Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion/Wiki Cap

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Revision as of 08:06, 30 July 2011 by RJackson (talk | contribs) (IRC logs be visible?: Do it, doctoar.)
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Bringing back this to life, we need to decide how to proceed on Wiki Cap distribution in the future.


A reminder of some now-established points:

  • Using a list and a scoring system is broken, leads to unproductively competitive behavior from users, and to over-reliance on it from staff
  • While distribution on a weekly basis seemed like a good idea to regulate the number of total Wiki Caps in existence, it had the side-effect of the community having the false expectation for it to happen without fail every week, and proved to be too slow at times, causing frustration
  • The English and Russian parts of the Wiki being complete, there has been an issue of people creating work for themselves in order to get more edits
  • The combination of these things turned the Wiki Cap into a standalone reason to edit, rather than a reward for doing so
  • The Wiki Cap guidelines need to be rewritten


Here are some solutions that have come up in order to address those issues:

  • Using a list and a scoring system is broken, leads to unproductively competitive behavior from users, and to over-reliance on it from staff
    • Pictogram tick.png Done: Delete the Wiki Cap candidates list, and stop using the Wiki Cap scoring script entirely
  • While distribution on a weekly basis seemed like a good idea to regulate the number of total Wiki Caps in existence, it had the side-effect of the community having the false expectation for it to happen without fail every week, and proved to be too slow at times, causing frustration
    • Pictogram tick.png Done: Dispel the notion that drops will happen every week; we did that by not giving anything on June 26th
    • The frequency to give it may be irregular now. However, getting everyone together in order to decide on distribution requires a generally-agreed-upon moment when people are there, which may vary over time in order to keep it irregular
    • Volume/rarity concerns should be disregarded; even if all editors with over 500 edits or so got a Wiki Cap, it would still be considered a rare item
  • The English and Russian parts of the Wiki being complete, there has been an issue of people creating work for themselves in order to get more edits
    • Pictogram tick.png Done The deletion of the list should help this, as edit count matters less now, and is less visible
  • The combination of these things turned the Wiki Cap into a standalone reason to edit, rather than a reward for doing so
    • This needs to be more emphasized into the Wiki Cap guidelines
    • Rewarding users based on other things than editing (e.g. outstanding community contribution, à la Shugo (item icons), Michael (highlander team), or Benjamoose (promo material, graphics, general awesomeness))
    • This should make the "bias towards IRC members" more widely accepted, since IRC is a great way to get involved in more community-related matters other than pure editing. However, it should never be completely mandatory to use it
  • The Wiki Cap guidelines need to be rewritten
    • This can only be done when all of the above is settled


The method most people were leaning towards as of the last discussion was to do it on a nominate-and-approve basis:

  • Staff members (or maybe regular contributions?) can nominate people and explain the reasons behind the nomination
  • The rest of the staff reviews the nomination and approves, or declines, explaining their decision in case of a "no".

Multiple questions arise:

  • When and where does this discussion happen?
  • Can regular contributors see it?
    • If yes, can they also nominate others?
  • Does an approval require unanimity? Does it require a threshold of "yes"'s? Does a nomination expire if nobody says anything?

Last point: Robin said, in the email in which he talked about wiki cap distribution, that we may run any changes past by him. This is such a change, so his opinion should be taken into account before making any decision final. — Wind 11:43, 3 July 2011 (PDT)


Edit as of July 6th: Reformatted to make it easier to answer. Each question has its own section.

Distribution process

IRC logs be visible?

Should the IRC logs of the discussion be public?

Pictogram tick.png Yes The ability for the community to review what we're saying, I think, will add a bit of pressure to make well informed decisions. -User RJackson Signature Colon DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.png 16:11, 17 July 2011 (PDT)
Pictogram tick.png Yes Transparency is important. Voting behind closed doors with no non-staff scrutiny leaves the process open to accusation of bias and distrust in the system. User Moussekateer signature sprite.pngMoussekateer·talk 16:23, 17 July 2011 (PDT)
Pictogram comment.png Dunno How about not making them public, but allowing people to ask if they have been nominated, and if yes, to know why they have not received it yet? Not sure exactly how much to give out (full log concerning a certain person?) but it would avoid some drama caused by the publicness of them while letting users know what's up with them. In any case, I advise the creation of a separate channel like #tfwikicap where such things could be discussed, in order to possibly have different settings without disrupting #tfwikistaff (like invite-only-ness) and to better coordinate the regular-ness of the meeting — Wind 16:33, 17 July 2011 (PDT)
Pictogram cross.png No I agree with Windpower.. it would be better if we quickly explain why they didn't get the cap, rather than show who exactly is opposing them. --User Firestorm Flame.png Firestorm 16:57, 17 July 2011 (PDT)
Pictogram tick.png Yes. Logs should be viewable by everyone but only mods / admins should be allowed to join when there is discussion going on. A new channel is an ok idea but I don't think it's really needed, we'll still face the same problems of whether to log / who to let in regardless. seb26 17:09, 17 July 2011 (PDT)
Pictogram comment.png Compromise? Transparency is an important concern, but if a nominee is not approved, it may be unnecessarily harsh to display the preceding discussion in public logs. I suggest only publicly releasing logs concerning approved recipients, and possibly privately disclosing others on request. — User nVis s.png 23:58, 17 July 2011 (PDT)
Pictogram cross.png No It's not necessary. We should introduce transparency when explaining why individuals were awarded the cap at the time of awarding it. -- Pilk (talk) 00:35, 18 July 2011 (PDT)
Pictogram comment.png Maybe I understand how some people may feel about anyone being able to see who they are opposing because of possible harassment or just the fact that they'll know people will be reviewing the logs may put them under pressure to not truly speak their mind. Neither of these things concern me personally but it is something to keep in mind when considering what lines, if any to release. Particularly my note about undue pressure. -- Lagg Backpack Stickybomb Launcher.png 14:24, 23 July 2011 (PDT)

It seems we have reached a disagreement, gentlemen. I advise everyone, myself included, to reconsider. Some comments worth reading have been posted by the community as well. We should meet on IRC to discuss this — Wind 22:15, 19 July 2011 (PDT)
Well, guess that won't happen; I'll just go ahead and implement the idea described on the talk page, unless anyone has an objection. — Wind 01:03, 30 July 2011 (PDT)
Pictogram plus.png Approve Thumbs up from me. -RJ 01:06, 30 July 2011 (PDT)

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