Forum:Vote: Rights holder activity

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Due to a lack of a current codified process for the removal of additional tools from inactive users or requirements for activity, the following is proposed as a policy for these proceedings moving forward. Based on feedback on Forum:Rights holder activity.

Proposed policy

The following outlines the expectations of staff members and the process of removing access to moderation tools due to inactivity. Updating these rights on Nukapedia and its Discord are dictated by the following policy and activity levels are subject to administrative discretion. Process Similar to the requirements for qualifying for additional tools on Nukapedia, staff members must maintain those activities after tools are granted. Users who are inactive do not necessitate tools to serve the wiki or its chat functionality by the very nature of inactivity. Updating these routinely ensures our internal controls are secure and consistent. Timeframe If a staff member does not edit, contribute to their applicable section of the community such as chat or discussions, or use moderation tools for four months, they will receive a talk page message. At five months, a warning that tools may be removed at six months. In the case of bureaucrat inactivity, the wiki representative will assist in updating rights. 4 months 5 months 6 months Talk page message Notice removal may occur at 6 months Eligible for rights removal Extended leave In the event that a staff member wishes to enter into a protracted absence from the wiki, a message must be relayed to an administrator or bureaucrat to that effect. Those who provide this notice should clearly state an expected date for return to activity. Failing to return to activity by the specified date without further explanation will result in the timeline process above. Bureaucrat activity In addition, in order to maintain rights, bureaucrats are required to meet a regular level of productivity. In any six month timespan, bureaucrats must make at least 200 edits or discussion posts as well as utilize their administrative tools at least once. Bureaucrats may elect to receive administrator rights in lieu of meeting the productivity requirements, thereafter subject to timeframe requirements only. Reappointment Should a user return to the wiki after a period of inactivity and wish to regain their access to tools, they may do so without acquiring or running for prerequisite roles by demonstrating one month of activity in their corresponding section of the wiki and holding a forum vote per normal application process. Does not cover rights removed due to resignation or as a result of conduct policy proceedings.

Poll

Poll finished on 6:07 am November 7, 2021 (UTC). A consensus must be reached by voting before any action is taken. You can vote by placing the following line in the appropriate section of the option you support: # {{yes}} ~~~~ # {{no}} ~~~~ Please do not edit other user's votes.

Yes

1. Definitely yes, I also like the adjusted number of months. It has been long due. –Findabair^{The benefit of the doubt is often doubtful.} 18:23, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
2. Six months is a very reasonable timeframe to consider a staff member inactive, and noticing users after 4 and 5 months gives them more than enough time to return if they wish to do so. The Appalachian 18:28, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
3. These are fairly reasonable requirements for activity, and cover me in my limited capacities compared to my historical activity level. ---bleep196- (talk) 18:36, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
4. This is totaly acceptable for staff who havnt been here for months or years. JustDoggo2 I swear to god if I don't get my damn mugs! IM GOING TO EXPLODE 18:45, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
5. This is actually more generous than I probably would have been, personally, but even so I'm completely for it. --DirtyBlue929 (talk) 19:26, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
6. I would prefer a more strict policy, but this is a step in the right direction Scribe-Howard (waster_93) (talk) 20:48, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
7. Not bad, I like the leniency, doesn't feel like a knee-jerk reaction as some other proposals like this have been in the past. I'd argue the one-month activity for return could be amended with "unless bureaucrat is convinced of their work within a shorter timespan of returning," since there could be situations where a user makes it known that they'll be inactive for a while. In general I'd argue there should be a difference between users who abandon their posts without warning and those who tell a staff explicitly that they will be quite busy doing something in the real world for a bit. Still, this is fine. On an unrelated note what's with the text being really small inside the box of the post? |\| () |\/| /\ |) | Talk | Discord | NMC 21:05, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
8. Slipmcripfist (talk) 21:32, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
9. I honestly think 6 months is too long, but I do think this would be a positive change. Katy Webb A better future, underground! 21:50, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
10. This is a fair and perfectly reasonable expectation. If you're not active enough to utilise your role to better the community, there should be no reason as to why you should keep them. TechnoCrusader (talk) 23:08, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
11. OctumFO4 (talk) 02:56, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
12. HrhFlameprincess If you are no longer contributing to the wiki then there is no reason to still have full admin rights. No different to any other workplace regardless of if it is a volunteer role or not.
13. I would have been fine with shorter periods of inactivity, like the previously suggested the two month period, but I am in favor of the policy overall. If needed, we can always revisit the issue in the future and make necessary changes. The Dyre Wolf (talk) 07:48, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
14. Generally I agree with this. I think OverseerX brings up a good point about inactive roles existing without tools already. Perhaps these could be used more extensively, both on the wiki and on Discord. - Sigmund Fraud ^{Talk Contributions} 15:47, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

No

1. Too many unanswered questions in this verbiage. 1. What about currently inactive users? 2. It says that if you want to regain your rights you have to be active for 1 month and you don't have to acquire or run for it but then it says you have to pass a forum vote. Just confusing to me. 3. There are a couple other holes that I am just too tired to remember tbh but I honestly think we have focused too much on inactivity as if it's a real issue within the wiki. And I just personally think this is going to change nothing for the better. I also just disagree with the timeline. Would want a more conservative timeline if at all. It's sad to see so many people quickly vote yes on this as it just seems to need a little more work. I personally think this guideline without some tweaks is risky to pass. I'm all for moderator discretion, a big advocate actually, but am inclined to think this currently allows for too much in a couple areas. Just my two cents. Jon the Don -JBour53 (Talk to my consigliere) 05:56, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
2. I believe there's a reason why inactive moderator roles exist. The reasoning "Updating these routinely ensures our internal controls are secure and consistent" is invalidated because inactive moderator roles wiki-side currently remove use rights tools that prevents them from misusing them. I do believe that an inactive user should have a justification for their absence, but the inactive moderators roles were created for that purpose. I am not sure why this was not implemented on discord-side, but it should have been when we moved over to discord a few years back, similar to what has been done on the wiki before. 07:36, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
3. I cannot in good conscience vote Yes to a policy that is already being put into practise before it is elected in, the vote comes off as an attempt at an ad-hoc vindication. Further, The edit requirements for a Crat are oddly small, Some people (some of them not even crats) are able to make 200 edits in a day, and that is the proposed bare minimum expected over half a year, why even have a minimum requirement at that point if it's going to be so low? In addition, I question the decision to notify people via talk pages of this. Not because I think they don't need to be notified, but because Staff as it stands are incredibly slow and lax with posting onto talk pages with the current few instances it's required. Life makes people busy I understand, but if Staff are poorly capable of keeping up with the comparatively small Talk Page workload that they have now, it seems ridiculous that they are proposing more. What happens if Life happens and a member of staff is not alerted at those times by merit of "Busyness"? I half expect that staff could easily be "Busy" for the whole 6 Months, and then just strip without warning on account of "Well that's the time limit" ignoring their own requirements of forewarning people a number of months beforehand. And also, on perhaps a smaller but still poignant level, I see no reason for action to be taken. The wiki has some very real problems, of which staff know of, and inactive rights holders are not one of them. Removing rights from the inactive will not improve the wiki in any capacity, but it makes it very easy for people to be practically-ousted from Staff without the required due process of a No Confidence Vote. Lastly the writing is, as Jbour pointed out, very unclear as to how an inactive staff member would become a full staff member again; One line indicates that they need only be as active as their role's minimum activity requirement, however another indicates they would need to go over the whole election process again. I'm not opposed to the concept so long as the above issues are fixed; like that the writing be a lot clearer and there be a lot of safeguards, but as it exists in the writing above, it's a hard "No" from me. LovinglyGaslight (talk) 08:30, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Neutral

1. Don't really think about such things, pretty sure this didn't need to go all the way into a vote (as it doesn't affect the majority of editors) and could have been hashed out in a discussion (IMO). Branebriar1930 (talk) 20:23, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
2. Given all the trouble this has caused recently, I'm staying on the sideline of this vote. Aiden4017 (talk) 08:27, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Comments

One point I wanted to see elaborated on here, since I believe this was discussed a little more thoroughly in either Discord or a past forum, is what "admin discretion" means in the policy outlined above.

One of the concerns expressed every time this topic comes around, is that someone will do the old single contribution every 120 days to avoid the first talk page message, citing that as being active; this is not the case. Similarly with the later stages, a single contribution after the notice does not reset the original 120 day timer nor does it prevent the rights removal notice and actual removal phases. A standard of reasonableness based on the sum of user activity, is the alternative to rigid quotas which were viewed unfavorably. This is would be especially true in an instance where a user who is of very low to borderline nonexistent activity, and only comes around to any substantial degree in defense of themselves as being active. If you say or do nothing of value for months on end, then you throw a fit because you are threatened with being removed via inactivity, you are not suddenly active. If you had the time to, on command, throw a fit when faced with the potential for rights removal, then you had the ability to display some degree of activity as a staff member during the duration of inactivity leading up to the talk page message and notice. The user will have to show activity appropriate for their rights level beyond their own defense and maintain that for at least a month, similarly to the requirements for users returning and wanting to petition for rights being returned. This way users do not simply show up a short time, hoping to reset the 120 day timer, before returning to inactivity.

This is something that needs to be made clear alongside the vote. That way in 5 to 10 years, some new batch of editors and staff members are not left wondering what we all meant and how the policy should be used. Or more likely, when users are removed but contest their own status with shit all to show for it but their own outrage. The Dyre Wolf (talk) 07:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Very good points, Dyre, I agree with you. I appreciate especially your mindfulness concerning future editors. These users will inherit the tools we construct today, and I mirror your dedication to both ensuring they are easy to navigate as well as maintain desired efficacy.

Even policies with solid foundations should be revisited and improved and this case is no different. I strongly support continuing our work on it, next focusing on the "standard of reasonableness based on the sum of user activity" you described. In addition, soon we will have the advantage of a sharp, sudden clarity that only policy rollout experiences can bring, which will only serve to enhance our efforts. -kdarrow ^{take her for a spin!} 08:01, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

To address one of the issues (#2) brought forward by Jbour in his vote:
It is never stated that 1 month of activity is all it takes to get the rights back, it only states that running for prequisite roles is not necessary. E.g., if you are an admin, go inactive, want to get your rights back, you would not have to go through the requirements of whichever rights you held before becoming an admin, such as chatmod, contentmod, or discussionsmod. At least that is how I understand that line.
Likwise, I would not make sense to have someone coming back, put a month worth of effort into editing, and then be autoconfirmed. I think that the proposed community vote on re-instating an inactive staff member is a super important control mechanism. –Findabair^{The benefit of the doubt is often doubtful.} 08:39, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that's the idea. If rights were removed for inactivity and the user returns, there would be one month period of activity required to showcase their return to the community. At the end of that month, they would be eligible to petition for same level of rights as had been removed, without needing to petition for entry level positions. Effectively, the user would not have to start back a square one as a patroller. This is a notable difference because this is not the case with users whose have had no confidence run against them. But it is only eligibility, so the user would need to be able to demonstrate to the community the same sort of moxie that any user petitioning for rights would have to display as part of a compelling reason for rights to be given to them. The Dyre Wolf (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Results

The forum proposal passes with majority and quorum, policy added here. --kdarrow ^{take her for a spin!} 09:42, 7 November 2021 (UTC)