Wiki and Forum Policy - General Discussion

Except that "Know that a festivity is likely to affect wiki activity" isn't their lesson in like 99.9999% of cases, and chances are it would be super situational if it was actually important for wiki conduct otherwise... Still a good thing to know, just not one I'm sure if applicable here. Still, nice work there.

It's more about patience and conduct than a concrete lesson. If you can recognize that the mods have lives and families and holidays, and that maybe this time of year TVT bans aren't the most important thing to worry about, it's a symbol of maturity.

Three big reasons people get a ban are either for being impatient/impulsive and not allowing proper time for others to give their say, not understanding the context in which they’re conducting their actions, or for being inconsiderate of other members of the wiki community.

Forcing banned people to look at the context of the day, patiently wait around and then show some respect for the moderators as people can thus be pretty key.

Plus, a chunk of banned people get banned in part for failing to have a healthy balance between their non-TV Tropes life and their TV Tropes life. So seeing that the moderators have such a balance can be helpful for them.

Edited by Silasw on Dec 25th 2021 at 8:59:34 PM

Most banned people really want to continue editing ASAP, even if they feel like raising the demands, PM other people with edits or making a new account, not understanding that they'll get booted immediately. Don't think they need to be reminded to be patient, as it's a quick way to discover people who only think of themselves. And I'm realizing now this is another EB popcorn so I'll stop rambling.

Yeah, you people do have a point...

Whether to release a ban is usually discussed among the team, so that would require a portion of the team to be online at the same time.

I say "usually" because suspensions that involve someone running a text-replacement plugin are open-and-shut cases, because the user can be unsuspended once the plugin is disabled or uninstalled.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 25th 2021 at 10:12:53 AM

Chances are you wouldn't need as much discussion if you had a decent procedure list, algorithms, and pre-defined messages. At least, that's what I assume. I do get that writing more original messages can help often, but at this point, I believe there should be a little more automatisation (not nearly as much as big corporations like Youtube use, that'd be stupid, but just a bit).

Edited by Piterpicher on Dec 26th 2021 at 11:28:25 AM

Well, every situation is different. Pre-defined messages work for notifiers, but not when every bannee is a different case with different issues and a different reaction to being suspended. The less impersonal you make these things, the more people in EB are going to get pissed the fuck off at not actually being given attention and care.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 26th 2021 at 5:31:29 AM

that's what the procedure list and algorithm part is about... Having some decent rule of thumb based on edits and account age and a procedure list comparable to a potential offense list (edit war, grammar, unilateral change, etc.) and behavior list (aggressive, passive-aggressive, overly apologising, relaxed, etc.) and only using discussion in case it doesn't work or a scenario has not been anticipated would speed up the process at least a little. It would likely need fleshing out, but still, trying to almost always rely on discussion in face of increasing growth is like Sisyphus trying to push his rock up a mountain.

though I will agree, maybe trying to use templates would irritate people, it's why many of them don't trust communication bots when doing things and often go "LET ME SPEAK TO THE MANAGER".

I'm kind of sure having some sort of procedures and a questioning route chart is already a part of mod training.

I sure hope so. It's pretty weird IMO that we could reach 16 years and 550000+ pages without the higher-ups having some kind of procedure and operations manual like this or this.

Edited by Piterpicher on Dec 26th 2021 at 12:06:29 PM

For all we know the mods do have something like that.

I mean, a "guideline of how to moderate" is pretty common on forums. Definitely was for the forum I was a mod for for a while.

I don't remember if it was confirmed, though.

As far as I know, we don't.

Way back at the beginning, Eddie decided not to adopt Wikipedia's formality, and that included having a structured system for infractions. Suspension decisions and adjudications are handled at the discretion of individual moderators, with consensus for difficult cases. This way, each person is treated as an individual.

Maybe someone official should take a look at this ATT thread. It's been back and forth for a while now and what started as a content dispute is coming fairly close to Godwinning itself.

We're looking at it. I thought all the arguments about the morality of Fallout 4's factions had long since faded into irrelevance, but obviously it doesn't work that way. We still have people arguing over Final Fantasy VII ships.

See, that worked when the wiki was smaller. A lot of decisions Fast Eddie made were good when the wiki was smaller. Making related/all pages in a namespace lists one page? Now there's tens of thousands on one. All those admin fiats? IP and TRS know they're a problem and stick out like a sore thumb in some cases. Due to growth and his short-sightedness, many of them no longer work.

For a different example, look at YouTubers. I've seen many new, less popular ones like and respond to all comments on new videos they upload. But when you have more than twenty comments, it gets tiring, and past the point of fifty or so, you really wouldn't want to do so for every video. But they still provide the same great content and appreciate their viewers, likers, subscribers, and commenters, even if they can't reply to all of them. The individuality quotient is reduced very slightly, but it's a necessity.

I do know I'm the kind of guy who likes soul, but I don't think this will make the site soulless. If you insist on holding on to this individual treatment and informality thing, and don't want a great procedure manual, then I won't push you to change your mind. But I hope you know when the day comes when it becomes unviable, or even impossible. I won't hold it against you if things have to change because it's very understandable, and hope others wouldn't as well.

Edited by Piterpicher on Dec 27th 2021 at 10:54:01 AM

Question: is it okay to report backseat modding and overly hostile responses on ATT here?

Yes, which one?

That reminded me I had a project about mini-modding I haven't touched in a while.

Just in general, as I've noticed there's an uptick on popcorning and people putting in weird judgement calls on thread reportage. There's one I'd like to report, but I was involved in it.

I think that's still OK to report on as long you admit any mistakes you might’ve made in that and try your best to be neutral as possible.

Issue is, the person I'm reporting actively reports to this thread, and I don't want another round of "you're causing drama".

I have a feeling about who are you referring to, but I'd rather have mods talk with you about it.

For the record, no, it's not anyone I've been embroiled in an edit war with.