Forum:Update to Admin Replacement Process 2023

Hello everyone, With User:Kaido King of the Beasts stepping down from the role of Admin a few months ago, User:Awaikage have been talking a bit about possibly replacing Kaido. Currently, the rules are for an election to be held, and the rules for the election process haven't changed (to my knowledge) since 2014, almost 9 years ago. A lot has changed in this community since then, so we thought it would be important to have a discussion about how or if the community would like to change that process.

For those unfamiliar with the process, please feel free to check out Forum:New Administrator 2019 for the nomination rules & requirements, and Forum:New Administrator 2019/Voting for the voting rules & requirements. To paraphrase in order to become an admin you have to have had an account on this wiki for over 1 year & reached 1000 edits in non-social namespaces (so article content, forums, talk pages, etc. not blogs, userpages, etc). In order to vote for an admin, you must have to have had an account for on this wiki for over 3 months and reached 300 edits in non-social namespaces, and in addition be "active" which means having 10 edits in the past 30 days before the voting opened. Also don't cheat, blah blah blah...

Since these rules were written back in 2014, I'd like to provide some context for those who were not here then. Back then the wiki was a much younger place. Most users with accounts were primarily here to edit the wiki itself, and discuss the series secondarily. A small portion were here just for blogs. We were still using the Wikia chat platform. The wiki's host company was still called Wikia, "Fandom" as we know it didn't really exist. Discussion Threads, Content Moderators, and our Discord channel didn't even exist yet. Most of our active editors/community members were students at the time. At the time, the wiki had only 3 major user rights groups; Admins, Chat Mods, and Rollbacks. Admins and Chat Mods were both elected, only rollback rights were given at the Admins' discretion. There was a fair amount of turnover in those roles at the time as well.

Since then a lot of the things I've mentioned have changed. Most important I think is to note our wiki has found stable leadership, and we've been trusted to appoint users to all the other roles with no major issues. The creation of the Content Mod role also has changed the landscape quite a bit, before that only admins could delete pages/images, protect pages, etc. The majority of the work Admins had to do in 2014 can now be done by the Content Mod role. Now the only actions only Admins can do is to can block/ban users, change user rights, and edit MediaWiki pages.

Most of the rules around becoming and voting for admins are focused on edits to wiki pages, not discussion threads, etc. I've spent most of my time since becoming more active focused on the Discussions side of the wiki, and I've frequently had to use my admin rights to ban people there. The current rules do not even mention Discussions at all, since they didn't exist then. I feel that someone with admin rights that is engaged with that side of the community is a must-have, and we should open ourselves up to the idea of being able to promote someone from that side to Admin without the main namespace article edit requirement.

So I'd like to ask the community a couple questions:
 * 1) Do you think that The One Piece Wiki should still elect admins with a community vote?
 * 2) If we are to elect admins, what should we change about the process?
 * 3) How should we take Discussions into account when selecting admins?

Thanks for reading post, I know I always tend to write them quite long! 04:34, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
Hi, know I haven't been around a lot, still working on my great catchup but the @everyone from discord prompting me to notice is why I'm responding, and I think that's telling.

My take is that, yeah, the parameters should be largely set around how the wiki functions presently, not how it functioned in the before times, during the long-long ago. And call me whatever names you want, but a general election for it seems hazardous at best, and just a popularity/ideas contest at the worst. If the current field of leadership IS stable, then replacement of lost leadership should be handled BY that leadership, possibly with consideration given to the active community at-large, in case someone IS just so unpopular that it might be detrimental to the person's ability to moderate. Both on wiki and on discord should probably be accounted for, but if the team who is admining are mostly dealing with each other, then their field selection should probably be based somewhat with that in mind.

Discussion posts (if trackable) should probably just be factored in the same as any other type of edit, particularly talk edits, though it's easier to reply to them, it seems like people tend to give thought-out replies and answers on this wiki ftmp. Maddwaffles (talk) 04:51, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi, it's me, the admin being replaced

Even though the current system has been in place for nearly a decade now I think it's pretty solid and wouldn't change much if anything about it. I'm in favor of retaining community nominations and voting. Perhaps the activity requirement for voters can be scrapped, I seem to recall it was added because candidates were going way too far to recruit voters in that one election. I think we've moved past that. Chances are anyone who votes now will be an active editor that cares about who is elected admin.

I agree that electing a new admin who's active on both the main namespace and Discussions would be ideal, but the mainspace should be at least 90% the focus in an admin election. I think we would be in good shape so long as the new admin is active enough to ban rule breakers while a solid team of DisMods handles the rest. But if we were to aim for new requirements that would get someone who has their toes in both spheres, I would suggest: minimum 300 mainspace edits (like the normal poll voting requirement), keep the 1-year-old account rule, and must have been a Discussions Mod in good standing for at least 6 months (I'm flexible on the time requirement).

Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 05:59, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I largely agree with Kaido on this. The previous systems should still work, and the activity rules for voting can be toned down. While Discussions is part of the community, from what I recall, most of Kaido's admin responsibilities were mainspace-focused. Therefore, his replacement should also be a mainspace-focused user.

I don't think being a Discussions Mod (or Thread Mod as we currently call them) should be a requirement for the role. That would leave us with a really small pool to choose from. Expanding to Chat/Discord Mods and Content Mods would give us more options, if prior moderating/staffing experience is preferred. I'd prefer somebody who already has staff rights since they've proven themselves to handle their roles responsibibly, but I'm open to discussing that.

Whoever's elected should be willing to spend time participating in and moderating Discussions, if there really is a major need, but as it stands, none of our Thread Mods meet the mainspace edit requirements. 13:10, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I’d like to clarify that I’m not seeking a discussions focused admin currently, but I’d like people to consider the possibility of an admin solely focused on them in the future. I’ve got it covered now, but it’s hard to stay on top of both editing and discussions, so we might want to consider the idea of promoting one of our current Discussions Mods in the future, even if they don’t meet editing requirements.

Also just throwing this idea out there: is there anyone who would support a hybrid model of community nominations, but the current Admins selecting the next admin from those who are nominated? 13:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@Noland, to be clear I don't think being a DisMod should be a requirement for ALL admin candidates - rather, that's solely my proposal for amended requirements for candidates who are *both* editors and Discussions users. Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 17:13, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Admins should always be voted on. The current system is fine how it is now. SeaTerror (talk) 17:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Makes sense, thanks guys. I would be fine with that approach, JSD. 17:34, 10 July 2023 (UTC)