Forum:ADMINSHIP PROJECT

Hello this Tigernose. I am making a forum regarding the current system of electing admins. I have decided that there shall be change. This is one of the main reasons why we had over 110 people in usergroups once. I hope you understand and vote. This is clipped to removing the fictional webmaster right, although Joeyaa will make a persuading forum about this.

User Rights
I am sure you have heard the term user right. There are four user rights:


 * Rollback - The ability to quickly undo edits by a user on a page.
 * Sysop - The ability to protect pages, delete pages, edit protected pages, to block people and etc.
 * Bureaucrat - The ability to give user rights to a person.
 * ShoutBox Mod - The ability to control messages in the Shout Box.

I am leaving the latter right out of this, it is new and does not affect my reasons.

When you have a certain user right, you are placed in the corresponding user group. You can be placed in more than one user group. When placed in a user group, you obtain the ability. This is one thing cleared.

User rights are not RANKS. I hate it when people misunderstand the definition of a user right. There is no such thing as promotion. This means, if you are a bureaucrat it does not mean you are a sysop as well. You have to be in both user groups to have both abilities. Many users are considered b-crats, but it doesn't mean they have the same ability as a sysop. You have to have both user rights. This is unlike the sysop/rollback user right. If you are a sysop, you do have the ability to rollback people, even if you aren't in both groups. This brings me onto a message to some 'crats out there: when giving a user admin rights, when they already have rollback right - please take away the rollback right as it only gives off server lag.

What we think now, is this: rollback -> sysop -> bureaucrat. This is wrong, there is no such things as ranks, therefore someone can be a 'crat without even being a rollback.

Now that we have understood what user rights are, we need to consider when and why we should give these user rights to someone.

Rollback
User rights are not ranks. This means Rollback isn't the first step up a tree. Subsequently, you can become a sysop without having to be a rollback. Now, rollback rights should be given to a user who is actively involved in removing vandalism. People apply for rollback rights thinking they are a step up there. Except they are not. Edits do not matter with the rollback ability. A rollback can only rollback edits. So, when making applying for rollback, please think: are you going to use this power. You are better off without the power if you are not going to be removing vandalism. This means you can apply to sysop rights, instead of having to be a rollback first.

When thinking who to give rollback rights, you must consider how many times they have fought off vandals. Stuff like having an active Vandal Watch, or involved in anti-vandalism projects. These are good factors to consider.

Sysop
Now, the sysop right a very important right. Yet, we misunderstand that. Giving a user adminship rights on here is the equivalent of giving adminship on a forum. A lot of you, I guess, go on forums. A lot of you, I guess, crave that adminship right. The adminship right is the most important of them all. It is not below the the b-crat rank, because like I said: being a bureaucrat means you can only promote people. Bureaucratship is a minion compared to sysopship.

Firstly, if you want to know - people who are just a sysop are called sysops. People who have both the 'crat and sysop ability are called admins. Admins are usually people who represent the wiki when in contact with Wikia or other wikis. Despite this, admins and sysops have the same ability. Admins should be the name called to people that we call "bureaucrats" here in this wiki. I don't mean this literally, I am just pointing out that there no ranks.

We have cleared the fact that user rights are not ranks. This brings us onto the next matter of why someone should be a sysop. Someone can apply to be a sysop without having to be a rollback. This doesn't mean that if you are denied rollback ability you will be accepted sysop ability. There is a huge responsibility that sysops hold. A sysop can block others. That is scary enough. They are the so called "heads" of the wiki (ability-wise). They do not lead the wiki, but they have the power to block, delete, protect, edit wikicode. Applying for sysopship should be a huge responsibility. This all links with the no ranks issue.

So, applying for sysop is a huge responsibility. In my opinion, someone should only be a sysop if they are trusted by the community, are experienced with wikicode, have a lot of edits, are involved in a lot of projects and so on. I am not giving any guidelines, as there are no guidelines. I am simply pointing out you have to be trusted a lot by the community. When disusing the powers, you will get demoted (hopefully to the guidelines of Seahorseruler's potential policy :D). A total amount of edits above a 1000 is recommended with a 40% mainspace portion, and you must be actively involved in projects. This is the closest I am going to get to rules.

Bureaucrat
This is a difficult one. I did say that there are no ranks, but being a sysop before having 'crat rights is recommended. In reality though, bureaucrat promotions should be closed. I think there should only be some 4 bureaucrats. The ability is unneeded anyway. I don't see the point of applying to be bureaucrat. Purely because there are already 4 people who can promote people, which is enough. Like I said 'crat isn't a step up the tree. It is simply a power. If someone drops out, then maybe someone else can apply to take their place. This is as far as I am going, 'crat ability is unneeded to the average sysop.

Webmasters
We get to this point. I am agianst the webmaster right. This is purely because it is not are right, it is a fictional title. The CPW is a free place, anyone can edit - no one rules the wiki. The funny thing is, out of the 4/5 'crats we have at the moment, the majority of them are webmasters. What is the point of that?

Wikia never mentioned a webmaster. Robbsi made the term. He may not have invented it, but he applied to wikis. The closest thing to a webmaster is staff, as they get the ability to make wikis and etc. We do not have webmasters here. Please remove the title. They do not exist. We are the only wiki to have them (with the exception of a couple, which coincendently are edited by users here). I think Joeyaa's famous blog regards this issue, but we should have them removed.

Election System
I am now onto how people get elected. The way we do it know should be changed IMO.

Nomination
I don't think the way we do it now is right. No other wikis does it like us. I am proposing, that 2 other people have to nominate you, so you can applicate. You cannot nominate yourself. One of these people, one of them has to be a sysop, the other can be anyone else. This way, deserving people can be given the chance. LarryRawr once said this may turn into a popularity contenst. It may, but the people at the moment who are involved in fights and conflicts are already a sysop or a rollback. The people who do not have a userright are usually people who are taking a back seat. Let it stay this way. I don't want regular users to be converted into fighting and in stupid, pointless sockpuppeting.

So this is what I am proposing:


 * 2 people must nominate you for a right. You can ask them too, but they must agree fully. It can not be a sympathy vote, nor a vote because you are their friend.
 * One of these people must be a sysop. The other can be anyone else. This ensures a deserving person to be nominated.

Voting
The way we vote is pretty unorganised. My main concern is the "neutral" section. I think it should be removed. I think this, because a lot of applications are becoming what I call: vote lagged. This means, so many people sign underneath the neutral section, that you can't receive a valid result because this is what the ratio is:


 * For: 2
 * Against: 2
 * Neutral: 20

Funny you may think it is, but it is annoying. Some people are a little to kind here. I'm seeing people saying "I don't think you're ready yet", but putting it in the neutral section so they don't upset the user.

This is how to resolve this:
 * No Neutral section. If you neutral, don't vote and leave a reason underneath the "Comments" section.
 * Only Signatures in the "For" and "Against". This means, you should only leave a signature in the corresponding section and no comment. The comment goes in the "comment" section. Not only does this make it more straightforward, you can easily compare the two. It is difficult to compare a "for" section with 10 votes, vs. an "against" section with 5 votes, but each of them have a paragraph clipped to it.

Secondly, I am concered on how we organise votes. I think, in order for a vote to go through it must have a vote difference of 6. What I mean by vote difference is: Votes "For" subtracted by Votes "Against". Now, within this 6 vote difference, 2 sysops must vote "for". Then the application goes through to the administration, where the sysops agree to give rights to the user. To organise these votes, it must indicate the vote difference next to the applicants name, in the section.

For example (I am using "nowiki" for this.):

==Tigernose - Rollback request (+5)==

The "5" indicates the vote difference. When voting, you must change the vote difference.

Deserving Users
Like I said, I won't make any guidelines, nor I hope there will be, but when voting for someone, you have to physically look at their contributions, and not their editcount. Some users may have 1000 main edits, but they might all be 2 byte minor edits. Please consider this.

Amount of Admins
This is a major problem. This has been going on since 2008. Have you heard this before:

Slight problem with that: There are too many! This brings me back onto my message: user rights are not ranks. This means rollback right is as important as others. The main problem concerning this is reverting conflicts. With the amount of sysops and rollbacks we have got, the amount of reverting conflicts are HUGE. The only way to solve this is to have IRC meetings. This can be easily done, I have planned it out in my head, but that is for a different day.

Right. So this is how it should look like.

With the amount of users who have user rights, conflicts are abundant and we can't solve anything. The administration should consist of about 10 users who are trusted to maintain the wiki.

However, we should not focus on numbers. Some people are suggesting: 10 admins, 5 crats, 16 rollbacks etc. In my opinion, we should get the job done, by removing unneeded user rights, and then see what the numbers are. Chances are, it will be a positive amount. We can't have a fixed target, because then we have to specifically choose who to keep and who to demote. That will be very long, so just get the job done.

We have addressed the issue of the amount inactive admins and have demoted them. Now is the time to demote the active admins who don't need the powers.

Summary
This is the longest post I have made so far. I hope you understand and I hope this will get put through. I will make a seperate vote for each section I made in the post, so things can get addressed seperately. Each section is slightly categorised, so the vote sections will have varied titles.

-- TЙГЭPHO3Ь ( Chat| Edits|  Vandals) 14:32, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

=Votes=

I agree

 * -- Zapwire  (Talk 14:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * -- C ed 12 14 Talk 15:03, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * -- seahorseruler | Talk  (EditCount) Yoshi! 15:08, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * -- Hat Pop  Bunny Ears Rule! 15:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * --LarryGoesRawr!  LOL! 15:49, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

For

 * -- Zapwire  (Talk 14:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No offense to the current webmasters, but I think staff and the rest of the community will respect us more if we do this. -- seahorseruler | Talk  (EditCount) Yoshi! 15:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * -- C ed 12 14 Talk 15:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * -- Hat Pop  Bunny Ears Rule! 15:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * --LarryGoesRawr!  LOL! 15:50, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * -- B a r k j o n Complaints here! 18:26, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

For

 * -- Zapwire  (Talk 14:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * -- C ed 12 14 Talk 15:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * -- Hat Pop  Bunny Ears Rule! 15:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's worth a shot. --LarryGoesRawr!  LOL! 15:50, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Disscussion

 * I say yes to lack of neutral, but no to the comments section. It's much simplier to put them in the section you vote for. -- Zapwire  (Talk 14:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A compromise could be that you should only put a reason no longer than a sentence. If you want to make longer reasons, put them in the comments section. -- TЙГЭPHO3Ь [[Image:Tigernosenm.PNG|30px]] ( <font face="Tahoma">Chat| <font face="Tahoma">Edits| <font face="Tahoma">Vandals) 15:01, 20 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Ditto Zapwire, and I agree with the voting section, but I do not agree with the nomination section. -- seahorseruler |<font color="Red"> Talk  (EditCount) Yoshi! 18:01, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree

 * -- Zapwire  (Talk 14:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * --<font face="System"> C ed 12 14 Talk 15:10, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm down for stability. --<font face="Arial" color="A020F0">LarryGoesRawr!  LOL! 15:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)


 * --CatZip888 18:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not agree

 * Idk, this might make a lot of users quit.. For real.. -- seahorseruler |<font color="Red"> Talk  (EditCount) Yoshi! 15:10, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments
I dont get how we can have to many of something like rollbacks or sysops because the more their are the better the wiki will be proteced for I dont think we should stop promoting user because i think its better if we have as much as we can, except for webmasters there should awalys be 2-4 webmasters no more no less. -- Brendan7195  Viva la Wii |undefined 16:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, There can be too many. If there are more than enough, many admins disagree with eachother, and that leads to more un-needed debates and arguments. Right now, i think we have enough. I disagree with demoting some active ones, but i agree to stop promoting new ones. As for webmasters, I am starting to feel we don't need them. Wikia staff and the rest of the wikia community don't respect us much because we have webmasters. If we stop using the term, and just have regular crats, we will be treated like a regular wiki again. -- seahorseruler |<font color="Red"> Talk  (EditCount) Yoshi! 16:58, 20 August 2009 (UTC)