Forum:Questions about our VFS system

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Note: This topic has been unedited for 5497 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over.

Serious business warning: Serious business below.

In the past I haven't paid much attention to the system by which users are made into administrators. But a couple of questions have come to my mind.

From VFS:

• The first 10 days of a month (1st - 10th), current ops have a vote to see if we need more ops.^†
• The next 2 days (48 hours) of a month (11th and the 12th), any users can nominate users for oppage (not yourself you egotistical jerk!), but not vote. Hold your horses there.
• The next 8 days (13th - 20th) support up to three people for oppage (op votes count double in this vote).^∆
• The following 8 days of a month (21st - 29th), current ops take the users with at least 50% of the leader and vote on who to op. Each op gets two votes apiece. Stacking these votes is not allowed. In the event of a tie in this round, the candidate with more user votes than the other gets oppage.
• The last day of the months with 31 days, current ops play Russian Roulette to see who gets de-opped. (Zombiebaron goes first with 6 bullets)

Firstly, how did this system come to be? I imagine that I joined the wiki after VFS was created, and I'm curious about what led either the community or the administration at the time to come up with this particular system. I imagine there's some sort of history.

Second, and here's the serious business part: I notice that the decision on whether to op is largely up to the existing administration. A vote is carried out first among admins to decide whether it is necessary to make any more poor souls into sysops. A short nomination period is carried out, and then users vote on whoever is nominated. After that nominations are closed and the sysops themselves vote, and new administrators if any are selected from the results of the final round of votes.

What if a situation were to arise in which the community in general wanted new sysop(s) and VFS was closed? Because the VFS page is locked except during user voting in the middle of the month, people cannot be nominated or considered for the position until admins have given any noms the OK by unlocking the page. What if there were some users who thought "Hey, we should probably get a couple more sysops in place because fucknuts like Bambifan101 and the spambots have been hitting the wiki and there's not always an op around nowadays for Instant Bannification"? Or something like that. You know. (By the way, I'm not accusing our current administration of Teh Power Abuse or anything like that. These are just honest questions.) But yeah, do we, like, strive to have as few sysops as possible on here? If so, why?

Final question: What criteria are used to determine whether or not new sysops are needed?

This thread brought to you by the Obama administration, which knows all about transparency. --Andorin Kato 03:42, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

1. This system came about because we didn't want a fixed timescale in which people would expect a new sysop vote. It was changed so that we would only start one up when people generally felt we needed it.
2. In that situation, one would hope that the current sysops would notice the need for more admins - backlogs at VFDs, Ban Patrol, or the feature not getting updated often enough. If not, someone could point these out somewhere and ask if a vote could be started. I think rather than "as few as possible", the mentality is "only as many as are needed".
3. The criteria are basically whether or not any of the current sysops feel like we need any more. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 04:06, 02 Dec 2009

We have had a few issues like that lately, now that you mention it. There were at least three instances last month when the FQ was empty, one of which was just the other night. And then there are issues like this- vandalism attacks that persist and persist because nobody is around to block the vandals. There have been lots of times when I'm watching Recent Changes, a vandal pops up and starts messing with things, and there are no admins in IRC to deal with it. Sometimes I am able to check RC to see if an admin has edited recently (usually Modus, for some reason) and post a heads-up on their talk page that we need them to help with an idiot or two. Sometimes that doesn't work, though, and you end up with situations such as the aforelinked thread.

Right now there is an unblocked IP who certainly deserves a banning and is listed on Ban Patrol and everything. He was constantly making crap edits and creating crap articles and because no admins were online to stop him, he just kept going until, for whatever reason, he stopped himself. Now, usually I can make RAHB (or sometimes zim or gwax or MoneySign or whoever) do whatever needs to be done, but they aren't always in IRC. I don't know as much about clearing out VFD and the feature queue, because what I do is primarily antivandalism. But I know enough about antivnadalism to think that, because we allow anonymous editing and are a parody wiki, it'd be a good idea to always have at least one sysop around to deal with troublemakers. Currently that is not always the case. --Andorin Kato 04:23, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Yep... as I type this, there's a blanker on the wiki and, yup, no administrators around to deal with him. Just another example. --Andorin Kato 06:44, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

As a regular witness to Andorin's tireless efforts on IRC, I fully support what he's saying. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! 07:00, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

He has tires - but he really does stuff. -- Style  Guide 19:45, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

This is why what you say is not necessarily correct. It is 100% impossible to have an administrator online at all times. Believe me, we've tried it a number of times. Every VFS we say "well it would be a good idea to get someone from a less active time zone", and sometimes it works, but it just doesn't hold up 24/7. There are going to be spots where admins aren't online. We're going to have to deal with that. Which is exactly why we have pages like ban patrol and QVFD. They exist so that if an administrator is not around while those issues are happening, the administrator can catch up later and deal with it then. There's nothing people do to this website that an admin can't undo with the click of a few buttons, and so whether they're an hour late getting there or not will not change the fact that it gets taken care of in the end. More administrators is also hardly the answer because the more helpful regular users suddenly are not doing regular user things like reporting vandalism, if they all get opped and start doing sysop things. These are just a couple of the reason why we only have as many admins as necessary. I must go now, as fifteen windows on my screen are blinking orange. -RAHB 08:02, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

What he said. Also, admins you haven't seen for a while can sometimes drop by and surprise you by actually doing stuff. Not this time, though. I'm doing nothing until I get my internet back at home. Then I'm gonna ban the lot of you - that should take care of everything. --UU - natter 09:12, Dec 2

RAHB already took care of that. --Andorin Kato 09:14, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Nah, I'm talkin' individually. Personally. And alphabetically. Of course, it'll be a long-winded process, and I might get bored after, say, names starting with "And", but the intention is good. --UU - natter 09:26, Dec 2

Jesus Christ, there are a lot of users whose names start with "And". --Andorin Kato 09:31, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Which is why I'll probably tire after banning them all. Duh. --UU - natter 10:15, Dec 2

Any my two shekels: the FQ should never be an indication as of if we need or we don't need new admins. Most of the time, this month, we didn't have an everyday feature because there were 7 articles on VFH each of them with less than 10 votes. As with the vandals - I'm just following up on what RAHB said. Totally agree with him. The normal indication we'd use is - is VFD clogged? Is QVFD clogged? is the maintenance (ICU/WIP) clogged? Are there are hours long vandal sprees? I think the answers for all of those is no. You'll always have the odd vandal that will find the time window in which we're not present, having more admins will not prevent that. This is why we have rollback users. We've also limited page moves for new users and allowed rollbacks to repress page moves - anyone noticed there aren't anymore page move vandals? And last, I think everyone forgot about this fella - that everyone can use his JS to counter vandalism. ~ 10:13, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, both of those last two things you said are incredibly nifty things I didn't know about. Just thought I'd mention that, I guess....soooooooooo, yeeeeeeeaaaaahhh... -RAHB 00:36, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

Theory no. 1

My theory is that they are only 200,000 users with 25,000 articles, being exceeded by 1,000,000 visitors. They came here, but then they fucked off becuase we are savages. Compared to Wikipedia, which has 11,000,000 users and 3,000,000 articles, we ar pretty small. But we are growing quickly. |Si Plebius Dato' (Sir) Joe ang Kemador CUN|IC Kill | 04:42, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

What does this have to do with the topic at hand? ie, I'm sure you have a point, but I don't see it myself. --Andorin Kato 04:48, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Cue "Point? Who said anything about a point?" • • • Necropaxx (T) {~} Wednesday, 07:43, Dec 2 2009

Joe is just a senile old ex-marine reliving his glory days through the internet. Something about revolutions and numbers and...uh...Roosevelt. -RAHB 08:06, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

I'm always voting to get more admins, but nobody listens to me and all the current admins are stupid jerks.

Also, Andorin Kato for admin! Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 08:59, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Is it just me, or could this whole forum be a clever plot to ensure that Andorin gets opped? Hmm? Hmmmm? *waggles eyebrows* • • • Necropaxx (T) {~} Wednesday, 09:10, Dec 2 2009

Can you have an Admin on probation or with an electronic collar to see how they go ? Perhaps inactive Admins should be revoked or is it a job for life here ?? --RomArtus*Imperator ® (Orate) 10:10, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Wrong phrase. Try "life sentence". --UU - natter 10:15, Dec 2

UN:AA. ~ 10:16, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Electronic collars? They told me I got that by special request! That's the last time I ever sleep at this bed and breakfast... -RAHB 00:39, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

Time to vote!

Vote:

You are not entitled to vote.
You are not entitled to view results of this poll.

Andorin for Admin

More pron

Pie

Savings

Profit

Comedy option

Andorin for Admin

There were 0 votes since the poll was created on 16:38, 6 June 2021.

poll-id 55C94622F60A56B2C01BB24A2A330C24

-OptyC Sucks! CUN20:20, 2 Dec

The poll was created at on 13 , and so far $3 people voted. Awesome. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 00:45, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

More Prawn!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! 00:49, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

That's what I voted. You can't say no to moar pr0nz. --Andorin Kato 00:50, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

What in God's name is going on here.... -RAHB 00:55, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

Didn't you see Terminator Salvation? Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 00:58, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

No, actually. Is it out on dvd yet? -OptyC Sucks! CUN00:59, 3 Dec

Probably. I haven't seen it. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 04:43, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

I did saw it. I wanna become a prawn. Joe for admin! |Si Plebius Dato' (Sir) Joe ang Kemador CUN|IC Kill | 06:57, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

That's completely possible, depending on your definitions of "admin", "for", and "Joe". • Spang • ☃ • talk • 22:12, 03 Dec 2009

"Joe" means coffee, "for" means for, and "admin" means OptyC. -OptyC Sucks! CUN23:17, 3 Dec

Fook! FOOK! People exploding! Now you've all seen District 9. - T.L.B. WotM, UotM, FPrize, AotM, ANotM, PLS, UN:HS, GUN 03:13, Dec 4

My favorite part was where they fly on the bicycle. --Hotadmin4u69 ^[TALK] 12:27 Dec 4 2009

No way. The best part was the light cycles scene. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 14:03, December 4, 2009 (UTC)

I cried when he had to shoot Old Yeller -OptyC Sucks! CUN16:24, 4 Dec