RfA Blurb
Hi, Wikia. I would like to become a central sysop because I see great potential for a collaborative project that I would like to be a bigger part of. I am currently an administrator for 
FFXIclopedia, which was recently brought to Wikia. I admit I had my doubts about it at first, but after seeing how helpful the staff and techs have been working out the kinks and offering their assistance in making the transition as smooth and quickly as possible(especially during a scary wheel war of 3 admin accounts that were compromised), and neat MediaWiki features Wikia offered that we never thought of, my thoughts about Wikia were a complete turnaround. I have thousands of edits worth of experience creating new content, formatting existing content, patrolling recent changes for vandalism and policy/template compliance, participating in countless deletion and move request discussions and resolving them as well. I'm always coming up with new and creative ways to improve articles, templates, or designing interface messages for maximum convenience. I am always on #wikia and #cvn-wikia and offer my input and assistance to the best of my ability. I feel tight-knit communication with the community(ies) is(are) vital to the success of any wiki and I feel I can better this hub of wikia with my creativity, patrolling and admin experience, and assisting the staff in any way I can. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don't hesitate to bring it up and I would gladly answer any inquiries. Thank you for your time in reading my RfA :) --User? 04:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Support
Oppose
- Too few Central contributions, in my opinion. Try again after spending a bit of time around the place :) -- Manticore Talk | Contributions 07:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
- Is that the only reason? The aforementioned qualifications written at the top of this article do not require a specific number of edits. Edit count should be irrelevant, it's the quality of existing edits and the potential for growth. At least that's the case with 4 users listed here promoted using this process, 2 of which have even less than I do. --User? 18:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
- I didn't say "edits", I said "contributions". You've been here for a little over a month, so quite frankly, I don't trust you yet. -- Manticore Talk | Contributions 08:04, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry, I use "edits" and "contributions" interchangeably, matter of opinion I suppose. The requirements listed above say nothing about the quantity of "contributions" anyway. I'm applying per my original post above, that should more than cover for #1. I'm an admin on FFXIclopedia, and I am well aware of how to use and not to use the admin tools. As for #4 I waited til it felt about right, based on the interaction with others in #wikia. It feels wrong to be opposed on the grounds of which previous admins promoted with a similar number of contributions, one of which the majority were in the userspace. --User? 15:26, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- I didn't say "edits", I said "contributions". You've been here for a little over a month, so quite frankly, I don't trust you yet. -- Manticore Talk | Contributions 08:04, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Is that the only reason? The aforementioned qualifications written at the top of this article do not require a specific number of edits. Edit count should be irrelevant, it's the quality of existing edits and the potential for growth. At least that's the case with 4 users listed here promoted using this process, 2 of which have even less than I do. --User? 18:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
- As per Manticore, not enough contributions overall and lack of experience, might want to try in a few months or so..--Cometstyles 10:23, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- Lack of what experience? There is nothing I don't know about MediaWiki functionality or the admin tools. And I am well aware of Wikia policy and guidelines. I can also distinct between a "i dunno what im doing edit" and a "bad faith edit" and provide the proper guidance depending on the situation. I wouldn't apply for something that would be over my head or that I wouldn't be able to take responsibility for. For both of you, or anyone else interested, feel free to chat with me on IRC about any uncertainties you have. --User? 15:26, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- I think it's rather obnoxious of you to say you know everything about MediaWiki and the admin tools, especially because as a JRSysop at FFXI, by your own admission, you don't have access to all the tools normal administrators do. -- Manticore Talk | Contributions 15:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
- I'm just defending myself, and the only difference between the two is one can block and the other cannot as well as MediaWiki: edit rights. Although I have inputted on a few interface changes as I mentioned above. Regardless, and per Dantman's comments, just because I have access to the sitewide JS, AWB/MWB access lists, etc doesn't mean I will be utilizing them, nor do I have any desire to do so. It's not obnoxious, even if I had no tools at all doesn't mean I wouldn't know how to (and how not to) use them, with the exception of javascript. You want to quiz me? The reason I applied was how Dantman so eloquently described it, a sysop flag. I was interested in watching and making sure edits are in good faith and differentiate between those that are not and those that aren't sure what they're doing, and guide them in the right direction. If your primary concern is the integrity of the site interface, make a group that doesn't have access to it, no skin off my nose. On that note, the volume of distrust and paranoia in this RfA is unnerving. I'm putting myself on the line here. Anything I would do here reflects on Ganiman and the FFXIclopedia community. You're making a deal out of something that's not a big deal. As cheesy as it sounds referencing it, it's true. This is something I'm offering to do in my spare time to help you guys out. I'm not sure why you or I are commenting further anyway, this was technically supposed to end 3 days ago, despite not more than 3 members of the community having a chance to input. I'd think if it was such a big concern there would be a lot more people among the 40~ staff, the 20~ sysops, or anyone else in the community voicing their opinion. This isn't exactly a snowball here. --Charitwo 05:18, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
- Sysop works differently here on Wikia than it does on Wikipedia. Like I said, there are a lot of global things that access is given to just by getting a Sysop flag. And fyi, it's not possible in base MediaWiki to create a group that doesn't have access to that but can act like a sysop (90% of the control pages in question are not in the MediaWiki namespace), furthermore it's not worth the effort of the techs to do something like that because there is no great demand for Sysops here. In a case like this, what Wikipedia states about admins has absolutely no relevance. Just to help you understand why here are a few of the many reasons; Every wiki does administration in it's own way, Wikipedia does it it's way, Uncyclopedia does it it's own way, same for all the other Wikia wiki, and the Central Wikia does things in it's own way to. Furthermore a Wikipedia Sysop is not equivalent to a Central Wikia sysop. Our sysops have access to things that Sysops on Wikipedia don't have access to, if Wikipedia gave Sysops the same access to things that Sysops have access to on the Central Wikia then it to would be considered a big deal to them. Becoming a Sysop on the Central Wikia is about the same level as becoming a Bureaucrat on Wikipedia, and that is a big deal. You are also misinterpreting the numper of staff and Sysops we have here. True that there are 40~ staff on Special:Listusers/staff, but some of those are bots, and a large number of techs are there, only the Community Team staff members actually come here to the Central Wikia which gives you a grand total of 8 staff members who only oversee this process and don't often comment on the process, the determination of if someone is accepted is if the current Sysops and active community members accept and trust that user enough for them to be a Sysop. Then as for the Sysops on Special:Listusers/sysop it's true that there are 20~ Sysops on the list, but 40% of those Sysops are staff, one is a former staff member, and 20% of those are users who are already trusted enough to have powers like janitor and lookupcontribs so a mere Sysop tag doesn't mean very much at all. The actual total number of Sysops we have is listed on this page under #List of administrators, and if you compare the list of users here listed as admin with the actual list, you'll see that there are only 7 Sysops which we have that aren't extremely trusted or hired by Wikia. Sysop is a very tight-knit group on Central Wikia, it's not like Wikipedia where you can have them by the dozens. Wikipedia is a large encyclopedia which requires many Sysops to oversee the many thousands of users editing articles. But Central Wikia is only a small encyclopedia with the purpose of managing the Wikia community, there are no mass articles for Sysops to oversee, the current amount of Sysops and Staff we have is already enough to stop all the vandalism that ever comes here, and Sysops here have more power than sysops on Wikipedia. So as you can see, unlike Wikipedia our need for Sysops is much less, and because of that we can tightly-knit our Sysops together into a small effective group which unlike Wikipedia does not have conflicts with each other and split into factions on an issue. All of our Sysops are extremely trusted, thoroughly know our rules policies and how we do things, and on most any issue that will arise we'll all agree on the same general action on an issue. You getting Sysop depends on the current sysops and active community members considering you a good candidate and giving support, and you've got 3 active members of the community (1 sysop) opposing you and absolutely no support. If you were a good candidate, then someone would actually support you. But we see no such support. If a RfA is debatable, then 90% of the time it will be rejected. And this is highly debatable. ~NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Oct 11, 2007 @ 22:44 (UTC)
- While your concerns are valid and I see where you are coming from, I still stand by my point that just because I'd have access to these global features doesn't mean I will use them. Just because a *insert occupation here* has access to *insert privileged rights/access/features/etc* doesn't mean that they will or have a use for all of them. I have not and never will have a need to utilize these global features when there are already people that maintain them quite well. Area of responsibility is a good reference. --Charitwo 02:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
- Even if you say you aren't going to use it, it doesn't change the fact that we still have to trust you not to screw with them. And even referencing areas you are responsible for elsewhere doesn't matter because those things are not our things, and while you have been with them long enough to be trusted with those areas, you have not been with us long enough for us to trust you with such areas.
- Take it this way: You recently hire a construction worker who had access to a backhoe but never abused it, into your gun shop and he gives you that as a reference, even though he says he'll never use it or abuse it, do you give him the keys to the sealed gun shelves? Hell NO!!!
- If you want to give a good reason, then answer me this; What issue is there we have on the Central Wikia do we have that giving you Sysop will solve? It sure won't solve the deletion of 7 day old
{{i}}'s, it won't solve spammed pages showing up, and it won't solve dealing with new editors who make mistakes. All of those are already handled by our current sysops quite well, adding you as a sysop won't make them dealt with any faster. - Being a Sysop on central means you are tightly-knit with the highly active members of the community. I can identify GHe, Jack_Phoenix, Manticore, Cometstyles, and a few other people being tightly-knit with the community and very helpful. But I haven't seen a good enough fraction of how close they are with the community and how helpful they are on you. And two of them aren't even Sysop here which doesn't help your standings. If you want to become a sysop, then I suggest actively watching central's RC for a few months, reverting vandalism using the undo and edit features, tagging junk for deletion and letting the current sysops handle deleting it, helping answer questions in both the forums and IRC, reading over all the policies and wandering around to see what unwritten things we follow. When you are entrenched enough in the community for people to identify you as a strong supporter of it then someone else will nominate you for a RfA. ~NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Oct 12, 2007 @ 03:44 (UTC)
- While your concerns are valid and I see where you are coming from, I still stand by my point that just because I'd have access to these global features doesn't mean I will use them. Just because a *insert occupation here* has access to *insert privileged rights/access/features/etc* doesn't mean that they will or have a use for all of them. I have not and never will have a need to utilize these global features when there are already people that maintain them quite well. Area of responsibility is a good reference. --Charitwo 02:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
- Sysop works differently here on Wikia than it does on Wikipedia. Like I said, there are a lot of global things that access is given to just by getting a Sysop flag. And fyi, it's not possible in base MediaWiki to create a group that doesn't have access to that but can act like a sysop (90% of the control pages in question are not in the MediaWiki namespace), furthermore it's not worth the effort of the techs to do something like that because there is no great demand for Sysops here. In a case like this, what Wikipedia states about admins has absolutely no relevance. Just to help you understand why here are a few of the many reasons; Every wiki does administration in it's own way, Wikipedia does it it's way, Uncyclopedia does it it's own way, same for all the other Wikia wiki, and the Central Wikia does things in it's own way to. Furthermore a Wikipedia Sysop is not equivalent to a Central Wikia sysop. Our sysops have access to things that Sysops on Wikipedia don't have access to, if Wikipedia gave Sysops the same access to things that Sysops have access to on the Central Wikia then it to would be considered a big deal to them. Becoming a Sysop on the Central Wikia is about the same level as becoming a Bureaucrat on Wikipedia, and that is a big deal. You are also misinterpreting the numper of staff and Sysops we have here. True that there are 40~ staff on Special:Listusers/staff, but some of those are bots, and a large number of techs are there, only the Community Team staff members actually come here to the Central Wikia which gives you a grand total of 8 staff members who only oversee this process and don't often comment on the process, the determination of if someone is accepted is if the current Sysops and active community members accept and trust that user enough for them to be a Sysop. Then as for the Sysops on Special:Listusers/sysop it's true that there are 20~ Sysops on the list, but 40% of those Sysops are staff, one is a former staff member, and 20% of those are users who are already trusted enough to have powers like janitor and lookupcontribs so a mere Sysop tag doesn't mean very much at all. The actual total number of Sysops we have is listed on this page under #List of administrators, and if you compare the list of users here listed as admin with the actual list, you'll see that there are only 7 Sysops which we have that aren't extremely trusted or hired by Wikia. Sysop is a very tight-knit group on Central Wikia, it's not like Wikipedia where you can have them by the dozens. Wikipedia is a large encyclopedia which requires many Sysops to oversee the many thousands of users editing articles. But Central Wikia is only a small encyclopedia with the purpose of managing the Wikia community, there are no mass articles for Sysops to oversee, the current amount of Sysops and Staff we have is already enough to stop all the vandalism that ever comes here, and Sysops here have more power than sysops on Wikipedia. So as you can see, unlike Wikipedia our need for Sysops is much less, and because of that we can tightly-knit our Sysops together into a small effective group which unlike Wikipedia does not have conflicts with each other and split into factions on an issue. All of our Sysops are extremely trusted, thoroughly know our rules policies and how we do things, and on most any issue that will arise we'll all agree on the same general action on an issue. You getting Sysop depends on the current sysops and active community members considering you a good candidate and giving support, and you've got 3 active members of the community (1 sysop) opposing you and absolutely no support. If you were a good candidate, then someone would actually support you. But we see no such support. If a RfA is debatable, then 90% of the time it will be rejected. And this is highly debatable. ~NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Oct 11, 2007 @ 22:44 (UTC)
- I'm just defending myself, and the only difference between the two is one can block and the other cannot as well as MediaWiki: edit rights. Although I have inputted on a few interface changes as I mentioned above. Regardless, and per Dantman's comments, just because I have access to the sitewide JS, AWB/MWB access lists, etc doesn't mean I will be utilizing them, nor do I have any desire to do so. It's not obnoxious, even if I had no tools at all doesn't mean I wouldn't know how to (and how not to) use them, with the exception of javascript. You want to quiz me? The reason I applied was how Dantman so eloquently described it, a sysop flag. I was interested in watching and making sure edits are in good faith and differentiate between those that are not and those that aren't sure what they're doing, and guide them in the right direction. If your primary concern is the integrity of the site interface, make a group that doesn't have access to it, no skin off my nose. On that note, the volume of distrust and paranoia in this RfA is unnerving. I'm putting myself on the line here. Anything I would do here reflects on Ganiman and the FFXIclopedia community. You're making a deal out of something that's not a big deal. As cheesy as it sounds referencing it, it's true. This is something I'm offering to do in my spare time to help you guys out. I'm not sure why you or I are commenting further anyway, this was technically supposed to end 3 days ago, despite not more than 3 members of the community having a chance to input. I'd think if it was such a big concern there would be a lot more people among the 40~ staff, the 20~ sysops, or anyone else in the community voicing their opinion. This isn't exactly a snowball here. --Charitwo 05:18, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
- I think it's rather obnoxious of you to say you know everything about MediaWiki and the admin tools, especially because as a JRSysop at FFXI, by your own admission, you don't have access to all the tools normal administrators do. -- Manticore Talk | Contributions 15:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
So when is this going to be closed, going on two weeks now. O_o As interesting as Dantman's diatribe(s) and anecdotes are, it's sounding like a broken record now. "Charitwo will go donkey kong on the globals" We get it. --Charitwo 05:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
- Guess I half to come in and clear up the misunderstandings and misinterpretation.
- Firstly, that set of 4 things at the top is nothing. That's just there as the general guide to stop dozens of users who shouldn't be applying in the first place. That's not really even considered when it comes to nomination, overall it's what the community feels about you as a user. Consensus over a static list of requirements in otherwords.
- It doesn't matter how much you know about policies and stuff from past experiences, every new wiki you go to has a different set of policies, and a different way of doing things. Even if you know the general things from being an admin on the FFXIclopedia you are still a newbie here because you have not been around long enough to absorb how we do things here.
- Edits don't really matter, what matters is a familiarity with the community and many Wikia. You may have been admin on one wiki, but you haven't been around to to many others. Even if you see an admin who may not have had many edits here, they most likely were admin on a number of other Wikia wiki, and did a lot of their help for Wikia on all of those wiki.
- You're still a new user here: You came from a freshly added wiki and haven't been around for very many months (Look at me, I wasn't RfA'd till I had been here for 9 months), You're only a JRSysop there, you haven't been admin on very many other wiki and thus have not seen the many different ways of administering wiki that are used on the many wiki around here.
- Central Sysop isn't just another type of sysop flag. It gives us access to the Spam blacklist, Interwiki map, the Image and url filters, the Global JS, and the access lists for the AWB and MWB tools. People who get sysop here are active users who are solidly integrated into the community and completely trusted with few doubts.
- Take a look at the past RfA's, the major factor you'll see in people getting Sysop here was either no-one had a reason to oppose it and everyone supported it (Like you'll see in mine and GHe's RfA's), someone else was the one to do the RfA because they were active in the community and felt that they were highly trusted and there was a good reason for them to be sysop, or any opposition had easy reasons that calmed the people opposing. If you have a lot of opposition, then generally the community does not trust you enough, which as you'll remember is #4 in that list up there you were mentioning.
- Just something off the note, but you do know that you are using a Signature template!? That was discussed in the forums here, and it's something that overall is frowned upon. That does show that you have not been familiarized with a lot of the things we do around here.
- ~NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Oct 7, 2007 @ 16:41 (UTC)
- Removing it here will remove it on FFXIclopedia, and not having the subpages will result in an unlinked signature. Which is why I made those. We have it like that so talk pages are cleaner without a mess of signature markup. So I guess I'll put up with typing out my userpage and 5 tildes making talk edits here. --Charitwo 05:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)