The Sims Wiki talk:Community Portal

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Abuse Filter
I wasn't sure whether to put this here, in a forum post or on the Admin Portal talk page but I felt the community deserves a say in this too. In the wake of several recent spam/vandalism attacks, I contacted Wikia asking that provided we gained consensus, we could be allowed to have the Abuse Filter activated here. It is a MediaWiki extension and a tool which can prove valuable if configured correctly. I received a reply stating that as long as we have users here with experience with the tool (I myself have a little bit of experience in addition to a few IRC users I know), we can have it enabled.

The tool can be used to block suspicious edits, which we can limit by a specific usergroup if we wanted to, tag suspicious edits on Special:RecentChanges and in the page history, such as section blanking, without actually stopping them, block/warn a user who triggers a specific filter based on how we set it, throttle certain types of edits, for example, if someone went to say blank a page, they would be stopped the first time around and they would trigger a term listed in Special:AbuseLog (which doesn't exist here yet as we don't have the AbuseFilter) and Administrators can check this to see if the user in question has triggered the filter and so forth. How it works depends on how we choose to configure it.

For us we could say, program it to combat gibberish page names/edit summaries (which one particular spammer has used frequently) and many more things - it is a powerful tool. This and this show what the AbuseFilter has been programmed to do on another wikis and I feel it could be good for us too and is better than locking down a whole wiki just because of one spammer. I realise most of our administrators may be new to this tool and over time, we'll become more acustomed with it. If anyone needs help with the tool, they can always ask around on Wikia.

Given how powerful this tool is, I would like to know if the community would be comfortable having this tool enabled via a community discussion. I think that it would be very beneficial and I don't see any major downsides to this. I'll reply to an email I received from Wikia depending on how the consensus went down. What do you guys think? 10:21, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * As long as the Abuse Filter is not abused, I believe it can prove valuable in decreasing vandalism, but when it comes to its use, we should not overreact. By this I mean it should be used only when dealing with major spammers and vandals rather than a single vandal who creates a few spam pages. In that case, good old revert-block-ignore can prove more useful and easy. But anyway, I support. Andronikos sig.png 10:36, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * FWIW, we can actually configure it against everyday problems, such as blanking a whole page, meaning if someone tries it - it won't be allowed. I'll also suggest that if the feature is enabled, we don't set it to block users for every little thing - there's no point setting it to ban someone who tries to do something when they couldn't actually do it. It's all very customisable - it's best to wait until we actually get it (if we get it) before pre-emptively deciding on what extent we'll use it. Though I do agree it's not worth adding everything to the filter just because some forms of vandalism/spam vary; AbuseFilter performs best with the common things. Also I don't think it can really be abused as only administrators will be able to control it. 10:47, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * This would definitely be a better alternative than locking down the whole wiki. I support this as well. Ѧüя◎ґ 18:31, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * Per Auror. 18:41, May 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * Fine by me. I might see if I can set it up on my test wiki if someone needs to test using it or something.
 * Support. Dharden (talk) 04:35, May 31, 2012 (UTC)
 * Btw WH, you won't be able to use it on your test wiki as Wikia need to enable the extension. There is however a testing function inside the filter which will allow you to test a specific filter without disrupting anything else on the wiki. Seeing as the support has been overwhelmingly positive, I've asked Wikia to enable the extension so we should get it at some point today. 06:31, May 31, 2012 (UTC)
 * Hm, could have sworn I'd just be able to send a Special:Contact in to get it :/ Anyhoo, I'm glad we're getting it and I'll try doing a little research on it later.
 * The AbuseFilter is now enabled and can be controlled via Special:AbuseFilter. I've added a couple of general countervandalism filters and one experimental anti-Meep sheep filter. 16:52, May 31, 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe I didn't quite catch in the middle of this discussion, but what will this filter do if someone manages to abuse, like spamming? Is the edit just reverted somehow or it just disallows suspicious edits? Or maybe I should try it to understand?  Nikel  Talk  14:50, June 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * Alright, I've "tried" it and hoped that other vandals will only blank the pages, because I can't. Seeing from the abuse filter log, does "Disallow" action mean a temporary block or something?  Nikel  Talk  14:58, June 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * From what I know, it disallows the edit as is if the page was protected. I think it can also be configured to warn or block the editor who attempted it as well. Andronikos sig.png 15:00, June 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * Andronikos is right, it will stop the edit from being published. "Warn" doesn't give an explicit talk page warning to the user but they'll be warned when they hit publish and if they really want to make the edit then they have to hit publish again. "Tag" will just tag the edit when viewed in the page history, the user's contributions or Special:RecentChanges. "Throttle" will pretty much continuously stop the edit from being published a few times, it's mainly used as a deterrent to put the user off of trying. "Block" is pretty self-explanatory and "block /16" blocks the user's IP range. 15:15, June 1, 2012 (UTC)

Top 10 lists
I've noticed that the Top 10 lists feature has been largely unused for quite some time. At an attempt of trying to make this place more interesting, I feel that we could try and shape the feature around our community a little bit more. If all else fails then we may as well deactivate it as there's no point housing a feature that's just going to be abandoned.

I'm open to ideas of what to do with the feature, how we do it and how to make the feature seem more attractive to users in the hope that they would embrace it. If we want to try and attract more users here then realistically we have to make do with what Wikia provides for us and the Top 10 lists can engage the community but when left unused, the feature is pretty worthless.

Ideas? 11:36, June 2, 2012 (UTC)


 * We could make lists of desired features in the games, a monthly list (like the Monthly Poll) or something alike. 11:39, June 2, 2012 (UTC)
 * I simply choose to disable it. I never really see the point of interest of it.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote for Featured Media!  11:44, June 2, 2012 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I personally agree with Nikel. I only created this based on IRC opposition to disabling it. Plus desired lists have been done before, both as a Top 10 feature and a poll. 17:35, June 2, 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe monthly poles can work much better than Top 10 lists. Firstly, the polls can easily be used embedded in both the main page and the newsletter, while Top 10 lists have a page on their own. Secondly, has anyone here tried renaming a Top 10 list without breaking it? Thirdly, polls show more statistics than Top 10 lists. So I believe they should ultimately be disabled, since they remain unused and when used, they only cause trouble and disorder. Andronikos sig.png 08:53, June 3, 2012 (UTC)
 * Disable them per the above.
 * Given that 4/5 users have said we should disable it, I've gone ahead and made the changes. If anyone decides we should reactivate it later on, feel free to bring it up. 02:02, June 4, 2012 (UTC)

Revisited: Eliminating Player Stories
Last year, a proposal was put forward to eliminate player stories from the wiki however no action was taken due to hesitation from users, lack of consensus and the discussion eventually drying up.

Since the abuse filter has been enabled, I've noticed that the filter designed to disallow edits containing profanity has picked up an awful lot of what would seem like false positives, particularly on Player Stories pages. This is because the content that was added before we even had the filter enabled contained profanity and/or pejorative terms which is literally preventing anyone else from adding anything to those pages unless the offending terms are removed; that exact filter actually works effectively on every other part of the wiki. I've removed some terms from a couple of stories pages but I'm certain they aren't the only stories pages that contain profanity and even trying to moderate them is rather tedious and time consuming.

We may as well face facts:
 * 1) The vast majority of player stories are of below average quality and are left unsigned.
 * 2) Anonymous users can write to the Fanon namespace and create an account if they care enough about their fanon articles.
 * 3) Moderating the subpages in general can be quite tedious and annoying.
 * 4) Hardly any registered users actually actively contribute to these subpages and would much rather use the Fanon namespace as there is much more freedom.

I realise that last year's discussion on this didn't get very far but I now feel a lot less hesitant on eliminating player stories outright and I think it would be better for us if we did eliminate them as it would save administration headaches and such. What do you guys think? 15:43, June 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * I think they should be eliminated because what you said is true - most Player Stories places currently look like dumps (formatting errors, awful grammar and such). Also, there is an example of an awesome Fanon based on a pre-made Sim. On the other hand, the theories shouldn't be deleted - instead, I think the current ones should be archived (or the ones with poor quality should be deleted) and we could keep a monthly weekend or whatnot (like the ones we now have for Fanons) to check their quality, since the number of theory pages is way smaller. 16:04, June 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * I also think there's no way we could ever clean up everything that contains profanity. But, we can't compare fanons and player stories. Anons can freely (like, very freely) put their stories in the player stories, but fanons have certain standards of the stories; not to mention if they only write 1-2 sentences. If they only stop by to tell a bit of their stories on fanons, then the fanons themselves might be the subject of deletion eventually. Which means more work to maintain the fanon namespace. Besides, stories for premade Sims are more practical if written in player stories instead of creating new fanons. In short, player stories are a good editing sandbox for the anons and users, and they're different from fanons. Player stories are quite popular to anons, and recently more player stories are submitted by many people.


 * Those are the points of view from the anons themselves, and different problems for us. The filter might be quite useful for abusive editing, but I simply disagree if fanon will take over the player stories, unless there's no other methods.  Nikel  Talk  16:09, June 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * I've just searched the wiki for pages with profanity, narrowed down to two words in particular. Though Wikia's search engine cache's results (like any search engine), I've noticed it has appeared in the fanon namespace too, again before the AbuseFilter was enabled, which already in itself breaks the policy.


 * As for Nikel's points, they're understandable from an anon's point of view. The only other way I can see this problem being resolved is for us to simply remove any story containing profanity, which would probably be more tedious than it's worth as it would probably happen all over again. So aside from my initial proposal, I'm out of ideas. 16:21, June 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * I made the previous proposal, so it would be easy for me to stand up and redouble my support for this idea. But the things said in the previous discussion and here must make me pause and reconsider the effect of what we're proposing. I encourage thoughtful consideration and discussion of all possible courses of action before we proceed to a consent period.


 * What I'm thinking at this present moment is whether Player Stories do serve a purpose. I stand by my previous statement - that most player stories are poorly-written and are not interesting to read. But, could player stories perhaps serve as a 'relief valve' of sorts? In this I mean, I think player stories might be useful to keep around if keeping them limits the amount of garbage that ends up in the Fanon NS, since we'll have to delete any poorly-written stories that don't meet Fanon criteria.


 * At the same time, the sheer volume of the stories and the rate at which new ones are added (as Nikel stated, they are still popular with anon users) makes it prohibitively difficult to moderate them, so profanity and inappropriate content is bound to slip through un-noticed by the admins.


 * At the present time, I am taking a neutral stance to this idea. I'll keep watching the discussion and the pros and cons, and may alter my stance accordingly. --  LiR speak ~ read 17:44, June 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * Honestly they should be eliminated unless the user's signature isn't located anywhere. Also there are some amounts of profanity located on these player stories which no one seems to find. But on the other hand, these are the player's stories and even though some do not meet the standards it doesn't mean we should just take them out. It's the player's story and should remain there to see unless it is located in the Fanon NS then the story should be gone. If this site was to eliminate such a small detailed wording on the player's stories, then we'll probably see some anger since it would mean the player would might think we are being jerks ya' know? And we don't want to see an uproar since the player would might come back to update it. Starmoonie (Talk Here) 19:14, June 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we should nuke the whole player stories thing from orbit. Here's my reasoning:
 * As said above, it's virtually impossible to moderate them.
 * They make the site look untidy as most of them are poorly written.
 * If they want to write about what they did, they can just make an account and create a fanon article which we can moderate easier.
 * I'm sure someone is going to reply to this with the whole "but they put work into their stories and want them here forever herp derp" thing. But to be honest, I doubt anyone will care tbh. Most people have likely forgotten about their stories, and if they care so much they can ask an admin to get the story for them. So, yeah, delete 'em.
 * Another thought I had earlier after my post was to have a sort of "Best of..." stories selection for some of our more "popular" Sims, where the most well-written player stories get saved in some sort of archive while the rest get tossed. That way, those stories that really are good quality are saved for others to read, and those that are junk or break the rules get deleted. However, unless we had a large community movement to do this and it was organized correctly, I think this idea would be too difficult to put into practice.


 * Upon consideration of all the points I've found on this, I'm going to switch to Support for deletion, on the condition that a notice is put up prior to deletion allowing users to 'reclaim' their stories before final deletion. As well, if the idea I gave above actually seemed like a good and practical idea to someone here, we could try to implement that prior to final deletion too. --  LiR speak ~ read 02:12, June 11, 2012 (UTC)
 * I couldn't think anything better than what LiR proposed. Player stories are untidy, most of them are low quality and boring, and also 1/3 of a wiki is the maximum amount of stubs it should have, as it was in the previous discussion, and should we count the player stories, we are well beyond that. By all means, delete them. Andronikos sig.png 08:16, June 11, 2012 (UTC)
 * I can say that the player stories aren't better than junk. I have a safer approach before deleting it. We can just edit the templates to remove the player stories links from the infoboxes. That way, we can know whether the communities realize about this change (if we really care about their stories), and avoid if there's any protests going for this change. IMO, users who aren't used to manually typing the link in the URL or the search box are likely to be directed to the Player Stories from the links. If there's no major opposition from them about this, then the deletion is now safe.


 * Unless some users can actually access it by using search box/URL/etc. and there are still Player Stories activities going, then this suggestion is just void and I suppose we could delete it anyway.  Nikel  Talk  09:39, June 11, 2012 (UTC)
 * As an alternative to deletion, I think Nikel's idea is pretty good and pretty easy to do. That way noone loses anything assuming they actually care about their stories and those who don't know how to access the pages by editing the URL won't be able to add new stories.


 * I can understand LiR's suggestion though I think an issue is that most stories have no way to identify who wrote them meaning that if the whole idea is to showcase an individual's story then it's pointless if we don't know who it is. Plus it seems like administrators will spend so much time looking for above average stories only to find so little, making it very time consuming and frankly not worth it, hence why I'm dismissing this idea.


 * Also despite the fact that I'm rather pessimistic about that many people who wrote a story even caring enough to recover it, we would give quite a bit of notice before actually deleting anything. 1 month sounds fair. 11:00, June 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * As I said, the idea didn't seem very practical, even to me. I felt the need to mention it on the off chance that someone besides me might think of a way to make it work. Honestly I don't think many people will choose to save their stories, but I still think that option should be extended before they're all deleted; a month sounds like a good length of time.


 * As for Nikel's idea... I'm a bit concerned that if we just remove the links and don't make clear the fact that we've done so, people who know that the player stories exist and who want to contribute to them might become upset, as they would perceive that the player stories had been deleted. If we actually were deleting the pages, there would likely be plenty of notice of the pending deletion so it wouldn't be a big surprise to anyone that it was happening. If the idea of Nikel's proposal is to remove the links and see how many people notice/care, then I suppose any sort of reaction is the sort of reaction we're looking to observe. If that's the case, then my concerns may not be completely relevant. --  LiR speak ~ read 11:14, June 11, 2012 (UTC)

The practice of eliminating the Player Stories and removing the link are quite similar. We can simply notify them that we're going to delete the Player Stories, even though the real fact is that we only removed the link, while the stories are intact. If we later change our mind, retrieving the link back is much easier than having to restore all deleted subpages. If by chance anyone finds out that the player stories aren't yet deleted, we can tell them that the deletion is still in progress.  Nikel  Talk  11:35, June 11, 2012 (UTC)
 * I have some pretty good examples of premade Sims who are turned into fanons by Watch Yo Face. Most of them are so bad that some people consider her as a plagiarist. These are better in Player Stories or not at all. But I'll just prefer "not at all".  Nikel  Talk  03:04, June 13, 2012 (UTC)

Spotlight
Like last year, and the year before, I think we should request a Spotlight, which would appear at the bottom of the screen under the "Around Wikia's Network" section with an image from our wiki with a link too, which promotes TSW across a wide range of wikis on Wikia's network. It worked well for last year's Q4 EP (The Sims 3: Pets) and given the fan response to The Sims 3: Supernatural, I think it would be another good opportunity for us to try and attract some new users. The EP is released September 4th in the US.

I do realise I've put this forward pretty early and it's better to request it a few weeks before the release of the EP; I'm just proposing this locally now just to see how the community feels about it. 18:18, June 16, 2012 (UTC)