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)

I would agree to have Awaikage as the new administrator. Also note while I may help out a lot, I am not really interested in that level of position as I am happy where I am at. As long as I can help as best I can including assisting in dealing with bad edits and vandals I am fine either way. -Adv193 (talk) 23:53, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Kage is already an admin. 14:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

So let's bring in the candidates and start voting. I don't need this rank because the wiki is far from my vision. Would make since if this was 2009 but it is unlikely I would take the job seriously and this wiki would still stray away from my vision.

Joekido (talk) 21:51, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Personally I think a new admin should also at least be aware of discussions as there are over 200+ users there. Asking just one person like @justsomedude to handle all the bans isn't fair. Having someone else to be available to watch over reported posts and support dis mods would be a big help. I know I post on discussions and moderate it but don't do any edits outside of posting. I do go to discord but don't spend a lot of prolonged time there as I don't have large chunks of time to dedicate to it, I normally post in spurts. I just think someone who can attend to both would be ideal. ASimon24 (talk) 23:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I’d like to remind people that this forum is only for discussion about the possibility of changing the rules. We are not yet having the election. If your post does not contain a comment about the rules, you are not helping this discussion.

I have specific proposals I’d like to get the community’s opinion on:


 * 1) Dropping the edit count requirement for voting and nominating down from 300 to 100.
 * 2) Allowing users that hold rights of admin, rollback, content mod, chat mod, thread/discussion mods to vote regardless of edit count or activity. (Keep in mind that I removed rights from all inactive users earlier this year)
 * 3) Current Discussion mods are able to be nominated.
 * 4) I would like to allow users with only Discussions edits to vote as well, but with a substantially higher post count, maybe around 1200?

I would love to hear if anyone else has specific proposals as well! 13:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Each of those proposals sound acceptable to me. Damage3245 (talk) 15:14, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

While the other changes sound good, I don't think we should lower the edit count requirement (#1). 100 is too simple to achieve and can be done without much interaction with other users, and 300 gives a greater chance to have interacted with the respective candidates while also showing more of a commitment to and experience with the wiki. Allowing Discussion posts/comments as a substitute requirement is a good suggestion and should service as a viable alternative to lowering the main space edit count. However, I'm not active enough in the Discussion section to know what a good number of edits for it would be. Dragonus Nesha (talk) 15:56, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with #3 and don't have any real Discussions experience so can't speak on #4, though I agree that it should be an option. I agree with DN on #1 that 100 is too low though; while I don't think 300 is fully necessary, something like 200 seems fair. I disagree with #2; while I would be okay with having more lax requirements for existing staff, I think there should still be at least some kind of activity requirement. While the inactive staff were recently removed, any new rules & guidelines might become active for years like the previous ones, at which point more inactive users may have staff rights. If someone hasn't participated on the wiki in the last 6 months, especially if they're a staff member, I don't see why they should participate in the voting process. (Tangentially, there should probably be some limit to how long staff can be inactive without notice (in which case this point wouldn't matter), but that's a separate discussion.)

To one of the older points, having a Discussions-focused admin seems like it should at least be kept as a possibility for the future, especially if Discussions continues becoming more active. Like ASimon pointed out, having only mods active in Discussions could cause issues, since they don't have full permissions like admins. Walrsu (talk) 01:41, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

We always preferred elected voting in early days, but one of the issues is while it allowed everyone to vote, it wasn't being done anonymously. And polls were easy to manipulate using IP addresses. It did make things uncomfortable at times.

Some other wikis have "goals" you must meet (like X amount of posts with no bad behaviour), an example of that failuer wikipedias been targeted for abuse before by trolls in the past wherein they were good for a while then as soon as they got power went mad with vandalism. And the method I use at another wiki is simply having admins/bureaucrats that "vouch" for you, with more then one staff member vouching = welcome to the team.

I don't really mind any process and from my experience every method of electing a staff member has pros/cons. I was offered a staff status early on since I'm one of the founders, but I opted out and maintain everything is fine so long as editors have that choice. Not everyone wants authourity and responsibility, I'm in charge of a few wikis right now and dislike it. But theres not much I can do about those wikis, only one is in a position where I can quit in the near future. Angel Emfrbl (talk) 08:30, 14 July 2023 (UTC)