AnilSerifoglu (talk) 00:15, 25 June 2024 (UTC)The Forum:CT:Merging Bureaucrat, CheckUser, and Administrative autonomy had just passed, but the Wookieepedia:Administrators page could use some clean-up. Permalink to my draft—I'll be keeping this link updated.
The proposed changes only apply to the introduction, "Sysop tools," "Responsibilities," "Becoming an administrator," "Extended leaves of absence," "Becoming a CheckUser," and "Becoming a bureaucrat" sections. In other words, the content of the introduction plus the sections between "Meet the team" and "Administrative autonomy."
I propose making an expanded list of responsibilities, merging the current "Sysop tools" and "Responsibilities," to be more transparent in reflecting pretty much all the areas for which admins are supposed to deal with. Just because admins have access to and are therefore responsible for editing these features doesn't mean the larger community doesn't have a say; standard policy/community-consensus protocols apply, just as regular editors are welcome to request changes to e.g. fully protected templates. It codifies existing practice and refers to policy pages, with these additions:
- Specify that Discussions moderators can be promoted in accordance with the Requests for user rights (RFUR) process—this currently does not exist but it probably should; it's something to add to the RFUR at some point after consulting with Discussions users as well.
- Specify the admins may work with Fandom staff and our new Social Media Team on community partnerships.
- Through Cavalier One, who is also a Fandom staff member, the administration has previously worked with Disney+, who provided us with high-quality promotional assets for use as our fancy site theme for the Ahsoka series in late 2023. Disney+/Lucasfilm has never asked us to change site content, and admins have been re-theming the Main Page and overall wiki for new content from before my time as an admin.
- Some editors will also remember that for the latest Season 3 of The Bad Batch, admins also spoken with them about tweaking the wording on the Main Page to make it seem less like a press release :P On 4th May this year, admins and the Social Media Team also ran a brief promotion with the Podathon charity event through site announcements and a change to the Main Page.
The "Becoming an administrator" section shall specify the ways in which an admin could be removed from their position (by resigning, blocking, RFRUR vote, or failing activity requirements). It will be immediately followed by the new "Becoming a CheckUser" and "Becoming a bureaucrat" sections to keep these related things together—removed rollback and Discussions moderator rights management from BC though, since regular admins can actually manage such rights.
There is a separate section below about activity requirements. OOM 224 (he/him) 21:42, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
Discuss main proposal
- Per admin suggestions, the proposed text would also address 1) admins taking on community suggestions for e.g. site interface, 2) noting BCs' full Discord server perms and deleting consult channels upon archiving, and 3) admins formally representing the Wook. OOM 224 (he/him) 18:40, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
- Excellent work OOM. I just have a few comments to make. I fell as "Blocking and user rights management" could be separated in two sections. I understand the initial intent (blocking is part of managing user rights), but I just think it's best to have the first three points separated from the other since they deal with something else in practice, and it may help users to navigate the various responsibilities. I don't really get this part: "to ensure users' privacy against future bureaucrats." under "Chat moderation". Why against (first off, seems a bit antagonistic) bureaucrats in particular? Just saying "to ensure users' privacy." seems enough, no? As we recently vote on the issue of archiving threads, shouldn't that kind of responsibilities be also noted in the list (under Consensus)? NanoLuukeCloning Facility 16:41, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- There was a discussion a few months ago about having a page for site interface requests: here is a draft for Wookieepedia:Interface suggestions. Perhaps it can be added to the interface section? OOM 224 (he/him) 16:54, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
- I would say we should discuss this on another dedicated SH once the Admin rewrite has been voted on. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 18:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Activity requirements
Finally, smoothing out the activity requirements. As I have raised with the rest of the admin team, this definitely will require a subvote when this proposal is brought to the CT.
The current rules, under Wookieepedia:Administrators#Extended leaves of absence, are pretty confusing and leaves the issue entirely at the discretion of BCs. To make it clearer, I suggest removing "excepting prior explanation of inactivity" for the edit count requirement while allowing admins to provide explanations after they are found to have fallen short of the requirement, so that all admins can be checked for their edit counts, whether they have said they are active or not. Someone could then speak to the admin and ask them to provide an expected date for returning to the specified activity levels so that serving admins are alerted to the rules that the community has given them.
Of course, if the community wants to remove these rules, that would also be an option.
Returning to the proposed tweaks if the community wishes to keep the productivity requirement in place: to make it more enforceable, I suggest removing any mention of BCs and tweaking the wording to "shall be demoted," so that the onus of dealing with relative inactivity is not solely placed on BCs, who could simply decide to sit on the issue or be seen as being not impartial when it comes to enforcing requirements on fellow admins.
To make it more accepting of admins who use their sysop rights to carry out vital maintenance work via bots, I think edits from bots for admins actively maintaining bots should be included. It can also be brought in line with the upcoming voting eligibility amendment by easening the "mainspace" edits requirement to "non-userspace, non–talk page" edits, especially given that admins do vital work on MediaWiki and Template pages, for example.
I think the "Attempts to communicate will be made" at four months' absence only for a "Warning that removal will occur at 6 months" to be made at five months is a bit weird, but I recognise it might be good to have at least two rounds of warning for the admin before demotion at six months of absence, hence the proposal to remove the table and require a heads-up about the rule to be included at both the four months and fives months juncture. OOM 224 (he/him) 21:42, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
Discuss sub-proposal
- In regard to "simply tell other administrators that they are taking a break", I think that this is kind of insufficient, and we should always default to using the Vacation template. Since administrators are voted-in by the community, it should be clear to the community when an administrator isn't available. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 16:41, 15 May 2024 (UTC)