User blog:'R BlaiddDdraig/Assassinews 04/16 - System Change and Featured Fanons

For those who don't know, I am Blaidd, I've been a member of the Wiki for over a year, a member of the Istruttorium for little over a year, and more specifically the Rafiq of the Apprentice Program. I have agreed to post the News Blogs concerning the operations of the Wiki. Sima is doing the News Blogs regarding new Assassin's Creed info, and Teller is doing the Holiday Blogs. So let's begin.

Revolution!
Now while Cello was the Bureaucrat here, this Wiki ran under a strict hierarchy. Cello was of course at the top, followed by the Admins, the Istruttori, the Apprentices, and finally, the regular editors and anons. When a decision needed to be made affecting the future of this Wiki, only the Staff had a say, with Cello giving the final word, while the rest of the community was ignored. However, now that Cello is gone, we can change that system.

Our new Bureaucrats - Sima and Vatsa have abolished the old hierarchy. The new message we are trying to deliver to the community now is "equality": all users are equal, everyone has a say, and most importantly, the Staff are not superior to anyone else. What the Staff have is extra responsibilities and duties, not power.

So, in order to better involve the whole community in decision making, we have set up Forums where people can vote, offer suggestions, and comment on changes to the Wiki. Examples of such Forums can be seen in Event Articles Deletion and Future of Apprentice Initiative. Over the coming weeks, the Staff pages will be rewritten, so as to sound less authoritative. I'm almost finished rewriting the Apprentice pages, so if you're interested in becoming an Apprentice, read those pages, and the Forum linked above for the latest info on the changes made.

So, to sum up - the Staff are not to be worshipped or feared, and everyone now has an equal say regarding the decisions made around the Wiki. Also, small note regarding the Forums; the way they're organised has been redone by Vatsa. They're better structured and pretty straight forward, I haven't had a proper look at it yet so if there's any queries with that leave it in the comments and Vatsa or someone else will assist you, though it shouldn't be to overwhelming.

Featured Fanons
On a new topic, the way Fanons are voted for Featured Status has changed. The Fanon section is a relatively new addition to the Wiki, and has taken off better than expected.

As with mainspace articles, we have nominations for Good and Featured Status, where a user nominates an article and that article is judged by other editors. Our first attempts at deciding Featured Fanons was a bit rushed. First they were Fanons of the Months, then it was changed to just Featured Fanons and the voting became more of a competition, as only one would become Featured. So after several complications and multiple faults, we agreed to just change the Featured Fanon nominations to be the same as the Featured Articles.

This means that Fanons can be nominated multiple times, people can vote for more than one, and people can vote against them - it's an all-round better system.

There is also a Fanon Portal in the works; more news on that at 11.

That's all for today. Enjoy.




 * Posted on: 06:15, April 16, 2012 (UTC)