At the risk of sounding like a prude, do we really need quotes on pages that are full of sexual references and (mild) swearing? It is meant to be a site for everyone to enjoy, and a few questionable edits have slipped through. I've updated the vandalism page to draw attention to it. Chris ^{talk - mod} 22:21, 30 September 2010 (BST)

I think the quotes should be deleted, I'll try and sort things out when I can. Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 20:32, 17 October 2010 (BST)

They both want to be administrators, both of them have different advantages and disadvantages, I think we should promote at least one but I wanted to gather opinion not just from bureaucrats, although we will have the final decision I think it's fair that the other admins have their view. Discuss. Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 20:31, 17 October 2010 (BST)

Also I think that we should decide whether they will become admins or not based off their own edits rather than in competition against each other. If you think that they should be against each other then okay but thats what I think. Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 20:42, 17 October 2010 (BST)

It now seems that 1885 also wants to become an admin, which doesn't make much difference, except there is another to consider. Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 21:34, 17 October 2010 (BST)

While on the topic of admins, me and Chris gave a two week trial to Woozle44 a while back and didn't particularly edit much in that period or since. Personally I think it would be a good idea to 'de-adminise' (the account hasn't edited since June and there isn't a very large edit count) allowing a bit more 'space' for another of these high editing users to replace him. Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 21:15, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Yeah, de-admin that account. As for the others, do we really need more admins? More people with power generally leads to more abuse of power. Chris ^{talk - mod} 22:10, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Chris has a point. Personally I think that we need to give it a bit longer has they both have areas in which they need to improve on:

• User:camponhoyle Spelling and punctuation

• User:dangerousx Adding a considerable amount of content to pages rather than small edits such as spelling

Thanks Magical Trevor 18:58, 19 October 2010 (BST)

I'd say those two areas would cancel out perfectly :)

There is some stuff on the wiki on Administrator Policy. In my opinion, there also needs to be some gap to fill in the admin team:

• Will the candidate provide additional necessary coverage for moderating different year/friendship groups?
• Does the candidate need admin access to provide that coverage? Perhaps, if only for move page and delete. I find the admin tools are rarely very useful for general editing/improvements. The number of instances that need "the full arsenal" of tools are small enough to cope with.
• Or, does the candidate need access for a project involving admin-editable-only pages, e.g. homepage?

Rewards would be nice, but we can't give admin access to everyone who does lots of good edits. On that basis, we would end up with more admins than users -- who would admin the admins? I think 3 new admins is too many when compared to the volume of admin:user edits currently (though subjective I get the impression there is general agreement on this here). I know this idea breaks down if taken to a ridiculous extreme: an admin who makes an infinite amount of excellent edits implies they shouldn't be an admin! There is some truth in the extreme case :)

Maybe there is a finer-grained hierarchy of positions in an addon: it would be useful to acknowledge the amount of work people put in (similar to UserScore, but advertised). E.g. rookie, experienced, guru etc. I'd be quite interested in having a look at this idea -- I don't want to be too stingy!

If we are undecided we can wait, or when I get time at the weekend I will consider carefully the requests (number of edits is not something I consider important), and suggest how to proceed (not excluding waiting longer). I haven't had time to look properly, but I wanted to acknowledge all three requests.

Thanks everyone,

Clizard 00:29, 21 October 2010 (BST) zZzz

Hi Again, Sorry these responses seem to be getting longer...

I've had a look at the user permissions system and it is in need of a bit of an update. Contrary to what I said last time, I think my original aim was to make the permissions as open as possible. I therefore plan to move the move facility to be available to all users. Note: There are now autoconfirmed accounts available.

edituserjs will be removed completely from all admins and bureaucrats.

I wanted to expand delete privileges to all users too, but this logically requires undelete, which would be unacceptable to people who had requested their pages be removed permanently. Therefore these will remain admin tools until a separate admin(permanent) and user delete become available.

Protected pages: the admin options on these have changed a lot since we last discussed them. There are 92 fully protected pages. This is too high. I will go and update policy on protection, then unprotect the ones I propose be unprotected on the understanding that if anyone disagrees then they can undo and ununprotect pages and edit the policy :) The pages that require permanent protection are: the main page and things displayed on it, administrative (contact info, announcements, admin policy, meta) and, in rare cases, commonly used templates. Temporary admin protection may from time to time still be necessary to stop flame wars etc.

File uploads: 12MB is way too much. I propose this be 150kb and all files that are significantly over this be resized/optimised. 150kb is enough to communicate well most images. File uploads have been temporarily been moved to autoconfirmed while I wait to implement this.

There is also a need that is not provided by the current structure: to have people be able to edit protected pages! I'm therefore looking into setting up a developer usergroup who will be able to edit the user interface and access protected pages (such as the homepage) for the purpose of developing the wiki. They will also be able to delete and undelete pages. Therefore there is still a lot of trust being placed to use these abilities responsibly, else we end up with mario on our front page.

Ideally this would be a free for all, but realistically we need to maintain a state of peace on the wiki, avoid spam, and these permissions are hopefully natural and logical.

The bit you want to read

I think Dangerousx and Camponhoyle should become admins, and 1885 should become a developer. All three have been great contributors (and have fixed some especially important things). Though we're not being swept away by garbage just yet, there are times when me and some of the other current admins (well, I speak for my self) don't have time to forensically examine all the edits. Dangerousx is on the wiki probably the most and tends to catch spam first (and has reported it) which suggests that there would be an immediate benefit to the wiki with him becoming an admin. I think 1885's interests are probably more closely aligned with the development side of things (provided I can get it to work, it is a new system!). This is just a proposal though.

I haven't forgot about redecorating. I've been trying to play around with the logo -- but my artistic skills were particularly bad last night.

Perhaps we should also have a clean up of admins who aren't around any more too. Clizard 20:12, 26 October 2010 (BST)

I agree that the user access levels should change to give more power to autoconfirmed users, and less to brand new users. I don't know what edituserjs even is so it probably would not affect me taking it away.

Delete Privileges: I think that standard users (and autoconfirmed users) shouldn't be given the power to delete purely because i feel that some may use this to delete lots of useful pages and cause a lot of work to clean up. About permanently deleting pages, I have noticed that (as an admin), you can delete a page and then protect the deleted page so that nobody else can recreate it, which in a way is the same as permanently deleting it (as long as the admins don't recreate it!).

Clizard: I see blanking pages as the same as delete, except it's more efficient to let people delete. At the moment delete also removes pages from view to anyone without undelete, which we need to maintain. There should also be a 'user delete' so that users can undo each others' deletes but not see or undo deletes that admins have done.

Protection of Pages: The semi protection doesn't really work at the moment because the semi protection is to stop editors with no accounts from editing, but they cannot edit anyway. This needs to be changed so that only autoconfirmed users and higher ranks can edit and therefore can be used to protect highly vandalised pages. I do think however that all pages regarding policies should be fully protected. I think the admins should create the policies and discuss them, but then if a standard user wants part of it changing then they can suggest their idea to us in a place like suggestions. Regarding templates, the most used templates (e.g. the welcome template) should be fully protected and the rest semi-protected.

Clizard: I think semi-protection works already: it should provide protection from new accounts as well (users who aren't autoconfirmed).

File Uploads: I totally agree with what you have said about the file uploading, though I do think that the uploading should be for autoconfirmed users and above forever (we don't want vandals uploading 'naughty' images).

Clizard: I don't think it'll do too much harm if everyone can upload and overwrite images (self-policing, just like editing text). but if it becomes a problem we can review.

Developer User: I think the idea of having a developer is a great idea, it allows users like 1885 and Alan (perhaps move him from admin to developer?) to work on templates and improve the wiki with all their coding knowledge (which I do not have!). Allowing them to delete and protect (as well as the opposites) will provide them with the only abilities they really need, and allow us admins to do the banning. The developer user could potentially be used as the first step to becoming an admin, by giving them some admin powers but not the really important ones.

Clizard: The developers aren't ranked below admins, but will fulfil separate roles.

Autoconfirmed Users: These users should be the same as normal users except: They can move pages, upload images and edit semi-protected pages. I don't think they should be able to delete pages (for reasons mentioned above).

Who will become admins?: There are quite a few old admins on the wiki who haven't edited in years (for example: Heskey and Jonathan Parton), they seem to not be on here any more, perhaps they should be de-adminned and allow the new generation of users to become the admins. I agree with Dangerousx and Camponhoyle being admins and 1885 being a developer, but should we just make them all admins until this new 'breed' of user is available?

Sorry for rambling on for a while. Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 13:23, 27 October 2010 (BST)

Should I gather a list of people to potentially de-admin? Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 19:04, 27 October 2010 (BST)

Yes please :) Clizard

Okay here is a list of old admins who haven't edited in a while (or edited little in a while):

• Anomaly - No edits since June 2008.
• Glabrata - 2 edits since March 2008
• Heskey - No edits since June 2007
• Jonathan Parton - No edits since May 2007
• Kronos - 1 edit since November 2008
• Nick Slawicz No edits since June 2007 (Only 3 edits in total!)

Removed all except Glabrata and Kronos. Nick's account isn't even on any more (security hole?!). Clizard

Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 19:33, 27 October 2010 (BST)

Kronos' one edit was in 2009, I'm not sure what's happened to Nick Slawicz's account seems a bit unusual... Anyway shall we promote Dangerousx and Camponhoyle? Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 19:45, 27 October 2010 (BST)

Yeah go ahead. I'll sort out the developer access and namespaces that User:1885 requested. Clizard

Yay! Thank you! Just a quickie - could the Developer group have (versiondetail) and (upload_by_url) rights? Version Detail would be useful so that I can source extensions compatible to our specific requirements, and upload_by_url would be handy for uploading template images. Thanks for the promotion!!!! ¹⁸⁸⁵