Forum:Moderators Group

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This topic is to discuss the proposal to create a new user group for certain users to gain limited powers to help keep the wiki a friendly place: Moderators.

Summary

Per the discussions in this forum topic, it would not be possible for the "protect" right to be split to allow protection but disallow unprotection. In that topic, it was mentioned the possibility of having a user group with limited powers to moderate the wiki and the group would likely be called Moderators. Please leave a signature under the heading of either Support or Oppose depending on what you think as well as your opinion under Discussion. Thanks! :)

Support

1. --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 19:40, July 7, 2013 (UTC)
2. —Shakhmoot _(Talk) 19:47, July 7, 2013 (UTC)
3. -- The Talk Goblin 19:54, July 7, 2013 (UTC)
4. Conditioned support --ROOT 根 (talk) 20:05, July 7, 2013 (UTC)
5. --Elveonora (talk) 20:22, July 7, 2013 (UTC)
6. --Charmanking2198 (talk) 21:17, July 7, 2013 (UTC)
7. Dan.Faulkner (talk) 23:46, July 7, 2013 (UTC)
8. --TricksterKing (talk) 00:35, July 8, 2013 (UTC)
9. --Taynio (talk) 00:55, July 8, 2013 (UTC)
10. --Joshbl56 14:19, July 9, 2013 (UTC)
11. Conditioned support. --Cerez365^™(talk) 14:32, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

I support the idea, but I have two questions. The first one, after this group will be created. Who will be responsible for adding moderators who are supposed to have a high-level of trustworthiness and know his rules very well? The sysop? The second one, what are those rules that could distinguish between the moderators and rollback rights? —Shakhmoot _(Talk) 19:59, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

For your first point, most likely sysop's would make the promotion after discussion between themselves in private areas (if such areas exist :P)

For the second point, that would have to be discussed between the sysop's as well since they'd be the ones enforcing those rules. --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 20:01, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

Perfect, but as known. We are here in an encyclopedia not a forum. So those rules must have been put properly by sysops, we need them here to share their ideas about this point in exact. —Shakhmoot _(Talk) 20:08, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

I would point out if this was implemented, I think the amount of time this group should be able to protect a page would have to be a short period in the measurement of a few days. — SimAnt 20:26, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it should be good that only sysops have the power to protect the articles permanently unlike the moderators. —Shakhmoot _(Talk) 20:32, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Simant, but I'm not sure the MediaWiki software would allow that. Wikia would probably need to custom code the system so that it would work the way we would want it, I think. --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 20:35, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

I'm really not sure about this. I'm all for avoiding edit wars, but giving certain users the power to lock down pages to stop editing sounds kinda heavy handed. I'm more an advocate of using talk pages to settle these sorts of issues, and using a method like this, it would leave things unresolved for one party until an admin addressed the situation, if it was even brought to their attention. I don't know about the rest of you, but I lose threads in the recent activity page all the time. It just seems to me this would be handing set people the right to basically tell others to F-off with no guarantee of resolving the problem, just leaving someone going away bitter and someone else, regardless of being right or not going away thinking they've won the day. --Hawkeye2701 (talk) 21:27, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

Moderators would not be able to lock down pages forever. They would just lock down the page temporarily until an admin came online to deal with it fully. If you look through the recent changes today, there was an hour of edit warring that couldn't be dealt with because no user was online who could do something about it. In that particular instance, the user was told many times to stop putting it in and ignored everyone because he felt his opinion superceded everyone else's and in that case, the various users who were reverting the ignorant user's edits were right. In most cases, the protection is a warning to stop revert warring and to use the talkpage (even more so with the introduction of the three revert rule) since there are many people who are blissfully ignorant to the use of talkpages to deal with situations. As in today's case, the problem did get resolved by the blocking of the ignorant user but after least two hours after it happened. That could've been solved 2 hours earlier if there were moderators on the site that could've just protected the page(s) in question or dropped a temporary 24 hour block until an admin came along to deal a harsher judgement if necessary. --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 21:32, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I see the advantages of the idea, but I just think the problems outweigh them. I mean the most obvious is that there will be a moderator available. If the whole idea is to have the mods there in the absence of the admins, what's to stop this sort of thing happening if a member of neither group is on hand? That means finding people trustworthy enough not to abuse this position who can be online at times when the admins aren't and aren't involved in the situation to begin with so that they remain objective. I'm aware this isn't something that is required to be absolute, the mod idea is basically a fail safe against revert wars, but if we're going to go through the trouble, making sure it's done properly is the big concern, isn't it? --Hawkeye2701 (talk) 21:55, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

It's very unlikely that there will be no members from either group, because the chances are that the mods that get chosen will cover for the dead period in the morning (from about 8am to 1pm BST) and it's obvious that if the mod idea goes through, it'll be done properly. This thread is basically to get everyone's opinions and collate ideas, so that when we approach Wikia to make the custom group, we can just link them straight to this thread to see our collated opinions and outcomes :)

Just to throw this out there, I can think of about 2-3 people already who would be deserving of a position of Moderator ;) --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 22:00, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

The above list is the list of moderators? Dan.Faulkner (talk) 23:13, July 7, 2013 (UTC)

I'm all in favour, agreeing with the limitations and other foundations discussed, and have been hoping something like this would occur; though I am surprised it hadn't happened sooner. That being said, I, personally, would only make one or two people a mod in the beginning, until the need arises where we need more. With the right selection of people as moderators, I do not foresee any abuse of power or any other potential negative aspects. It really comes down to the selection and making sure those people can competently perform their job in an unbiased manner. Though I do not believe anyone is lacking that information already. And as for "dead periods", that's easily fixed by picking people of different time zones. It's definitely a necessary step in refining the wiki, having moderators.--Taynio (talk) 01:05, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

Shouldn't something like this be decided by administrators though? I'm not talking bureaucrats here I'm talking top brass administrators with this being a whole new rank and all.--TheUltimate3 ^(talk) 01:47, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

I thought that was the intention already?--Taynio (talk) 01:55, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

@TU3: This thread is really to get the opinions from the community at large. If the majority of people in this thread are supporting this proposal, then it would likely be up to the admins to decide the users who'll be mods and the rules they have to follow and the powers mods should get. Also it's required for a community consensus before we can go to Wikia asking for a new user group, per the page Snapper2 linked to on the previous topic (here's a direct link to said page: Click me!). --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 08:53, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

What happens if a "moderator" accidentally protects the wrong version?--Karunyan (talk) 03:26, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

Always revert to the version before the edit war started and then protect. ~ UltimateSupreme 05:43, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't questioning policy, just wondering what would happen if someone managed to sneak in an edit just before the protect button was hit...--Karunyan (talk) 13:32, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

In a case like that, the person who put the protection on would just revert the change made (this would probably need a new protection level of Moderators and Sysops Only, thinking about it) --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 13:34, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

I'm all for it, however, like I said I don't think it needs to be a widespread group. Coupled with the fact that we have no IP users any more (should we be recruiting users O.o) which means even less spam and stuff like that, I think it's one of two things, give a separate flag to a few people (I've moved from 5 to 3 possibly just 2 on this one) and give them the ability to protect pages, unprotect would also be useful in the case where someone actually spams/vandalises the page before it's protected and a poor edition gets protected. Or as someone mentioned in the other forum, give someone else the sysop flag. Essentially, the protection would come into play after the reverts are done and the situation is getting out of hand. Then sysops fly in, click magic button, and issue is resolved.--Cerez365^™(talk) 14:32, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

Agree that there doesn't need to be tons of people in the group, it only needs to be small to cover the times in which there are no sysops, but I don't think a new sysop is really necessary as there are quite a lot of those and it's dangerous to have too many sysops imo. Mods could get blocking powers, assuming that they would only get to block up to a very short time but again that'd have to be discussed fully so there's no back-and-forth of emails with Wikia support getting the right perms set. --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 14:37, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you, that this is a pretty good idea. What I don't understand is why an extra sysop would be a bad thing? Other than the ability to block problem users, which, to my knowledge, hasn't been abused on this site in my time, nor when I just observed as an impartial reader prior to becoming an editor here, there is no difference between what you are suggesting and a sysop. Any power given has the potential to be abused. But we're all adults here (I think), or at the very least, mature teenagers (nobody laugh at the "mature" part >.>), so I think we can trust someone else with a sysop flag if it is deemed necessary. There are a couple that come to mind that are deserving of such a flag and could help with the subject of this topic. My point is, why create an entire new group, when a sysop flag could just as easily fix the problem? Thoughts? ~ Ten Tailed Fox 19:01, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

There are quite a lot of sysops as it is right now and I think that just having a few users with some powers, but not full control of the wiki (aka the Admin Dashboard) is a better trade off. That way, you can give out more powers to users who think they are deserving of them such as protection/unprotection etc, while not compromising the wiki by giving full on access to the Dashboard, because the Dashboard has no options for controlling what each sysop has access to, so someone could be given sysop permissions and have unnecessary control over the wiki. Hence, having a group in which you can safely give other users certain sysop based powers like protection/unprotection, blocking/unblocking etc without risking the wiki seems better. Plus, it just looks weird when you've got tons of sysops who are getting the flag just to have the ability to protect articles and nothing else :P --Speysider ^{Talk Page | My Image Uploads | Tabber Code | Channel} 19:14, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

A valid point. ~ Ten Tailed Fox 21:21, July 9, 2013 (UTC)