Feed The Beast Wiki:Administrators' noticeboard

Lang fix
Make the code and pageSuffix methods of Module:Language public. -Xbony2 (talk) 21:09, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Module:Utility_functions already has a public version of pageSuffix, although you have to trim the first character off if you're not using it as a link.  Chocohead Nag • Edits • Staff 21:15, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I mostly want code; I just threw in pageSuffix because, why not? -Xbony2 (talk) 21:19, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * You should be able to get code from pageSuffix and just trim off the /. --  Satanic Santa F T B Wiki Admin 16:13, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That's ugly and redundant code. -Xbony2 (talk) 10:29, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
 * is not that ugly in the grand scheme of things, especially as you'd only likely have to call it once.  Chocohead Nag • Edits • Staff 16:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Group updates
-Xbony2 (talk) 21:20, 27 May 2016 (UTC) -Xbony2 (talk) 11:03, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
 * , taking off staff and probably banhammer.
 * , taking off staff.
 * , adding editor.
 * , adding editor.
 * Veto. That person has only been editing the wiki for a couple days. --  Satanic Santa 🎅F T B Wiki Admin 04:04, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Editor should be given out whenever you think someone's edits are good enough that they don't need to be manually patrolled. 🐇 R e t e p 9 9 8 🐇🐰 Bunny Overlord 🐰 05:22, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
 * "Promoted based on staff choosing; any staff can nominate a user for editor rights if they are trustworthy and if they create documentation past a few pages. Requires no formal vote." - My renewed and unfinished group proposal. -Xbony2 (talk) 11:48, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Peter: I agree. But we also shouldn't give it out to people who only have 30 contributions. I don't think that's enough to determine that they will almost always have edits that don't need to be looked at too much by staff.
 * Xbony: I don't know why your future proposal is really relevant in our decision making right now, where your proposal hasn't even been proposed. --  Satanic Santa 🎅F T B Wiki Admin 17:17, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
 * That portion of my proposal is my interpretation of how it works currently. Apparently I'm wrong, but then again there isn't an established group system here (hence why I'm making my proposal- so we can have a system to cover all cases, and so each staff member that joins joins the same way). -Xbony2 (talk) 18:10, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

(the more active editathoners) -Xbony2 (talk) 11:32, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
 * , adding editor.
 * , adding editor.
 * , adding editor.
 * done --  Satanic Santa 🎅F T B Wiki Admin 17:11, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Interwiki fixation
There's a bunch of interwikis that need to be converted to HTTPS and shit. Go through each one, check if it is HTTPS, or redirects to another website, and fix it. And Gamepedias should start with the prefix //, not https:// or http://. This is the kind of thing I'd fix myself, but you know, I'm not an admin. -Xbony2 (talk) 12:46, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It's a wonder why we have so many obscure wikis on the list to start with.  Chocohead Nag • Edits • Staff 12:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * That's just how it is per default. See -Xbony2 (talk) 12:54, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Just because it's default doesn't mean keeping all of them is necessary.  Chocohead Nag • Edits • Staff 12:56, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Didn't say it was. -Xbony2 (talk) 14:15, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you just stop complaining about not being admin? It's really annoying. --  Satanic Santa 🎅F T B Wiki Admin 19:46, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry. It's just that I feel like sometimes I do everything around here. I devote hundreds of hours, pretty much every single day, to wiki writing and fixing shit. This is my passion. But yet, this wiki is ruled by two admins who just "do enough editing on the wiki to maintain PRO", and who don't seem to do anything unless I literally force them to. I'm sorry for being snarky, I'm sorry for being for a bitch, I really am, but I'm just tired. -Xbony2 (talk) 23:45, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * You know, this wouldn't be the first time you haven't responded to a request over the course of a week. -Xbony2 (talk) 15:42, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * It's also hardly a huge priority, for months we've coped with it (especially considering the only 2 we really use is the MC Wiki and normal Wikipedia), an extra week isn't a big deal what so ever.  Chocohead Nag • Edits • Staff 19:50, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * And gamepedia/wikipedia are already fixed anyway. 🐇 R e t e p 9 9 8 🐇🐰 Bunny Overlord 🐰 20:00, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * There I fixed the fucking https shit --  Satanic Santa 🎅F T B Wiki Admin 20:09, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * thank you
 * It's not that it is a huge priority, it's just that it's something that takes very little time to do but yet takes a lot of time to get around to doing. -Xbony2 (talk) 21:02, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * If it's so quick, then you could've done it and put it in a table so they'd only need to copy and paste the links over.  Chocohead Nag • Edits • Staff 21:04, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * @Retep, that's not unsigned. It's just part a badly indented comment. (bony)
 * The lesson here is to always indent your comments correctly. 🐇 R e t e p 9 9 8 🐇🐰 Bunny Overlord 🐰 21:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * You're one to talk. You just broke a comment in half. -Xbony2 (talk) 21:38, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * @Choco, I probably should of, if it would of helped that much. -Xbony2 (talk) 21:21, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I'll never vote for you to be admin since you insist on saying "could of" instead of "could have". 🐇 R e t e p 9 9 8 🐇🐰 Bunny Overlord 🐰 21:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I think you became admin not because you were experienced or worked hard for it, but because there just weren't any other admins around at the time. Santa could of ;) been fine as the only admin, but alas. -Xbony2 (talk) 21:38, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Peter was admin before me, and was also made admin at a time where there were 3+ other admins. --  Satanic Santa 🎅F T B Wiki Admin 21:42, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * To be more specific, it was the role of Bureaucrat which I assumed by bureaucratic fiat. Admin I got a full month before santa and was given to me by jinbobo, who was wiki lead at the time. Staff I was given by jadedcat, who was wiki lead at the time, when I first joined so very very long ago. 🐇 R e t e p 9 9 8 🐇🐰 Bunny Overlord 🐰 21:47, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * And I'm pretty sure Tadpole (now known as Nerixel) was admin at that time too --  Satanic Santa 🎅F T B Wiki Admin 21:49, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yep. See Feed The Beast Wiki:Administration.
 * If I re-apply for admin, which I don't even know if I'll ever do, I won't be surprised if ya'll don't vote for me. Not because I'm not experienced (I've written thousands of pages), not because I'm not hardworking (I contribute almost every single day, and I've spent hundreds of hours contributing), not because the tools aren't of any use to me (a rather large amount of the administrative action taken recently (I could say a majority, but I'm not keeping score) has been at my request), but because I bitch-out when it takes a week for administrators to do a ten minute task. -Xbony2 (talk) 22:19, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256

I endorse xbony2 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2

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-- santa wanted me to sign, so there you go.
 * Uh, I appreciate it, but I think that doesn't count as a signature. -Xbony2 (talk) 10:38, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

New editor retention
Here's something that people (by that i mean everyone) should work towards. This was something I was working on, which involved creating new policies, pushing the translation tools, visual editor/template data, the new notification system and most importantly the wikilove and thanks extensions which i believe have been since removed. Of course while I haven't observed/monitored the wiki closely, but you'll know if anything I say here is true or relevant. -- properly signed (Former Wiki Lead); July, 2016

Rationale
As with any volunteering work, inviting and retaining new volunteers is an issue. Since reestablishing the wiki as a public wiki, there has been no significant (perceivable) increases in the editorship among the general public. There has also been no significant structural change to the content or the administration of the wiki (although there seems to be a closed off effort to reorganize the categories on going? I advise you create a project page to invite general participation). I put this here because only the current admins have the power to instigate any meaningful change in the current state of the wiki. The wiki lead has been phased out (for the better), but the admin (and possibly the staff) needs to take up the responsibilities that were previously held by the lead. Currently the wiki isn't going anywhere, it's just chugging along since I left it, maybe fixing the shit I left behind.

Resources

 * Editor Trends Study
 * March 2011 Update
 * RFA by month
 * Attrition Pipeline
 * Decline Theories

Assessment

 * Editor by tenure: Stagnant admin/staff count could represent two things: (1) failure to retain editorship (2) administrative failure (I'm leaning towards the latter). There should be a clear direction in which the admins are taking the wiki. I see none of that.
 * Accessibility: The existence of the visual editor significantly lowered the bar of starting to edit. But as crafting grids and infoboxes are central to many of the pages on the wiki, there remains a challenge for new users to understand how they work. The TemplateData extension was my intended solution to this but it has been removed. It is impractical to think that a visual editor without template data will solve the problem of the inaccessibility of wikitext on this specific wiki. The existence of excessive levels of user groups also gives the impression of a closed community. The PRO tag also works to give off the same impression (especially when 90% of the edits are made by pro users, though since it's a curse thing we really can't do anything about it).
 * New user editing experience: There is no longer any obstacle for any user to begin to contribute. However, retention still seems to be a problem. Special shoutout to Xbony2 for scaring off anon editors. In general there is a lack of compliments and a surplus of criticism (direct or indirect). templates remains an issue to new users, until a better system is in place, the burden is placed on the staff to add/include templates on new pages instead of asking a new user to understand the complicated tilesheet/oredict/crafting grid system that is in place.
 * Mobile audience: The generic mobile skin is present. However, templates and other page elements are not optimized for mobile. Crafting grids also don't seem to be working. Editing on mobile remains a miserable experience (this is however, to be expected).

Recommended Actions

 * Establish clear and simple wiki policies. Convey clearly to active and "tenured" editors the official stance (decided by consensus) towards new editors.
 * Identify possible obstacles that may cause disinterest in editing in the different stages of wiki participation up to adminship and bureaucrat requests. cf. attrition pipeline
 * "Openness begets participation". Encourage and mentor new users, express your appreciation to their contribution (the thanks ext is a good lightweight solution to this, wikilove would also be good). Assume good faith. Simplify the user hierarchy. If possible, hide the pro user tag (it looks ugly as fuck anyway).
 * Ease the use of templates. Test out the TemplateData extension (used on wikipedia, go check it out ). Write guides that are geared toward new users. Do not expect, however, the new users to read them. Make them accessible, but don't make them mandatory.
 * Encourage participation, let people know that anyone can edit the wiki. (I'm looking at whoever keeps adding IP to anon user pages) You won't get any new users if no one knows that the wiki is open to the public. Coordinate with the FTB team (forcefully, that's how i pissed them off. this is called the official ftb wiki after all) to inform players the existence of this resource.

Closing Remarks
As the current active editorship is low, this seems like a lot of work. But it is crucial for a wiki to have editors to be able to survive. There will be that one day when you decide to retire from editing, who's going to take your place then? Inviting participation and retaining users should always remain a top priority for any wiki. Of course this wiki will die if modded minecraft ceases to exist (ftb is already ded to me). 𝜘

Comments
You may leave your comments here. I am leaving it as is and will not be providing any more comments. The staff and admin should come to a consensus of the situation at hand and any actions to take among themselves, however, anyone is free to participate in the conversation.

There is a page for the category overhaul, btw. It's here. I don't really think it's up-to-date, though. It's more or less Santa's project.

This wiki has not declined. I'm very insulted that you think it is. It's been going places. It's moved in status from "that other wiki" to "the new wiki". We're actually used now, actually relevant now, believe it or not. When I joined the wiki, we had about 5000 articles. It's now at around 11,000 articles.

I think the direction we staff are taking is obvious- we're going up. I've been trying to work on 1.8/1.9/1.10 documentation, so when that version becomes the version that everyone uses, this wiki will be a well-established reference point, and hopefully will grow in usage and editors. Other staff are more focused on making up for what we have in 1.7 documentation, since there's plenty to do there.

I removed TemplateData a while ago, because it doesn't work if you have VisualEditor disabled (like me, and many other editors do). I strongly dislike VisualEditor- I don't like correcting every edit. It's just bad. I don't think levels give an impression of a closed community. Actually, I think the opposite- editors look up and say, hey, I can do that. Either way, it's still very easy to edit.

Why are you bashing the IP award? It's funny. It's encouraging, a warm welcome, in my opinion. You get it if you make a contributing edit. And if you use your regular account, you get the good old classic bony welcome. Some new users have used their user talk page to ask questions, which I think is cool.

About templates btw- one thing I don't mind taking credit for the MediaWiki:Gadget-toolbar.js. It adds a toolbar with all of the FTB Wiki's most used templates. It makes it a lot easier to new users to use templates. Getting new users to understand templates is tough, and there's no magical way to do it. But we haves guides, we have the toolbar, and we have staff that help out.

Mobile sucks ass. We get it. That's something we want to improve at some point; actually, we want to improve the entire skin.

What's next? Policies. We're working on that, but ultimately having a formula for every single thing is silly. We expect staff and editors to use common sense. We don't want to make a hundred thousand byte policy just say "be a good guy"- that's pretty much redundant, and a waste of our time.

I don't like wikilove or similar extensions. If you need a special extension to tell someone thank you, you're kind of lazy. It means a lot more to just to say "thank you" then to mess with barnstars and cookies. They really don't mean anything.

We have guides. Here's a nice guide to assist with templates. I also started a general getting started guide, although it's quite incomplete (but still useful).

I had an editathon a while ago. That was great on newcomer participation. Went really well. People know this wiki is open to the public. It's not in its dark ages anymore. It's a real shame that this wiki was once only accessible by staff; It should of [this is where Retep bashes me for grammar] been open to all users day one, this day, and every day in between.

The currently editorship isn't low. It's pretty much higher then it's ever been, and I intend to push it and the wiki as far as it can go. Modded Minecraft isn't going to die, at least not any time soon, so mod documentation will always have a place. I plan to monitor this wiki even when it does, though, kind of like a dragon watching over its treasures. -Xbony2 (talk) 15:40, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I have PRO hidden for myself btw. If you don't like it, hide ".gamepedia_pro_user:before". We could hide it globally, but Gamepedia might not like that. -Xbony2 (talk) 15:52, 4 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree to Jinbobo that the "pro" mark is stupid. The symbol gives the view that it is a closed community and has the appearance that some are "pro", and the person who wants to help and purely looking for the first time, thinks he is a "noob".


 * Guides: Meanwhile, I have found many pages you would need for edit (internal and external) but some I still have to ask. An overview of all possible stuff (with links to the special pages/guides/template definitions) I miss to this day. Some useful pages are hard to find and accessible only via detours. For example Special:TileList. --LuminousLizard FTB Wiki Staff de-N / "en-2" (talk) 17:25, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
 * We can't really do much about PRO, even though it is pretty clunky. Curse will probably do something to improve it; users from the Minecraft Wiki and WOWpedia wikis among many other wikis have complained about it (they're big wiki fry compared to us small wiki fry). You can hide it in your CSS though (the users of the Minecraft Wiki made it into a Gadget, which I think would be a cool idea to steal).
 * As for lists, the sidebar has links to important things, like the community portal (which is an outdated page I need to get around to improving. It looks like it's admin only though, which is probably why I haven't), the recent changes, the MOS, the noticeboards, the full list of templates, modules, special pages, mod abbreviations, etc. I'd to work on making an improved sidebar some time, though. -Xbony2 (talk) 19:49, 4 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't particularly agree about "pro". I don't think it's significant enough to turn off a large amount of editors just by seeing that people here are "Pro". It also hasn't been around long enough for us to observe a significant effect. Since it's been around, there hasn't been a change in the amount of non-staff edits.
 * Most of the administrative stuff lately has been around changing and creating new things in Tilesheets and OreDict, not really things visible here on the wiki in some fancy way like RC. For example, these extensions now have APIs that we will soon be using to import tilesheets and stuff with Peter's tilesheet program. Another example of this is that tiles can now be translated. You wouldn't really know that this happened unless you looked at the special pages and noticed the new "TileTranslator". There are also some other projects that we've been slowly working on, not just as administrators but as a group together, like deprecating G, the category overhaul, and as of yesterday deprecating/deleting all of the Help pages.
 * I also don't agree about the level of groups. I agree the amount we have sucks and we need to remove a few of them, but I really doubt it has an effect on editors. Most editors probably won't even see the various rights and groups unless they look at special pages or random users profiles (most of us don't even use the UserProfile as our main user page, so that's even more unlikely).
 * Criticism vs compliments/thanks is something I plan on surveying here. I just have to write some code to help me do the actual surveying. Once I do that, we will be making appropriate changes. I have personally noticed that the majority of the things on user talk pages are either "welcome!" or "you did this wrongly", especially since we got rid of the thanks extension. That extension is kind of annoying and I agree with xbony that it's lazy, but I also feel like it's much better than having dozens of "thank you" messages on their talk pages. That might be more annoying to be honest. When we had WikiLove we never used it as anything but a joke. You can see that on many of our talk pages and talk page archives. We do encourage that users read our crafting grid guides and such, but having new users understand how tilesheets works is kind of ridiculous, especially since they can't even import them. All we ask of new users is to give us the tiles and we do some magic shit.
 * Mobile sucks. I use mobile all the time, and I hate it. Super unusable. You can't even view tiles. Definitely something we need to fix.
 * Interaction and cooperation with FTB has slightly improved, but we still haven't been mentioned in the news posts despite being told that our news will be included. Somewhat disappointing, but there really isn't anything we can do but bitch, which we do.

--  Satanic Santa 🎅F T B Wiki Admin 19:38, 4 July 2016 (UTC)