Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Practices and processes

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Practices on unbecoming members of the wiki (aka user bans)

Given recently-concluded RFR and the statement "it is the community that leads this wiki, not the administrators", what are everyone's proposed changes to the process of banning users? Does the community want to have a voice in who is getting banned or is it fine for sysops/bcrats to decide on it? ❄The F. Prince❄ (talk) 08:39, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Bans occur both on the wiki and on discord. I'm not sure if you brought this up with the intent to cover discord as well, but either way I think these two platforms need to be addressed separately. To that end (and more), I've started a discussion on Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Discord#The role of Discord for the wiki. —Idris 12:45, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

The community already has a voice on who is getting banned by selecting sysops and bureaucrats whose judgment they trust. - Felix Omni 15:11, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Felix on this one, if the community lacks faith in their admin team they should nominate new ones and remove the ones that they fundamentally don't trust.

The whole point of being an admin with the full toolbox is that it grants the ability to act independently. Not everything needs to be a committee decision. -Chieftain Alex 19:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

If people didn't trust us to use the administrative tools correctly, we wouldn't have them to begin with or we would have been demoted already. For what it's worth, 99% of the time a ban happens we're banning spambots or vandals. Banning actual users is far more rare: since I started editing the wiki in 2016 only 4 actual editors have been banned, and 3 out 4 of those bans were temporary. - Do_odleplex 22:05, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Or maybe people don't want to make waves. It's a lot easier to simply ignore things you're mildly annoyed by than to start an RFA - especially given how the nature of RFAs mean either the sysop is removed or they don't, with nothing in between.

This is why terms are a good thing. It's much less of a barrier to not support reconfirmation than it is to support removal. horrible | contribs 22:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I would like to point out that while an administrator’s discretion is usually the deciding factor, I don’t believe that there is a strict rule that prevents the community from voicing their opinion. The most recent temporary ban was at least in part influenced by the community. I would also assume that it is okay for the community to contest a decision that has been made. I am not sure in what way you are asking your question Prince, whether you want to suggest a ban or contest a ban. For discussing a decision that has already been made, you can always email the admin that performed the action. In general, you can always contact administrators (sysops and bureaucrats) if you are having a problem with a decision or some user’s behavior.

I would generally avoid turning things into an open inquisition though since this will quickly escalate and may not be as productive and healthy to the community. poke | talk 23:03, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

On Adminship and High Standards

→ moved from Guild_Wars_2_Wiki_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Tanetris#On_Adminship_and_High_Standards

I think you bring up a good point Idris: “the prospect of adminship on this wiki is intimidating as hell, because the community has very high standards, and it certainly feels like they do regard admins as leaders instead of fellow users who happen to be entrusted with extra tools” I personally would like to see this changed because this is the wrong direction. I think we can all agree that admins on the wikis have often been seen as leaders (still are, always will). But I would challenge that this is because they are admins. Let’s think about our most active users that go out of their way to positively affect the wiki. Because of their presence and passion for the wiki, these users will be quickly understood as a core part of the community; they are in a way “running the wiki”. These editors being seen as “quasi-leaders”, the next natural step for them it to become admins because they happen to already have the trust from the community through all the work they have put in. We have seen this happen all the time over the last decade, and I still remember lots of comments like “didn’t realize you weren’t already a sysop”. So because users like this already appear as leaders with what they do, they eventually become admins. This can be summed up with: Wiki leaders will get admin permissions. However, the reverse is not necessarily true and I believe admins shouldn’t need to act like leaders. The fact that members are intimidated of running for adminship troubles me because this means that we (as a community) are effectively gatekeeping access to useful tools to outgoing members. Not everybody has the personality to act like a leader. On GWW, a good part of our sysops were working mostly in the background and there were definitely ones that outright avoided having to deal with user conflicts. Because at the end of the day what does being an admin mean? It means access to a few more useful tools. Yes, a big part of that toolset is a blunt mechanism to end user conflict, but that’s only one thing. And some of these tools may be useful to trusted members of the community without relying on them as leaders. So I would personally like this community to challenge their opinion of what the role of an admin is. Remove the leadership understanding and reduce them to trusted members that have a slightly bigger toolbox, because that’s essentially what they are. The community runs the wiki — the community as a whole. Everyone is welcome to challenge opinions and have an impact on the wiki. This is not limited to users with additional rights but should be possible for anyone. Run this wiki, and remove the implicit pressure by having too many expectations and implicit requirements for administrators. And while we’re at it, let’s add more administrators with all kinds of different personalities. poke | talk 21:35, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think our expectations or the requirements to become an admin are too high. It looks like, for the most part, we want someone level-headed, trustworthy, active and involved with the community. That's not really unreasonable. If that seems too much of a hurdle for some people, maybe they're just not meant to be admins in the first place.

Another possible factor that deters people from wanting adminship is that it's simply not worth it to them. It's a thankless "job", even moreso than being a regular editor. On top of that it can be quite draining and mentally exhausting (see the current events). You have to make decisions (i.e. perform bans) that others might disagree with and do things that are out of character for yourself.

Concerning seeing admins as leaders... I don't know. Most of the current admins, including myself, don't come across as leaders in my eyes. There's certainly no abundance of authority present.

"While we’re at it, let’s add more administrators with all kinds of different personalities." I'd rather have a handful of capable admins than a crowd of less capable ones. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and I don't think we should repeat what you had on the GW wiki. As for different personalities, we're pretty diverse already, aren't we. Regardless, I do agree that having more admins would be nice, like one or two sysops/bureaucrats, perhaps, to fill the empty spots. talk 18:30, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

"Personally, I don't think our expectations or the requirements to become an admin are too high. It looks like, for the most part, we want someone level-headed, trustworthy, active and involved with the community. That's not really unreasonable." Unreasonable and intimidating are two different things. I agree that these are reasonable standards, but being active and involved with the community and being level-headed are vague and potentially nerve-wracking standards to live up to. If an admin decides not to join Discord, or real-life gets on top of them for a few months and they only have time for quietly deleting spam, for example, are they failing to be sufficiently interactive with the community? —Idris 18:38, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

(Reset indent) How is that nerve-wrecking? You just let people know and that's it. As long as you don't go MIA for years on end, constantly fade in and out of existence, or immediately bail after becoming an admin, it should be fine. Also, discord's still a very recent addition. Prior to that it was IRC that was (and perhaps even still is) used. I doubt all of the admins were on it. It's not really a requirement to be there, in my opinion. What I meant by being "involved with the community" is that people should be aware of your existence, you participate in discussions and collaborate with others. Basically, don't be a complete stranger. talk 18:55, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

“possible factor that deters people from wanting adminship is that it's simply not worth it to them” – Did you consider that this might be a bad thing? That people think they could not live up to the expections and such won’t run for it, further pressuring the few remaining admins? I think that’s a circle that’s only going to get worse as we expect more from admins, demoting them for not fitting these expectations, without actually working on adding ones. Why shouldn’t we “repeat what [we] had on the GW wiki”? Why do you think that having a large number of administrators sharing their work, relieving the individual, is a bad thing? poke | talk 19:27, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

"Did you consider that this might be a bad thing?" Of course it's a bad thing! But there's nothing we can do about people simply not wanting to be admins. Regarding "further pressuring the few remaining admins", don't know about you, but I don't feel pressured right now. Sure, the whole wiki politics thing is mentally exhausting, but other than that, the wiki is relatively quiet. "Why shouldn’t we “repeat what [we] had on the GW wiki”?" I had a rough glance at how things were handled back then and I wasn't impressed in the least. From policies over yay-/nay voting polls without any proper argumentation and reasoning to a red slab of an admin list, I can't see the appeal. A large number of admins is a potential hazard for conflicts, inactivity and solo trips. We don't need that many people to keep the wiki in shape. There's just not enough work to do for that. Just look around you. Having a few active admins suffices in my eyes. We should focus more on working as a team instead, involving the community. talk 19:48, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Let me repeat something that I think may have been overlooked in my previous comment: our expectations for admins are vague. The size of this talk page makes it pretty clear that what constitutes "sufficiently active" is not universally agreed upon by the community, and I think that ambiguity plays a big role in people's reluctance to put themselves forward. You have a clear vision of what it means to you, Inc, and it's great that you feel confident in your ability to live up to it, but you're only one person. I don't agree that this is an unsolvable problem; we just need to have some conversations on more specific, targeted topics (like transparency, what "active" means, what discord's role is/should be, etc) instead of wringing our hands about the fact the problem exists. —Idris 20:14, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Adminship can be rewarding in that you occasionally can help the community to push through something that wouldn't have been possible without you and your rights.

Most of the time it's a pain in the butt. Cleanup tasks nobody will thank you for, the occasional moron vandal who gets obsessed with you or goes on a spree... weighing into any discussion with a casual bit of feedback suddenly has more gravitas and you need to be on your game. There's a fair bit of expectation on sysops that you won't flake out and disappear (at least within the first year) which most people seem to fall foul of (if you're leaving, just leave and resign, don't lurk and do nothing).

Ultimately you've got to be a paragon, because when you fuck up, people will remember and annoy you with it forever more. -Chieftain Alex 20:44, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

If that doesn't explain the general reluctance to be an admin (at least a part of it), I don't know what will. Nicely summed up, Alex.

You might be scared and/or reluctant of pursuing adminship, Idris, because you find the requirements/expectations too daunting (see your statement above the section header). I believe others simply don't care about becoming one, the same way they aren't interested in participating in our fun RFAs. talk 20:57, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

“But there's nothing we can do about people simply not wanting to be admins.” – Well yes, there is. We already have identified an example reason why someone might not be an admin. So let’s lower the bar and make becoming an admin more approachable without having high expectations linked with the role.

“don't know about you, but I don't feel pressured right now” - Good for you but I feel different about that. It was easy for me too back in the days where I was around close to 24/7 on the wiki because that was the major part of my life. But nowadays, I have many different things going on in my life and since I don’t really play GW2 regularly any more, there is a disconnect to the wiki’s content. This directly affects my activity, as probably anyone can tell just by looking at my activity. But the primary reason why I am still around, and why I’ll personally continue to stick around for as long as I can, is because I care very deeply about the wikis. It was a huge part of my life that I am not willing to give up. So I stick around because I continue to care and will continue to use my abilities to work for the wiki and its community. Ironically, because of what happened in the past few weeks, I actually feel more motivated again and will probably regain some activity that I have lost in the past. Note that this is not out of pressure; it’s just that I enjoy it again (even though these particular events have been somewhat draining). – But all this doesn’t mean that it’s easy. So yes, as we remove more admins, I do feel more pressure to make up for that, even if that doesn’t directly mean more immediate work.

“I wasn't impressed in the least. From policies over yay-/nay voting polls without any proper argumentation and reasoning to a red slab of an admin list, I can't see the appeal. A large number of admins is a potential hazard for conflicts, inactivity and solo trips.” – You are mixing a lot of things there. The only problem GWW had was the over-policing. GWW was formed out of GuildWiki and the foundation started with a very clear structure out of policies that the community would agree on and continue to take rather literal (even to this day). This was the thing that would end up causing problems later as the community evolved. When GW2W started, the community thankfully realized this and went in a direction that involved less policies and more discretion. But the number of admins on GWW was never a problem. As I said above, we had a lot of different personalities with different specialities. The team was able to depend on each other and no single person felt the need to act upon something if they didn’t actually want to. That allows for a lot of freedom and in my opinion reduces friction within the team. The number of admins is also in no way related to the possibility of solo trips, and the reason why inactivity happened is simply because the game ended at some point. Since there was freedom within the admins, becoming less active was never a problem. And I still believe that outside of potential security issues due to potentially broken login credentials, having inactive admins is not an issue. In over 13 years, we haven’t really seen problems with inactive sysops, and I will continue to defend the point that having an inactive admin does not prevent a user from going through an RFA successfully.

“There's just not enough work to do for that.” – It isn’t about having work to do though. It’s about being there to handle things when they come up. I still believe that activity shouldn’t be a requirement as long as you are able to respond when things come up. We don’t need admins to patrol recent changes; any member can do that. That’s why we have the admin noticeboard, so that any member can report issues for admins to act upon, to use the tools they have been entrusted with. If we really required admins to be on top of everything, that wasn’t necessary.

One final point about what you said earlier about you not seeing that a part of the community thinks of admins as leaders. There definitely appears to be such an expection; you said it yourself: “[Ideal bureaucrats] need to be role models and representatives for the community, displaying level-headedness, civility, and respectfulness.” poke | talk 20:59, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Inc, I freely admit that my statements are influenced by my concerns about becoming an admin... but I mean. We're having a conversation about why people are so nervous about becoming admins. I want to resolve my concerns so I can make a more informed decision on whether adminship is right for me, and I hope I'm doing so in a way that will open the door for others. Would you prefer I didn't bother? Because that's what it sounds like. I'm all for admins being honest about the challenges of the role -- I did ask for more transparency, after all -- but I'm not impressed by your defeatist attitude. —Idris 21:08, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Idris: My preferences and/or opinions should absolutely not hinder you from anything! I'm just a single person. In the end, the decision lies entirely with you. If you put up another RFA, I'll vote. Apologies if what I said was too "defeatist", but that's how I — and even Alex — see it. I just don't want to romanticise the role.

@Poke: With all due respect, if you feel pressured by being in an admin position or simply lack the time, it's perfectly fine to take a step back after all these years of good work if you feel like it. You can still be a part of the community and share your knowledge, as some people suggested.

Also, I don't really view "role models"/"representatives" as "leaders". I.e., take the Queen for example, she's the representative and public figure, but not a leader. Regarding the inactivity debate, I acknowledge your opinion, but I do not share it. talk 21:32, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

"active and involved with the community"; once again Inc, I get that these are ideals that you're referncing, but I really do wish you would stop talking for the "community" on something you were unable to gain general consensus on. These are your expectations of an admin and the expectation of some other users, thats really about as far as you can go with that comment.

"I wasn't impressed in the least. From policies over yay-/nay voting polls without any proper argumentation and reasoning to a red slab of an admin list, I can't see the appeal. A large number of admins is a potential hazard for conflicts, inactivity and solo trips."; As someone who was very active during that time and was within the admin team, I'm just gonna flat out disagree here and say that your knowledge is flawed by its lack of familiarity. Having a wide and diverse admin team was a joy. Different oppinions were heard, tasks were handled based on personal strengths and as a group, we reflected the many aspects of the community we worked for. A wide and diverse team is a benefit! Also I find your statements about their not being enough work and keeping the admin team limited; to actually be somewhat worrying. Admin on the wiki is not a supply and demand concept. Having more admins than you need; is a good thing. Also the idea of any current admin trying to pull up the ladder behind them, so to speak... I find problematic. Adminship shouldnt be a wee clique thats closed to new entry, it should be something that's open and evolving.

What I find odd here is the discrepency in the points you're making; people who agree with you seem to be arguing the wiki is an evolving beast and as such, community expectations can change and evolve over time and thus this debate about activity. That's fair enough, I can see the logic although I still think it needs to be consensus led. However you now seem to be stating that the expectations and requirements should be fixed at what they are currently, as you dont see them as too burdensome and that adminship should be limited to a small and chosen few. Despite their being a raised concern of the current role being seen as potentially intimidating.

So which is it? Is adminship morphable and malleable and open to adaptation and change over time or is it finite, immutable and fixed? My issue here seems to be you're stating two opposite points at once... that we should keep the things that suit your particular oppinion of adminship, but change the things that dont fit with your personal views on adminship. Which isnt really how community based progress works.

Also im going to disagree with poke on the wiki-lawyering. I actually enjoyed having a clear set of rules and policies, for people to abide by - the only thing i didn't like is the lack of substantial guidance on review of blocks or user sanctions that we had in place (it quite often felt that if someone got banned and even if another sysop thought that action was unduly harsh or an overstep, that it was strill discouraged for other sysops to utilise their abilties to review bans. Which never sat well with me.). However saying all that we still had a clear policy on taking a purposive interpretation of the rules we enacted; which I personally enjoyed and found helpful to the community at large. However due to my academic background, I may have been alone in my enjoyment of that factor. However that's all a personal aside. -- Salome 21:39, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

This is a bit of a shift in direction, but it possible to separate the roles of content moderation and user moderation? I feel like the ability to delete pages, revisions, and files; move without redirects; and edit important pages (eg Main Page) is probably far less intimidating than the role of a full sysop, and may serve as a stepping stone for users who are interested, but not ready or willing to take on the full responsibility just yet. horrible | contribs 01:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

In principle, this is an excellent idea. One problem: what's the tangible difference between what you suggest, and a "full sysop"? Looks like the only user-directed tools they have are "check user" and "block" -- which are useful for dealing with spam accounts, something I think maintenance-only sysops should be able to deal with. —Idris 01:29, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I see it as a difference in mindset. Having the ability to remove users for any duration is - to me - a far more scary and threatening power than anything else. If you take that away, the role becomes strictly a janitorial one. horrible | contribs 01:34, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Oh, for sure, I'm just not sure how we'd accomplish that if both groups have the same permissions. —Idris 01:39, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

It could be as simple as a policy (I know GW2W doesn't like these, but hear me out!) that states using the tools in a non-vandal-fixing-capacity would be immediate removal of privileges, or if that's not enough, I feel the role would still be fulfilling enough for editors with user blocking taken away completely, as a form of extended extended permissions. horrible | contribs 01:50, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, either of these could work, I think. The sort of users we trust enough to grant admin-level maintenance tools could also probably be trusted not to ban real users, especially when given clear instructions. Edit: would they be granted this power via RfA, or by politely asking a bureaucrat? The RfA process is pretty intimidating in itself, but it might be a necessary evil. —Idris 02:14, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Personally I would still prefer RFAs, especially in the event that this becomes a stepping-stone to full sysop powers. Though maybe with a lowered requirement of some sort? horrible | contribs 02:23, 22 June 2020 (UTC)