Forum:Discussion: User rights request policy addendum 1.0

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The discussion below focuses on the following addendums to the user rights request policy. Hearing support, the following will move to a community vote reflecting applicable feedback. Thank you for your time in reviewing the following. -kdarrow ^{take her for a spin!} 22:11, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Proposal

Draft 1.0-A

Draft 1.0-A

Chat moderator It is important for chat moderators to maintain a connection to Nukapedia with a verified Fandom account, but this requirement would serve better as a focus on engagement in chat instead of a rigorous edit requirement. Chat moderators must complete either Nukapedia Vault Academy training or Discord Moderator Academy as well as have two-factor authentication (TFA) enabled on their account. Comparison Action Current Proposed Replace Continuously active editing this wiki, and in this wiki's Discord server, for at least two months. Continuously active in this wiki's Discord server with verified Nukapedia account for at least two months. Add None Completed either Nukapedia Vault Academy training or Discord Moderator Academy. Add None Enabled two-factor authentication on account allowing for moderative action. Discussion moderator Currently, a content moderator is not allowed to seek discussion moderator rights and is instructed to instead run for administrator. The content and discussion moderator roles and tools are different, and users may not wish to run for administrator. This proposal removes the arbitrary restriction. Comparison Action Current Proposed Remove Must not hold the position of content moderator. None Content moderator The requirements are higher for content moderators in comparison to other moderators in terms of time but lack the same endorsement requirements as the others. The proposal accounts for a user's time as a patroller in their total time requirement and brings edit count equal to discussion board post count. Requirements for mastery have been replaced with competency and the ​arbitrary restriction for discussion moderators is likewise removed with this proposal. Comparison Action Current Proposed Remove Must not hold the position of discussions moderator. None Add None Secured an endorsement from at least one active bureaucrat, administrator, or content moderator. Replace Have held the position of patroller for a minimum of two months. Have held the position of patroller for a minimum of one month. Replace Continuous active editing on this wiki for at least three months. Continuous active editing on this wiki for at least two months. Replace 2000 edits 2500 edits Replace Demonstrate competency in basic and advanced editing tools, as well as substantial experience utilizing templates. Demonstrate competency in basic and advanced editing tools, as well as basic knowledge of technical editing. Administrator The requirements for administrator are not reflective of the progressive responsibilities of the role, and do not vary from content moderator nor expand upon the requirements of chat or discussion moderators nor include requirements tailored to those outside of a primarily editing role. The following addendum will create more rigorous benchmarks for the role, differentiate it from moderator roles, and provide more inclusivity for all moderation branches. Comparison Action Current Proposed Replace Continuous active editing this wiki for at least three months. Continuous active engagement in or editing this wiki for at least six months. Replace 2000 edits 5000 edits, chat messages, or discussions posts Add None Secured an endorsement from at least one active bureaucrat or administrator. Add None Demonstrate competence in all mechanisms of editing and either all functions of discussion boards or all aspects of the Discord server. Add None Exhibit exemplary leadership ability, dedication to non-toxic culture, academic integrity of content, and high level communication skills. Replace Have held the position of patroller for a minimum of two months. Have held any moderator position for a minimum of two months. Bureaucrat The requirements for bureaucrat should be the most rigorous and not the least defined. Currently, they are not reflective of the progressive responsibilities of the role, and do not vary from administrator or moderators. The following addendum will create more rigorous benchmarks, differentiate it from administrator and moderator roles, require demonstrating high level communication and leadership skills, as well as continuous engagement in all facets of the wiki and its community. Comparison Action Current Proposed Replace Continuous active editing this wiki for at least three months. Continuous active engagement in and editing this wiki for at least one year. Add None 10000 edits, chat messages, or discussions posts Add None Demonstrate active engagement and competence in all mechanisms of editing, and both the functions of discussion boards, and all aspects of the Discord server. Add None Exhibit exemplary leadership ability, dedication to non-toxic culture, academic integrity of content, and high level communication skills. Overview Lines that are striken out are current requirements replaced by the current proposals. Italics indicate the new requirements and those without wiki markup are not impacted by the proposals. Proposal overview Name Activity Contribution Endorsement Competency Service Additional Chat moderator Continuously active editing this wiki, and in this wiki's Discord server, for at least two months. Continuously active in this wiki's Discord server with verified Nukapedia account for at least two months. 5000 Discord posts Secured an endorsement from at least one active bureaucrat, administrator, or chat moderator. Demonstrate competency in Discord's interface and tools through interactions with others. Must be able to instruct and direct Discord users on how to vote and comment on forum posts. Completed either Nukapedia Vault Academy training or Discord Moderator Academy. Enabled Discord two-factor authentication on account allowing for moderative action. Discussions moderator Continuously active on this wiki's Discussion boards for at least two months. 2500 discussions posts Secured an endorsement from at least one active bureaucrat, administrator, or discussions moderator. Demonstrate competency in the Discussions interface and tools through interactions with others. Must be able to instruct /d users on how to vote and comment on forum posts. Must not hold the position of content moderator. Content moderator Continuously active editing this wiki for at least three months. Continuous active editing on this wiki for at least two months. 2000 edits 2500 edits Secured an endorsement from at least one active bureaucrat, administrator, or content moderator. Demonstrate competency in basic and advanced editing tools, as well as substantial experience utilizing templates. Demonstrate competency in basic and advanced editing tools, as well as basic knowledge of technical editing. Must be able to instruct and direct users on how to accomplish basic edits and vote on forum posts. Must not hold the position of discussions moderator. Have held the position of patroller for a minimum of two months. Have held the position of patroller for a minimum of one month. Administrator Continuously active editing this wiki for at least three months. Continuous active engagement in community aspects or editing this wiki for at least six months. 2000 edits 5000 edits, chat messages, or discussions posts Secured an endorsement from at least one active bureaucrat or administrator. Demonstrate competence in all mechanisms of editing and either all functions of discussion boards or all aspects of the Discord server. Exhibit exemplary leadership ability, dedication to non-toxic culture and academic integrity of content, and demonstrate high level communication skills. Have held the position of patroller for a minimum of two months. Have held any moderator position for a minimum of two months. Enabled Discord two-factor authentication on account allowing for moderative action. Bureaucrat Continuously active editing this wiki for at least three months. Continuous active engagement in community aspects and editing this wiki for at least one year. 10000 edits, chat messages, or discussions posts Secured an endorsement from at least one active bureaucrat or administrator. Demonstrate active engagement and competence in all mechanisms of editing, and both the functions of discussion boards and all aspects of the Discord server. Exhibit exemplary leadership ability, dedication to non-toxic culture and academic integrity of content, and demonstrate high level communication skills. Must have held administrator rights for a minimum of one year as well as at the time of application. Enabled Discord two-factor authentication on account allowing for moderative action.

Draft 1.0-B

Draft 1.0-C

Lines that are striken out are current requirements replaced by the current proposals. Italics indicate the new requirements and those without wiki markup are not impacted by the proposals.

* If there is no active bureaucrat and current active administrators do not meet the qualifications, noted requirements will be waived to allow administrators to apply for bureaucratic rights through the regular forum process.

Discussion

Everything in there makes sense to me. A lot of the changes are (in the scheme of things) minor, but clarity is good. combining edits/messages/posts etc into a higher number, but averaged out over the three is a good idea. User:SeriousHex

I think most of these changes make sense. I do not think chat moderator should be required to complete any sort of training procedure though. They should be made known as supplementary help, but not requirements. I donn't know why content moderators and discussions moderators are mutually exclusive, so getting rid of that stipulation makes perfect sense to me. For content moderators, I do not understand why the tenure as patroller and time spent on the wiki are decreased; I think they are fine the way they are currently. Everything else about content mod requests makes sense however. I agree with everything included in both administrator and bureaucrat request policies except for one thing. Chat messages and, to a lesser extent, discussion posts are far easier to make en masse than edits unless those users are making widespread, routine edits across a huge number of pages. As such, I think more chat messages and discussion posts should be needed compared to edits. Sigmund Fraud 22:42, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Current training program for chat moderators is proving very effective especially with the new bot command setup. Think of it as teaching someone how to drive a car before handing them the keys, everyone will feel more confident, not to mention more prepared. -kdarrow ^{take her for a spin!} 06:48, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

When you say potential chat moderators should complete Vault Academy training, does that mean the general editing program, or the chat moderation/community program? The answer might be obvious but I still think it could use some clarification.

I completely agree that discussions moderators should be able to run for content moderator and vice versa, you can currently be a dmod and chat mod at the same time, as well as content mod and chat mod, so why not content mod and dmod?

Requiring an endorsment to run for content mod and administrator sounds like a good idea. However, we do not always have a large amount of active bureaucrats and admins, so securing an endorsement for the admin position might become a problem in the future. I'd like to suggest that if there are two(?) or less active admins/crats, an eligible user should be able to run for administrator without an endorsement.

Finally, I am in favor of a combined requirement of total edits, discussions posts and Discord messages for admins and bureaucrats, but I think there should also be a minimum in each category, for example 250 /d posts, 250 Discord messages and 500 edits for admin and 500 /d posts, 500 Discord messages and 1000 edits for bureaucrat. That way we can ensure that a user has the skills and knowledge needed in all facets of the wiki which they will get moderative tools for. The Appalachian 09:18, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

We might want to specify what "continuous active engagement" means, when is a user considered to be actively engaged on Discord or /d - 1 daily post, 10 daily posts, 100 daily posts? Though in general, I am pretty much in favor of the supposed requirement changes.
–Findabair^{The benefit of the doubt is often doubtful.} 17:58, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I like the direction most of the changes take.

I wager the reason content and Discussion mods were exclusive, instead opting for the user to run for admin, is that the overlap between the two positions would cover most everything about the wiki, save for chat. Even if not the intent at the time of writing, that is how it has functionally been taken into practice. It would also leave the dual mod in the uncomfortable and odd position where they could rightfully ban a user or spam bot for rule violating content posted on Discussions, but the exact same dual mod could not issue a ban to curb the activities of a user who lets loose the exact same rule violating content on articles or talk pages. Content moderators do not have ban authority, so even though the dual moderator would be fully capable of issuing a ban in terms of what the Fandom framework allows, since the way /d mods issue bans is exactly the same as the way admin issue bans, but the user would not be able to use their ability ban because content mods cannot issue bans.

As an alternative, I propose we dig up the hybrid roles which have not been used in some time. I thoroughly disagree with the idea that we would trust a user to be both a content mod and Discussions mod, and that we trust the user to issue site bans based on moderation done on the /d platform... but for some reason would not trust the very same user to be able to issue bans on site. Personally, I would say we just need to urge the user to be an admin, but if the user (or users, if this is a change suggested in reference to a specific requests) is determined not to run for administrator, a hybrid role would offer the best of both worlds. It would be more efficient, so that the user does not have to seek out an admin, and just as importantly, it prevents the dual mod from being placed in a position where they feel like they have to defend their actions. The authority to ban would be a part of the hybrid role from the beginning, so the trust we give them as a Discussions mod is reflected in editing, and since the user is a content mod, we know they are capable editors.

I agree with Aish that there should be some sort of metric beyond a single, shared number of edits and posts. I do not want to sound inconsistent; I know I have been against quotas as a metric for engagement, but in my mind, rights requirements are not about measuring how long a user has been active or how busy they have been, and it is instead a way to measure who the user is and whether or not they should be trusted with more and more authority. It functions as a barrier to entry which is only overcome with time invested, and during that time, exposure to other users, difficult scenarios (as difficult as wiki-ing can be, anyway), and interactions to be measured by the staff member who might offer an endorsement. It should be at least a little bit of a hurdle, because anyone can put on a good face and be a productive member of society for a span of only a few months. Before we start handing out keys to the castle, we need to know the person, and even with the higher requirement of time spent as moderator rather than patroller, I firmly believe the 5000 cumulative interactions would be too easy for someone to slip through the cracks after requiring less than a year of activity. Without trying to cast aspersions, everyone knows Discussions is my baby, but the 2000 count editing limit has been a barrier to entry which has dissuaded a considerable number of trolls. 2000 might not be a tremendous amount for power users that know how to edit and, just as importantly, how to edit with others, but those edits might as well be considered moving a mountain for the would-be shithead. It requires actual knowhow, because unlike /d or Discord, it is significantly hard boost your numbers, and because of the way folks interpret different "right" ways to approach layout or content, it is likely to place users in at least one or two contentious situations. All of this not only gives the existing staff opportunity to evaluate the user, but effectively, it is much less likely that the effort is worth the joke and more likely the user will slip up along the way.

The weight of the second server wipe or wave of leaks coming as a result of increased accessibility, meant to be more accommodating, and insteadt too naive, as it becomes far easier to exploit, is something which should not be brushed aside. We have had troubled users. We have had them as editors, as /d users, and in chat. While we can do our best to steer the overall wiki culture into a place less welcoming, we cannot change the fact that users such as these exist and will continue to exist. Right now, if I were to ask each user who was the user who disrupted the community most in the last 5 years, I would wager we could manage at least a dozen different names, each with a resume of dickery which highlights the lengths to which someone motivated by anything from pettiness, to lolz, to genuine abhorrent beliefs, will go to cause trouble. Does not help that the Fallout series seems to attract them like moths to the flame.

I would not want there to be fewer than 1000 edits, regardless of the other numbers. Maybe not fewer than 1500 edits. If the user is already a chat mod or a discussions mod, prior to their admin petition, they should already have thousands of posts under their belt and may already been nearing or exceeding 5000 accumulative posts when they are eligible to petition for admin based on time having passed. Chat mods already have a minimum count of 5000 posts specific to discord just to qualify for that role, so as written currently, a chat mod would have only needed to have weighted 2 months before being eligible for an admin rights request. It is not likely a chat mod has fewer than 4 months prior to that successful petition, giving them 6 months total at the conclusion of the two month waiting period. Discussions is similar, requiring a minimum of 2500 posts to qualify for that moderator position, which is not likely to be achieved in fewer than 4 months, even with lower effort posts, bordering on spam. I am all for extending the amount of time a user must be continuously active from 3 to 6, but I would not be opposed to raising it higher, since a total amount of time, which is measured as a different waiting period then the time since last successful petition, makes this period so short it is redundant. I would further raise either how long the user must have been active overall, or how long the user must wait after their successful moderator petition by at least 3 months so the 6 month period of activity applies to time spent as a moderator and is not eaten in its entirety by time prior to being a moderator. Between admin and crat, the first column activity looks like admin is half the wait of crats, but the additional column at the end is the column that actually matters. Where a crat petition requires a full years wait, the admin petition only requires two months to have passed, which is a considerable difference that I do not believe was intended to be so dramatic. Especially not when time spent prior to receiving moderation rights will eat most of, if not the whole, first column, leaving only 2 months at the tail end of the moderator petition.

There are other listed requirements, but they are much more nebulous. They are also considerably easier to exploit by an unfit admin, looking to stack the deck with willing participants. I have seen "assume good faith" used like a cudgel to beat the naive over the head with or give the indifferent an excuse to stay uninvolved, so while these are wonderful sentiments for what we should want to see in an admin, they are not requirements which would help weed out what we do not want to see in an admin. "I believe they are" or "you only say that because you do not like them" are about as much of a defense as is needed for a secured petition in a situation such as this, since these are subjective qualities.

I am fully on board with requiring familiarity with Discussions and/or Discord a formal requirement and not just something I include as comments on the petitions themselves. The admin role comes with the ability to moderate here, and the expectation should be that anyone given a tool knows how and when to use it. If nothing else, the user should know most of the regulars. It should not be the situation we had for years, where the golden "badge" that shows up for admin was so foreign to our forum goers that it was confused with Fandom employees and that admin were complete and total strangers, often only stepping in when a ban was needed but not given by local staff...or was a banning of local staff. No one should have to be typing out essays every day, if their interests align more closely with Discord's chat or editing, but the consensus of an entire platform should not be confusion or contention. Having admin required to at least stick their head in the door of the social platforms which they are given the tools to manage, is a huge step forward. I also believe it demonstrates a willingness to cooperate with others in a role which extends beyond the moderator positions, which only focus on a single part of the wiki. The Dyre Wolf (talk) 13:09, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I have reviewed the feedback, see second draft above. -kdarrow ^{take her for a spin!} 21:45, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Quick question about the endorsements - are those supposed to be mandatory?

If yes, I do not think that to be a good idea, folks should not require a member of staff vouching for them in order to be able to run for rights.

It might also discourage people, who do not want to go around and ask for staff support on their vote.

–Findabair^{The benefit of the doubt is often doubtful.} 10:29, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Just because I've seen that sort of situation happen, I would suggest either removing the requirements for 'crat, or creating a "break glass in case of emergency" option that allows someone to run or be appointed if no-one (or no-one willing or acceptable) qualifies. It is not impossible that in a long period between games (or heaven forbid the IP goes completely stale for a while) that the userbase can dwindle to the point where qualifiying is impossible. Agent c (talk) 23:18, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I have reviewed the feedback, see third draft above. It adds a caveat about lacking an active bureaucrat. -kdarrow ^{take her for a spin!} 06:16, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Vote

Not hearing any further feedback, this will move to a vote. -kdarrow ^{take her for a spin!} 08:35, 10 February 2022 (UTC)