UESPWiki talk:Administrators

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Staying up-to-date

Small point, but does Aristeo still have the roles described in Other Administrative Roles? Rpeh 15:07, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

He no longer has check user, but still has cartographer and map. That's not really an admin role, but he probably should be removed from it. (In fact, for simplicity, I should be removed from cartographer and map as well since I've never done any work on the map.) --Wrye 16:31, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

I haven't either, though I could if I wanted to. Thing is, there's already about as much done on the map as there's likely to ever be need for, so that privelege isn't so important anymore. I have no real problem with it, I just doubt I'm likely to excercise those rights any time soon. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 18:21, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

Thought for another role

I just had a thought for another administrative role that might take some of the burden off of Patrollers, if it's something that's doable: a "Trusted User" role. Such a user would have the ability to mark their own changes as patrolled (or perhaps would automatically be marked as patrolled), but not anybody else's. Failing that, it could also be implemented as a flag that could be filtered during patrolling instead (i.e., less-important to patrol). The point of such a role would be to allow people with a consistent history of good grammar, spelling, and general editing to not require patrolling.

Would this be doable? If so, would it be desirable? --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 01:26, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

I'm sure it's technically possible, (though it would require some code-wrangling by Daveh, who's usually too busy with other things to do much of that) but I really don't see why we'd need it. If somebody is trusted enough that their edits don't need to be patrolled, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't also trust them to patrol other people's edits. Adding another layer of bureaucracy doesn't really seem worth it for just that. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 01:40, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

The only reason I was suggesting it is because becoming a Patroller implies (requires?) that you regularly monitor the Recent Changes list and take action on it. That's something that many people (okay, that means me...but probably others as well) might not be interested in doing on a regular basis. If there were some kind of "infrequent patroller" position, that might be more to my taste. ;) Actually, thinking about it, that would be essentially a "non-position" in the sense that it wouldn't require any changes to the existing administrative structure, it could simply be marked on the Patrollers' page (if at all) to distinguish between those who patrol regularly and those who patrol infrequently, or only monitor certain pages, etc. Someone (you?) mentioned in another discussion that there was a need for more patrollers, so that's what prompted me to think of the Trusted User role, and now the Infrequent Patroller role. :) --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 11:44, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Well, checking Recent Changes is not necessarily a requirement for Patrollers, it's just the easiest way for us to see if somebody is qualified for the position. An editor with a history of good constructive edits (particularly correcting grammar/spelling, and fact-checking, cleaning up, and otherwise improving existing pages, as opposed to creating new ones) is usually a good candidate for Patroller, but it's not like you've got to punch a clock and patrol X pages per day in order to keep your position - many of our Patrollers aren't very active at all anymore. Patrolling (like everything else on this or any other wiki) is purely voluntary. Right now, if you nominated yourself for Patroller, I'd say you have a fair chance of getting it, at least based on number of edits. (514 at the time of this post, mostly not in your User space, so you meet that qualification anyhow.) I think we might consider changing the language on the Patrollers page to de-stress the "you will have to watch the Recent Changes page" bit, which I think is what you seem to be worried about. You don't actually have to watch Recent Changes, it's just the best way for us to be able to gauge the quality of your edits and thus determine if you're ready for Patroller status. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 12:01, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Hint received. :Þ --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 12:09, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

This infrequent patroller/trusted editor role would hold some interest to me as well. My experience in the TES is limited to Morrowind, so patrolling other namespaces is awkward at best. Yet I do contribute a lot of edits, some of which are just minor tweaks. At times, I hold back on edits if I see there is no patroller present, so I don't flood the unpatrolled edits section. (comment predates TRL)--Benould^•T•C 12:06, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Actually, you'd probably also qualify for Patroller at this point - I was considering nominating you myself for all the MW work you've been doing (and specifically because you do so many edits, it'd be easier for the Patrolling staff if your edits were auto-patrolled as well.) Feel free to self-nominate, you'll have my vote at least. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 12:19, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Ok, I suppose that could solve the issue as well. ;) BTW, Happy Birthday, Mr. Lurlock --Benould^•T•C 13:18, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Eshe

Hi all, Should Eshe be tagged as "semi-active" as she hasn't edited in over a month. I wasn't sure how long one has to be to be "semi-active", so I thought I'd ask here first. - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 16:22, 6 June 2008 (EDT)

Eshe should be back in roughly two months. Various Real-Life activities mean she won't be around for a little while. There's no need to change her status only to change it back again though. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 18:21, 6 June 2008 (EDT)

---

A "semi-active" tag, or even an "inactive" tag is now necessary I think. Eshe hasn't edited substantially since May, her only edit in the meantime being to add a notice in June. It's now October, and Eshe still hasn't returned after an absense of 5 months now.

Even if we have to change her status back next week, I sill think we should let our users know that Eshe is currently unavailable. Having her tagged as "active" is misleading for any editor who views the Administrators page. - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 05:20, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

Yes I know. I was going to wait until three months were up. That still leaves four more days. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 05:26, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

"Inactive" seems appropriate. --Wrye 17:02, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

I agree, but I'd still like to see out those last few days. Our policies on Mentors is that somebody must have been active within three months or their name is removed from the project; one week after that, outstanding userboxes are removed from their pages. We may as well kill two birds with one stone and do both at the same time.

Since this has come up, I'll outline what I had intended to do. I was going to post on Eshe's talk page on 14 October advising her that she had been removed from the Mentor program and marked as inactive on the admin list, and that the Mentor and Admin u/bs would be removed in a week. One week after that, I'd have removed the userboxes. We don't have a precise policy in the admin case, but I hope my explanation makes it clear what I was going to do and why. Given that the situation doesn't come up very much, I'd be glad to hear of any suggestions. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 17:12, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

Re admin userbox. I'm against removing it. Whether Eshe logs in or not, she's still an admin, and though it has been proposed to auto-remove admins after a while, that proposal is not supported (some for, some against). Hence it would be inaccurate to remove the admin box.

Nor is there a problem with lack of clarity on the page. Eshe already has an "extended absence" note at the top of the page. And, checking her talk page, there doesn't seem to be a problem with people not realizing that's she's not active.

On top of this, it's pretty strongly against policy to edit a user's user page. Given enough need, sure, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

OTOH, Re mentor userbox -- I can't speak to policy on the mentoring system. If there's already a policy to remove the mentor user box, then I don't have an objection to that. --Wrye 17:42, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

Or we could extend the userbox templates for either or both of Mentor and Admin, and maybe the other admin-like statuses as well, to optionally have "(inactive)" added to the text of the box. This way, only minimal changes to the user's page are required, with no violation of the user's intention. Not sure it's necessarily the way to go, but I thought I'd throw it out there for consideration. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 17:47, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

I'm not sure why anyone thinks we need to screw with the user box. Since Eshe put up her own notice, she's only received a single message (Which wasn't even connected to her being an administrator). I don't think we need to fix what isn't broken.--Ratwar 18:13, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

Wrye (and, post edit-conflict, Ratwar) makes a fair point so I'll leave the Admin UB. He's a bit out-of-date on the user pages though - a whole load got edited recently, post-deletion review, and it happens at other times too. Whilst I would agree it should not be done on a whim, there are many occasions on which it has been done before. Keeping the site in order is more important than avoidance of toe-treading. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 18:18, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

Contribution Review

I hope this is a good place to bring this up. I was inquiring to know from any Administrator if my recent contributions were okay. All information that has been mentioned in my 2 edits are all factual. In one edit, I did notice in Miscellaneous_Items that there weren't any mentionings of items belonging to Official plug-ins. I was wondering if this was intentional or if nobody has yet to mention them. If the information isn't meant to be on that page, feel free to delete.

-- Stephanie 08:57, 3 April 2009 (EDT)Stephanie

All items from plug-ins are documented on the plug-in pages, therefore Iron Ore is documented on Unearthing Mehrunes Razor Items. As with all items in the game, the site's search feature will take you to the correct article if you're not sure where an item is described: simply type in "Iron Ore" and hit the "Go" button. The Items article also includes that advice, and explicitly states that plugin-related items are covered on their own pages.

Your other edit will be patrolled when a patroller has a chance to follow up on it -- checking on recent changes isn't specifically an admin task. Also, if you want feedback on editing, you may want to contact one of our mentors. --Nephele^Talk 11:06, 3 April 2009 (EDT)

Hmmmm?

Hi there. Even though I've just joined UESP today, I am a longtime contributor to both the English Wikipedia and the Simple English Wikipedia, and over there, Checkuser access is both highly sensitive, and potentially damaging. Are you sure that you want to allow ALL administrators to automatically have this permission? Please note that checkusers can really potentially harm someone very badly if they want to by revealing personal information such as the IP that they run from as well as (maybe) where the user is logged in from.

This is a friendly suggestion, and I really think that you should consider making the Checkuser and administrator priviledges separate instead of intertwined.

Thanks, Razorflame 09:54, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

Our Privacy Policy covers precisely this point. Wikipedia is a very different site from this one, and given the small number of administrators (let alone active ones) we all need to have the ability to prevent disruption to the site from persistent vandals. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 09:58, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

I do realize that Wikipedia is a very different place than this site. Thanks for the input. I've already read the root page of this page and found that you guys do indeed not have very many administrators, let alone active ones. Is this because you are having trouble getting suitable people for the job, or is it a matter of not many people using this site anymore? Cheers, Razorflame 10:01, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

Percentage-wise, our number of administrators isn't that different from Wikipedia -- it's just that Wikipedia is nearly 1000 times larger than UESP (in total page count, in total edits, in total contributors, and in total administrators). --Nephele^Talk 10:26, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

But are you having problems getting more administrators, or are there just not very many active users to this site? Cheers, Razorflame 10:57, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

First, if you already knew the sites were different, why did you make the comparison in the first place? Second, it would be polite not to start questioning site policies on your first day as a registered member. Third, it would also be polite not to make sarcastic replies when you get an answer to your question.

There are plenty of active users on the site, and we have as many administrators as we want. Since that number isn't high, they all get CheckUser. This wasn't always the case, but caused unnecessary bottlenecks when the one or two admins who did have it weren't around. Since our privacy policy prevents us releasing information obtained through CheckUser to non-admins except in cases of vandalism, what's the problem? Any vandal has already given up their right to anonymity by trying to disrupt other people's use of the site. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 12:08, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

Oh, I wasn't questioning site policies.  :( I was wanting to give a helpful suggestion. I did not mean to offend anyone with my posts. I was just trying to be helpful :(. My last post were legitimate questions, with no intention of being sarcastic. If they were or are portraying sarcasm, then I sincerely apologize, because that was not my intention. Razorflame 12:16, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

(stop outdent) Neither I would say. A quick check through Recent Changes will give you an idea of how many edits we get here daily. In my opinion, we have more than enough Admins given the size of the site. And when they are good at getting stuff done as they are, why have more? --SerCenKing ^Talk 12:05, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

Thanks for answering my questions. I, too, believe that you guys have more than enough administrators on this site to handle the inflow to outflow ratio of edits :) Just wanted to give you guys a friendly suggestion, and Rpeh above answered my question quite eloquently as to why all administrators are checkusers. I just want to ask you guys to be careful when you go nominating new administrators, now, OK? Razorflame 12:16, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

Admin Activity

It's true that I'm currently less active in Oblivion scene (and most of that is in modding and tool support), however I still check the site occasionally (typically several times/week. Also, I may be available in unusual circumstances (e.g. if all regular active/semi-active admins will be away, I will probably be able to fill in for brief periods if I'm given several days warning).

Also, it should be noted that our currently "semi-active" admins are still much more active then Dave and I were in earlier days of the site). So, after a long period of "Activity" expansion, we're now moving back to closer to where we were before Oblivion came out. Might be simpler to relax our notion of "Active" rather than demote everyone's activity level. --Wrye 03:23, 28 May 2009 (EDT)

I agree. I certainly don't consider Nephele to be semi-active in any way, and I think GuildKnight's fairly active as well still. Not sure about others...I don't pay close attention to peoples' activity—my impressions are based on how often I see them on pages on my watchlist. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 13:46, 28 May 2009 (EDT)

Okay, now I'm inactive. I'll revise the admin list accordingly. I'll probably still be reachable by email, but response time will likely be on the order of several days to a week. --Wrye 03:19, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Clarification

I was just curious, since I know the temp adminships for the others were removed due to them not being active, is mine still a temporary adminship that was just extended? Or was it snowballed into a permanent adminship and I was just oblivious? Not that I want it taken away, I just want to know where I stand jumping into discussion and such where an admin is needed. Thanks! Jeancey (talk) 23:16, 5 August 2014 (GMT)

It's still temporary. No one ever set a duration to it, that I'm aware of, but I think the general idea was to wait for the ESO edits to die down. Once that's done, we need to de-admin you, per the discussion back at the beginning, then if you want to run for admin, you can do so. While it may seem a bit pedantic to do things that way, I believe people wanted to avoid presenting adminship as a fait accompli and then having temporary admins running, essentially, after the fact. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 01:14, 6 August 2014 (GMT)

I figured that was the case, but I wanted to check. So I should wait until the adminship is done, then do an RfA, and not do an RfA before my temp adminship is done? Jeancey (talk) 03:32, 6 August 2014 (GMT)

Yes, you are free to do an RfA as soon as your temporary adminship is over (if you want to relinquish it to do one, just let Dave know). We only put this stipulation on because we wanted to make it clear to editors that you don't become an admin by just waiting for a game to come out. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 03:37, 6 August 2014 (GMT)

Kk. That's what I had thought, but I got somewhat mixed up by Jak and Alfwyn losing it as intended (3 months post release), but me not. I'll wait for now. No need to rush things. :) Jeancey (talk) 03:41, 6 August 2014 (GMT)