Board Thread:Site Discussions/@comment-3416945-20160117033101

Wikia recently announced the addition of two new user rights groups. The user rights groups are called "Discussions Moderators" and "Content Moderators" respectively.

Discussion Moderators are equipped with administrator-like rights on forum threads and message walls. They will be able to moderate chat. (Chat moderators will remain as a separate group as well.) They will also be able to delete, move, and edit Article Comments and delete Blog Comments.

Meanwhile, Content Moderators will have the ability to moderate parts of the community that host the wikia’s content. They will assume the following abilities: Deleting and undeleting pages, protecting and unprotecting pages, suppress redirect on page moves, move files, and reupload files.

This is quite a big change and it can have positive effects on the Sonic News Network community. For starters, we need to decide if we want to utilize such rights. I believe we should. As per usual, all requests for these rights should be made at Sonic News Network:Requests for User Rights.

We'll have to decide on a set length for these nominations. Rollback and chat moderator are roles just below content moderator and discussions moderator respectively. Rollback and chat moderator currently last one week and require five votes. Administrator and bureaucrat last two weeks and require ten and fifteen votes respectively. There's a few things we could do here:


 * Content moderator and discussions moderator nominations last one week and require ten votes. No change in requirements for other user rights.
 * Content moderator and discussions moderator nominations last two weeks and require ten votes. No change in requirements for other user rights.
 * Content moderator and discussions moderator nominations last one week and require ten votes. Administrator nomination requirement for participating users increased to fifteen.
 * Content moderator and discussions moderator nominations last two weeks and require ten votes. Administrator nomination requirement for participating users increased to fifteen.

(The bolded option is the one I prefer)

Of course, we're not limited to those options. I encourage you to think of better alternatives.

Lastly, I suggest that we give current administrators the options to "downgrade" to one or both of the content moderator and discussions moderator user rights. I know that some administrators can become overwhelmed with all of the responsibilities and obligations and would prefer to only have half of the rights. Some are more content-oriented and may only want the content moderator rights and some are more community-oriented and may only want the discussions moderator rights. I think we should allow current administrators to downgrade their rights, but for a limited time. It may get a bit crazy if we allow administrators to downgrade their rights permanently. Of course, if an administrator chooses to downgrade their rights, they may not upgrade back to administrator without first nominating themselves at the RfUR page.

Thoughts? 