Board Thread:Site Discussions/@comment-3416945-20160829051027

Hello everybody. As you may or may not know, I am Bullet Francisco and I am an administrator and former bureaucrat of the Sonic News Network. I have been a part of this wiki for nearly five and a half years and have been an administrator for most of my time here. During this time, the wiki has always operated under a strict "community consensus" guideline--in which us, the community, make the decisions on how to maintain the wiki and the community.

This worked especially well for a fairly big community such as ours, booming with activity on the wiki and on chat. We could operate with a system in which the community was self-maintained, and the community was fairly welcoming because everyone was on an equal playing field. However, time passes. The Sonic series has long since passed its prime and us, the community, have grown up. Most of us have moved on from this wiki and/or moved to Discord to keep in touch with the people we formed bonds with here.

This is why I am suggesting that the wiki also move on from the ancient policy of "community consensus" to make its decisions. Back in the early days of SNN, speaking from 2008-2009 roughly, it was mostly the admins who made the big decisions. Navij11 and Sacre Fi were the authority here for a long time. But they were trustworthy users with a vision for this wiki's future, and with the small community that SNN maintained at the time it was ideal for getting the wiki to the place it is now. The system SNN ran on was the admins made all the big decisions for the small wiki.

This works well for a small wiki because as the community aspect of the site is dying, the wiki still thrives with information. Information that needs to be protected and maintained. The admins struggle to move forward with policies because of the current community consensus policy--the community hardly participates anymore! The admins need to be able to move forward with decisions that would benefit the wiki without having to go through the frustrating obstacle of attempting to get inactive members of the community to care about something that should obviously be implemented.

The current system is designed for a big wiki. The community maintains the community. That sounds, ideal right? But SNN no longer really has a community aspect. It's more of just a wiki with some discussion going on. You look at any other wiki or small forum site and they are run the same way - a group of trustworthy admins maintain everything. And it runs most smoothly that way. Our current wiki/small forum site would be best off run by a small group of trustworthy administrators that do not need to jump through all these different loops just to get something passed into law here. We need to redesign our site to fit the current situation and transition the wiki to a bigger and brighter future.

So what I'm suggesting is that SNN revert to its previous ways: the admins and the bureaucrats have the authority. For this to happen, we need the current admins and bureaucrats to cooperate and we need to entrust these positions to particularly trustworthy people. Our current most active legacy admins are BlueSpeeder, Ultrasonic9000, and Mystic Monkey. They are our most trusted users.

For this new "admins have the authority" system to work, the most trusted users need to be the bureaucrats. As the bureaucrats have the most power, they get to decide who is and who isn't an admin. Do the current editors and casual forum goers even know who Supermorff, Genesjs, Myself 123 and GravelEclipse567 are? Obviously they each are all big parts of this wiki and have helped this wiki to grow. But it's time that the wiki move on from the past. I'm calling for all four of these users to be "lapsed" or step down.

In replacement, I suggest that Ultrasonic9000, BlueSpeeder, and Mystic Monkey be promoted to bureaucrat. This is an ideal set of three unique minds. Ultra, Blue, and Mystic are all highly dedicated to this wiki and have earned the trust of the community. This is why I think the wiki would run most smoothly if these three users can just move forward with decisions instead of having to go through the exhausting process of contacting users like me trying to get me to support a User Rights nomination or a forum thread that can't gain enough community momentum to pass.

To be a bureaucrat on the RfUR requires FIFTEEN votes. Do you really think that a nomination will pass without ever begging people off of Discord to come and vote? Even an admin nomination or a content moderator nomination struggle to pass. The lapsing rights is FOUR MONTHS. That's far too long for this new system. We should transition the decision of user rights permanently to the new bureaucrats like it was back in the early days of SNN. If someone is deserving, promote them.

With the community aspect of this wiki nearly gone, it is important for the wiki to be maintained in this matter because it is most efficient. Trying to get community consensus is exhausting when there aren't really anymore huge conflicts on the wikis regarding policy. We've all left.

That's why I am calling for the current four bureaucrats to step down or to be lapsed and I'm calling for Ultrasonic9000, BlueSpeeder, and Mystic Monkey to be the replacements.

I will step down effective immediately. The remaining administrators, Journalistic and MetalMickey272 should remain in their post as admin as they are both reasonably active on various parts of SNN.

Slug-Drones is long overdue for a rights lapsing as she has not made any substantial edits in four months.

New administrators should be immediately named to also help maintain the wiki. Under the recommendation of Blue, they should be Luma.dash, Axel Badnik, and Riders940 as they are also active editors of the wiki.

It's time to remove ancient policies and transition this wiki to a bigger and brighter future. We are a smaller group now, but the information at SNN is the best it has ever been. We need to maintain that and keep up the good work - but the community consensus policy just slows down progress.

Thank you for a great five and a half years. I regret none of it.

Make SNN Great Again.

Yours Truly,

Bullet Francisco 