> As far as I understand it, there's not a lot of transparency when it comes to choosing new moderators - it's all handled "behind the scenes" and the moderators themselves decide who becomes a new moderator.
This is a standard practise across the internet when it comes to moderator selection so that it doesn't become a popularity contest,in most cases new mods are chosen based off feedback the mods give to the admins
have a listen and have a link to my discord server"This is a standard practise across the internet when it comes to moderator selection so that it doesn't become a popularity contest,in most cases new mods are chosen based off feedback the mods give to the admins"
I don't know about "across the internet" but on Wikipedia (which is the closest analogue to TV Tropes) it's a public process, see here
for details.
I saw what happened when r/pokemon decided to let users make the decision of who to put in charge of moderation. Long story short, those who kept low quality posts out were replaced with those who only wanted low quality posts.
Also, we do not have nearly enough passionate users to get 25 mods, let alone 100. The conversation has come up in the past, but even many of the most hardworking tropers openly don't want that type of responsibility. That's why the idea of the engineer position keeps coming up, so that some users can help out by doing small mod work like editing locked pages so that full mods can handle the bigger things like suspensions.
My musician pageYeah I was going to say well plenty of people would be for individual duties. Very few want the whole thing which as it's so much work.
Which is why the engineer thing seems like a good idea for the future.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."^^^"So you think we need to start copying wikipedia(sic) now?"
Please stop trying to put words in my mouth. I'm saying that your assertion is not backed up 100% - our nearest contemporary certainly has a public and transparent method of choosing admins.
Edited by Exxolon on Nov 24th 2021 at 2:59:23 PM
Should we start copying Wikipedia now? No... But look, some ideas can be copied once or twice if they work for someone else. It can't always be applied, but something's not bad just because someone does that.
Also, remember r/pokemon is a forum. While it does have upvotes and downvotes, it's ultimately subjective what counts as a low/high quality post. If anything, the vote quota is there to indicate what people want as well. The wiki generally does not advocate for giving content just because people like/want it, for better or worse. We have a set of quality standards people are expected to follow.
I did always vouch for the engineer position... I'd ask for the cut list, locked pages, Today's Featured Trope and maybe custom titles.
Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)Engineer duty sounds like a good idea. At the very least, there could be a contingent with the authority to approve video submissions.
Maybe the engineer system could also be paired with a hierarchy of page locks, for example:
- Open: Can be edited by all tropers.
- Restricted: Can be edited by engineers and higher.
- Locked: Can only be edited by mods and admins.
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Yeah, that was kind of my point. Well, that, combined with the fact that we have a lot of users who see this whole site as a forum. Why else would we have such a problem with Conversations In The Main Page?
I trust everyone I regularly interact with in the forums to vote responisbly but there are so many editors that I only see going in to wonk, that I have no faith in what would happen if they had a say.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Nov 24th 2021 at 10:05:30 AM
My musician page"we're waiting on the admins to make a decison."
Self-Demonstrating issue is Self-Demonstrating
Edited by Exxolon on Nov 24th 2021 at 3:13:55 PM
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You know the problems with the admins are a separate category from those with the mods, right?
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Nov 24th 2021 at 10:14:38 AM
My musician page"As it happens to be, we are currently extending some invitations for new moderators - we have found some candidates that we'll be messaging."
Huh. How incredibly ironic. I bring up that there are too few moderators and a lack of transparency about how new moderators are added (amongst other issues). Turns out there are new moderators under consideration at least partially addressing one of the issues but due to the "lack of transparency about how new moderators are added" I had no way to know this. If this gets any more ironic I'll turn into Alanis Morissette.
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Nah, in the admins' case it's a full-time job, which means they really can't just add more to their numbers. That and they only seem to be interested in the technical side, which is still important, but means that it's unlikely they'll do anything about the community ever.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Nov 24th 2021 at 10:26:02 AM
My musician page
Terminology issues? On most sites that would give them the "Developer" or "Programmer" handle. Our "Moderators" are actually "Admins" in terms of their role on the site, a "Moderator" is usually someone who has limited authority over a certain section of a site. No wonder people sometimes get confused.
At least to my understanding, all the current mods have to baiscally do all mod duties because there's so few of them. If we had a ton more, would there be a reason they couldn't specialize in areas that interest them (some mainly doing locked pages edits, some keeping an eye on Ask The Tropers reports, some doing crowners and keeping the cutlist clear, etc.)? If that was the case, I think people would be more receptive to being invited to be a mod. I guess there would need to be some kind of roation system for less desirable duties like handling the Edit Banned thread....
Edited by Orbiting on Nov 24th 2021 at 11:59:57 AM
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Keep in mind, when Fast Eddie was the admin he was very involved in community stuff and technical stuff. The titles aren't changing just because he's gone, but the new admins are the people who bought the site from him and rarely post as regular users. Unless they're just posting in disguise the whole time, but you'd never be able to prove that.
I'm one of the people who openly said I'd never want to be a mod, but would love an engineer role. I've done moderation duties on another wiki, one that was much smaller than this one, and it stressed the hell out of me. So did having managerial duties at work. I'm just not great as an authority figure; I do my best but I crumble under pressure. I'm sure a lot of other people here feel similarly.
Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 24th 2021 at 1:55:10 PM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall

(Note, I have brought this up privately with at least one moderator but I think this now needs a wider debate)
The kernel of this observation is based on my experience earlier this year with editing suspension. All in the appeal process and getting released for editing took took around two weeks, which is an extremely long time for something that should have been resolvable in perhaps 24 hours. I then did some research based on Wikipedia as a baseline.
At the time I looked, Wikipedia (English) had 6,331,197 articles and had 1089 administrators. TV Tropes had 552683 articles (around 11.5% of the size of Wikipedia) and had (and still has) just 9 mods. We're trying to run a site that's about 11.5% the size of Wikipedia with 0.83% of the mod/admin numbers - if we had proportionally the same number of mods as they have admins we'd be running at 125 or so.
While there are differences in culture between the two websites and I don't have access to other statistics such as number of active users, number of daily edits etc. to fine tune the comparison, we're severely understrength by any metric.
This has several undesirable side effects:
So. We need to address this. My initial suggestions are:
I'm throwing open the floor here. Intelligent observations, challenges and counter arguments are welcome. Attempts to shut down the proposal or insults are not.