Hey guys, I suggest we change the deletion threshold back to 5 (or even anything below 0 for X certain period of time) so that we don't have shit articles sitting around forever.
Military Consultant, SCP Wiki
Hey guys, I suggest we change the deletion threshold back to 5 (or even anything below 0 for X certain period of time) so that we don't have shit articles sitting around forever.
Military Consultant, SCP Wiki
taking what sorts said below into consideration, i recommend that articles below 0 be brought up for review, and the author contacted if they arent currently active in the discussion.
if they fail to make changes that are sufficient to bring the article's rating above 0 again within a certain period of time(within a week of being contacted maybe?), then we can vote on it for deletion.
then, any article that falls below -5 could be voted on after 24 hours, and any article that fell below -10 could be voted on right away.
that all said, i will support the current proposal if put up for vote even without changes, i just feel that this would address both concerns.
I'm against it.
Admin, SCP Wiki
I'm against changing it.
Admin, SCP Wiki
Ditto.
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
Hey guys, I suggest we change the deletion threshold back to 5 (or even anything below 0 for X certain period of time) so that we don't have shit articles sitting around forever
I strongly support this. I advocate for a -1 threshold, with the 24-hour grace period remaining intact.
Seriously, there is no reason to not either queue up a rewrite or delete an article outright when it goes into the negatives. If we feel that the article needs a stay of execution, we can give our input in the deletion vote.
-snip- to stay on topic.
Dropping in my vote for a -1 threshold, and… let's say -10 for early deletion vote.
if your reading this your gay
Oh, right. Frankly, anything is fine by me for early deletion votes.
I think an article ought not to be subjected to early deletion if it has a significant number of upvotes, even if it's at, say, -10.
Deletion in due course, maybe. But not _early_ deletion. If an article has, say, ten or so upvotes, then don't fast track it's deletion because that's evidence that it does have a constituency and we ought to make it easier for the author to review and digest comments on the forum, to sandbox it, and to go back to the drawing board and try to make it work.
Early deletion isn't what it sounds like. It simply means it can be deleted the moment its grace period is up.
Military Consultant, SCP Wiki
There is never actual early deletion, for exactly the reasons you've given. But we can start the vote early if it goes down enough.
Given that we're going to be waiting 24 hours no matter what I think we should stick with -10 and -25 like we've currently got. We should revisit that after the move.
We're going to have to stick with the shit as much as we would otherwise and apart from one terrible recent example things do not linger at -1 for days.
Given that we're going to be waiting 24 hours no matter what I think we should stick with -10 and -25 like we've currently got. We should revisit that after the move.
things do not linger at -1 for days.
Yes. Yes they absolutely do.
Have you ever looked at Lowest Rated Pages? Do you know how long pages tend to stick around between -1 and -10 just because no one wants to read them?
("Weeks" is the answer. Occasionally "months". I know this because Lowest Rated Pages is my shortcut to finding stuff eligible for deletion. I check it at minimum every few days.)
This isn't about stuff like the saddest necrophile SCP. That only stuck around a couple days and got a lot of attention and I have no problem with that. I'm talking about stuff that people just ignore, including the authors, because for some odd reason being in the negatives is OK until it eventually drifts down to -10. (Also, I've had multiple authors tell me that their piece is just fine because it's 'only' at -4 or whatever. Wut?)
It's not extremely urgent but I don't see why we shouldn't just address it now.
I just looked at the articles between -10 and -1 and they are all old stuff that's drifted down slowly, which is exactly the kind of stuff I want to linger so it can be improved before deletion.
I was going to support this when I thought you meant this as a policy for after the move. Then I thought about it and said "fuck it"; no reason to wait that long to flush shit out. Supporting -1 deletion threshold, -10 (or even -5, if we're up for canceling the vote if it rises above) early-vote-for-deletion threshold, keep the 24-hour grace period.
Do we want to make it somewhat temporary, or just try it for a while and see if it works well?
Ehhh, I'm a little leery of it. I say let's try it on a trial basis.
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
I'm totally against raising the deletion thresholds above -5, and I don't like the idea of raising it at all, at least not till we move, because right now Deletion is Forever. Once an article is deleted, it and all of its related data, like its history and its discussion thread, are gone irrevocably. Sure, for utter crap, this isn't an issue, but this proposal wouldn't affect utter crap, but rather older marginal articles that for whatever reasons haven't aged well and could very well hit a positive rating with an update of some fashion.
Lemme just pick an old one between -10 and -1… SCP-232. It's currently sitting at -4, with 58 votes. This breaks down to 27 upvotes and 31 downvotes. That's about a 47% approval rate, which is statistically not far at all from majority approval of those who have expressed a preference. Hell, change the votes of two people from down to up, and it's sitting at 0. (Yes, easier said than done, but certainly doable.) By the same token, an article could hit this same -4 with a grand total of four votes. That's too small a sample size to get a representative view of the user population.
Finally, a large part of the reason I supported the original deletion threshold change from -5 to -10 was because -8 was no longer the kiss of death it once was. Now it's not unheard of for an article to be rewritten and saved after dropping below -20. I don't want to just delete these marginal articles at -4 or -6 or -8 simply because we got impatient waiting for someone to save it. (Yes, I realize it wouldn't be "just deleting" these articles. They'd get a vote for deletion, but since most votes end up with deletion, it's more than likely a death sentence for that article.)
The process we have works. If you, as a staff member, want to bring these marginal articles up to the attention of the userbase to try to move their ratings or to inspire someone to rewrite them, then by all means, do so. But changing the deletion threshold is not the way to address the issue.
Having said all that, once we get to the new site, where Deletion is not irrevocable, I'll be a lot more willing to futz around with the deletion thresholds.
[Added:] Related but tangent issue that I don't want to start a whole new thread for: in the Site Rules, Senior Staff have the right to "call for the mass review of a particularly good/bad entry." I suggest changing this line to "call for the mass review of a particular entry.", since most articles that need more attention are generally neither particularly good nor bad.
(this post is also re: Sorts)
I'm totally against raising the deletion thresholds above -5, and I don't like the idea of raising it at all, at least not till we move, because right now Deletion is Forever.
hm. alright, I suppose that is a fair point. My perspective is perhaps altered by having watched certain articles, including some (often old Tales) that are definitely total shit, just sit around on the Lowest Rated page for forever. The thing that triggered my support of this now rather than later was an old tale that sat around at -5 with no new votes or comments despite having been put up for review four times over the course of two months, and other similar examples as well. (Granted… Most of these weren't SCPs, but rather supplements/Tales/etc. And… that tale did finally get deleted when I put it up for review for a fifth time during a super busy period in chat when people actually happened to be willing to read articles.)
The process we have works. If you, as a staff member, want to bring these marginal articles up to the attention of the userbase to try to move their ratings or to inspire someone to rewrite them, then by all means, do so.
We've definitely been doing this. (Well, Scantron and I have been.) Trouble is, our process for that is pretty inefficient. Maybe what I'm seeing here is just the side effects of a lack of ability for staff to effectively get eyes on something. It's typically 'try your luck in 19'. Not sure about any kind of solution, though I've talked to Mackenzie about options for PF featuring of articles.
[Added:] Related but tangent issue that I don't want to start a whole new thread for: in the Site Rules, Senior Staff have the right to "call for the mass review of a particularly good/bad entry." I suggest changing this line to "call for the mass review of a particular entry.", since most articles that need more attention are generally neither particularly good nor bad.
I definitely agree with this, and honestly, the only staff who actually use the review process - mainly Scantron and I at the moment, again - use it this way. Mackenzie got data on which articles had the least number of votes, and we've been putting those up for review. Though like I said, frustrations with middling to total lack of response to the review process are part of the reason for my support for this proposal. Which I suppose could be a poor motivation. You just kind of get sick of the mud pile when you stare at it every other day or so for weeks and weeks on end and see such little discernible movement.
So I guess I was wrong, there isn't no reason to start the deletion process when an article is in the negatives, as long while deletion is forever. My support for a -1 threshold is as strong as ever for the new site, though.
I agree with Quik. Also, re: calling for mass review: What if we make a prominent actual page listing those articles?
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
Bland PM'd me with this:
May I suggest that rather the a page to call attention to he low rated old articles you have a rewrite contest?
I'm not sure what I think about this one.
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
Eh… I don't like it.
Tangent: I do think we need much, much stricter rules on rewrites. If someone wants to rewrite an article, fine, but I think we need to start going ahead and deleting stuff off the main site. We've got two, crappy articles—both with completed deletion votes—that have been sitting on the site for a few weeks now. Let them rewrite the article and repost it. I'm no longer in favor of guaranteeing their spot.
Additionally, no. Deletion threshold stays where it is, as far as I'm concerned, at least until the site move. It was lowered recently because of the mass hate that would hit an article with fairly minor flaws. I'm happy with where it is, though I think we need more staff paying attention. I think I deleted seven or eight pages last night? A bit silly.
"WELL FOUNDATION. YOU MADE IT SO EASY. SO VERY VERY EASY." - dimensionpotato
Tangent: I do think we need much, much stricter rules on rewrites. If someone wants to rewrite an article, fine, but I think we need to start going ahead and deleting stuff off the main site.
I guess I shouldn't have edited my initial post in this thread.
It seems very likely that not attributing the old author is a violation of Creative Commons. And we've almost never attributed the old author. Deleting the article removes all onsite evidence of the old author. I don't think this is necessarily a problem so long as the old author is attributed somehow … but so far, we haven't really done this. ESPECIALLY if we institute a stricter rewrite policy and start deleting shit, we've got to address this.
There's plenty more to be said re: other stuff you brought up, but so as not to get too off-topic, I'll say it later.
I strongly support allowing someone to post a rewrite in a new slot, or even the old slot after the original version has been deleted. Some of those articles are accruing/have accrued so many downvotes that it'll be impossible for a rewrite to recover from it, especially on rewrites of older articles, where a significant number of the votes are from people who aren't around any more. And frankly, most people who downvote aren't going to come back and look at it again, even if it's now the best thing on the site.
That being said, I think we need to institute a rule where the author of a rewrite MUST post an attribution to the original author in the comments. I've done that with both of the re-writes I did, and I plan to with the other rewrite I have languishing in my sandbox.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
That being said, I think we need to institute a rule where the author of a rewrite MUST post an attribution to the original author in the comments.
Seconded whole-heartedly
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
That being said, I think we need to institute a rule where the author of a rewrite MUST post an attribution to the original author in the comments.
Thirding this, in case my post did not make it clear. As far as I can tell, we are legally required to do this. The fact that we haven't yet is a pretty clear failing on our part.
I suppose it's more of an issue now, since rewrites used to be more commonly posted on top of original versions. Now that we're moving more towards posting on fresh pages, yeah, we probably want to include something in our rules material concerning attributions on rewrites.
I agree with Quik. Also, re: calling for mass review: What if we make a prominent actual page listing those articles?
I would strongly support this.
Any other comments, or do we need another topic for this discussion?
I'm with Bright, Sorts and Dex, and that is that I'm against it.