Board Thread:Wiki management/@comment-5143323-20180113035227/@comment-5143323-20180114024620

Brainulator9 wrote: First off all, I'm a staff member and I was not notified that this was happening. Would it kill you all to leave a message on my talk page saying "hey, we're gonna talk about fixing the wiki, ya mind joining us?"

So this means I'm given the ability to run the wiki as if I'm Big Brother or something. Cool for me... but really, no.

I want to address the four main points individually, which should make my reply long enough that you should abbreviate it should you display my message.


 * 1) "Excess power to regular users makes being a staff member redundant" Not really. At the end of the day, we are still bound to the same rules, expected behaviors, we participate with other users as if we're not staff members... we just get a few extra buttons that allow us to moderate uneven content. In that sense, I do not see myself as a member of the government, I see myself as more of a police officer. That's why I've pushed to reflect this further. This opens the floodgates for staff members to make rogue decisions (see the bottom of the post for more on rogue staff) while throwing actually smart people like AWikiBoy521 and Cavia porcellus under the bus all because they don't want rights. Don't give me the whole "they can demote good members!" talk because I feel like we've implemented safeguards against biased or blind votes ("(s)he's my friend", "per X") as well as votes without any explanation. I'm pretty sure a staff member who does behind the scenes work can say they're doing that and prove it should a thread come up.
 * 2) "Some of the users tend to not know why things are added in the first place" - I'm not sure how exactly this is a problem with democracies. If you really want everyone to know that certain policies are in effect, tell people about it, via bulletin, talk page, whatever. Please do not create excuses to avoid communications with other users.
 * 3) "Too frequent changes on same single and/or unnecessary things cause a lot of headache" and "People tend to vote subjectively, not objectively" (I list them together because the same argument applies to both) - In the case of the second sentence, that includes you all. I mean, a good amount of these votes are built around subjective criteria i.e. what is right for the wiki is subjective in and of itself. That is why there is no consensus even among staff members as to whether certain topics should share an article or whether we should use gender-specific pronouns, for example. And by allowing the staff to dictate the vote while also allowing people to criticize them, wouldn't it occur to you all that the whole business of "it'll be easier to maintain the wiki's quality when we have fewer complaining members" won't work by giving them reason to complain?

Jack, I've been around here roughly as long as you have, and I know you're aware of all the instances of staff members causing controversy during their activity: Wintermelon43, WinterMagnet, Zambiealex, Camwood777, Hoanganhminh, and MeVsZombiesMeWin (aka Meyguhmein)... the last two being the most poignant in my case, seeing as how half a decade ago or so, I was going off about how I disliked their "dictatorship" as I called it. Of course, that was when I was a small fry; now, I actually have those same powers while those two are off the radar (and much better). Even still, for as much as you want to turn this into the People's Democratic Republic of Socialist Plants vs. Zombies Wiki Union, I do not want this wiki to return to the battlefield that was the wiki of back then. We referred to it many times in the staff Discord, which you are in. Also, no I don't want it to be the "People's Democratic Republic of Socialist Plants vs. Zombies Wiki Union". In fact, I wanted to return it to democracy after a while with a better voting system personally. Also, people have found loopholes in the rules to get away with abusing voting privileges. We also do talk to users about it but it's ignored too often. The third point you made I can kinda get around though which is why I want there to be some moderation about it and that people's opinions should be taken into account when deciding things. I also notice a lot of staff voting subjectively as well, which is caused by regular users voting them in subjectively allowing them to do so. Sometimes, users don't know what exactly is best for them. I'm not claiming I do but I want to at least try to see how it ends up in the long-term.