GTA Wiki:Requests for Promotion/Jan 2014 Administrator Election/Thomas0802

Case 1
A new user, John123 has made somewhere between 20-30 edits. They have all been minor edits but good - correcting spelling and grammar in articles and occasionally fixing the format of something. In the article Love Fist, he changes which instruments the band members play without leaving an edit summary. John123 is reverted by a patroller named CowboyPatroller, who uses rollback to undo the edit. John123 makes the same edit again, leaving the edit summary "maybe you should play the game, if you did you'd know I'm right". CowboyPatroller reverts him with rollback again. John123 makes the same edit for a third time, this time with the edit summary "STOP UNDOING MY EDIT YOU STUPID PRICK". CowboyPatroller rollbacks his edit again, and then tells you. For the sake of this question, you don't know which members of Love Fist play what instrument. What would you do?


 * A: In this case I would open a discussion page with both editors. I would post images from different artworks about the Love Fist band and analyse it. Before analysing it, I would have locked the page for edit warring. As John 123 is a new user, I would have peacefully introduced him to our Civilty Policy page, and remind that we should not have personal attacks here. After the discussion is finished and analysed. I would add the right info myself to the page.

Case 2
A brand new editor, Newbie200, makes an article called When Do i Get Trevor? The 'article' is a question about how long he has to play GTAV before Trevor becomes playable. Newbie200's written English is so bad that it's almost incomprehensible - he uses capital letters and punctuation almost at random and he frequently uses netspeak ('u' instead of 'you', '&' instead of 'and'). A regular user with no special rights and no prior history of bad behavior, GTAFAN316, nominates the article for deletion with the comment "lrn2wiki". CowboyPatroller reverts GTAFAN316 with the edit summary "Don't be mean dude" but doesn't otherwise talk to Newbie200 or GTAFAN316. Who do you think was out of line? As an administrator, what do you say and to whom?


 * A: I would post a message on Rigby's talk page about improving his grammar before starting editing here. For this, we have a Help:Editing page in case of help by writing sections and get accustomed to Wikia's editing rules. Third thing, I would say to Rigby, that when he needs help with problems during games or wants to open a discussion about something, he should post it in our forums or create a blog post. About the two other editors, I would just end this discussion and move the article to a forum with correct grammar.

Case 3
An editor has been uploading images and refusing to follow the image policy. He has been warned by a bureaucrat and blocked for refusing to follow the rules three months ago. He has continued to upload images - he now names them correctly but he doesn't bother with a license. When confronted on that he says "I don't bother with that only women care about such things". The bureaucrat who warned and blocked the user 3 months ago has said nothing about this. What do you do about this?


 * A: First of all, after he received one message, I would explain to the user that we have certain policies that we need to copyright images and name them correctly to keep the Wiki clean and organized. If he names correctly but continues to violate the licensing part, I would explain to him, with details, where does he find the button to the licensing drop down menu. This should work with most users. But in this case, the user insulted the bureaucrat with personal attacks, feeling over superior. This is part of our civilty policy which is included in the new Welcome template that he should read attentively. I would give him a 1 week block to think about it.

Case 4
A user named TheWikiKid says on his userpage that he is 10 years old. Bureaucrat01 blocks TheWikiKid for being underage and in violation of the Wikia-wide rule that says you must be 13 to edit. TheWikiKid posts on Bureaucrat02's Community Central talk page that he was only joking and that he's really 16, and so Bureaucrat02 unblocks him. Bureaucrat01 immediately reblocks him with the comment "he might be lying and he was causing trouble anyway". Bureaucrat02 re-unblocks with the comment "no he wasn't". The two bureaucrats start wheel-warring (undoing each other's admin actions) and swearing at each other on their talk pages about the incident.

"Stay out of it" is an acceptable answer but it is not the only acceptable answer.


 * A: In this case, I would act with more strictness. I would try to search the user overall the internet, on blogs, forums, social networks, to find out his age. If he is really 16 years old, I would agree with him, and he would be able to start editing. But I would leave a message to him, saying that joking with the staff isn't a mannerly way to talk.

Case 5
GTA92 is a long term editor. His contributions are sometimes good, but he has a history of being argumentative - especially with staff. He's been blocked twice, once for a day once for a week, but both blocks are over a year old. He adds some The Sky Is Blue type trivia to an article, which you revert with rollback. He reverts you with the edit summary "You can't delete it just because you don't like it, 'sysop.'"


 * A: We have a Trivia policy that I would have introduced to him. Then it might be alright. I would give the idea that maybe he should not only work with trivias, and yes, having ideas to contribute with another projects on GTA Wiki.

Case 5b
In addition to what was described in Case 5, GTA92 then follows you to two other articles and reverts your edits with the edit summary "wrong" for both of them. How do you handle this?


 * A: Regardless from case 5. I would block him for one week, because he should know that it isn't right to revenge against a staff member with reason.

Case 6
A long term user on GTA Wiki named GTAmaniac decides to switch his affiliation to Grand Theft Wiki. He does this by announcing this on his user page. He also begins sending messages to other active users on GTA Wiki encouraging them to join him in switching affiliation to the other wiki. CowboyPatroller starts reverting the messages encouraging others to switch wikis. In response, users from the other wiki come over to this one and vandalize CowboyPatroller's user page and talk page. Grand Theft Wiki's owner Gboyers says that although he doesn't personally approve of his users vandalizing this wiki, it's outside his jurisdiction and so he won't even tell them to stop.


 * A: It is alright to move from GTA Wiki to GrandTheftWiki. Just move. But his actions were completely against our spam and plagiarizing policy and he should stop with this part. I would protect CowboyPatroller's page to autoconfirmed level. We have already talked about Gboyers actions, so I would contact another GrandTheftWiki staff member to tell these users to stop.