SmashWiki talk:Community portal/Archive 6

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content appropriateness

How do we feel about the level of appropriateness of our content? (swearing, nudity, etc.) Zixor (talk) 18:30, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Swearing is discouraged. Cafinator (talk) 01:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I ask because of a picture of someone flipping the bird. I'd say this doesn't belong on the wiki. Zixor (talk) 23:39, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you provide the link? It would have been helpful if you had done that in the first place. --Kirby King 02:40, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

My question remains valid regardless of its intent.
In any case: here is the link: http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Image:N184805085_30438739_4012.jpg
Zixor (talk) 02:25, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Open Letter: An Outsider Looking In

Preface: Although I'm an avid SSB player, I'm not a contributor on SmashWiki. However, I do have quite a bit of experience editing and managing wikis, having been involved on both GuildWiki and GuildWarsWiki and having helped to found PvXwiki (where I'm currently a Bureaucrat), and, when it comes to wikis, my primary focus/interest tends to be policy-related and managerial. As such, it should come as no surprise that my interest was piqued when someone on an IRC said, in regard to SmashWiki: "there's one sysop who thinks literally permabanning people is a way to resolve the issue and refuses to acknowledge that half the problem is backlash against his bannings." The discussion that followed (along with another, related discussion on SmashWiki's IRC channel) prompted me to write this "letter." However, before I begin in earnest, I'd like to make it clear that what follows is purely from the perspective of an outsider looking in and, as such, it may not reflect the "whole picture." Thus, if I've neglected anything that could potentially mitigate the following, please, by all means, spell it out for me if necessary.

References:

The links above, taken as a whole, even assuming good faith, i.e. that the bans were deserved, etc. -- which, based on the Block log, may very well not be the case, paint a disturbing picture, especially when examined by someone who, all self-aggrandizement aside, knows quite a bit about what it takes to administrate a wiki. I’m sure that Randall, etc. are excellent contributors and maybe Galaxia, etc. were really poor faith editors, I don’t really know, nor do I care. Being a good contributor is not anywhere near the same as being a good administrator, and, no matter how bad those bad faith editors were, there’s no question in my mind that the administrators handled themselves poorly, to say the least! I really don’t mean to pick on Randall, but, for example, when you’ve got a sysop who is willing to ban users based on evidence of sockpuppetry that turns out to be faulty, and that same sysop is willing to (from everything I can infer) ban people for disagreeing with him, there’s a problem. When, on top of that, you have permanent bans being thrown about more liberally than I have ‘’ever’’ seen, there’s a ‘’big’’ problem. It’s not even so much the permabans themselves, either, it’s the rapid escalation to permabanning coupled with the fact that permabans have apparently been deemed necessary for, as near as I can tell, rather minor offences (if repeated ones). And another thing, maybe I’m just reading a bit too much into this phenomenon, but it seems like the sysops feel obliged to, when banning someone for, say, a personal attack, specify that the attack was against a sysop as if the mere fact that the recipient of the sysop made a difference. Assuming I’m not merely making mountains out of molehills, so to speak, that trend is perhaps equally disturbing since it runs entirely contrary to the intrinsic nature of wikis.

And it’s not only the bans, themselves, that have me worried, it’s the way the sysops are handling themselves with respect to those bans. I’ve seen statements like (these are not quotes), “oh well, he wasn’t a major contributor anyway” or “oh well, the wikidrama that followed sysop x’s ban really wasn’t necessary” used to defend certain administration actions that, if nothing else, toed the line between good faith and outright abuse, and the backlash that inevitably followed. Such statements reflect a horrendous understanding of the way wikis work, particularly the second type which, astoundingly, seems to essentially discount the sysop’s potential culpability for having been the source of the wikidrama. And the “us (sysops) vs. them (the users at large)” mentality that such statements foster and that seems to run rampant throughout SmashWiki is, as near as I can tell, at the heart of most of the problems I’ve noticed. Heck, some of the sysops have seemingly dropped even the façade of civility; I expect to see block caps from trolls, not from sysops. And banning people when they disagree with you (again, that’s how it seems looking at some of these situations from an outsider’s perspective) makes the situation all that much worse. As a very wise person once said, “inability to discuss and reach consensus is a scary thing indeed, especially when the alternative is banbanban.” Indeed, that uncompromising attitude makes it all the more likely that people will disagree, and, even if they do so in a manner that ‘’does’’ deserve a ban, that doesn’t excuse the culpability of the sysop, and it is certainly cause for concern.

If the above represented isolated events, that would be one thing, but I have a nagging feeling that there’s a lot more where that came from (and I could have written quite a bit more simply about the things I’ve listed in a great more detail, but, alas, I’ve other things that I need to get done). Equally disturbing is that when I sought answers from an active bureaucrat -- quite possibly the only active bureaucrat -- the responses were vague at best and often seemed designed to exculpate the sysops as much as possible (again, that’s just a perception). I have no stake in the success (or lack thereof) of this wiki; indeed, I sought out answers for no better reason than my own edification. However, whatever comes of this (and, most probably, nothing will), I felt compelled to post; hopefully I’ve given at least some of you cause to pause and reflect on what I’ve said; to be blunt for a moment, a number of other experienced wikieditors and I, were nothing short of astounded by what was going on here, and that opinion reflected the consensus of more than a half-dozen "outsiders," that alone should (hopefully) say something. Regards. Defiant Elements 04:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to try and maintain a theme here that I tried to observe in the IRC channel: I can only reach conclusions based on what I see, and I'm not inclined to made declarations on behalf of other people who are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. I'm sorry if that meant that you felt I was only offering vague and defensive responses, but bureaucrat or not, I'm not omniscient. Carrying on that theme, then, I'm going to restrict myself in what I respond to in your post; other people can respond to explain their own actions, and I won't try to speak on their behalves. If this makes my response unsatisfying, so be it.
To respond to a paraphrased quote of mine: saying that drama wasn't warranted after a block is put in place isn't an attempt at indemnifying a sysop for an improper block. Rather, it's a comment that just because a community (or, in this case, a segment thereof) reacts negatively to a block, the block is not necessarily wrong. People get angry if their friends get blocked regardless of whether it's warranted, but that doesn't speak to the validity of the block. In order to conclude that a block is unjustified, I need to see more than a list of "supporters" of a blocked user; since a list of names doesn't convince me that the action was unjustified, I think such a list ("drama") unnecessary. The same effort would be better spent explaining why the action may not have been justified, rather than just waving one's hands in the air. So I still think that was a fair statement.
Since you don't have much of a history around here, you may not be entirely aware that I have not been particularly active; the fact that I'm even a bureaucrat here is really just the result of some combination of peculiarities and fanciful timing. You have noticed some things that you believe to be astray on this wiki, and you have responded by raising a red flag, acknowledging that you may be impaired by your admittedly limited perspective. I don't consider myself to be in too dissimilar a position to you, but I am more willing to put my trust in the hands of people who have been more active than me. I certainly don't think all the sysops are corrupt, and I've seen certain administrative actions reviewed and revised, so I'm inclined to defer to process there.
But again, if my attempts at explanations to you seemed vague and exculpatory, it would be because they were simply my attempts at explanations--my observations and inferences--which is all I can offer. There are other users who are more qualified to explain their own actions, and other users who are more qualified to offer their own running observations of fact. So with that said, I do look forward to reading those accounts and perhaps enriching my own understanding of events. Until then, however, I'll continue to withhold judgment, because I don't consider myself active or informed enough to do otherwise. --Kirby King 06:31, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Ah, thank you for the clarification. I'd been told that you were one of the only "semi-active Bureaucrats," and with nothing else to go on, it was hard to put your responses in their proper context. As to your second paragraph, I believe you've somewhat confused cause and effect in this instance. I would certainly not expect a ban to be overturned on the basis of a simple petition created and populated by the banned user's friends and I am not arguing that the existence of those petitions is proof, in of itself, that the bans weren't justified. The problem, as I see it, is that there are some cases in which the sysop is responsible for causing the petition to exist either through administrative action which was unjustified in the first place (and there are examples of that, of that I have no question) or by the manner in which the sysop justified his actions and/or responded to queries regarding his actions. The nature of the petition and the lack of the desired effect (from the petitioners' point of view) is irrelevant in this case, it's existence, however, is, if the causal link is impropriety from a sysop. As to "I certainly don't think all the sysops are corrupt." I certainly don't think that either. To base that assumption on the actions of a few sysops would be a biased sample indeed! (I hate fallacious logic, if you haven't realized that already.) Could you define the process by which an administrative action is "reviewed and revised?" Are you referring to informal review (i.e. by another sysop) or formal review (i.e. by Wikia or by a consensus, e.g. a no-confidence poll)? Similarly, does the aforementioned "revision" refer to one sysop overturning another or say, Wikia demoting a sysop? Thanks again. Defiant Elements 06:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
As far as cause/effect goes, I'm not sure how much we're really disagreeing--I'm not dismissing the possibility that unjustified actions can lead to reactions, I just suspect that the ensuing response is likely to illustrate whatever improprieties might exist. If they do exist, they should be pointed out; if they don't exist, the energy spent complaining over the actions is wasteful. In the event improprieties exist but aren't pointed out in the ensuing ruckus, then it's up to the observant to chime in, and as I think I've established I can't put myself in that camp. As a general principle I think it's pretty reasonable; whether these particular cases were actually the third case rather than the second, I can't definitively say. Re: all sysops are not corrupt, I didn't mean to imply you thought that. But assuming that several (active) sysops are not corrupt, they should be in a position to monitor any inappropriate actions and take action of their own. Specifically, I was referring to the reversal of blocks by other sysops (and in other cases, the implicit and explicit affirmation of other blocks by other sysops, based on block logs and talk page comments). --Kirby King 07:25, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Hmmmm... I think the problem is less that we're disagreeing, per se, and more that we're using dissimilar emphasis (not to mention language). I will say, however, that although the petition, in of itself, isn't proof, the offhanded dismissal of said petition on the basis of presumed bias is not a proper response, not to mention potential bias on the part of the sysop, but, for the moment, that is neither here nor there (I'm too tired to go into more intricate distinctions at the moment, however). Similarly, I'll respond to your point about unbiased ("uncorrupted") admins tomorrow (i.e. later today). For now, I need to get some sleep. Defiant Elements 07:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Re: Unbiased ("uncorrupted") sysops; Although I'm a huge proponent of admin discretion (one glance at PvX:ADMIN should convince you of that) there are a coupla problems I see with your logic.
  • Although there will inevitably be situations in which a ban or other administrative action is somewhat questionable and although most actions are easily remedied/undone, if the Sysops find themselves needing to revert each other more often than "infrequently" and/or if the Sysops find themselves reverting actions because they are more than questionable, there's a problem. Heck, one person told me that, although the ban policy seems to suggest that most bans should be ~ 24 hours, one anonymous contributor was banned for a week on the basis of a single edit which was construed as vandalism. Unfortunately, I've not yet had time to verify that story, but, even if it's only a rumor, that rumor, because it reflects a perception of the Sysops is disturbing in of itself. Yes, the other Sysops can very probably "handle" that problem in one way or another, but there shouldn't need to be a problem.
  • The manner in which Sysops are handling themselves and responding to queries is at least as important as the bans themselves. As I said in my first post, I'm willing to entertain the notion that every single one of those bans was fully justified. In fact, we can start with that as a premise if you'd like, but when I start seeing threats, etc. like the ones found in the references above, I can't help but find fault with their manner of conduct. Furthermore, although, as per my first point, an unjustified ban may be overturned, it's much more difficult to "undo" the damage done by simple conduct, and that conduct is much more likely to reflect a deep seated attitudinal problem that's equally difficult to "fix."
  • Given that a) my second point is valid and b) in order for any formal review (i.e. from Wikia) to occur, a consensus is required -- this based on what you told me in IRC -- I'm not sure how I would go about raising a red flag and/or making a vote of "no confidence." On, say, PvX, I'd expect that if someone took issue with a Sysop, they'd contact a Bureaucrat (off-wiki more likely than not), and that Bureaucrat would then discuss the matter with the other Bureaucrats and, if appropriate, demote the Sysop in question. However, when you've got Sysops saying not to piss 'em off if you want to stay on their good side and when discussion is met with such fierce resistance as is, and when the Bureaucrats do not provide the outlet for no confidence, to whom are people supposed to turn? I'm really not sure? The tendency seems to be that regardless of whether a particular ban was justified or not (it's immaterial in this case), anything approaching a "complaint" is tossed aside as "biased" or whatnot. Not to sound too alarmist (I know that I hate it when people on PvX post conspiracy theories about admin collusion), but there is a tendency among sysops to defend each other's actions when they feel like they're "under fire" and/or when they feel that a comment made against one Sysop reflects poorly on all of 'em. That's what I've observed anyway, maybe it's not true here.
Defiant Elements 18:34, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
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