Group rights.
Rollback
- move pages
- mass-undo edits made by a user
VCROC
- + Rollback
- Delete pages
- Edit protected pages
- Protect pages
- Block users
- Unblock users(?)
Administrator
- + VCROC
- Undelete pages
- Edit AbuseFilter
- Edit MediaWiki pages
- Delete forum threads
Reposting this here because I feel it's relevant.
ImGonnaBeThatGuy wrote:
A week or so ago, I roughly outlined the roles of rights holders:
- Rollbacks should be doing the majority of the editing. Formatting correction, grammar and punctuation fixes. They should also be marking for review and doing Delete Nows and giving valid reasons. To get to VCROC they need to be active and show good judgement in regard to quality.
- VCROC should be doing the majority of QC and deletions. They should also be active editors and reviewers. They need to be active in site matters. Adminship should only be given to people who show good judgement not only in regard to quality but in handling users, site change proposals, be knowledgable of site rules and TOU. Adminship shouldn't be an automatic promotion due to seniority. We don't need a lot of admins.
- Admin should be making sure the site runs smoothly. Answering user question, responding to conflicts, looking into issues. They need to be active in discussions about site issues. They need to help with deletion appeal, as well as doing QC.
That was one nice thing about VCROC, it could, theoretically, divide the labor a little more. Theory and practice, though.
What would happen now is that VCROC gets combined with admin. This essentially means that admins do EVERYTHING.
The issue is, there's no real difference. Admins were doing a majority of the Quality Control and Deletions. We had literally one VCROC member and one person who could get it, and they've been moved up to adminship.
TL;DR Admins already were doing EVERYTHING.
On that note, there's no real reason for this thread to continue to be up, as the VCROC group right has already been removed. With that, I'm locking this thread.
Shining-Armor wrote: VCROC is literally admin. They have almost all of the power of an admin except they lack the ability to undo what they have done. A VCROC member could cause just as much damage to the site as an admin could and do so just as easily as fundamentally there is almost nothing different. As for VCROC being a stepping stone it gives users a false divide between admin and rollback as there really is no middle ground. A user going from Rollback to VCROC will experience the same shock as someone going from Rollback to Sysop because they are the same thing. Again I think this needs to be said VCROC only lack the ability to undo what they have already done and this is not a good idea.
Once again, I would agree with you for a wiki specializing in basketweaving and what have you. But historically, VCROC and admins have slightly different jobs on this wiki in particular. The undelete feature gives one the ability to do deletion appeal, an additional responsibility that a person may or may not want to do. Moreover, administrators have the ability to close threads and delete comments, which gives them complete control over articles, blogs, and the forums. You can start to see a kind of divide forming; VCROCs are concerned primarily with editing and quality control, while the task of an administrator is of a more bureaucratic nature.
Steam Phoenix wrote: The issue is, there's no real difference. Admins were doing a majority of the Quality Control and Deletions. We had literally one VCROC member and one person who could get it, and they've been moved up to adminship.
TL;DR Admins already were doing EVERYTHING.
That isn't true. Although Gator's contributions were iffy, Veronica and I were reviewing and editing diligently. Veronica apparently wasn't interested in administrator at the time, and Underscorre was gearing up to become VCROC, so a lack of VCROC members wouldn't really be an issue. In fact, with the exception of Empy, the level of VCROC activity actually exceeded that of admin activity for a while.
Shining-Armor wrote: VCROC is literally admin. They have almost all of the power of an admin except they lack the ability to undo what they have done. A VCROC member could cause just as much damage to the site as an admin could and do so just as easily as fundamentally there is almost nothing different. As for VCROC being a stepping stone it gives users a false divide between admin and rollback as there really is no middle ground. A user going from Rollback to VCROC will experience the same shock as someone going from Rollback to Sysop because they are the same thing. Again I think this needs to be said VCROC only lack the ability to undo what they have already done and this is not a good idea.
Once again, I would agree with you for a wiki specializing in basketweaving and what have you. But historically, VCROC and admins have slightly different jobs on this wiki in particular. The undelete feature gives one the ability to deletion appeal, an additional responsibility that a person may or may not want to do. Moreover, administrators have the ability to close threads and delete comments, which gives them complete control over articles, blogs, and the forums. You can start to see a kind of divide forming; VCROCs are concerned primarily with editing and quality control, while the task of an administrator is of a more bureaucratic nature.
Steam Phoenix wrote: The issue is, there's no real difference. Admins were doing a majority of the Quality Control and Deletions. We had literally one VCROC member and one person who could get it, and they've been moved up to adminship.
TL;DR Admins already were doing EVERYTHING.
That isn't true. Although Gator's contributions were iffy, Veronica and I were reviewing and editing diligently. Veronica apparently wasn't interested in administrator at the time, and Underscorre was gearing up to become VCROC, so a lack of VCROC members wouldn't really be an issue.
Look, I'm not going to argue and fight about it, but I am going to say this;
Reviewing and editing diligently is the responsibility of every member on this site. Particularly, when it comes down to it, admins and VCROC. Now that chat is gone, the added responsibility of moderating it for admins makes VCROC almost redundant.
It's almost as though you're saying "VCROC should be kept because they have responsibilities!" So does everyone else in a community at large, and as admins we shouldn't be trying to excuse ourselves from everything but deleting a couple of pages and doing a few Deletion Appeals by shoving a majority of the site clean-up onto four or so people.
We should not assign responsibility to a single user group, because as it goes higher, the more it seems like a vacation. A majority of our rollbacks became inactive, and they didn't do much of jack shit at several points. In this event, with this setup, their responsibilities either go unattended to or get shoved to someone else.
Everyone needs to work as a single team - a community - with a coordinated effort behind it. We need to plan out our movements, not try to decide who is more of a grunt. Since I became admin, it's basically the same as VCROC: the reason I wanted admin was to help in Deletion Appeal. That's the only real difference.
On that note; VCROC almost has made us not precarious enough with who is selected as an administrator (Nommeh, for example). It's not an effective tool in determining a person's value or ethics to the community. A person's value and ethics are an effective tool. It's not about reputation or who has to do what with everything. It's about doing our part. With that, the selection of an admin isn't based around who was the best VCROC - it's based around who can work hardest, figure things out, and actually do things when thrown the ropes. If that's the only reason we have to keep the right, then there's even less reason to keep it.
tl;dr It isn't going to hurt anyone by any stretch of the imagination to do a little extra work and put more care and effort into who we choose for user rights.
Steam Phoenix wrote:
It's almost as though you're saying "VCROC should be kept because they have responsibilities!" So does everyone else in a community at large, and as admins we shouldn't be trying to excuse ourselves from everything but deleting a couple of pages and doing a few Deletion Appeals by shoving a majority of the site clean-up onto four or so people.
I have no idea where you got the idea that having a VCROC team is "shoving a majority of the site clean-up onto four or so people." Weren't you trying to make the argument earlier that admins have to do everything?
Steam Phoenix wrote:
We should not assign responsibility to a single user group, because as it goes higher, the more it seems like a vacation. A majority of our rollbacks became inactive, and they didn't do much of jack shit at several points. In this event, with this setup, their responsibilities either go unattended to or get shoved to someone else.
You've built a strawman here. I didn't say a user group should only do certain tasks while neglecting everything else. My point is that emphasis is placed on certain tasks depending on the user group. Administrators, for instance, can revert vandalism when they see it, but that's something rollbacks should be looking out for. Similarly, while quality control is a big part of an administrator's job, they should put a lot of their time into Deletion Appeal since VCROC don't have that ability. So perhaps VCROC do 60-70% of deletions while admins get the rest and do deletion appeal.
Steam Phoenix wrote:
On that note; VCROC almost has made us not precarious enough with who is selected as an administrator (Nommeh, for example). It's not an effective tool in determining a person's value or ethics to the community. A person's value and ethics are an effective tool. It's not about reputation or who has to do what with everything. It's about doing our part. With that, the selection of an admin isn't based around who was the best VCROC - it's based around who can work hardest, figure things out, and actually do things when thrown the ropes. If that's the only reason we have to keep the right, then there's even less reason to keep it.
How has VCROC made us less cautious in regard to whom we promote? That makes no sense whatsoever. We discovered Gator was plagiarist before he had the chance to become an administrator. Nommeh was briefly made an admin, but it was for such a short time there weren't any negative repercussions.
***
This isn't an address to anything you said on this thread; it's just something extra to think about. You supported my VCROC application, saying that there "wasn't even a question." Yet a few months later when I applied for administrator, you said this:
"Part of the reason I'm opposing is that adminship is only physically a step up, but our duties and responsibilities matter as well. Our attitude matters."
You're really driving home the point that as far as user rights go, there isn't a major difference between VCROC and administrators. But your attitude towards my application reflects the opposite view. If "there's no real difference" as you say, why did you support one and oppose the other?
Reviewing and editing diligently is the responsibility of every member on this site...
Um lol no it isn't. Nobody here has any sort of "responsibility" to do anything except for people with user rights.
...Particularly, when it comes down to it, admins and VCROC.
Right, people with user rights have responsibilities. Responsibilities that would be better off divided between different user groups...right? I mean, that just seems like good teamwork to me.
It's almost as though you're saying "VCROC should be kept because they have responsibilities!"
That is actually exactly what he's saying.
So does everyone else in a community at large, and as admins we shouldn't be trying to excuse ourselves from everything but deleting a couple of pages and doing a few Deletion Appeals by shoving a majority of the site clean-up onto four or so people.
No. It's simply distributing the workload. Right now admins have a ton of shit they have to deal with, what's wrong with having some people help them out? Isn't teamwork a good thing?
We should not assign responsibility to a single user group, because as it goes higher, the more it seems like a vacation.
Just because admins aren't handling every single aspect of site maintenance doesn't mean they're slacking off. I'm willing to bet that if responsibilities were more evenly distributed, productivity would actually go up.
Everyone needs to work as a single team - a community - with a coordinated effort behind it. We need to plan out our movements, not try to decide who is more of a grunt.
By "Everyone", do you mean the admins?
Also, lol at the idea that people lower down in the rank are "grunts". This is a wiki, we all have to do dirty work on here. That's just how wikis work. If giving different user groups different types of dirty work is what works best for the wiki, I don't see a problem with it.
And can you please explain to me how giving all the responsibility to the admin team is a more efficient method of teamwork than assigning different groups of users different duties? Because I'm honestly not seeing it.
I would go on, but I stopped reading there. I'm assuming the rest is more of the same.
Another reason I opposed the VCROC position shut down, and I forgot to mention it, is that everything would work so much better if each right has a definitive task to do. Why not write something like that on the Requests page?
Steam Phoenix wrote:
It's almost as though you're saying "VCROC should be kept because they have responsibilities!" So does everyone else in a community at large, and as admins we shouldn't be trying to excuse ourselves from everything but deleting a couple of pages and doing a few Deletion Appeals by shoving a majority of the site clean-up onto four or so people.
I have no idea where you got the idea that having a VCROC team is "shoving a majority of the site clean-up onto four or so people." Weren't you trying to make the argument earlier that admins have to do everything?
Steam Phoenix wrote:
We should not assign responsibility to a single user group, because as it goes higher, the more it seems like a vacation. A majority of our rollbacks became inactive, and they didn't do much of jack shit at several points. In this event, with this setup, their responsibilities either go unattended to or get shoved to someone else.
You've built a strawman here. I didn't say a user group should only do certain tasks while neglecting everything else. My point is that emphasis is placed on certain tasks depending on the user group. Administrators, for instance, can revert vandalism when they see it, but that's something rollbacks should be looking out for. Similarly, while quality control is a big part of an administrator's job, they should put a lot of their time into Deletion Appeal since VCROC don't have that ability. So perhaps VCROC do 60-70% of deletions while admins get the rest and do deletion appeal.
Steam Phoenix wrote:
On that note; VCROC almost has made us not precarious enough with who is selected as an administrator (Nommeh, for example). It's not an effective tool in determining a person's value or ethics to the community. A person's value and ethics are an effective tool. It's not about reputation or who has to do what with everything. It's about doing our part. With that, the selection of an admin isn't based around who was the best VCROC - it's based around who can work hardest, figure things out, and actually do things when thrown the ropes. If that's the only reason we have to keep the right, then there's even less reason to keep it.
How has VCROC made us less cautious in regard to whom we promote? That makes no sense whatsoever. We discovered Gator was plagiarist before he had the chance to become an administrator. Nommeh was briefly made an admin, but it was for such a short time there weren't any negative repercussions.
***
This isn't an address to anything you said on this thread; it's just something extra to think about. You supported my VCROC application, saying that there "wasn't even a question." Yet a few months later when I applied for administrator, you said this:
"Part of the reason I'm opposing is that adminship is only physically a step up, but our duties and responsibilities matter as well. Our attitude matters."
You're really driving home the point that as far as user rights go, there isn't a major difference between VCROC and administrators. But your attitude towards my application reflects the opposite view. If "there's no real difference" as you say, why did you support one and oppose the other?
1. I fail to see where those two arguments conflict. Honestly, admins need to have the better majority of the work - we are the leaders of the community. But this seems like we are trying to put responsibilities onto another group whilst almost shirking our own. How hard is it to make a site proposal, update the rules, make a few deletions, and appeal a couple of deletions when someone doesn't see a problem? It's not that difficult.
2. I never said you did. But as Deletion Appeal is oftentimes taken care of, we aren't exactly spending alot of time doing other things. I may have misunderstood your argument, I will admit. Here's the thing, though: responsibilities compile with rights. As admins, it's our job to take care of the site and improve it - that is the best thing we can do. Rollbacks should be on the look for vandalism, but I don't see them being the ones to block the vandals, which therefore means admins should also keep an eye out.
3. What I'm getting at there is that part of the reason VCROC exists is to see who could be admin. The role itself exists namely for site clean-up - which, imo, is a job for an admin. I'm simply trying to point out that said reason isn't really accurate. On that note, without the VCROC, it would take more care to select administrators because of how big a step it is up - would you have made Simba or Nommeh admins when they were only rollbacks? I wouldn't. But we made them VCROC, which, when you look at it, is pretty well the same thing.
As far as the bottom goes, I can't remember how long ago your app was, nor do I care to look. I know it wasn't that long ago, but since then, I've been thinking about these things, and I've changed alot of what I think about. I would probably oppose any VCROC app for a person who I don't think would be fit for admin nowadays because of how little difference there is between the two. Do I see the future? No, but I can take a good guess on how well someone can do even when they don't have the right. And I do admit, I was wrong when I opposed your app - you've done a good job so far, and you should keep that up.
Reviewing and editing diligently is the responsibility of every member on this site...
Um lol no it isn't. Nobody here has any sort of "responsibility" to do anything except for people with user rights.
...Particularly, when it comes down to it, admins and VCROC.
Right, people with user rights have responsibilities. Responsibilities that would be better off divided between different user groups...right? I mean, that just seems like good teamwork to me.
It's almost as though you're saying "VCROC should be kept because they have responsibilities!"
That is actually exactly what he's saying.
So does everyone else in a community at large, and as admins we shouldn't be trying to excuse ourselves from everything but deleting a couple of pages and doing a few Deletion Appeals by shoving a majority of the site clean-up onto four or so people.
No. It's simply distributing the workload. Right now admins have a ton of shit they have to deal with, what's wrong with having some people help them out? Isn't teamwork a good thing?
We should not assign responsibility to a single user group, because as it goes higher, the more it seems like a vacation.
Just because admins aren't handling every single aspect of site maintenance doesn't mean they're slacking off. I'm willing to bet that if responsibilities were more evenly distributed, productivity would actually go up.
Everyone needs to work as a single team - a community - with a coordinated effort behind it. We need to plan out our movements, not try to decide who is more of a grunt.
By "Everyone", do you mean the admins?
Also, lol at the idea that people lower down in the rank are "grunts". This is a wiki, we all have to do dirty work on here. That's just how wikis work. If giving different user groups different types of dirty work is what works best for the wiki, I don't see a problem with it.
And can you please explain to me how giving all the responsibility to the admin team is a more efficient method of teamwork than assigning different groups of users different duties? Because I'm honestly not seeing it.
I would go on, but I stopped reading there. I'm assuming the rest is more of the same.
1. Really? Why did we shut down chat, then? A big opinion was that the chat users were just dead-weight who did nothing for the site. Here's the thing: If you are a member of a community, you have a responsibility to that community - Things run more efficiently that way.
2. Did I say teamwork was a bad thing? As far as having a shitload of work to deal with, it's our job. The moment we applied we should have been prepared for bigger workloads - people help out when the admins help out, because we set an example of how to act and look. We are the leaders of the community. Teamwork is an excellent thing, but it doesn't work by distributing everything to site staff. We must ask the community as a whole to help us - they are using the site, and if they care for it as much as we do, they will help us the best ways they can.
3. I did not say that either. But from what it sounds like, it's almost as though we want the VCROC to handle the larger majority of site clean-up - I won't disagree that it was their general purpose, but admins have that same responsibility. Productivity will go up as we work harder towards a general purpose.
4. I mean, everyone. If they want to help, then we should put them into our plans to help take care of the site.
As far as distributing the workload, it would work better with smaller groups of people, not just user right groups as a whole. More people could tackle each task individually. Things can't be rushed - they take time. I've learned this.