Forum:Revising Chat Moderator and IRC Operator requests

Forums: Index → Community discussions → Revising Chat Moderator and IRC Operator requests | Post

It's been nearly a month since the last discussion about revising the Chat Moderator selection process was ended. For that period, requests for Chat moderator have remained closed, and the issues that led to its closure have not been resolved. The purpose of this thread is to finally lay those questions to rest.

Let's start with where most people agree, and go from there. Based on prior discussions, it is generally agreed that the RfCM process should be more open to user input on an applicant/nominee, and should be structured less like a formal vote.

In the previous thread, Lost Labyrinth suggested implementing a form of the system we use to select admins and bureaucrats, wherein there is an open discussion period, followed by a vote if a consensus isn't reached. Various methods could be used to make the process less formalized, including waiving the "one request at a time" requirement, or the process of holding requests on separate pages. Beds also suggested adding a "cooldown" period between successful requests, though the nature of this suggestion would be tied to whether or not multiple requests could be heard simultaneously.

For sake of neutrality in the intro, I'll give my personal opinion in the discussion section below. -- LostInRiverview ^{talk ~ blog} 04:33, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

I see an implementation of the RfA-style discussion process as being probably our best bet at the present time, with a couple suggested modifications. Where presently RfAs are required to sit in discussion for at least 5 days (and possibly up to 10), I would like to suggest that we loosen this requirement for RfCMs, especially if a consensus is clearly forming after several users have weighed in. I would also support eliminating the one-at-a-time rule, and support having all the requests managed on a single page rather than on separate pages.

On a final note, I think it might be worth re-considering the chat moderator ruleset we have in place, especially in regards to the specific membership and activity requirements. I think the rules as they're currently written may be too restrictive and could be interpreted more strictly than perhaps they should be. This is just a personal concern of mine, and does not affect my support for a general overhaul of the request process itself. -- LostInRiverview ^{talk ~ blog} 04:33, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Pretty much this. As far as activity requirements go...determining activity on something like Chat is often tricky as we don't actually have any way of knowing that somebody has joined Chat unless we just happen to be in the right place at the right time. I don't think it needs to be as strict as the 4 month requirement to apply to be a chatmod but seeing as we have a number of users on Chat who rarely, if at all, edit the wiki itself. Something like "Regularly active on Chat" might be something we could put down but even then it's kind of broad, I don't know. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 11:17, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Alright, so let's get this discussion back on board. After some thought, I guess the current chatmod requirements are a little bit restrictive (coming from the person who came up with the idea of new requirements). As for the way RfCM's are going to be dealt with, I agree with the RfA style discussion based style, but maybe we should go with a shorter discussion period i.e I was thinking about 3-5 days, or maybe just 3 days altogether. As for the cooldown period, I still think we should do this for my reasons stated in the previous thread. Beds ^{(parlare - da leggere)} 11:37, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

I might not talking a bit of sense about this but since admins/sysops can also grant and revoke chat mod rights to other users, should they be also involved in reviewing (granting/denying) the requests? --Frostwalker ^{Talk to me!} 15:11, October 21, 2013 (UTC)

Frostwalker raises a very interesting point and thinking about it, what reason is there not to allow sysops to give out/revoke that right when the need arises? As long as the rule of consensus in these requests is followed then I can't see any problems. Obviously this is up for debate but I'm just speaking my mind here. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 19:21, October 21, 2013 (UTC)