The wiki editing lock

[Ryukama]

Sure thing.

 

[Arigarmy]

Has there been any recent notable incidents of vandalism? I don't mean one-time easy undos, something that actually took some time to deal with.

 

[Antvasima]

If you mean mass vandalism sprees, then no (although many poorly done edits in a row, that have to be cleaned up, are common), but that is mostly because they know that the edits are constantly monitored, and that any vandals are immediately blocked. Without that safeguard in place, it would be open season for them again, as it used to be.

 

[Arigarmy]

Hm, I see. The system as it is seems perfectly fine, then. If Admins have to check and moderator new contributors (which IIRC was your main intention), would it be a good idea to open some type of subforum where a new user would introduce themself, or at least, have them show themselves in a way to prove whether or not they're going to do suspicious things in general?

Finally, your belief that you leaving will immediately cause the site to collapse is, for the most part, paranoia as far as I can tell. Unless no other mods/Admins are capable of being on in the same timeframe of you being active, there are a select total of 21 staff capable of working on pages, 30 staff capable of working on threads, and 22 staff capable of being in the chatroom total. Also, if you're only on for 6-8 hours a day at your best, 16-18 hours would then consist of you not being here. And if this place were to go to hell if you were gone, it could last for at least three times the amount of your presence.

You have enough staff to live for some time, the only difficulties that could be present is the reoccuring staff fights and/or something that takes a bit of workaround to solve like say if someone moved a page to a blog page (which is possible), meaning you couldn't undo the action of it being moved, or in other words pseudo-deleting the page.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, the 6-8 hours of non-stop monitoring edits is only an average for that part of the work (I do other work as well, and this is not a casual level, it requires intense focus and efficiency), and I handle a backlog of every single suspicious edit during the entire 24 hour day.

Considering that, as such, I have a full overview of everything that is going on, and there are already a few hundred pages that have been edited every day that need to be checked up and frequently adjusted.

If I was not there to handle it, because speaking matter of fact, given that I consistently have to do so, nobody else has or will, these bad edits would quickly start to accumulate, and it is hardly paranoia to make a logical analysis that if people would be able to get away with increasing amounts of it, it would quickly attract vandals, whether ones with a grudge, of which there are very many, or ones that simpy wish to exaggerate or downplay statistics, of which there are even more.

 

[Arigarmy]

I see, but why would one choose not to oversee edits the way you do? As you've said they won't or will examine them.

 

[Antvasima]

As for regular members proving themselves to be rational and reliable, they can usually do so via content revision threads, but I do not mind a forum for member introductions.

 

[Antvasima]

I use the page that I linked to earlier to check up every single suspicious edit that happen during the 24 hour workday. Nobody else is doing so, and a large part of the work remains when I start to check it all up.

Again, with no offence intended, the rest of the staff do not handle anywhere near all of it, or it would not remain for me to take care of. It is up to me to shoulder that burden, and without me around, the wiki genuinely would quickly turn extremely badly written, and get lots of incoherent poorly motivated statistics.

This part is not subjective, it is objective analysis from long-term experience.

 

[Professor_Voodoo]

Hmm. Stress is a killer....

And you have put thousands of hours of effort into keeping this wiki afloat. No small feat. But, not counting you, there's 3 bureaucrats, 16 administrators, and 4 content moderators. So that's 23 guys overall, quite a lot, and I assume they'd know how to work a rotating schedule. I think while it'd be tough should you depart, whenever that may be, you have an all-star lineup ready to hold the line and keep the more undesirable aspects at bay.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, Bert Hall's possible new monitoring feature might help, but othervise it will be extremely hard to split the workload.

 

[Kaltias]

I see where you are coming from with that proposal, I really do.

The biggest problem is, seeing that the entire wiki is locked can be intimidating for a new user. Like, many people here started by making a profile, fixing small mistakes, elaborating a bit some informations etc.

Having to ask an admin/content mod for literally everything does discourage contributions.

As a hypothetical example: I am a new user, I never contributed once to the wiki although I read profiles for a while (actually pretty common). I'm reading the profile of one of my favorite characters, and I notice that there are some typos, that a technique needs a bit of elaboration or something along those lines.

I can tell with a 100% certainty that in a situation like that I wouldn't make a thread nor I would contact an admin, I would leave the profile as it is. Why? Because it seems like bothering them for a silly reason.

 

[Antvasima]

@Kaltias

Yes, I am previously aware of this problem, but regrettably we have to attempt to weigh the good and bad parts against each other, and making sure that the wiki is not overrun with hundreds of bad edits every day is more important than the fact that new well-behaved members are not immediately able to make small corrections.

Basically, the small corrections made by new members every day are a very small number by my experience, whereas there are considerably more edits that need cleanup even currently, when my constant monitoring is keeping the severe vandals away.

To reiterate, this was not intended to turn the wiki into a locked vault, just to enable the staff to get some measure of control over potential vandalism and incompetence after I am gone.

That said, I was just in very early talks about this with Bert Hall, so I do not know if what I intended is entirely practically workable yet.

 

[Kaltias]

The problem isn't well behaved members not being able to contribute immediately tho. It's the fact that those first small edits are the first step towards those members becoming active contributors. If you never make that first step, all the potential that this contributor has for the wiki is basically lost. How many content mods would have as many contributions as they do if they had to ask an admin each time before becoming staff themselves?

I know that the purpose isn't turning the wiki into a locked vault. The problem is that there is a serious risk that it would be the result.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, all of this could be easily rectified by clarifying in the front page that new members have to show themselves to be reliable in the forums before getting editing access for security reasons.

 

[Antvasima]

Also, they would not have to ask an admin every time. Once they have shown themselves to be reliable, they would get regular permanent access, as usual.

 

[Kaltias]

Oh, I see. Then the issue would be lessened, although it would still be present, mostly the part about the first impact.

 

[Antvasima]

Yes, the current situation is far more drastic than what I intended, so it is easy to misunderstand.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I am still 100% against this form of change and think things should be kept as is. I would hope you could accept the majority opinion, Ant.

 

[Antvasima]

As I have stated, I am obviously not going to enforce this against the staff's wishes, but we do need to talk about this the coming months.

 

[Antvasima]

Me leaving the wiki is a genuine threat to its wellbeing, so this is an important suggestion to keep it afloat in the long run.

 

[Kaltias]

Also, I do have something else to say.

If the main concern is vandalism etc, what prevents that user from telling me that they are going to fix a typo then make unwarranted edits anyway.

And most importantly, you are right, you have built this community, worked harder than anyone else for it, and that's something that I sincerely admire.

But it isn't something that you did only by yourself. The community exists because most of its participants are productive members. If most of the members were people who make bad edits, who do not care, vandals etc, VSBW would not exist. Because it's a cooperative effort, and everyone works for it to a varying degree. If that wasn't the case, no amount of patrolling or moderation would help, which is obviously not the case.

 

[Antvasima]

No, of course I have not nearly built it by myself, but I am the one who manages most of the edit-monitoring and everyday organisation/coordination, the former of which requires somebody to overview almost everything going on in this wiki every single day, and without somebody holding that crucial pillar that allows everybody else to go about their everyday business, the wiki really would eventually turn completely unreliable.

Basically, the wiki is not functioning nearly as smoothly as it seems on a surface level, and it can very easily collapse once the foundation is gone.

 

[GoldenScorpions]

Sorry for commenting not being an admin here, but I wanna support Ant a bit.

I can very much see where Ant is coming from, and his worries have solid foundation. As an admin on another large-scale community website, problems pop up frequently and unexepected ones can be hard to deal with. The nature between the 2 websites are different, but dealing with problematic people, frequent demand from members and managing a large database is hard. Without the bureaucrat there, the page would not exist, and the same can be said about Ant here.

Having a restricted access to trusted members and higher is a feasible change to do in the future. Only super new members who haven't proven their trustworthiness would be excluded, and I assume the system would be able to quickly tell who is trustworthy and who isn't. Obviously, a lockdown like the one going on right now is excessive and unhealthy, but like Ant said, that was Bert misunderstanding and the situation should be fixed soon. Besides, the change isn't to happen right now; further discussion between the staff will surely happen to optimize the potential new system

The one thing I'm wondering is HOW the staff will judge new members on giving them or not the OK. Since they wouldn't be able to edit, the only possible access to them would be Forums, but that may not be enough. You won't always know what they could hide or how they really act; maybe they'll act nice to gain access. Maybe an individual mini-interview would be needed as well?

In any case, with the situation soon fixed, it's not a huge deal... yet.

 

[Soldier_Blue]

I would like to remind everyone who wants to follow the thread to just use the "Follow" button instead of spamming that you're following.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you. As you mentioned, most members have proven themselves to be sufficiently competent and trustworthy. This was strictly intended to be a way to sift away temporary vandal accounts and people who do not know what they are doing, or constantly make time-consuming bad edits.

The problem with that this issue was suddenly rushed upon us, is that no specifics for the framework have been worked out yet. That was supposed to be figured out through private discussions with the staff.

However, I suppose that the train has suddenly passed. I am not able to properly make a case for why this is important, despite the disadvantages, from my current position, which is extremely bad for the long-term sustainability of this community.

Basically, this was intended to be my future retirement plan, to ensure that I could eventually leave the wiki with good conscience, without knowing for a fact that the reliability would gradually collapse once I am gone.

 

[BertH]

Hello all -- I have reverted the change I made less that 24 hours ago. As Ant said, it came from a misunderstanding as he and I were discussing possible solutions. I'll continue talking with him more of course, and we'll work on less extreme measures like the script he mentioned.

I apologize for causing anyone distress, but I also think it's good that it spurred all of this conversation. There's a great deal of activity here and the community is run extremely well, by some really dedicated people. But it's important to remember that we can't take that for granted.

New ideas should be discussed and considered, even if they are somewhat extreme. Sometimes those conversations can spawn even better ideas that no one would have thought of otherwise. The important thing is to keep talking, and always be looking for ways to improve. If some staff are unable to maintain the time commitments they have had in the past, there may have to be changes. Ant's been very clear about his need to step back and I hope the conversations continue.

 

[Antvasima]

No problem. Thank you for responding so quickly.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I understand what Ant was coming from, although I don't agree with him.

I do think that this misunderstanding from BertH was ultimately for the best. It is very good that this idea could be openly discussed with Staff and some regular members giving their honest opinions.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I would much have preferred to handle this matter through individual private discussions, as certain parts of the wiki work genuinely won't function without me going by my current experience.

 

[Antvasima]

Anyway, since the wiki lock is gone, it is probably best if I lock this thread, and we continue the discussion in private later.