Board Thread:Community Discussions/@comment-26237829-20150413220042/@comment-3051533-20150415141037

Okay! First off, hiya! Haven't gotten involved in the community recently, well, basically due to the reasons why EED wants to create this great wikia reform or whatever it is called. :P

Anywhozies! Let me get to the actual point of me responding to this, I'd like to counter the argument portrayed by Percebais;

"You must be at least 13 to legally to even edit or have an account on Wikia, not just chat. That also only applies to users in America, to be a legal issue."

While, yes, this was indeed true, and I was one of those people that got onto the wiki illegally - Only that's not exactly how COPPA is set up, COPPA is an online privacy act as most all of us probably know by now, and (I would totally link to all the different points, but instead I'll just put a source at the end of this to the wikipedia page) what COPPA states is that any individual under the age of 13 isn't allowed to share their personal information online. (Which by the way I didn't, well very rarely, most people at the time thought I was around 18 just by guessing, I was from Brickipedia after all. :P) And IF you are 13 or under you're allowed with proper parental consent, (However that consent must be proved).

As for chat only being for 13 year olds on up at the time? I have to disagree with EED on that point, chat has always been open to anyone just like the wiki has been.

"Why wouldn't we change to this system? That way we would know what users are wanted by the community to be admin, and which aren't. The judgement of forty or fifty is greater, as opposed to the judgement of four or five users."

Ha, what? You do realize that's /pretty/ much what the entire content of EED's blog was right? :P The point of the admin veto is that we are set up as the representatives of the people, which is why constant administration promotions should take place as the representatives. (Which was basically my role as an old timer admin) Everything has to go through the main office, just like an actual government. Say this for example, let's say two hundred thousand people in America sign a petition for America to turn into a communist nation. :P - Actually I suppose that if all the population agreed to be a communist nation then it would happen because people would revolt and what not, but whatever. :P Anyways, let me re-establish my points here as I haven't made it particularly clear here, what I'm saying is that the administrators are /supposed/ to run the site. See awhile back we were having some trouble with users whole posted inappropriate pictures saying "Well, kids need to mature eventually anyways" - Again, not explaining myself properly, but anyways it's like this, the administrators are supposed to know what's best for the community, if you don't teach the child that putting the fork into the socket is a bad idea then the child will do it, my ultimate point being that the community doesn't necessarily know what it wants, and that the ultimate decision should be reached by the administration and not the users (Yes yes, I know I was soooo strong for the democracy we have set up now back in the day, and I still am, less so please though. :P)

"I have seen many instances in my short time on this site where many moderators have abused their tools. "

Moderators are now suggested by the community if I remember right, an entire wikia reform movement would fix these problems (Theoretically). What I'm saying is that we would try hard to demote on abusers of their power and that if a user ever sees anyone abusing their powers they should be reported to the admins, I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say by this part, so I am going to leave it with this small paragraph. :P

''"I have never witnessed a moderator refrain from kicking anyone. " ''

And as EED said earlier on in his blog, he wasn't talking about kicking users, he was talking about banning. The problem that we're having is that users troll/post inappropriate things/swear on the chat and when people kick them after warning them, the popular opinion on chat would be to say that the user is abusing their power for kicking for the rules, and thus the social stigma has the moderator feel that he isn't being decent enough as a chat moderator and that he shouldn't ban them, and then the user that was disobeying the rules gets away without any consequences.

"Misused? I don't think any policies or anything were misused. "

EED wasn't saying that the policies were being missed, he was saying that the wikia itself was being misused, that the point of a wiki is for editing not chatting - Which I actually am not in agreement, although I do feel a reform is needed, I don't feel that the wiki ever was focused on editing as a whole, what has kept the wiki alive and booming was the community. From my experiences there are several different types of wikis. The Editing based wikis, The Chat/Blog based wikis, and then the third option is the community based wikis which is a cross between the two.

"It's universally accepted and proven that on large wikias (w:c:rs for example, and even wikipedia:) that admins are just users with extra maintenance tools. Wikias with "oligarchies" really do tend to not do as well. I mean, look at that site, Brickimedia even. The site is doing fine with just its admins and patrollers. Site administration was really defined on Wikipedia. If this didn't work, how would all these wikis get so large? How have they not fallen inactive or failed?"

Now, here I am going to be speaking purely from what I have experienced on wikipedia, which admittedly isn't much so anyone who frequents Wikipedia or Brickimedia feel free to correct me here (Or anywhere actually). But basically I feel that larger communities such as Wikipedia and Brickimedia have a fatal flaw that their communities are lacking in spirit, on my time on LEGO Wikia (Which was years), it didn't feel like a place where people could be friends, even after chat was made it felt too distant from any conversation if it deviated from LEGO, and I feel that wikipedia is a even better example of what I am talking about here. Wikipedia hasn't fallen inactive and hasn't failed because of the sheer amount of people that want to contribute to sheer knowledge and I feel it would be the same exact amount of productivity regardless of what system that it runs by. For one thing wikipedia isn't a community, or at least that's not it's focus so it's not a very good example as wikia has basically reformed itself into a social networking information site and different "government" systems are needed because of that reason.

"What? That idea is absolutely ludicrous. Why would we entrust what we want and don't want to five users? Admin vetos? It seems that anything that would be entrusted to an extremely small group in which one member is named "Eagleeyedan" would cause more harm and more users leaving than anything else. I don't see how anyone can "run" a site with almost every user despising them. "

Back in the day when I was working with the admin team, the way we ran things wasn't poorly received, or at least not very much. Users were fairly content with the system that we had in place. No one has ever despised us ([Not very much anyways. xP] Except Drew. :P I mean even I got mad at him over the move thing. :P) (Note: As my sister's pet bulldog is jumping on me I have lost my train of thought here and will continue with this part later. :P)

"That is almost hypocritical. You are going to use the system that you do not agree with to bring back the old system?"

This here is not a matter of of hypocrisy, it's a matter of basically following the laws that are currently in place to change the laws. :P It's basically still obeying the rules and wanting to reform, it's not a bad idea. Anywhozies! Finished for now! I will hopefully post more thoughts on this later. Thank you EED for posting the blog, it was a nice read. :P