SmashWiki talk:Junior administrators

This is the extended, more detailed version of the policy I have proposed on Talk:Main Page. Like I said there, this is a proposal I've had the idea for for quite some time, but feel may be necessary due to increased traffic and recent vandalism. This is what I wrote on the other page: Tommy Barnes has struck again, this time going on right after Toomai apparently logged off. I think that with the increased traffic and activity of the wiki as it is in SSB4, it also means increased vandalism. However, interestingly, this has not meant increased admins. How do we combat this? The solution is simple: Do what a lot of other NIWA wikis already have done, and introduce "junior adminship." Return of Air Conditioner Vandals suck. 18:04, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

Support

• Support Why not. We need more people to use admin powers and even if OT doesn't want users to become fully admin, trusted users can make good use of a few of the tools. Dots (talk) The Meta Knight 18:07, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Strong Mega Support We only have two admins right now and rollbacking isn't enough. ZeldaStarfoxfan2164 (talk) is made in America 18:08, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Very Strong Support About 10 or so rollbackers (including me) were on the site when Tommy Barnes came on, and not a single admin was on for about 45 minutes. This will help greatly at combating vandalism. Besides, only 2 admins are currently active, but 20 or so rollbackers are also active, and rollback only solves some of the problem. Rtzxy Smashing! 18:14, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Hells yeah! This Wiki needs more staff. And this way, we can up the Wiki's administration without giving some of the slightly less competant candidates (I don't know who exactly those are, so don't rage at me) too much power for their own good. MeatBall104; Yeah, boyyyy!!! 18:27, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Support Basically, just read what I said in the original discussion on Talk:Main Page. We can't just slip up and let this stuff happen again whilst being defenseless. Scr7(talk · contribs) 18:30, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Support We need more staff to prevent ultimate vandalism, plus we only right now have 3 active admins. Awesomelink234 You rang, dude? 18:31, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Support - This proposal is very reasonable. There's a pretty long jump between rollbacker and sysop, and junior adminship seems to be the bureaucrat ladder's missing step. Given what's outlined, it looks like there won't be any redundancy issues, which is a plus. I suggest actual limits on the duration a junior administrator can block a vandal for as suggested by the proposal, and only allowing junior admins to semi-protect pages, since full protection is normally to solve edit wars between registered users and I feel that power should only be vested in the upper admins and bureaucrats. Blue Ninjakoopa 18:40, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
  • The reason it is only discouraged is that according to the big wiki coding people, actual limits are effectively impossible. The best thing we can do with the current MediaWiki system is to just impose strong discouragement. Return of Air Conditioner , singing the song of angry men 19:08, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Bloody Flipping Brilliant Idea: This wiki needs more people to block vandals, delete redirects etc, but according to our current staff, nobody willing is eligible for full-on adminship. So we just give this role to the appropriate people. Genius. Toast ltimatum 18:46, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Support: Per above comments. Unknown the Hedgehog 19:16, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Support, but tweak: Per everyone in general, but restrictions should be a bit tighter. It's not really "junior" if we're giving JAs pretty much all the core abilities that full administrators have. We don't need junior administrators being able to give blocks longer than, say, a week to autoconfirmed users. I believe only admins should be able to do that. Also, the policy (in its current state) states that JAs are able to protect pages, but not edit them. It should be the other way around, because allowing protecting, but not editing the protected makes no sense to me. Chilex (talk) 19:17, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
  • Junior administrators will be able to edit protected pages. I'm not sure where it says that they explicitly can't. And your suggestions were precisely my original intention when writing this policy, but again, according to Toomai, coding this for a usergroup is impossible, so the best I can do is discouraging doing anything more. Return of Air Conditioner My edit count 19:25, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

At least don't allow JAs to protect pages. Leave that decision to the full-on admins. Unless coding for such a usergroup is impossible too. Chilex (talk) 21:10, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

• Support Great idea. I'm with everyone else on this one. It is so rare to see anyone request for full-on admin ship. Without junior adminship, future smart vandals will become more nuisance. Rollback isn't enough to solve any problems and we can't just sit there and while being defenseless against any malicious vandals. Luigi540 (talk) 19:47, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Support, per everyone else here We need people with reliable tools to deal with vandals and surges of blatantly false informational pages. Two admins with arguably sporadic login times won't effectively cover nuisances like Tommy Barnes, and rollback is ineffective against the mass creation of spam pages. There needs to be more readily available tools. --Timson622222 (talk) 22:26, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Support. I already showed my support bfore this was even a formal proposal. Tepig (talk) 22:40, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• This essentially serves to give promotions without it being as grand of a deal as becoming an admin. Users who are knowable about how to handle wiki disputes, understand how things work, and show responsibility can step up and have some power, without the full weight/ordeal/pressure that comes with being a big-cheese admin. We have plenty of intelligent and capable people who can apply for this, and especially given the circumstance of our new major game finally being out, I support this policy fully. --HavocReaper48 23:31, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Support - This could work. This could really work. Like everyone else said, not everyone is eligible to gain the power of full-on adminship, but we still need more people around to protect the wiki. This is a good compromise.--Starman125 (talk) 23:52, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• You Have No Idea How Much I Support This - I don't know why people haven't come up with this before. This wiki has basically been screwed over ever since the beginning of this month, traffic is higher than Snoop Dog, and we basically need all the help we can get. Although, I do suggest that you don't just "volunteer and get the job"; rather, you have to go through several steps (not as many as one would go through to be a full admin) in order to become a "junior admin" (and maybe, if admins thought said "junior admin" is a good enough admin, they could be promoted to full admin). Aidan the Gamer 21:18, 29 September 2014 (EDT)
• Great Idea, but lemme ad on just a little bit Suppose a Jr. Admin puts a user box on his page saying the they are a Jr. Admin, now a vandal can keep track of that user and strike once they leave, so I say, that this is a great idea, but if a person should receive Jr. Admin they should keep it private. P.S. Yes, I"m still alive. :P MintyGuy700 (talk) 17:31, 2 October 2014 (EDT)
• Brilliant. Just a little change and this should pass. I think the rollback privilege recommendation is a little too much. I suggest that Jr. Admins should be hand picked by older admins, and to see if the user is actually trying to do something but can't in traffic as opposed to just not doing anything. Wizmalk (talk) 00:29, 2 November 2014 (EDT)

Oppose

• Oppose. I don't see how this would help. Blocking a vandal for two to six hours will just result in the vandal coming back after two to six hours, whilst regular bad-faith edit blocks (weeks to months) could make him/her go. The 'no deleting pages with large histories' idea is bad too, large histories have nothing to do with importance. Rollbacking can be handled by an RfR, whilst the last idea is good. Qwerty (talk) 19:48, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
  • As a lot of people have been saying, rollback simply isn't enough. Did you not see the Tommy Barnes attack earlier? We were constantly rollbacking his spam, but it took 50 minutes before an admin came and did something. This shows that with junior admins, whenever a vandal like this comes, it will never take such a long time for them to be blocked. Scr7(talk · contribs) 19:53, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
  • Preventing the deletion of pages with large histories will enable the user to easily delete a page created by a vandal or an obvious candidate for speedy deletion, while disallowing the junior admin to delete something where the decision to delete or not should be discussed more in-depth. In addition, the two-to-six-hours rule is just a guideline for an IP who may be making good-faith edits. It says on the policy page that the "two-to-six-hours" guideline does not apply for very obvious vandals, such as people who replace pages with obscenities or blatantly attempt to harass users. Return of Air Conditioner My music taste 19:55, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
• Oppose with a note. After the section below, I still just don't see the need. I think simply disproving the myth of a "stigma" on the RfA process is a much preferable alternative and adding one or two more admins under the current system would work fine. This seems like an unnecessary middle ground. Miles (talk) 22:42, 22 September 2014 (EDT)
  • Admins generally have two responsibilities: to settle user disputes and to do janitorial work. User disputes tend to be relatively frequent on the wiki, however, and I would not trust anybody willing to be an admin with the responsibility of settling user disputes. However, a position of junior administrator would allow janitorial work, something this wiki already has a problem with and will likely worsen in the future, without trusting people to settle user disputes when they really shouldn't be put in charge of it. Return of Air Conditioner the funky homosapien 07:13, 23 September 2014 (EDT)
• Oppose. To be blunt, this proposal is all about "more power without the corresponding responsibility". If junior admins are not expected to be capable of settling user disputes (which really is the most significant difference between the two ranks as presented), how are we supposed to trust them to block people (arguably the crux of this proposal) if the person being blocked then raises a dispute? Or block someone who is being disruptive in a dispute? Or make the call on whether to delete a disputed page? To put it simply, in order to promote someone to junior admin status, I would have to trust them an equal amount as someone I would be promoting to full admin status (and possibly more because I'd also have to trust them to follow the extra non-tech-enforcable rules), and at that point having a separate group is pointless.
  Now, all that being said, I do recognize the desire to have a user level that's more than rollback yet less than admin. I have an idea or two how we could achive this, though it might take a day or two to mold them into something presentable. But suffice to say that I don't think this proposal is it. Toomai Glittershine The Emissary 12:16, 24 September 2014 (EDT)
  • Toomai, I see your concerns and they're perfectly valid. They make me see that my proposal may, like you say, give too much power to the proposed usergroup. So, how about we do this? In my eyes, I intended junior administrators should only use blocking tools for vandals, and to leave any and all user disputes to administrators. Once a vandal is blocked, if they raise a dispute on their talk page it can be dealt with by an actual administrator, as they no longer pose a direct and immediate threat to the wiki. Deletion, likewise, I wrote with the intention of only using for speedy-deletion pages, and not to be used on disputed pages. All the tools, in my mind, should be used by junior admins solely to combat vandalism and do janitorial work. I propose that if a junior admin uses these tools for other reasons, we can give them a warning and then a removal of position if they continue. As for the non-tech-enforceable rules, I figured that even if they weren't enforceable by our wiki itself, we could still enforce it by checking Recent Changes, and leaving warnings for the junior admin (and removal of position if it continues).
    I'd be interested in hearing your ideas on this new usergroup. If you want, feel free to help rewrite my policy to implement some of the ideas you have in mind. Return of Air Conditioner All generalizations are false! 09:58, 25 September 2014 (EDT)
  • Bump. Return of Air Conditioner This signature is way too long. 15:06, 2 October 2014 (EDT)
    • I still don't really feel like this solves the problem of "As junior admin, what is your motivation to become full admin?". Even if they follow all the restrictions, they still have enough power to do all the important admin stuff while leaving most of the actual work to the full admins. That is indeed a lot of the purpose of the idea, but I feel like there has to be something to motivate people to move up. Toomai Glittershine The Golden 18:02, 2 October 2014 (EDT)

Comments

Forgive me for asking, but what exactly is the point of this? The difference between the proposed powers of this level and those of full adminship is minimal. Why not just RfA if you think you could contribute in this fashion? Miles (talk) 18:43, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

Well, the entire junior administrator idea is so there can be users who can quickly deny attacks such as the recent Tommy Barnes one, but don't need full admin powers that they will likely be inexperienced with. That's just summing it up from my point of view. Scr7(talk · contribs) 18:48, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

One annoying vandal doesn't make this whole category necessary; a much simpler means of dealing with him is to temporarily make new page creation require a user to be autoconfirmed. You'll need a lot more to convince me this is a worthwhile change. Generally speaking: what are Toom and I, plus the somewhat more inactive admins, failing to do that this would accomplish? I must admit I'm not seeing it. Miles (talk) 18:52, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

That could work for a period of time, but then Tommy Barnes could just wait up and start creating spam pages when the temp protection is over. It also doesn't cover the spam he does on existing pages; a quick block is better than people having to constantly rollback him until an admin shows up. In addition, I'm sure there are other vandals who are willing to spam pages just like Tommy Barnes has been doing. Having junior administrators reduces the potrntial of large-scale vandal attacks like this happening again. Scr7(talk · contribs) 19:00, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

Again, that doesn't necessarily warrant the need for this rights level. If you think we have insufficient admins, why don't you RfA or encourage others to do so if you think they've earned it and the need is present? Miles (talk) 19:03, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

I'll use myself as an example here. I think I'm a candidate for junior adminship because I'm actively around to deal with vandalism and spam all around the wiki. However, giving me full-on adminship would give me a lot of powers that I wouldn't know what to do with. I'm also not very experienced, so I'm not in the same boat as the admins who have been around here for much longer than I have. Scr7(talk · contribs) 19:15, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

This wiki is notoriously bad for its total lack of ability to get any new admins. I don't believe I've ever even been around to see a new administrator in the two and a half years since my account creation. The stigma and sheer difficulty that comes with an RfA, as well as the fact that our best candidates have no desire for adminship, are the cause of this. We currently have two administrators, and vandals have gotten smarter: the last attack waited for both to log off, and lasted close to an hour before an admin finally blocked the guy. Even if we make new page creation require autoconfirmation, they'll still vandalize existing pages. While rollbackers can revert this easier, it still took the work of about three to five rollbackers to combat the guy. In addition, once Smash Bros. drops in the United States and Europe, this wiki will likely see an explosion in activity. While the admins are doing as good a job as anyone can right now, two admins, no matter how competent, simply will not be equipped enough to deal with what will likely be a massive backlog of janitorial work and vandalism. Return of Air Conditioner Everybody knows I'm a m------------ monster. 19:06, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

Additionally, more support for this relies on how you feel about being the only janitor here, Miles. Are you OK with it? Don't you think it would be nice if there were admins with slightly fewer powers around to perform certain tasks themselves without having to ask for it to be done? It's not that you failed or fail to do anything, the goal here is to facilitate cleaning up the messes that have been happening lately among other things. Having to refer to an admin or a bureaucrat to get something done, however long it takes them to respond, seems like it holds the the community back. Blue Ninjakoopa 19:13, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

We've only had two users RfA unsuccessfully since 2010, (not counting obvious RfA failures like brand new users), ToastUltimatum and Unknown the Hedgehog, for whom I expressed neutrality and support, respectively, at the time. Both of those were in 2012. I don't see any stigma in submitting an RfA. If you think you have the qualifications, go for it. More admins wouldn't be a bad thing, if you didn't understand me. I just don't see why we need to add this when people could just RfA within the current system. Miles (talk) 19:17, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

I'm going to have to say that one of the reasons why RfAs are incredibly hard is because of your nemesis OT. If he wasn't so selective on only having professionally competent users getting adminship then those two and Mr. Anon would of been admins already. I personally see Junior Admin being a semi-admin but it is used for janitorial uses. Besides, I don't think anybody is going to have a problem with Janitors around this wiki. Dots (talk) The Pokémon 19:26, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

As far as I'm concerned, an admin should be capable of handling user disputes and actually dedicate the time to check the Wiki, along with the standard "show that you can use the tools to majorly help". Anon's inactive, and from what I recall, both Toast and Unknown were not greatly capable of handling user disputes during their respective RfAs, or just lacked evidence. If they truly wanted to, they could apply again and present said evidence. OT being selective for a dispute admin over a janitorial admin is just irrelevant. MegaTron1XD 21:27, 22 September 2014 (EDT)

So, how does a policy like this pass or fail? There are a large amount of points in the support section, and it seems that a large amount of the community supports the proposal, with pretty much all of the opposing points having been refuted. Is there still more that needs to be done? Scr7(talk · contribs) 11:22, 24 September 2014 (EDT)

Presenting a counterargument doesn't mean the other viewpoint is proved false, you know. Miles (talk) 11:35, 24 September 2014 (EDT)

That's why I said "pretty much". Scr7(talk · contribs) 11:41, 24 September 2014 (EDT)

I am completely unfamiliar with this "Tommy Barnes" fellow, if I'm going to be completely honest, but I can definitely say he's not the only person who vandalizes pages. I've seen the history of a lot of the pages here, and they've...never really been struck with a common source. Sure, starting this whole idea because of one person may seem a bit like an overreaction, but, in all honesty...it's better to take care of it now than have to deal with it later. Aidan the Gamer 21:22, 29 September 2014 (EDT)

In case you're wondering, Tommy Barnes is pretty much a Ridley fanboy. He keeps creating the same page (Ridley (SSB4)) and vandalize other users' pages. He's done this 20 times, I believe, and he's probably not gonna stop, although he's been doing less. Here's an example of his work. Rtzxy Smashing! 21:39, 29 September 2014 (EDT)