C&C and IS reform

[chaos**]

To address Jumpman's concerns and to make the process open for more people, I think the decision was made to limit IS to Moderators+ and Site Staff. All other non-sensitive operations should be made public and since we are going through C&C reform, we can simply stuff the majority of this work in there. Since I plan to give a lot more badges out to people so they can edit stuff on the SCMS, I think this might be the best plan.

So... how far along are we on the C&C reform, anyway? Have the ruleset and guides been updated to accommodate our new focus? I plan on putting the SCMS guide in C&C one of these days...

Also another thing of note. What would you all think of a peer-review subforum? It might not be necessary (and we can decide when we know how much activity the new C&C gets) but I think it'd be cool to put up stuff for peer-review after sweeping changes. It might not be necessary, but just throwing ideas around.

Also, we need a guide on the "credits" page. Mr. E tried to add himself after making 2 changes and a slight edit to é. I rejected his edit of course, but whatever.

[Mekkah**]

If you don't want every Site Staff member to read what's going on in the moderating circle you could always do
- C&C (everyone)
- Inside Scoop (Mods+ and Site Staff)
- Mod Discussion (Mods+)

but I'm not sure if that's necessary.

[chaos**]

Unnecessary division. Can someone answer my questions?

[Aeolus]

I'm all for making IS a bit more private, especially with the plans we have to increase the number of badgeholders. The only issue is dealing with users who've enjoyed IS access for a while... but will now lose it. I missed the IRC discussion on this, so I'm not sure of the details of all that.

The guidelines in the C&C forum are up to date; but more needs to be added. I had PM conversation with Obi on IRC two days ago where we thought it would be best to draft an announcement for C&C describing all the new changes and how people should react. He is currently working on that. Once the ball gets rolling and people get the hang of what we want them to do... I think that would be the best time to move the SCMS guide etc. to C&C so people will start using the SCMS as much as possible.

As for the peer-review forum. I think C&C itself will function as a peer review forum once the reform is implemented. People will be creating new topics for each material change they want to make, and people will be able ot discuss the changes in those threads. I envision it working just like the DP Analyses forum worked.

As for the guide for the credits page, I'd say it would be good if you (chaos) would outline a threshold of contribution to make it onto the credits page. I think the page itself is almost a guide... it provides tens of examples of the sorts of things that we want listed and the format in which to list them. I'm not sure what I'd put in a guide other than a general "level" that needs to be attained to get into the credits. If all else fails, I'm willing to just approve/disapprove edits on a case by case basis so someone doesn't have to spend time writing a guide for the credits page when they could be working on other projects.

[Misty**]

The way I see it, the best way to handle informing people about this news is to just tell them that we're eliminating Inside Scoop - which is sort of true, since the new IS is mostly just a renamed Moderator Discussion, with Site Staff access. To that end, I'd also suggest ditching #insidescoop for something else (i.e. #theinsidescoop).

[chaos**]

There are very few people who aren't moderators/Site Staff (or should be Site Staff) that contribute to IS anyway.

Aeolus, thats what I meant. Information about new policies should be drafted up, and there still aren't the stickies that I called for (typo correction sticky, etc) Later tonight I'll try to get the basis of an SCMS guide started, and remove links to stuff that people can't access lol

[david stone]

Well, what I was thinking was to have each analysis have a link to C&C. This would entirely eliminate the "megathreads".

If it could be done by script to take you to an almost ready made opening post if no one has discussed that analysis yet, but then change to just view that thread if such a thread exists, that script would be nice, but if that would go above pretty much anything else, I wouldn't mind taking on the job of just manually updating the links. So instead, it would just be a link to "make a new post" by default, and when someone sees an error, they'd click the "Help edit this page" link or whatever at the bottom, it brings them to "create a new thread", they'd explain the error, and then they just post it. Whenever someone posts such a thread, I could change the link to point to that thread. This would avoid bumping all current threads down 50 pages with an influx of tons of blank threads, but still allow each analysis to have it's own thread, thus maintaining focus.

This would also be present as a link in, say, the breeding guide, so it wouldn't be limited to just Pokemon analyses. Most strategy analyses already begin as forum posts, so all it would do is have the person who uploads it tag that link to it. To solve the hassle of updating it on the SCMS, the best solution I can think of would be for me to just delete the article from the opening post (it would be on the site at this point, anyway).

I hesitate to write too much on how this will work until I know exactly how it will work, though, so that's why there's no announcement yet.

/edit: This would also essentially make each thread be the peer review. If you are considering a massive change to an analysis, you could post your ideas in that thread, and open it up for discussion. Of course, "everyone can post", so it's not necessarily the same, but I don't really see the need to prevent people from posting in it altogether.

[chaos**]

There will be a generic link to C&C but I don't want each page to have a link to immediately post a forum response. I want people to read the rules and regulations of the forum and having an auto-post would completely nullify that. Also, I'm not sure if I understood this, but there should be a new post created for each issue which will be discussed and closed when resolved... I don't want a thread for each analysis, or a thread for each article. Of course, we can piggyback issues in one thread if multiple problems arise for one analysis, but it's not strictly enforced.

Aeolus knows how its going down. We need to get this going!

[Jumpman16**]

I agree that the threads themselves in C&C would be a peer review, and especially if it's made clear that C&C is taking on a much greater importance, posters will be much more likely to put on favorable auditions for the role of "worthy contributor to Smogon".