Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-1713281-20170209110855/@comment-112155-20170209184450

I'd like to comment a few things, both from my experience as a Content Moderator here and as admin and bureacrat the Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki.

I've always thought and I firmly believe that being a staff member in a wiki, no matter the rank, is not about gaining rights, a cool color for the username, power to settle discussions by saying "I'm an admin and you're not" (and I'm not saying that anyone on this wiki behaves as such, so please don't take as something personal). It is about gaining duties, and responsibilites.

I feel that there is a lack of definition on what the staff members have to do. And I'm not speaking about what they can do, which is something that Fandom decides (protect pages, block users, rollback edits...). I'm talking about their/our actual "job" as Staff members of the wiki.

Most of us do what we think we have to do rather instinctively, and I believe that active admins and mods all give our opinions on topics when we think it can improve the wiki, we perform tasks to provide content, fix things and generally keep the wiki running, etc. We also should try to be role models for regular editors, both in our behaviour and our edits.

With this said, I believe that being a staff member requires committment to perform those tasks in the present. We all have a life and duties beyond this wiki, obviously, but becoming a staff member is something that is not mandatory, many times you are offered the position and you can accept or refuse if you think you are not suited for the role and/or cannot dedicate the time it deserves. Therefore, when a staff members performs a dozen of edits per year, for example, I personally don't see him/her as an example of what a staff member should be in terms of committment.

Think about it with a cool head. Would you promote an editor as a staff member who performs 15 edits per year? Even if they are the most perfect and needed edits of the world, but would you promote him/her? Two years of inactivity is excessive, and their status should be removed earlier than that.

Basically, having been a great admin or staff member back in the day doesn't imply that you're going to be a staff member forever, because I've always considered it unfair for hardworking editors that are building a wiki right now, in the present, who may deserve a promotion, and are hindered by the fact that "no, you can't be promoted because there are already too many staff members, even in half of them barely show up around."

On the other hand, in case of an eventual return, it would be good to have in place a mechanism so that former staff members can regain their status in an easier way than being promoted from the first time. Or in case of sporadic returns or sporadic input, to have a voice but without voting rights in the ongoing discussions.

Hope my humble opinión is useful for the discussion.