VSBW, FC/OC and Joke Battles: A Few Questions For Staff

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

This thread is honestly probably going to be quite brief, but I do want to converse with staff on a few topics (both because I am running out of thread or conversation ideas and because I want to learn more about the machinations and workings of the community, staff and platform):

1: What defines a "highly trusted member"? Has any criteria been explicitly stated regarding who is "highly trusted"? Should there be a role assigned to people who are considered "highly trusted" so we know who is eligible to partake in discussions alongside staff?

2: Mr Bambu has already mentioned: "The main country users are from is invariably the United States of America, followed by Brazil, the Philippines, Russia, UK, Canada, Turkey... we're active around the world. If you want to standardize, I would say mostly American (South and North) and European, but that probably only accounts for just over half of the userbase, maybe two-thirds."

That being said, what about staff? I am mostly curious and concerned about whether the staff have the capacity to do "shifts" with regard to timezones to allow for 24/7 monitoring (though within reason due to all of us having other life priorities outside these platforms/communities), particularly cause that may present a (albeit easily rectified via wiki activity and history monitoring) gap in security that rule-breachers could possibly exploit. Are there any other additional countermeasures beyond monitoring and protecting of pages?

3: Do the staff across the 3 wikis stay within the bounds of their own wiki or do they coordinate efforts between each other's wikis?

Again, this could be complicating in terms of dealing with rule breaches, regarding possible policy differences and rule differences between the wikis and forum sections, which could pose a problem since if manpower is limited in any way in any or all three of the wikis and/or forum sections (which could be exacerbated by the above time zone issue), staff would need to familiarise themselves with the idiosyncrasies between the separate wikis/forum sections/platforms, even if they are merely variants (with small tweaks or permutations on certain rules) of the original ruleset.

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

Would very much appreciate if staff from across the three wikis and forum sections could share their thoughts/opinions and responses to these questions.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

1: What defines a "highly trusted member"? Has any criteria been explicitly stated regarding who is "highly trusted"? Should there be a role assigned to people who are considered "highly trusted" so we know who is eligible to partake in discussions alongside staff?

No, there is no concrete measure of this. It is simply a matter of broad perception. Agnaa (before he was staff) was by and large trusted by the majority of the staff to do staff things. He was a known face and handled things well. He would be the best example. This isn't a role people can really aspire to, it is vague on purpose. So just ask permission to join in staff discussion.

2: Mr Bambu has already mentioned: "The main country users are from is invariably the United States of America, followed by Brazil, the Philippines, Russia, UK, Canada, Turkey... we're active around the world. If you want to standardize, I would say mostly American (South and North) and European, but that probably only accounts for just over half of the userbase, maybe two-thirds."

That being said, what about staff? I am mostly curious and concerned about whether the staff have the capacity to do "shifts" with regard to timezones to allow for 24/7 monitoring (though within reason due to all of us having other life priorities outside these platforms/communities), particularly cause that may present a (albeit easily rectified via wiki activity and history monitoring) gap in security that rule-breachers could possibly exploit. Are there any other additional countermeasures beyond monitoring and protecting of pages?

"Shifts" could probably be organized if the staff were employees and not volunteers. I won't say who is from what country, because it is their information to give, but we have staff members in the US, Brazil, Australia, the Balkans, Sweden, Singapore, Italy, India, etc. I don't think we'd hit every single timezone but we'd hit quite a few of them. It's worthy to note that a lot of our sleep schedules are absolutely bizarre, though.

I think there are sparse amounts of rule breakers that would necessitate such things, and there is normally a staff online anyways without being overly professional about it all, in my experience. Regarding your final question here, the wiki has something called "edit patrolling", which is a system that allows us (mostly Antvasima, this being his dominion) to thoroughly check every single change applied to the wiki. Many are of little consequence and are moved past- changes to personal sandboxes and so on.

3: Do the staff across the 3 wikis stay within the bounds of their own wiki or do they coordinate efforts between each other's wikis?

Again, this could be complicating in terms of dealing with rule breaches, regarding possible policy differences and rule differences between the wikis and forum sections, which could pose a problem since if manpower is limited in any way in any or all three of the wikis and/or forum sections (which could be exacerbated by the above time zone issue), staff would need to familiarise themselves with the idiosyncrasies between the separate wikis/forum sections/platforms, even if they are merely variants (with small tweaks or permutations on certain rules) of the original ruleset.

There isn't much of a reason to coordinate across wikis on any consistent basis, and therefore it doesn't really happen, no. It has happened in the past, but it isn't really needed, I think.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for helping out, Bambu.

Some of our administrators and content moderators help me with my edit patrolling work though.

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

No, there is no concrete measure of this. It is simply a matter of broad perception. Agnaa (before he was staff) was by and large trusted by the majority of the staff to do staff things. He was a known face and handled things well. He would be the best example. This isn't a role people can really aspire to, it is vague on purpose. So just ask permission to join in staff discussion.

Thanks for shifting the thread instead of closing it.
I understand the subjective nature of it, but still, I would think it's easier to make it more definable as per consensus of the staff team, instead of relying on asking staff for permission, particularly if there comes any announcement that a large part of the non-staff community has opinions about (or some other issue where the staff somehow cause the community to start asking many questions and trying to become more involved in staff discussions), since that would result in potential swamping of staff by messages addressed to them (especially to the staff responsible for the announcement or issue), which, even if unlikely, should probably be an issue that requires preparation for.

"Shifts" could probably be organized if the staff were employees and not volunteers. I won't say who is from what country, because it is their information to give, but we have staff members in the US, Brazil, Australia, the Balkans, Sweden, Singapore, Italy, India, etc. I don't think we'd hit every single timezone but we'd hit quite a few of them. It's worthy to note that a lot of our sleep schedules are absolutely bizarre, though.

I think there are sparse amounts of rule breakers that would necessitate such things, and there is normally a staff online anyways without being overly professional about it all, in my experience. Regarding your final question here, the wiki has something called "edit patrolling", which is a system that allows us (mostly Antvasima, this being his dominion) to thoroughly check every single change applied to the wiki. Many are of little consequence and are moved past- changes to personal sandboxes and so on.

Well damn there's at least one staff member in both my home countries, and I really hope the edit patrolling is efficient enough to cover the whole wiki quickly either as a separate measure from or in conjuction with wiki activity and history checking

There isn't much of a reason to coordinate across wikis on any consistent basis, and therefore it doesn't really happen, no. It has happened in the past, but it isn't really needed, I think.

I know it's not exactly necessary, but given that you all have faced harassment before (including even DDOS or other destructive threats perhaps), it would be useful to have even if not needed (which, as the saying goes, is better than needing it but not having it)
That being said, the staff teams across each wiki/forum section should be sizeable enough to handle threats to any singular wiki, just not sure if anyone were to have any sort of plan to target all three wikis AND the forum at once whether there's any defences that can be enacted for that, so again, that coordination is probably useful to maintain to a degree.

(I have seen wikis and servers being taken down both as malicious damage by troll hackers and as security control by bureaucrats/administrators/staff or other authorities, particularly in Fandom and Discord, and in one occasion I was involved in a case where malicious wiki owners (bureaucrats and admins) harassed my friends and me (raiding the Discord server my friends and I were in and posting vulgar and derogatory content about us in Fandom, they were part of a game-based community my friends and I were once part of but left after the harassment) until I asked Kirkburn/George to take action against them, so yeah there is a personal element to these questions)

Maybe the first and third point could use a bit more elaboration (and in hindsight, the two of them could be linked, since any threat to the wikis and forum would have the community asking a LOT of questions), the second is dealt with already

There IS one other question I'd want to ask, though I hope this would never be the case: are there any measures that are taken against staff who flout/breach rules or abuse authority and perms (essentially a check and balance on power/authority)? (Not that I have ever experienced this here, since a majority of the times when I have encountered staff regarding my actions, it has been for very clear and understandable reasons, but it is a legitimate worry, particularly given the aforementioned past experiences with malicious and power-abusing staff)

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Thanks for shifting the thread instead of closing it.

I don't know what you mean by this.

I understand the subjective nature of it, but still, I would think it's easier to make it more definable as per consensus of the staff team, instead of relying on asking staff for permission, particularly if there comes any announcement that a large part of the non-staff community has opinions about (or some other issue where the staff somehow cause the community to start asking many questions and trying to become more involved in staff discussions), since that would result in potential swamping of staff by messages addressed to them (especially to the staff responsible for the announcement or issue), which, even if unlikely, should probably be an issue that requires preparation for.

I don't, I think getting permission from staff avoids a lot of minor troubles and nitpicks. There are sparse few users who would immediately come to mind as recognizably and universally "trusted" that would not simply be given a staff role. The exception are those users who were once staff but retired (not those who were removed, mind). The community tends to be able to ask individual staff their questions, or speak on an accompanying general discussion thread (playfully referred to as 'Commoner's Threads', these days). Users are required to get permission to avoid this very swamping of messages: dozens of low-importance messages flooding an important discussion makes it harder to deal with it all. Staff members don't tend to get an overwhelming number of requests for permissions.

I know it's not exactly necessary, but given that you all have faced harassment before (including even DDOS or other destructive threats perhaps), it would be useful to have even if not needed (which, as the saying goes, is better than needing it but not having it)

Why? Neither sister wiki has the means to put an end to such things, and if they were in a position to help, then our own staff members could, too.

That being said, the staff teams across each wiki/forum section should be sizeable enough to handle threats to any singular wiki, just not sure if anyone were to have any sort of plan to target all three wikis AND the forum at once whether there's any defences that can be enacted for that, so again, that coordination is probably useful to maintain to a degree. (I have seen wikis and servers being taken down both as malicious damage by troll hackers and as security control by bureaucrats/administrators/staff or other authorities, particularly in Fandom and Discord, and in one occasion I was involved in a case where malicious wiki owners (bureaucrats and admins) harassed my friends and me (raiding the Discord server my friends and I were in and posting vulgar and derogatory content about us in Fandom, they were part of a game-based community my friends and I were once part of but left after the harassment) until I asked Kirkburn/George to take action against them, so yeah there is a personal element to these questions)

I'm not entirely certain what sort of hypothetical you're asking about here. Attacking the wiki via a DDOS is more on the parent company's to defend against- FANDOM and XenForo. We don't host these places physically, any defenses are on their end.

As for the latter implication... the VSBW staff aren't organizing any witch hunts to harass our members. Our own staff are subject to the same rules as anyone else- if such activities were proven, the staff member would be demoted and in all likelihood banned, harassment is a serious offense and we've banned others for similar. I don't know what sort of 'defenses' you'd have in mind for something like that, beyond the aforementioned outright exile.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

There IS one other question I'd want to ask, though I hope this would never be the case: are there any measures that are taken against staff who flout/breach rules or abuse authority and perms (essentially a check and balance on power/authority)? (Not that I have ever experienced this here, since a majority of the times when I have encountered staff regarding my actions, it has been for very clear and understandable reasons, but it is a legitimate worry, particularly given the aforementioned past experiences with malicious and power-abusing staff)

Human Resources handles staff rule violations privately. If they find that staff have broken the rules to such a point that they need action, they are the ones to approve it. If ever you wish to report a staff member, you need only deliver it to one of them. The most active of them are Qawsedf and DarkGrath.

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

I don't know what you mean by this.

Oh I thought you were the one who shifted the thread from Staff Discussion to QnA, welp, either way, whoever did it has my appreciative thanks.

I don't, I think getting permission from staff avoids a lot of minor troubles and nitpicks. There are sparse few users who would immediately come to mind as recognizably and universally "trusted" that would not simply be given a staff role. The exception are those users who were once staff but retired (not those who were removed, mind). The community tends to be able to ask individual staff their questions, or speak on an accompanying general discussion thread (playfully referred to as 'Commoner's Threads', these days). Users are required to get permission to avoid this very swamping of messages: dozens of low-importance messages flooding an important discussion makes it harder to deal with it all. Staff members don't tend to get an overwhelming number of requests for permissions.

Yeah this makes sense, I guess anyone who repeatedly (with obvious malicious or harassing intent and ignorance/defiance of rules rather than unintentional genuinely honest misunderstanding) tries to intrude on staff discussions or other important conversations (or start an unwelcome thread addressing staff again with malicious intent rather than innocent misunderstanding) would be punished appropriately

Why? Neither sister wiki has the means to put an end to such things, and if they were in a position to help, then our own staff members could, too.

Attacking the wiki via a DDOS is more on the parent company's to defend against- FANDOM and XenForo. We don't host these places physically, any defenses are on their end.

This makes sense but then again if that's the case hopefully the staff in the 3 wikis and forum have easily accessible channels to the proper authorities (in this case Fandom and Xenforo) to ask for assistance and taking of coordinated action against any sort of impending or ongoing threat should said threats come to awareness.

Our own staff are subject to the same rules as anyone else- if such activities were proven, the staff member would be demoted and in all likelihood banned, harassment is a serious offense and we've banned others for similar.

Human Resources handles staff rule violations privately. If they find that staff have broken the rules to such a point that they need action, they are the ones to approve it. If ever you wish to report a staff member, you need only deliver it to one of them. The most active of them are Qawsedf and DarkGrath.

Yeah I was mostly asking who would be responsible and how would such issues be dealt with by them regarding potential staff rule breaches or abuse of authority (though I'm not sure if they might even rank above a head bureaucrat, if for example another person in Ant's position went rogue, though then again I highly doubt Ant or any potential staff would do that and I hope there's thorough screening for staff applicants and monitoring of new staff members, and to a lesser extent existing long-standing staff members just in case)

Yeah that's about all the queries answered then. Thanks for the information Mr. Bambu. I guess we can close this thread now if no further response is deemed necessary.

 

[Antvasima]

I won't go rogue. I have been doing this work for roughly 10 years now, and have gradually grown more mentally stable over time. At worst I will eventually hand over many of my responsibilities to somebody else, if I am no longer able to handle them.

 

[Catzlaflame]

No, there is no concrete measure of this. It is simply a matter of broad perception.

Hmmm, I think they were specifically asking about "highly trusted members" in the context of who can comment on staff discussions and the like.

What defines a "highly trusted member"....... so we know who is eligible to partake in discussions alongside staff?

Where he's referencing this:

Only staff members and regular members staff have deemed highly trustworthy may participate in Staff Discussion threads unless an explicit exception is noted.

In which case, there was a recent rule clarification on this, where we said that "highly trustworthy" only refers to (1) retired staff and (2) poeple who were offered staff positions but declined them.

• It is important to note that only voluntarily retired staff members and members who've been accepted for a staff position in the past but dismissed the offer by choice, fall into the category of highly trustworthy. The majority of regular members who do not fall into the groups mentioned above are still in need of permission from staff members with evaluation rights.

@Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

Hmmm, I think they were specifically asking about "highly trusted members" in the context of who can comment on staff discussions and the like.

Where he's referencing this:

In which case, there was a recent rule clarification on this, where we said that "highly trustworthy" only refers to (1) retired staff and (2) poeple who were offered staff positions but declined them.



@Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer

Ah, thanks for the clarification, I might have read these before now that you mentioned it but I barely thought about it cause I didn't think I'd be in a context where that would be relevant or necessary to keep in mind, my bad, I should have been more aware of the rules earlier.

Discussion Rules

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found it, sorry again to everyone for not abiding by this sooner.

I won't go rogue. I have been doing this work for roughly 10 years now, and have gradually grown more mentally stable over time. At worst I will eventually hand over many of my responsibilities to somebody else, if I am no longer able to handle them.

I did not mean to imply that you yourself would go rogue, though I appreciate the reassurance about your capacity and plans for administrative transitions when the time comes. Apologies if I insulted you or if it came across as casting doubt on your capabilities. I was trying to just explain a hypothetical worst-case scenario and wanted to convey it in the sense that I was worried about the possible ramifications of a person with that sort of authority maliciously abusing it in general, not specifically you or any particular staff member. As I've said:

a majority of the times when I have encountered staff regarding my actions, it has been for very clear and understandable reasons

^(in this case referring to this community in particular, I was expressing gratitude for the staff being patient and understanding even if firm, which is reasonable)

Human Resources handles staff rule violations privately. If they find that staff have broken the rules to such a point that they need action, they are the ones to approve it. If ever you wish to report a staff member, you need only deliver it to one of them. The most active of them are Qawsedf and DarkGrath.

I was just concerned about how far the scope of the Human Resources team extends, and whether they would be prepared for even a worst-case scenario of a high-status admin or bureaucrat breaking rules or abusing power, since I would assume even their capacity for checks and balances on power has its limits.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Bureaucrats, to my knowledge, can only step down by personal choice or be forcefully removed by Fandom. None of the current Bureaucrats are going to go 'rogue', however. We're all just volunteers to a group initiative, little more.

 

[Catzlaflame]

Erm actually, @DontTalkDT currently has a nefarious plot to go rogue on the wiki in the works.

“Now everything that was in my way is gone - and everyone else still believes in me. It’s only a matter of time before I get rid of the HR group. What do you think at that, Ant? THIS IS MY PERFECT VICTORY! THATS RIGHT, I WINN!”

Okay that was corny. I’m sorry.

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

Erm actually, @DontTalkDT currently has a nefarious plot to go rogue on the wiki in the works.

Okay that was corny. I’m sorry.

that lore though

Bureaucrats, to my knowledge, can only step down by personal choice or be forcefully removed by Fandom. None of the current Bureaucrats are going to go 'rogue', however. We're all just volunteers to a group initiative, little more.

This is understandable, but considering the authority hierarchy it's gonna be hard to stop anyone who has any "ideas"...
But ehh, again, there should be enough screening procedures and countermeasures in the first place before giving out staff roles so most of this is just hypothetical concern
In any case, yeah that pretty much answers all the queries ultimately
Thank you Ant, Bambu and Catzlaflame.
I guess the thread can be closed now welp (since there's not much else to talk about regarding the original topic).