit, there would be a quickly escalating massive amount without me around to take care of them. It takes somebody to monitor as a more than full time job to keep track of them all.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, what I am suggesting isn't even particularly drastic, just that we should make an effort to check up that the people with editing access seem to have some idea of what they are doing and have no malicious intentions, to keep the vandal accounts at bay. That is all.
Speaking as the only one who regularly checks up every single suspicious edit, there would be a quickly escalating massive amount without me around to take care of them. It takes somebody to monitor as a more than full time job to keep track of them all.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, what I am suggesting isn't even particularly drastic, just that we should make an effort to check up that the people with editing access seem to have some idea of what they are doing and have no malicious intentions, to keep the vandal accounts at bay. That is all.
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- #57
@Celestial Pegasus
Again, there seems to be a massive misunderstanding here. Most of our contributing editors would still be allowed editing access, and new members can easily be granted this as soon as some staff member is certain that they won't immediately start to vandalise or make bad edits. That is all.
Again, there seems to be a massive misunderstanding here. Most of our contributing editors would still be allowed editing access, and new members can easily be granted this as soon as some staff member is certain that they won't immediately start to vandalise or make bad edits. That is all.
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I just wanted to say that there's a certain user, whose name I'll only mention if they want me to, has mentioned to me some concerns.
They feel bothered that as such a long time member of the site, one who has been here longer than 90% of the admins, to find that they've had their editing privileges stripped out of nowhere.
They're also sympathetic towards other users that may feel even more bothered than they do, or perhaps even disrespected. Though they understand the completely good intentions and honest mistakes behind this incident, they disagree with this idea for the same reasons the other admins have shown.
Here are some direct quotes.
"I have been a member here longer than 90% of the admins and I find I can't edit pages today -_- Imagine my shock lol. I probably would've become a staff member had I been active for prolonged period, but still I feel bad for the other members who're new to this place."
"I am certainly somewhat miffed as a very old member here to find this, perhaps others would have been even more annoyed or even feel disrespected. I don't want to sound overreacting, but many people in my place might have felt the same."
"However I do realize this has been a big blunder which will be reversed eventually, although as other staff pointed out it would be reasonable not to implement it in future again. This is my opinion on the matter, personal feelings aside."
Now time for my thoughts.
Personally, I am concerned with how this level of exclusion from the site, effectively turning into a cool kid's table, will impact new members wanting to stay. I understand the potential problems that this can solve, however I want to at least humor the other issues that might happen.
I don't want us to start losing our million view milestones or have this fun, inclusive community get the life sucked out of it. Just like there's no point in putting so much effort into a site that's super unreliable, there's no point in putting so much effort into a site that doesn't appeal to anyone but us and is stagnant in growth.
And I get that this plan will still let trusted regular users edit. However I feel the initial blockade and exclusion will discourage new vistors from the get go. And people don't want to feel they have to put time and effort to infiltrate an exclusive club and earn rewards that on almost every other wiki or just basic rights. Also constantly having to find evaluate each reoccuring visitor to see if they are deemed worthy will be a huge waste of time and only add more to Ant's plate.
They feel bothered that as such a long time member of the site, one who has been here longer than 90% of the admins, to find that they've had their editing privileges stripped out of nowhere.
They're also sympathetic towards other users that may feel even more bothered than they do, or perhaps even disrespected. Though they understand the completely good intentions and honest mistakes behind this incident, they disagree with this idea for the same reasons the other admins have shown.
Here are some direct quotes.
"I have been a member here longer than 90% of the admins and I find I can't edit pages today -_- Imagine my shock lol. I probably would've become a staff member had I been active for prolonged period, but still I feel bad for the other members who're new to this place."
"I am certainly somewhat miffed as a very old member here to find this, perhaps others would have been even more annoyed or even feel disrespected. I don't want to sound overreacting, but many people in my place might have felt the same."
"However I do realize this has been a big blunder which will be reversed eventually, although as other staff pointed out it would be reasonable not to implement it in future again. This is my opinion on the matter, personal feelings aside."
Now time for my thoughts.
Personally, I am concerned with how this level of exclusion from the site, effectively turning into a cool kid's table, will impact new members wanting to stay. I understand the potential problems that this can solve, however I want to at least humor the other issues that might happen.
I don't want us to start losing our million view milestones or have this fun, inclusive community get the life sucked out of it. Just like there's no point in putting so much effort into a site that's super unreliable, there's no point in putting so much effort into a site that doesn't appeal to anyone but us and is stagnant in growth.
And I get that this plan will still let trusted regular users edit. However I feel the initial blockade and exclusion will discourage new vistors from the get go. And people don't want to feel they have to put time and effort to infiltrate an exclusive club and earn rewards that on almost every other wiki or just basic rights. Also constantly having to find evaluate each reoccuring visitor to see if they are deemed worthy will be a huge waste of time and only add more to Ant's plate.
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@Ant, on the surface that does sound reasonable.
However, if every newcomer that pops by sees that all the pages are locked for editing except by staff/content moderators, that could put them off participating in the wiki
However, if every newcomer that pops by sees that all the pages are locked for editing except by staff/content moderators, that could put them off participating in the wiki
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- #60
@Ryukama
Well, the current restriction is not at all what I intended. I just wanted us to be able to avoid vandal accounts or editors that make massive amounts of consistent bad edits. That is all.
Well, the current restriction is not at all what I intended. I just wanted us to be able to avoid vandal accounts or editors that make massive amounts of consistent bad edits. That is all.
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- #61
@Monarch Laciel
There is nothing that prevents them from participating in the forums, and as soon as the staff notice that they seem reasonable, they would be given editing access. It would be a bit of extra work for the staff, but beyond that, we would simply avoid vandalism, and unwarranted statistics changes, along with massive amounts of formatting and spelling errors.
There is nothing that prevents them from participating in the forums, and as soon as the staff notice that they seem reasonable, they would be given editing access. It would be a bit of extra work for the staff, but beyond that, we would simply avoid vandalism, and unwarranted statistics changes, along with massive amounts of formatting and spelling errors.
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@Ant I understand that, and have defended you and what has happened in the thread. I'm just speaking on behalf of a user who asked me to, while adding some of my own possible concerns. I know that this is not how it was supposed to be, but if we're to now have a conversation on this, we should go over what needs to be said and what we all have on our minds. I'm simply looking out for the best of the site, as you are too, and giving all points of views (including yours) representation throughout the thread.
Also just a question, has the "You have to wait 4 days before editing" thing helped at all?
Also just a question, has the "You have to wait 4 days before editing" thing helped at all?
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i will give my two cents and I'd say that locking every page is legit overkill like we are all here to look and edit mistakes each page has and stuff like that but if only a certain amount of people are capable of editing there is no point considering that while there are bad edits not ALL are bad edits it's stops people from coming and trying to participate like everyone says above. I mean no ill intent to you Ant admittedly i am more amazed you monitor the wiki that long but you have a staff here to help you really...again my two cents
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@Ryukama
The 4 day editing restriction has greatly reduced the amount of temporary vandal accounts, yes, but it isn't really hard to create a lot of them at once and then simply wait 4 days to start being a problem.
The 4 day editing restriction has greatly reduced the amount of temporary vandal accounts, yes, but it isn't really hard to create a lot of them at once and then simply wait 4 days to start being a problem.
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@Ant Alright. Like I've said although I have a lot of concerns and disagreements that I feel it's my duty to address for the sake of the site, I'll still maintain an open mind to your suggestions and accept them if they are truly the best course of action. I don't want to unfairly judge you while not understanding the point of view you have due to your position, which I feel many people do. This discussion between us and the others was meant to be much more organized and discreet, however I am confident in our ability to eventually sort this out. I'm sorry about what's happened and I hope you understand where I am coming from. Thank you.
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The thing about that is there are already bad edits that get passed under our noses anyway (no matter how much you monitor) and yes all the pages may not be in pristine perfect condition 24/7 but they probably get fixed eventually. I have seen alot that are in pretty crap and half-assed condition and fix/improved some along the way, not sure if that counts as anything for pleb muggles like me.
I do not know what the standard of reliability in here is but that is something no one single person can judge alone no matter how OCD we try to be. Heck I don't even think wikipedia is 100% infallible. For all we know the stats and everything written on some pages could be complete BS without being familiar with the subject. You see?
Anyway I wonder if it's possible for the muggle users are granted rights only to the pages they made at least. Id be perfectly fine with that if there's a script for it.
I do not know what the standard of reliability in here is but that is something no one single person can judge alone no matter how OCD we try to be. Heck I don't even think wikipedia is 100% infallible. For all we know the stats and everything written on some pages could be complete BS without being familiar with the subject. You see?
Anyway I wonder if it's possible for the muggle users are granted rights only to the pages they made at least. Id be perfectly fine with that if there's a script for it.
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I agree with Crzer's point.
EMagoIorSouI
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I agree with Crzer's point as well.
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I know this might be an unpopular opinion but it might be best, if possible, to revert the edit lock and close this thread. Then once things are much more settled down we can try to deal with this like we originally planned.
I think the one thing we can all agree on is that this isn't needed if you're still managing the edits. So if you aren't planning on stopping that any time soon we don't need to rush into this. With taking our time to think this through and handle it, I think we'll get much better progress.
If it's impossible/too innapropriate for us to have Bert undo this, then I suppose we'll just have to make the best and deal with this as we can.
This isn't the first time you've been put into a corner, done the best you can out of the situation and still managed to get a good result out of it though, Ant. I don't think you should be as worried or hard on yourself.
I think the one thing we can all agree on is that this isn't needed if you're still managing the edits. So if you aren't planning on stopping that any time soon we don't need to rush into this. With taking our time to think this through and handle it, I think we'll get much better progress.
If it's impossible/too innapropriate for us to have Bert undo this, then I suppose we'll just have to make the best and deal with this as we can.
This isn't the first time you've been put into a corner, done the best you can out of the situation and still managed to get a good result out of it though, Ant. I don't think you should be as worried or hard on yourself.
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Well, I immediately asked Bert to undo the wiki lock as soon as I was informed about it, but he usually takes quite a while to reply, so if we are unlucky, it could take a few days until the lock is lifted.
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I understand what you're trying to do.
I think once that the edit lock is lifted, we can close this thread and hold off the issue until a later date where it's possible to acess this situation in a far better manner, akin to what we originally planned.
I think once that the edit lock is lifted, we can close this thread and hold off the issue until a later date where it's possible to acess this situation in a far better manner, akin to what we originally planned.
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Do you want to close it then? I don't want to upset the other staff and users by that, and I think everyone knows how important people expressing their mind is to me, however I don't want there to be a bunch of difficult to manage chaos over an issue that isn't immediate.
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I am also interested in this, it is true that having access to the pages should have a positive rating but I can not hide my doubt for some famous page, Fundamentally, Let users Edit pages can also ask a lot of work in addition to my rehabilitation if it is not well edited more, I agree with czer but we must not leave the edition to all the person having to modify the pages, it would be dangerous I think. In conclusion, I am waiting to know more advice to have an opinion about it.
Edit: even the trusted members will not necessarily be biased, so maybe it is necessary to limit the edition only to the hax and not to the AP and speed
Edit: even the trusted members will not necessarily be biased, so maybe it is necessary to limit the edition only to the hax and not to the AP and speed
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