[DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

Summary:

A proposal discussion in the face of requirements needed to be able to join the SCP wiki community staff.

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[DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

EmotionalEntropy 28 Apr 2023 01:37

Mainsite Mirror

Background

As it currently stands, there are no formal, documented requirements for joining staff. Because of this, people under the age of 18 can become staff, as well as users banned from the site. Allowing minors to join staff holds complications and risks for several reasons, both to staff themselves and potential applicants. People under 18 are inherently more vulnerable to abuse and may be at a higher risk when in a staff position. There is also a variety of situations that a staff member may face that minors should not be involved in. Secondary to this, people under 18 are not even eligible to join the site they would be gaining authority over. Combined, these make giving them a position in staff, as well as giving them the authority that comes with such, would be irresponsible at best.
There is also the issue of users banned from the wiki being able to join site staff. Banned users are, as the name implies, banned from contributing to the wiki. Joining staff and voting on policy or participating in most, if not all, staff activities is essentially contributing to the SCP wiki. Although in practice, this is not a big issue, it is still possible and should be addressed.

Proposal

We propose the following be added in the Site Charter under section 4:

A. Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible to join staff, a user must:
1. Be over the age of 18
2. Be a member of the main site of the SCP wiki.
3. Be a member of the staff site of the SCP wiki until they leave all staff positions.

Other subsections will shifted down one letter, including the current subsection A. In addition to the charter changes, any underage staffers will be removed from their positions, and any staff members who are not members of the SCP wiki will be sent a message by their team captain(s) informing them that they must apply for membership within two weeks. Staff who are inactive at the time of this policy passing will not be required to join the main site until they come out of inactivity, after which they will have two weeks to apply for site membership.

Contributors of this proposal: EmotionalEntropy torcsandantlers jjed does not match any existing user name

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This discussion will be open for one week, after which it will go to voting should there be no objections. As it will require an edit to a charter, the vote will require 60% yes votes with at least half of staff members voting.

Last edited on 28 Apr 2023 02:00 by EmotionalEntropy Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

Uncle Nicolini 28 Apr 2023 01:43

It only makes sense. Supporting.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

DrBleep 28 Apr 2023 01:44

Supporting.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

JackalRelated 28 Apr 2023 01:50

Yup

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

Prime Girl 28 Apr 2023 02:05

👍There is the very unlikely case where someone might be eligible to join the SCP Wiki per our rules, wanting to join a team that does not require use of Wikidot (IO, Discord) but unable to use Wikidot for some reason beyond our control, though I guess we can worry about that if it ever happens.

edit: seconding Yossi

Last edited on 28 Apr 2023 06:25 by Prime Girl Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

Mooagain 28 Apr 2023 02:12

Looks good. Would it be worth saying that staff who stop being a member of the site also stop being staff? Not sure if that's already stated in the charter.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

EmotionalEntropy 28 Apr 2023 02:27

That part does have a bit of nuance in it, which I can see would be in how you look at it as despite site retirements many do not relinquish being a member of the site itself, but having that be so would be potentially useful in the case of when one may suddenly throw in the towel.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

AriadnesThread 28 Apr 2023 02:16

I think these are great! Supporting.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

Yossipossi 28 Apr 2023 02:18

I am against 2. IO has had a number of members in the past who were not site members, and making them go through the application process is cumbersome and unnecessary. Instead, I recommend 2 be changed to be A: must have a Wikidot account, and B: must be capable of being a member of the Wiki. This is identical to the prior criteria, but allows IO/Discord Team to not lose potential members just because they don't want to spend a few days to join the site first (on addition to onboarding, etc).

Also, 3 isn't a criteria to join; it's a criteria to remain staff. This should be rectified.

Last edited on 30 Apr 2023 07:10 by Yossipossi Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

psychicprogrammer 28 Apr 2023 04:57

Seconding, this could be a requirement to be non adjunct staff but there are exceptions where staff members do not need to be onsite.

Last edited on 28 Apr 2023 04:58 by psychicprogrammer Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

aismallard 28 Apr 2023 06:29

I would dispute that the current rules allow for banned users to be staff, there are clauses within the Site Charter, for instance, which strongly imply such a state is not legitimate.

Regardless, I am fine explicitly enumerating that banned staff is not okay so I'm not going to argue the above point.

Formatting-wise, there are two changes that need to be made, adding a period after "18" and using an ordered list instead of unstructured numbers. With the wording in the initial post, the wikitext would be:

+ wikitext

++++ A. Eligibility Requirements
To be eligible to join staff, a user must:
# Be over the age of 18.
# Be a member of the main site of the SCP wiki.
# Be a member of the staff site of the SCP wiki until they leave all staff positions.

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Now as for the actual policy, I agree with Yossi that requiring strict membership before being able to join at all is an unnecessary dependency requirement. (Note that, per RFC 2119, "recommended" does not mean "required".) Additionally I think the last point could be rewritten.

My suggested draft would be:

+ wikitext

++++ A. Eligibility Requirements
To be a staff member, a user must:
# Be over the age of 18.
# Be in good standing with the SCP Wiki.
# Have a Wikidot account.
# If eligible, be a member of the staff site of the SCP Wiki while serving as staff.
# Be immediately contactable by other staff members, and regularly present in primary staff chat spaces.

A. Eligibility Requirements

To be a staff member, a user must:

1. Be over the age of 18.
2. Be in good standing with the SCP Wiki.
3. Have a Wikidot account.
4. Be capable of being a member of the main site of the SCP Wiki. Such membership is recommended.
5. If eligible, be a member of the staff site of the SCP Wiki while serving as staff.
6. Be immediately contactable by other staff members, and regularly present in primary staff chat spaces.

Edit: I included Estrella's point about chat availability. I also added "if eligible" to address the issue with Adjunct Staff and future scenarios that may arise.

Last edited on 28 Apr 2023 15:39 by aismallard Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

stormbreath 28 Apr 2023 14:01

Be in good standing with the SCP Wiki.

I think if we keep using the phrasing "good standing", we might need to define what that means, because this is going to be a different usage than the existing version (returning to Operational Staff rank after leaving staff).

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can I get some nice "no signatures on my forum"
sigma-9 css machine broke
understandable have a nice day

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

aismallard 28 Apr 2023 15:32

I agree, as a phrase it is useful because we can define it in policy rather than using more specific terminology like "users who are not banned". I chose this wording because of its use in that other context, where similar benefits for use of the term exist.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

Yossipossi 28 Apr 2023 21:37

I strongly agree with Ais here. I agree with storm that we should define what "good standing" actually means somewhere, though.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

EmotionalEntropy 30 Apr 2023 20:22

Hello! I'll address each of your, Yossi's, and Estrella's points to the best of my ability on answering, agreeing, and opposing.

B: must be capable of being a member of the Wiki

There is no way for us to reasonably determine that a person is capable of being a member of the Wiki or that said person has taken the time to read the joining the site page and requirements to be a member of the wiki. While yes people may lie about their age in the making of a Wikidot account, we have a far better safety net as staff to handle it accordingly should it be discovered. Having an account on the SCP wiki would give us the confirmation they are fully aware of what is needed to be a member of the SCP Wiki, alongside being able to know who our members are and who we have on staff and consistently keeping track. Cumbersome as it may be, while I cannot speak for the rest of my contributors, putting in an extra small step of work in order to keep things far safer for us as staff and the community as a whole.

We also cannot determine if IO or Discord staff would wish to be adjunct staff unless stated by the individual, but there still needs to be a way of having them listed and kept track of. They are capable of obtaining important and/or private information such as passwords to public SCP Wiki IO accounts, inner staff discussions, and other types of information. There are difficulties in handling where they are able to go as Adjunct Staff, but they information they can obtain should still hold them in a responsibility of being kept track on as staff all the same through an SCP Wiki account if problems were to arise from them.

I can suggest this:

"Be a member of the main site of the SCP wiki or be actively pursuing membership."

The requirements stated from the initial discussion, while mentioning O5 does not state being in O5 as a requirement.

Now, in regards to Ais's points

Be in good standing with the SCP Wiki.

How do we determine someone is good standing with the SCP Wiki if they don't have an account?
Is it the SCP Wiki alone or is it in all SCP community spaces that have to determine this factor. As things currently are there are a large amount of people who we would not be able to determine their standing because there is no reasonable way to track it unless it were through their standing on the Wiki itself, and that requires membership. If it were to apply to the Official discord how would this apply to Wiki staff members who have received warns, or even bans alongside those who apply for staff in the same predicament.

Be immediately contactable by other staff members, and regularly present in primary staff chat spaces.

I do agree in the first section of being contactable by other staff members, however it would be important to clarify how and in what way. The immediately also poses an issue given the nature of messaging systems and people's times. In the second half, that holds differently given what we define as primary staff chat spaces and how they are present. I feel this would be a separate set of terms and that more focuses on activity and presence within your staff position and is held more as a criteria to remain staff than to join.

How does this sound instead:

Have an accessible way to be contacted by other staff members.

I will also be happy to amend requirement 3.

Please let me know all of your thoughts on such, as I am far more interested in what it just the quick and easy way and believe in order to cover all our tracks that such things are given thought for the long term effectiveness of the proposal.

Edit: I may be stupid, requirement 3 does in fact relate onto O5 access and I'll definitely amend it in the face of adjunct staff.

Last edited on 30 Apr 2023 20:28 by EmotionalEntropy Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

aismallard 04 May 2023 04:43

There is no way for us to reasonably determine that a person is capable of being a member of the Wiki or that said person has taken the time to read the joining the site page and requirements to be a member of the wiki.

I'm not sure, if someone is being scouted as a staff member, that probably means we can count on them to be able to read through the guide process.

Though if this concern is really such a strong one, I think it would be fine to change the wording to be more direct "Must be a site member", and note that the membership requirements (site and O5) are eventual rather than hard blockers before becoming staff. I think the alternate wording you suggested can work as well.

"Good standing" is presently understood by consensus. Though I think here you want more specifics, so consider someone being banned from a semi-associated community space but considered fine on the main site, where they would be fine unless staff felt they were already "borderline" due to other behaviorial issues. Afterall if they were banned from a community space for cause, and the same circumstances applied on the site, then that issue would eventually be resolved anyways.

But like I said it is used in other places of note and is understood among staff well enough that it is fine to include it here, though I do agree we should formalize it as its a useful concept to have in policy.

Have an accessible way to be contacted by other staff members.

The issue with this is being able to be contacted ≠ present in staff chat spaces. There were some notable individuals who, despite being on staff, were not in staff chat and were thus severely out of the loop on some important information regarding the site. yet they were technically providing "an accessible way to be contacted" because it was possible to send them messages. This phrase just doesn't mean the same thing.

If the word "immediately" is a problem we can change it, for instance, "Be available for live discussion with staff members, and regularly present in primary staff chat spaces.", which precludes the "responds to messages within a couple days" kind of communication, which is insufficient for staff coordination.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

torcsandantlers 04 May 2023 14:44

I like the addition of points requiring good standing and being immediately/readily contactable. I think an approach here for "good standing" is to get this through with the phrase included and hash out separately how we want to define it; we should probably track down all uses of it in policy to ensure it makes sense.

…if someone is being scouted as a staff member, that probably means we can count on them to be able to read through the guide process.

I think that's a great reason to require membership. We're asking them to do something quick and easy that can greatly increase our ability to keep records (for ourselves and the community) of who is and is not staff.

All-in-all, I think this is going to need some tweaks and a second discussion.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

Ethagon 28 Apr 2023 10:58

Agreeing with Yossi on Nr. 2 as well. I do think it's better that Nr. 3 is a requirement for remaining staff rather then joining, giving that it happens from time to time that Junior Staff slip through the cracks and with this they technically wouldn't be staff until the problem is noticed and an O5 admin adds them to the staff site.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Staff Eligibility Requirements

EmotionalEntropy 30 Apr 2023 20:27

Understood on Nr. 3 and looking at it yes this does pose its own problems, although Nr. 2 itself may also assist in allowing us to keep track of Junior Staff who slip through the cracks even if it happens sometimes.

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