Battlestar Wiki talk:Think Tank

Please note that I haven't begun work on the Think Tank proposal page template. I am now going to bed. Good night. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 22:50, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Admin input

I understand why Joe feels that admin input should be privileged and that all admins should be required to weigh in before enacting a change, and I don't fully disagree with him, but I must raise two concerns:

1. I believe that it is dangerous to privilege admin opinions over non-admin users. In particular, I do not believe that my opinion should outweigh a dedicated long-time contributor such as The Merovingian, whose failure to achieve admin status to date is entirely apart from his competency as a contributor and the validity of his point of view.
2. It may be unrealistic to await a response from all administrators - of the seven current admins, several have fairly sporadic availability. As an alternative, I might propose that we require a quorum (50% + 1) of administrators to weigh in. (On the other hand, major proposals can wait the week or so it would take to round up all admins, but this will become more of a problem as the admin staff grows). --Peter Farago 00:43, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

I agree with both points. As a nitpick, "more than half" is probably a better way of defining quorum. --CalculatinAvatar^(C-T) 01:14, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

Exactly. I certainly dont think that its fair to ignore non administrators but that a minimum number of administrator approvals would be a good idea. There are 6 admins now and so it would be quite easy for several to reply to an issue before a change.--Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 08:15, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

Ditto. Best to let our majority shape things as best as possible, although the use of a talk page for doing this WILL SUCK. Does MediaWiki have a user vote feature? Given how people visit the wiki sporadically, I recommend a 1/4 to 1/3 quorum of users or a fixed number, plus a quorum of at least 3 admins. One-half of the user base is really unrealistic, and waiting for such changes may make the progress of approving sweeping changes slower than a glacial event. --Spencerian

I like the talk pages. --Peter Farago 16:58, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

To clarify, I was referring to the "quorum...of administrators," suggesting the adminstrator requirement should be changed from "all" to "more than half," i.e. currently four. I agree that getting half the users to do any one thing is unfeasible. I also like the talk pages for their integration and attributable history. --CalculatinAvatar^(C-T) 01:00, 1 July 2006 (CDT)

Good points, here. I agree that administrators opinions hold the same weight as a regular contributor. The issue here is that this Think Tank will only work if people comment. Otherwise it isn't going to do us any good. Therefore, I would like to propose that any proposal requires a minimum of 10 contributors to comment on said proposal. That way we don't have things that aren't commented upon. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 09:40, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

I don't like the idea of a ten-comment quota, which may be difficult to meet for the more back-end-ish or esoteric proposals. I think I'd prefer a one-week minimum comment period, after which implementation could procede if no serious objections came up (and provided the above-discussed quorum of admins had weighed in). --Peter Farago 16:51, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

I have made the changes. Are there any other issues that need to be hammered out? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 23:04, 4 July 2006 (CDT)

Major Changes Definition

One item I'd like to propose adding to the "major changes" list is a non-passive change to a template that is in use (not subst'd). That is to say, adding/removing/modifying a template in such a way that requires going to each page that uses the template and making a change. A past example has been additions to the Character template. I think new techniques have been learned that have allowed passive changes to be made, but anything requiring a "cleanup effort" should be discussed, since reverting it (in the case that there isn't consensus for it) would be a cleanup effort of its own (rather than a simple article revert). --Steelviper 07:39, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

In my mind at least, this is a major change, particularly once the template has been implemented. So I agree. What does everyone else have to say about it? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 08:56, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

Just in terms of a location for those discussions, wouldn't it be better to talk about changes to a template on that template's talk page, rather than here? After a proposal is reached in the Template talk namespace, it could be sent here for final approval. --Peter Farago 18:13, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

The only problem that currently exists with the template talk model is that it can take weeks before anybody responds to a proposal there sometimes. It'd be nice if there was a least a centralized list of links to proposals so that people could know where the "action" is. --Steelviper 15:55, 1 July 2006 (CDT) 

That's a good point. Not everyone wants to watch Recent Changes like a hawk. --Peter Farago 17:12, 1 July 2006 (CDT)