Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-1713281-20170209110855

For the past 3-4 years, at about this time, we usually have a thread pop up about the admin team as a whole, and how we want to change it; removing powers from old accounts, voting on new admins, and starting last year, upgrading users to moderator status. So consider this 2017's Summit, if you will.

Firstly, the facts. We currently have 30 people on staff: 2 Bureaucrats, 16 Administrators, and 12 Moderators. For the moment, we're gonna focus on Admins. 16 is the largest number of people we've ever had on the team at one time. However, as was pointed out in another thread, roughly half of those admins are people that only contribute to the site sporadically, or in some cases have gone MIA altogether. That not only leaves policy and administrative discussion lacking input, but it can lead to issues with users reaching out to an admin that hasn't been online in several months. So, after some input from a few admins, we've rearranged the Admin list, and made a bit of a distinction between "Active Admins" (those who are here at least once every two weeks, if not every day) and "Semi-Active Admins" (those who contribute when time permits). That's not to say that one group is better than or has more seniority than the other, but it does help differentiate things for the community. Please feel free to contribute some feedback on this change. (For a more detailed explanation behind who was switched and why, go here).

In other house-keeping news, I would like to get some opinions on "retiring" Fumnov. The loose guideline that's previously been used in regards to depowering inactive admin accounts is 'no edits in over two consecutive years'. Fumonv last contributed in October 2014, and has not logged into Wikia since, which puts him well over the 2 year mark. If there's no objections, I think it's time to remove his admin access.

In more positive news, the floor is also open for adding new admins. As proposed by Annabell, I want to gather opinions on promoting The Many-Angled One from Moderator to Administrator. With us moving roughly half the team to "semi-active" status, I believe there is room for new appointments to the team. While I do believe there is room for more than one promotion, I do think we should discuss whether we want a "cap limit" on how many people we have on the team, and vote on candidate accordingly.

And with that, we'll segue into Moderators. We currently have 12 moderators on the site, but that number is a bit misleading. 4 of those users are "discussion moderators", promoted mainly for their work on Wikia's Marvel Discussions mobile app. They seem to be handling things there pretty well, but they all sparsely contribute to the site itself, so for this particular thread, we're going to ignore them, and focus on content moderators.

It's been just shy of a year since we minted our first 7 moderators, with the 8th added about 4 months later. Those original 7 all regularly contribute, with almost all of them making daily edits. Hufflepuffgirl28 has been a bit more sporadic, and has not been here since December 12th, but no big deal. In addition to discussing whether we want to move any of these guys from moderator to admin, I also think it would be wise to discuss if any of our current user base would make a good addition to the moderator team. At least on that front, I would like to see some input from the current moderators, since they have had a year to experiment with their powers, and should have some ideas on who would be a good fit. I also want to see what the current moderator group has on their minds as far as their access levels, tweaks they'd like to see, etc.

I know there's a lot to digest here, so take your time to respond. Looking forward to everyone's feedback. 