I just ahd a question, I'm trying to change my avvie and it for some reason says "the action could not be completed" So i was wondering if you had any ideas...?
What's on your mind?
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Right now, patroller and rollback rights are requested and granted as a single right, however the system treats them as two groups. I'd like to propose that we request Wikia Staff to merge the two groups into only one (naming it "patroller"), so that only one group needs to be assigned.
I think it would be good for this wiki to implement a "Use common sense" or "Ignore all rules" policy like many other wikis. This is a common policy across wikis, and essentially means do what you think is smartest and most beneficial, even if it isn't in the rules or if it interferes with a rule. Why do I say this wiki should have this policy? Well, it's important to remember that wiki policies are just guidelines on how things should/shouldn't be on the wiki. Even if something may conflict with a policy doesn't mean that it's a bad thing for the wiki, and thus the policy doesn't need to be enforced in those situations. Enforcement of policy is more specifically enforcing the purpose of the policy. If something doesn't negatively effect the wiki, then it doesn't interfere with the purpose of policy. As it stands right now however, users blindly enforce policies whether or not something is a problem, which doesn't aid in protecting the purpose of the policy.
Another issue why I think a "Use common sense" policy would be beneficial is that where users blindly enforce the policy. It's important to use common sense when enforcing policy.
Does something interfere with the purpose of the policy? | |||
Yes? | No? | ||
Enforce the policy and take action. If disruption or abuse took place, policy can be enforced. | Don't bother enforcing the policy, as the purpose of the policy was not broken. No disruption or abuse took place, therefore there's no need to enforce a policy. |
More times than not, I see a problem be created where there was originally no problem because some user, moderator or not, attempts to enforce a policy when no abuse or disruption took place, and where the purpose of the policy was never broken. Policies are meant to prevent problems, not create problems, so enforcing a policy when it's not necessary to do so is just troublesome.
At the same time, a Use Common Sense or Ignore All Rules policy is not to be used to excuse actions that are disruptive or abusive, in chat or on the wiki. Using a UCS/IAR policy to excuse these kinds of actions is gaming the system (WP:GAME, RS:GTS), and should be considered an additional policy violation.
For reference, here are similar policies on other wikis:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules
- http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/RuneScape:Use_common_sense
- http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/Brickipedia:Use_Common_Sense
- http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Avatar_Wiki:Ignore_all_rules
- http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Call_of_Duty_Wiki:Ignore_all_rules
- http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Half-Life_Wiki:Ignore_all_rules
- http://reddead.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Dead_Wiki:Ignore_All_Rules
- http://crysis.wikia.com/wiki/Crysis_Wiki:Ignore_all_rules
- http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Futurama_Wiki:Ignore_All_Rules
Additionally, this essay is a very good read, and one of its points I would like to emphasize here. You are not required to learn the rules before contributing. In an ideal situation, any user who uses common sense should be able to come into this community and contribute or chat naturally without having to even read the rules. Using common sense should allow for them to get along just fine and no issues should arise. However, with some users who are bound to enforce policies blindly, such as accusing people of being dupes or having zero-tolerance to their harmless mistakes. Even if something may be against the policy, they don't need to be warned or kicked for it if it causes no disruption or abuse. They can simply be made aware of the policy and be asked to be careful about those things in the future. It's a much more peaceful and happier environment to be in.
Another good read is this short essay, which essentially states that in order to build a better community and form more appropriate/successful policies, the policies can't always be followed. Periodically I've seen users discussing a problem they see in a policy here and are eventually told to drop the conversation for one reason or another. Being told to drop it solves nothing, whether or not the discussion is argumentative or against the rules. If a user sees a problem in the rules, then it should be discussed, because chances are there's room to improve it. Things such as the word filter come to mind here. When a user says "why do we block the word ______", that's not them trying to abuse the policy, but asking for reasoning behind the policy. You can't expect to discuss improvements to the word filter without using those words in the discussion, and even though using them is against the rules, you're using them to try to improve those rules. That's just an example.
Finally, another issue I see often that relates to this is users saying "that's not how we've always done it, so don't do it". That's a silly statement that prevents the community from advancing forward and growing. Things do need to be changed as a community itself changes. A related essay on this regard is Wikipedia:Ignore all precedent.
And for those who want to know some of the pros and cons of adding such a policy, several years ago Brickipedia discussed this same thing, so you can read the discussion and the pros/cons listed at w:c:lego:Forum:Ignore all rules. After reviewing those pros and cons brought up on that page, Brickipedia decided it was a good idea to add this policy. I believe this wiki should do the same.
It's really stupid that something this simple and harmless would need to be removed from chat, but currently anyone who has enabled chat hacks, a feature made available to every user of this wiki, has access to the /nc command. This command outputs a link to wikia:c:uncyclopedia:Nobody cares, a wiki page commonly linked to in the greater wiki community for its humorous truthfulness and honesty. This page, however, being on Uncyclopedia, has, to no surprise, swear words on the page. Because of this, users get warned when using this command. If someone is going to receive a warning for using a non-default feature of chat that's been enabled for every user, then either there needs to be a change to either remove the feature or agree that it doesn't deserve warnings.
I'd like to suggest that this wiki install Semantic MediaWiki, a MediaWiki extension that allows for semantic data to be stored and accessed within articles. What does this mean? Well in situations like the issue described here by Alemas2005, Semantic MediaWiki would allow for data such as a user's name, rank, and avatar to be stored on the user's article, and then be accessed using semantic properties on another article such as a song or band article. So an example of this in use could be on a song article, where the song was written by "User1234" but you want to get their avatar, instead of having to manually add it and update it manually any time it changes, you could do {{#show:{{{1|}}} |?Avatar}}
where {{{1}}}
is the user's name, and "Avatar" is a defined semantic property used on the user's article.
Currently Wikia chat automatically resizes every emoticon to 19x19 pixels. Most emoticons still display fine when scaled like this, but some don't. For example,



.message img { width: auto; height: auto; }
Does this sound like a good idea? It hardly changes anything, just makes emoticons look a bit better in chat.
One of the most-complained about policies I know of on this wiki is the one that requires users to link to videos using Viewpure. The purpose of this policy is understandable—sometimes videos actually do have some obnoxious and inappropriate comments. However, requiring users to take the extra step of using Viewpure is a bit unnecessary and can be a hassle. It's inconvenient on mobile, and during fast conversations in chat, it takes even longer to get the link ready. And of course, not everyone is actually going to care about comments or see them. So rather than having an extra policy for moderators to have to enforce, and another step users have to take to link to a video, I have a better suggestion (actually 2).
Suggestion 1
There are ways that you can hide YouTube comments on YouTube itself. This article on LifeHacker lists some options to remove those kinds of things on YouTube, or other things that might bother users. This would allow users who actually don't want to see comments to have them disabled, but at the same time allow for other users to link to YouTube itself quickly and safely. This is easier from a moderation standpoint for because moderators don't have to check if the comments are appropriate or not; if a user finds an inappropriate comment and actually has a problem with it, the moderator (or anyone else in chat) can suggest one of the options listed in that LifeHacker article. Other times, chances are it won't bother anyone about the YouTube link. And for people like me, sometimes I'm actually curious what kinds of comments something has received, which would mean I wouldn't have to copy the Viewpure URL and convert it back to YouTube.com. Also, Viewpure doesn't work for some users at all, I've heard, so this would allow them to still see the video that was linked (assuming YouTube works for them too).
Suggestion 2
This is a more rudimentary and possibly annoying suggestion, but it's also a possibility. It's possible to write a script that converts YouTube links to Viewpure links after they're shared in chat. This ensures that links are to Viewpure. The annoyance that this could cause however would be 1) if the script was buggy or YouTube updated it's URL format, the script might not work as it should and could possibly break chat, and 2) if a user actually wanted to link to the YouTube URL, the script could prevent them from doing that. This isn't the suggestion I'd favor, but it's a possibility. It could also possibly be something that users can enable in the user options menu, but not something forced upon every user.
Of course, with either of the suggestions, users are still responsible for making sure the video content itself is appropriate to link to in chat. These are just suggestions to solve the requirement of using Viewpure, which I find annoying and I know many other users do as well.
Due to the influx of new admins (Congrats, Rio, Gogs, and Loney!), I was thinking about the way adminship works in our community. Currently, there are no "term" lengths for admins - essentially, they serve for life, active or not, unless they resign (a rare, but precedential) occurrence, or are removed (something which rarely, if ever, happens). While this isn't necessarily a bad thing - we've had many admins who have provided continuous years of great adminship - it does have the side effect of inducing a achievement-based environment, rather than a merit-based one. A user can simply do enough to get admin, and then sort of relax, reduce their community involvement, and not fulfill their responsibilities of the office which they have campaigned for and been elected to.
Please note this assertion is not directed at anyone or any event. It is simply an observation of the way our system works.
With that being said, I propose a term limit on adminship. Term limits are a tried and true technique to promote community involvement and the furthering of community interests by leaders at every level of society. The term should be long enough to give someone time to show their worth as an admin and better the community, but not so long that people can become stale and drift into inactive or non-productive admins.
Adminship should be a privilege, not a permanent right. Users should have the right to make sure that their admins stay relevant.
I understand that this will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I think the benefits of such a system are practical but flexible. For admins who wish to retain their adminship, all they should have to do is just be a good admin.
I've provided some options for such a system below. Feel free to leave any comments below.
What do you think about a term-based adminship?
A) Adminship should stay the way it is. (13)
B) Term limits should be introduced, but current admins should be grandfathered in for an election cycle (AKA they get a free term) (5)
C) Term limits should be introduced, with everyone with the current rank of admin needing to under go a primary election in a timely manner. (1)
D) Other (Describe below)
If Admins were to have term limits, what should they be?
A) 6 months (6)
B) 1 year (5)
C) 18 months (3)
D) 2 years (4)
E) 3 years (1)
The Profile template changes the title of the article to the songwriter's name. If we could use another template or change it that would be great, but assuming that the profile template is used for something else, we would have to make another template and have a bot do it. I have however gone ahead and removed the DISPLAYTITLE magic word from the template. Also using that template on the homepage would be great, because last month the main page's title was 'benboy755'. LCF (talk!)
07:47, November 23, 2014 (UTC)
So it's been roughly 6 months since I, Agent Spy, and Ireithien got promoted to admin, and roughly 3 months since Mad got promoted as well. My question to you, the community, is:
How have we done, both in general and individually?
Can we implement a guideline/rule where users (besides the one who recieves the message and the one that sends it, and maybe admins) have to stay out of conversations on somebody's wall unless asked to join or something? It starts unnecessary arguments when somebody butts in on a conversation..

I was thinking we should have a vote on ALL active mods to see who and who isn't doing a well-enough job according to everyone here. Now, I'm aware that bias could take place, but I'm thinking we have enough people for that to not be a major factor. If we weed out the mods who aren't doing their jobs as well as they could, we would no longer need to rob the inactive mods of their rights in the name of "too many mods." And then the mods who get booted from this method can work their way back up to being a mod again through another vote in three (or fewer) months.
Sounds harsh, but this is an effective way to ensure a sharp mod team as well as keep the inactive mods you guys are prone to lop off. :P
Admins?
So the inactivity of Drew, Obi and BCG has prompted me to post this, because I feel our Wiki can potentially go nowhere if we don't resolutely sort this out.


We currently have just over 400 active and semi-active users on our Wiki. This is a substantial amount, and currently, none of them are being regularly updated. This page should, in theory, show the outdated articles, but for some reason it rarely ever works. Our user articles are in dire need of regular updating.
Which is where my idea comes in. At least every week or couple of days, one of you will update a certain number of articles. Could be the "A's", the "K's", both the "A's" and "K's", it's up to you. We could even install "shifts", meaning that on a certain day that user will update his/her articles. The next day, another user does his/her articles. Whether to install fixed shifts or not has to be decided by you guys.
What do you think?
Why are archive pages required to have the first sentence be in present tense, while the rest of the page is in past? It disrupts the flow of the article and makes it grammatically incorrect.
And anyway, if it's an archive of the old Message Boards users, then it should be all in past tense because the old MBs don't exist anymore.
Just my thoughts. By the way, can someone link me to the forum or petition where users voted to change this? Thanks.
So it's been roughly 3 months since I, Agent Spy, and Ireithien got promoted to admin. My question to you, the community, is:
How have we done, both in general and individually?
The external link icon to LMBs is just like all the others, so maybe a little distinction might help?
/* External Links */ .WikiaArticle a[href*="community.lego.com"]::after { background-image: url(images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140718215323/lcf119testinggrounds/images/0/0a/LMB.png); width: 16px; } .WikiaArticle a[href*="community.lego.com"]::after { background-image: url(images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140718215323/lcf119testinggrounds/images/0/0a/LMB.png); width: 16px; }
Okay, so straight to the point. I tried voting on the Community Messages poll yesterday, but it didn't work. I had to go to MediaWiki:Community-corner to actually vote on the poll. So that's most likely why there's no new votes on it since I voted yesterday.
Another thing which needs sorting out are the topics. If anything, they are in even more of a mess than the song and band articles, I would say.

You guys have a bit more free rein in this vote. (For votes which have "fixed" options, I'll use Community Voting)
1) What should the minimum number of pages of a topic be in order for it to deserve an article?
2) What should the topic's subject be? Roleplay/general/spam/news station/anything?
Consensus
1) 100 pages.
2) Anything.
Something which we need to sort out is the creation of new user articles. This is more of a "prevention is better than cure" thing, as we don't really have this problem, but I'd like to get it fixed.
I propose the following guidelines to add to the MoS:
- User must be Rank 5 or higher, unless the user is known from the old MBs (look for high post count and a "Ye [rank] of Olde" badge).
- If an MB user who doesn't meet the above criteria is a Wiki member, he/she may have a user article created.
We can't have pages and pages of little-known Cavemen and Pharaohs. We need to have some criteria in creating new user articles, as we can't have a database of all MB users.
Consensus
Items #1 and #2 approved.