User blog:AnonymousRose94/Rose's Razor: Improving Wiki Maintenance

Greetings, children of the wiki, and welcome to another Rose blog! Usually this is the point where I would insert a very bad joke or inflict cruel and unusual torture on Stryzzar, except this isn't just more Rose Ramblings. It's very important business concerning the current state of this wiki and the things that need to be done to get ourselves back in order after this mess that's been flooding the activity as of late. After reading my suggestions, I highly encourage everyone to discuss what you agree with, what you disagree with, what else could use improvement, and your own methods, and hopefully we'll get this place back in tip-top shape soon.



Administrators

One of the things that absolutely needs to happen is a change in our administrator pool. Some of our current admins are very helpful, but others hold the title and yet do little to nothing with it. You guys should know who's who. Obviously all of them did great things and worked hard to earn that position, but what's the value of what they did in the past when they're not taking advantage of their powers in the present? We need to either replace the less active administrators or add someone new to the loop; someone who is active regularly and will help out with deleting things, banning vandals, settling disputes, etc.

Rollbacks

Stryzzar, PhoenixDragonSamurai, Codyfan12, and I have all been doing our best to keep a watchful eye on the wiki, but lately it seems as if it is only us with a couple or so other users helping out. '''Everyone, please keep in mind that the four of us cannot retain order all alone. We need you guys to undo incorrect revisions when they happen and issue warnings when you know damn well that a rule is being broken. We need you to help inform the admins when a blog needs to be deleted or an inappropriate picture has been uploaded'''. The job is not exclusive to rollbacks while the rest of you can do as you please. Notice the "About Us" section describes the wiki's information as being "collaborative," not "written by one or two people while everyone else converses on blogs."

Chat Moderators

If you know me at all, you know I'm not active on chat, like, ever, but I noticed in a thread that the chat mods apparently aren't on that much either, especially when they're needed. So, same applies: we need to either add new people or replace the inactive current ones. Also, regular visitors to chat need to make sure they're doing their part to keep wiki authorizes informed.

Blogs

Blogs have, of course, been huge nuisance lately due to the overwhelming amount of people commenting and creating. Some of the new blogs break one of our rules that has been in place for a long time. I'll say it loud and clear so there are no misunderstandings:

'''BLOGS MUST BE AT LEAST FIVE SENTENCES OR MORE. IF YOUR BLOG IS UNDER THAT REQUIREMENT, YOU MUST ADD MORE TO IT OR IT WILL BE DELETED.'''

The problem with minor blogs is that admins tend to not notice them unless someone reports them. Also, in periods of high activity it's easy for them to get lost.

I want to propose that we make a forum where people can post links to blogs that need to be deleted. Admins will check it regularly and delete the links as the blogs themselves are wiped. Until this forum is created (or maybe it will never be, who knows), '''I'm thinking that I will make a user extension page with this same purpose. It will be open to everyone for reporting and I will check the page history often to make sure nobody removed their own blog'''. If at any time there is an edit conflict, I or another rollback will review the blog in question, and if we decide deletion is in order, we will record the link, delete the page submission, and personally speak to an administrator. '''The page/forum will only be for blogs which are under five sentences. For any other blog-related issues, please talk to an admin'''.

Now, every user, particularly new ones, has the opportunity to make their blog fit the requirement before it is reported and deleted. That tends to also be a problem: people are warned, but the blog is never edited and so it just sits there. '''We need a time limit for people to fix their posts before they are reported. I suggest that this limit be three weeks from the date of the blog submission'''. Chances are the submission date and the date the poster is warned aren't going to be that far apart, so that sounds reasonable, don't you think? I think for this I will make another section on my extension page, so there will be two: one for blogs that are on the "waiting list," and another for those that have exceeded the time limit for editing.

For everyone else, those of you who know of the five sentences rule and follow it (and those who spend all day commenting, I see you), all I can say is, please try to cut down on the blogging just a little. We have many things that you could be doing to actually help the wiki (revising character pages, changing tense, voting on proposals, just to name a few). Blogs are fun, sure, but can we all remember that the purpose of a wiki is to use our shared love of the show to construct a well-informed environment where people can be sure what's fact and what’s rumor, possibly even find out some things they never knew before?

That's all I can think of at the moment. Thank you all so much for reading. I hope you all will consider what I've said and maybe add your own suggestions to help out.

This is Rose signing off, until next time, peace, love, and pancakes.