Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-6218837-20150712205035

TL;DR: Read it, come on, it's important.

I understand we're reaching the 3000th page on the wiki, and that has put me under a lot of pressure. I can't give an exact number since a lot of them aren't categorized, but I would hazard a guess at about a 75:25 ratio between well-made pages and pages that need cleanup.

Now this wouldn't be so bad if our four (six counting inactive ones) moderators were superhuman and could fix it all as quickly as it occured. We can't. I will say we definitely can and should work a little harder, since mostly what we do is transfer it to someone else with a Cleanup template, but we really can't keep up with all this.

How would we solve this? The methods that come to mind are:
 * Page lockdown: definitely not. It's against ToU, and it's a very unwieldy and hard-to-enforce solution that would probably end up creating more work in the long run.
 * Getting more moderators: it's a possibility. However, honestly, no one here is suitable to be a moderator that isn't already, with a few possible exceptions that aren't very active.
 * Being harsher with idea deletion and creation policies: This has a very good chance of escalating beyond control to the point where the policies would ruin the user pool. Plus, we're about as tight as we can be without going into the red zone, which would be banning.
 * Directly speaking to users that are problematic: We try, we try, but a lot of people aren't able to understand that a blanket announcement to the whole wiki is targeted at them. I won't call anyone out here, but this is a suggestion that would really be more effective if pulled off by someone with significant diplomatic capabilities.

I honestly have no idea where to take this, so I'm asking for suggestions from you. This situation is really transferring a lot of stress through the wiki until it hits the final point, which is in this case me and the other mods. I ask you to trust the other staff members at least as much as myself, and give them some of your attention instead. Don't direct all your questions to them, but remember that they have capability too and were chosen because the community thinks they can handle such situations. To the moderators: unless you've been explicitly told not to do it, always remember this little bit of golden wisdom Silver told me [on the topic of becoming an admin on another wiki].

"Well, I guess if I mess up, I'll always have someone who can back me up and fix it."

Wikis are fixable for a reason, you know. Don't be afraid to make decisions, because we can always roll them back if they're bad. Just don't get into wars; discuss it quietly and calmly.

Appreciate the listening and (I hope) feedback we'll get. 