To contact staff directly or to report bugs, please use Special:Contact.
The discussion
Prompted from a discussion at Forum:Is_this_a_personal_attack_or_what?#bystander_opinion.
What do people think of volunteer users given Wikia staff-like powers that operate without any special identification? Should they be identified in some way similar to how staff are identified? Are they "normal everyday users" but at the same time "trusted users who have been given sysop-tools across the whole of Wikia" as asserted by Charitwo (who happens to be one of these "normal everyday users")?
Several people probably already know my opinion, but I can re-iterate it if needed. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:34 PM PST 4 Dec 2010
- You did blow up my mind with this one Fandyllic. Why did I never thought about that before? It's a good question.--Station7 23:06, December 4, 2010 (UTC)
- VSTF lists them quite well, tbh -- RandomTime 01:15, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- But then again, there's the Helper_Group - which seems to fluctuate, and it's hard to keep track of some of those people 01:17, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- VSTF lists them quite well, tbh -- RandomTime 01:15, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- Oh, there’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years. You’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint, and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
- -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:37 PM PST 4 Dec 2010
- You can also see them listed at Special:ListUsers/vstf on every Wikia wiki; their rights are listed on Special:ListGroupRights. --◄mendel► 11:28, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- IMHO, not only should they be visually tagged in their signature,
- But also: non-paid wikia staff should never be given powers in positions that (could) have impact across whole wikia!
- Because we now all can see what the consequences are.
- Sure the VSTF has its purpose and need for the community, but access to those tools and features should be made automatically available to all admins of the wiki's on wikia.
- That way it will become and stay a real democratically run feature, where "power-hungry" abusers can't do permanent damage...
⇐⇑©TriMoon™TalkHandyWikiLinks @ 21:55, December 5, 2010 (UTC)- I am not paid, but I hold bureaucrat and sysop powers on my wiki and can have impact acorss my whole wiki (130,000 pages). Wikia trusts the VSTF people as much as they do their staff, and you can see they're down with what they do because they keep holding the positions. Being paid or not has nothing to do with that. --◄mendel► 00:26, December 6, 2010 (UTC)
- Lets make one thing clear here: VSTF is wikia staff, official or not, paid or not, they have the powers to overrule the highest status of any customer can have...
⇐⇑©TriMoon™TalkHandyWikiLinks @ 01:13, December 6, 2010 (UTC)
- Lets make one thing clear here: VSTF is wikia staff, official or not, paid or not, they have the powers to overrule the highest status of any customer can have...
- I am not paid, but I hold bureaucrat and sysop powers on my wiki and can have impact acorss my whole wiki (130,000 pages). Wikia trusts the VSTF people as much as they do their staff, and you can see they're down with what they do because they keep holding the positions. Being paid or not has nothing to do with that. --◄mendel► 00:26, December 6, 2010 (UTC)
Big list of stuff
What both VSTF and Helpers can do
- Block a user from sending e-mail (blockemail)
- Block other users from editing (block)
- Bypass IP blocks, auto-blocks and range blocks (ipblock-exempt)
- Change protection levels and edit protected pages (protect)
- Create discussion pages (createtalk)
- Create pages (which are not discussion pages) (createpage)
- Delete many pages at one Wikia, or one page on many Wikia (multidelete)
- Delete pages (delete)
- Delete pages with large histories (bigdelete)
- Edit semi-protected pages (autoconfirmed)
- Edit the user interface (editinterface)
- Have one's own edits automatically marked as patrolled (autopatrol)
- Limit actions that can be preformed for some groups for a limited time (protectsite)
- Mark rolled-back edits as bot edits (markbotedits)
- Move files (movefile)
- Move pages (move)
- Move pages with their subpages (move-subpages)
- Move root user pages (move-rootuserpages)
- Not be affected by rate limits (noratelimit)
- Not create redirects from source pages when moving pages (suppressredirect)
- Override files on the shared media repository locally (reupload-shared)
- Overwrite existing files (reupload)
- Quickly rollback the edits of the last user who edited a particular page (rollback)
- Remove a user's avatar icon (removeavatar)
- Remove messages from the ShoutBox widget (shoutboxremove)
- Undelete a page (undelete)
- Use higher limits in API queries (apihighlimits)
- View IP actions across all Wikia (multilookup)
- View deleted history entries, without their associated text (deletedhistory)
- View user edits across all Wikia (lookupcontribs)
- commentdelete (commentdelete)
- multiwikifinder (multiwikifinder)
- phalanx (phalanx)
- phalanxexempt (phalanxexempt)
- Add groups: rollback and Bots
- Remove groups: rollback and Bots
What helpers can do but VSTF can't
- Bypass automatic blocks of proxies (proxyunbannable)
- Delete comments on blog articles (blog-comments-delete)
- Edit a page on many wikis at once (multiwikiedit)
- Edit blog articles (blog-articles-edit)
- Edit other users' CSS and JavaScript files (editusercssjs)
- Edit pages (edit)
- Import pages from a file upload (importupload)
- Import pages from other wikis (import)
- InterwikiEdit (InterwikiEdit)
- Mark others' edits as patrolled (patrol)
- Move blog articles (blog-articles-move)
- Search deleted pages (browsearchive)
- Submit a trackback (trackback)
- Toggle comments on blog articles (blog-comments-toggle)
- Upload files (upload)
- Upload files from a URL (upload_by_url)
- View a list of unwatched pages (unwatchedpages)
- blog-articles-protect (blog-articles-protect)
- createwikilimitsexempt (createwikilimitsexempt)
- plbmanager (plbmanager)
- themedesigner (themedesigner)
- Add groups: Administrators and Bureaucrats
- Remove groups: Administrators and Bureaucrats
What VSTF can do but Helpers can't
- Block other users from editing across all Wikia (regexblock)
- Block text from pages and edit summaries across all Wikia (spamregex)
- Check user's IP addresses and other information (checkuser)
- Delete and undelete specific revisions of pages (deleterevision)
- Mass delete pages (nuke)
- Perform captcha triggering actions without having to go through the captcha (skipcaptcha)
- According to that, then Charitwo broke the rules by editing the user's personal css/js file, and should have his hand slapped and be told not to do it again. Resa1983 13:54, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- What mendel posted is what each group has the technical ability to do, not what they should or should not do. As VSTF, I don't have the ability to edit others personal css/js. But as a Central local admin I do, and his attack edit summary was removed under that purview. --User? 16:52, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- What would you do when i let my global.js file load its contents on the wiki i administer with same content you removed?
⇐⇑©TriMoon™TalkHandyWikiLinks @ 21:24, December 5, 2010 (UTC)- Are you referring to your wikEd summary or the offensive summary you added later? If the first, it wouldn't matter because your global JS loads everywhere, and you edit on quite a few wikis, hence the global edit summary. If it were the latter, I'd still remove it. If it was a local JS page (e.g. Special:MyPage/wikia.js or Special:MyPage/monobook.js ), and I was not a local admin, then it would not be my place to remove it. --User? 21:57, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- What would you do when i let my global.js file load its contents on the wiki i administer with same content you removed?
- What mendel posted is what each group has the technical ability to do, not what they should or should not do. As VSTF, I don't have the ability to edit others personal css/js. But as a Central local admin I do, and his attack edit summary was removed under that purview. --User? 16:52, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- According to that, then Charitwo broke the rules by editing the user's personal css/js file, and should have his hand slapped and be told not to do it again. Resa1983 13:54, December 5, 2010 (UTC)
- So because you're automatically an admin on all wiki's with your current privelidges, it would mean you would do it again in same way as you did now. Being it your place to remove it or not...
⇐⇑©TriMoon™TalkHandyWikiLinks @ 01:01, December 6, 2010 (UTC)
- So because you're automatically an admin on all wiki's with your current privelidges, it would mean you would do it again in same way as you did now. Being it your place to remove it or not...
- That's not what he said. Being a local admin is different to having privileges on a wiki that grant the same powers. However, as the global.js file has effect on all Wikia-hosted wikis, including this one, it has to comply with all policies. And frankly, if you're using an automated edit summary to harass groups or individuals, you shouldn't expect it to stick around. No administrator is required to tolerate a terms of service violation just because it's aimed at them. --GreenReaper(talk) 01:14, December 8, 2010 (UTC)
TriMoon, there are important reasons why Wikia can't just go around just giving every tool available to VSTF to admins. Some of those tools (such as checkuser) reveal very private information - IPs can be used to identify the very location of users, and can cause a lot of damage if left in the wrong hands. Deleterevision, if abused, can be used to cover up misconduct. Since just creating a wiki makes a user a bureaucrat and admin of that wiki, one can understand that it's not a good idea to give these tools to local admins by default. VSTF have made legal agreements with Wikia as volunteers, and so they can be trusted with use of these tools.
I have never seen a VSTF member try to "overrule" local admins, or try to to do their jobs for them. VSTF members are specifically instructed not to engage of conflict with local admins. What you have seen is a VSTF member, Charit, trying to do his task as best as he possibly can, following the Terms of Use. That VSTF member also happens to be a local admin on this wiki, which means that it is perfectly within reason for him to enforce the policies of this wiki. That extends, of course, to user CSS/JS pages.
I advise you to try to keep an open mind and understand the purpose of the VSTF before quickly assuming that they must be "power-hungry abusers" that can be made redundant. :) The 888th Avatar (talk) 10:46, December 6, 2010 (UTC)