SmashWiki talk:Probation

Getting out

Will there be a way of getting out of the probation group if you get in to it? Shanicpower Make it rain! 05:22, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

If you start being a constructive user that puts effort into helping the Wiki, then yes, you'll be taken off probation. Omega Tyrant 07:18, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

Do you know which people to be in the probation group? The Awesome 19:11, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

It wouldn't be hard to figure out, we just look at all the user pages that are currently protected and apply it to those users, then remove the now-useless protection. Toomai Glittershine The Ghostbuster 11:15, 14 September 2012 (EDT)

I saw the notice at the top and I thought a good idea might be to put a user in probation when they have less than X% mainspace edits for more than Y time, and get removed from the group after being over Z% for Y time?ScoreCounter (talk) 17:31, 15 September 2012 (EDT)

The plan is to avoid using straight numbers as a cutoff. Toomai Glittershine The Sharp 18:13, 15 September 2012 (EDT)

The major problem with giving defined percents is:

1. They can't accurately measure a user's contributions alone. It's possible for a user to only have 10% of their edits be mainspace edits while having 50% or so go to their userspace and Smash Arena, yet those few mainspace edits are all of amazing quality (as well as their other constructive edits). Such a user would be given considerably more leeway than a user whose 10% of constructive edits are all minor or inconsequential. Quality > Quantity.

2. If we gave defined percents to reach, it heavily encourages users placed under probation to make a slew of "no effort" minor edits (edits that aren't outright revert worthy, but is an edit that pretty much adds nothing to the quality of the page), and do underhand things to boost their mainspace edits, such as intentionally not getting the edit right on the first edit and making successive multiple edits to fix the same edit, and even intentionally making minor bad edits (removing a sentence is easier than adding information, yet you can't really prove the user made the edit in bad faith instead of removing information they thought was faulty). These things will boost the user's mainspace edits and give the illusion they're trying, but still no effort is going into the quality of their edits nor to improving the Wiki.

3. Whatever percent it would be is arbitrary. Just why is 30% mainspace edits with less than 50% userspace edits fine, but 25% mainspace with under 52% userspace isn't? No percent suddenly makes the user a constructive user.

4. Once the percent is reached, it encourages the user to stop making an effort and go back to their previous behavior. Hey, all they need to do is use some of the "tricks" in point 2 to inflate their mainspace edit and keep it above the threshold, and they can continue their userspace and Smash Arena focus all the way.

So as you can see, giving defined percents to enforce this under would be a terrible and counterproductive idea. Omega Tyrant 18:47, 15 September 2012 (EDT)

I agree with OT and would like to add that there are certain users such as Emmett who mainly edit policy and don't do a lot of mainspace editing, and also users like myself who don't edit the mainspace but pop in for big policy discussions like this one. So, I think that idea should be abandoned and we should focus more on coming up with something more general that can be applied to every situation. DoctorPain99 {ROLLBACKER} 00:05, 18 September 2012 (EDT)

I'd like to push this if no major problems are found in the policy as written. Toomai Glittershine The Free 12:34, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

I see no issues and support its immediate implementation. DoctorPain99 {ROLLBACKER} 18:33, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

One minor issue I have with it is that I don't think there should be "probation durations". If we did such, a particularly lazy user could just wait it out, and then do their same old shit when the duration runs out. When put on probation, it should be indefinite, and the user won't be taken off until their effort towards being constructive becomes satisfactory. Omega Tyrant 20:06, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

Indefinite probations are certainly the default for users that are showing little or no contribution effort. But a secondary reason to apply probation is when wiki traffic is very high and reducing unproductive edits is necessary to monitor happenings, and the user in question is doing good work but is also spending much time in user/forumspace. In these cases a timed probation length would be more useful and less punishing (or even a non-fixed duration such as "when status drops out of red", but I'm not a fan of that). Toomai Glittershine The Xanthic 20:20, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

I see, follow through then. Omega Tyrant 20:24, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

Letting regular users suggest probation

What do you think about letting regular users suggest probation? It sounds like a bit too much at first, but I'm thinking that we can have higher restrictions on submitting RfPs, in a similar vein to changing the SmashWiki Status System. Perhaps regular users can only submit, say, one RfP per month? Air Conditioner -.-- -.-- --..! 19:06, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

The "original plan" was to allow admins to apply probation without requiring a request procedure, similar to how they can currently protect userpages/block users. Unfortunately it's impossible to change usergroups without a bureaucrat, so a request procedure is needed. In practice I expect RfPs won't be much more than an admin asking a bureaucrat to click the buttons, just like how users can ask admins to look into users for needing probation. Toomai Glittershine The Incomperable 19:12, 25 September 2012 (EDT)

Move

I think the name of this page should be probation users, since there are users that have been probated. The Awesome 09:38, 6 October 2012 (EDT)

Probation is a state that users may be placed into, similar to administrator, rollback, and bots. It is not like autoconfirmed, because it does not occur automatically. Therefore, it does not need to be a users added to the end of the title. In addition, learn some damn English, because probation users makes no sense. MegaTron1XD 10:18, 6 October 2012 (EDT)

Different system for edits

If a user has been warned to not do a certain action when editing the mainspace, such as pointlessly changing links and adding completely unnecessary things to an article, yet performs such action anyway, should those edits be counted towards the actual edit count? As human beings, we can tell if it's just learning or just trying to inflate the edit count to avoid probation. Bots are not needed for this, simply taking the time to search through contributions will do. MegaTron1XD 21:04, 3 March 2013 (EST)

Edit count doesn't matter for anything on the wiki; nearly everything is decided on a qualitative, not quantitative matter. Mr. Anontalk 21:22, 3 March 2013 (EST)

If a user is warned about probation, the edit count is used along with edit quality thus far. You then have some users thinking that by performing minor edits, they will get out of probation or not risk getting in probation. Though they are attempts, some of those edits may be attempts at inflating edit count. MegaTron1XD 21:30, 3 March 2013 (EST)

Edit count is only used a guideline to probation, rather than the determinant. When I looked through a user's edits to determine if they warrant probation, such edits you mentioned I consider "null edits" and thus don't consider them towards the user's attempted "constructive edits" (the same goes for repeated minor edits to the same page that could of been condensed into the first edit). Omega Tyrant 00:50, 4 March 2013 (EST)

If you can point to a single case where a user has avoided probation by inflating their edit count (hell, a case where doing that hasn't resulted in a harsher punishment), then your point has merit. Maybe we should have something warning about it on the page here, but we certainly don't need an entirely new system to deal with this. Mr. Anontalk 00:32, 5 March 2013 (EST)

The "bcrats can toss out requests" clause

I believe the ability for a b'crat to fail a RfP was originally written in so that if an admin attempted to probate a user for dumb reasons, it would be stuffed. I'm considering whether it's necessary, or whether it should be deleted. The intent of the overall system is to basically mimic the block system by asking "hey someone press the button please" - the guy who applied the action assumes all responsibility for it, and if other staff wants to get involved, they can do so after the fact instead of bumping heads beforehand. I don't see why we need to give b'crats the ability to veto probations before they happen, which blocks don't have. Toomai Glittershine The Brass 22:38, 31 August 2014 (EDT)

The ability really doesn't have be mentioned at all. If an admin, in any way, attempted to probate or even block a user for a dumb reason, any user would be free to bring up that said probation/block was unjustified. Having a direct veto doesn't really serve a purpose. MegaTron1XD 23:33, 31 August 2014 (EDT)

Does probation disallow edits to the User Talk and Forum Talk areas?

I know that if you are under probation, you cannot edit user pages or forums. Does it include talk pages for those areas? Corrin Fan 19:30, 28 October 2018 (EDT)

We should remove the Forum editing restriction

Back when probation was originally devised, a major reason for implementing it was because of many accounts popping up just to post in the Smash Arena, which was within the Forum space, as well as some other users who only existed to post in other non-constructive forums. Nowadays however, not only have we long stopped running Smash Arena on the wiki, people never actually use our forums for casual discussion, with the Ultimate section only having two topics ever made in the nearly four years since Ultimate's reveal, one of which didn't even get any replies. Nowadays, the forums are really only used for proposals and other discussions based around improving the wiki, which posting on is constructive contribution and no user should be barred from posting on them. As such, probation should only bar users from editing the User space, it's only a potential detriment to the wiki to bar probated users from editing the Forum space when they're now primarily used for important wiki-related discussion. Naturally to go with this change, we'll also no longer consider Forum space edits towards determining probation. Omega Tyrant 11:48, May 3, 2022 (EDT)

I support this. I have also noticed a sizable shift towards wiki-based discussions in the forums (several of mine have, anyway), so people should be able to contribute to those even while on probation, especially because the whole point of probation is "you need to contribute to the actual wiki more". Aidan, the Rurouni 12:01, May 3, 2022 (EDT)

Support as per above. Your Senpai, Iron Warrior 13:04, May 3, 2022 (EDT)

I mean, it's still possible to block forum space editing if we REALLY need to, but that hasn't been the case lately. Strong support. Black Vulpine the 🦊Furry🐺. Furries make the internets go! :3 19:53, May 3, 2022 (EDT)

Support: Besides Smash Area, almost all casual talk is done in the Discord server nowadays, and is even encouraged to be done there. In the last 3 so years the only users who have been probated are those who prioritize editing their userpage, which, for the most part, has been the only main form of unconstructive editing lately. As of now there's no harm in removing the restriction of forum editing when it hasn't been a real problem in a long time. Omega Toad, the Toad Warrior. (I'm the best!) 06:28, May 4, 2022 (EDT)

Support, yeah the Smash Arena on the wiki was abandoned for a long time and replaced by Discord. The root of the probation problem is user spending too much time editing their userspace instead of contributing. Having harmless discussion on forum won't really ever cause much problems. NPM Morr!? 11:07, May 4, 2022 (EDT)

Bumping this, if there's no good oppose in 24 hours, we'll go through with this change. Omega Tyrant 15:51, May 11, 2022 (EDT)