Proposal: change the rules for character approval

[covaithe]

I propose that we make the following changes to the character review and approval process:

• Create a new position called Senior Reviewer (SR for short). Judges are SRs, and judges can create new SRs by adding their names to the list maintained in the charter, and by granting them admin privileges in the wiki.
• When a character is submitted for review, it needs two approvals, one of which must be from a senior reviewer. The other can be from anyone.
• Retire the official approved characters thread, and replace it with the Approved Characters wiki page, which will be locked so that only admins can edit it.
• In order to submit a character for review, instead of emailing the judges, you should now edit the Approval Requests page and add a link to your character sheet at the bottom of the list, in the "Needs two reviews" section. That wiki page will be semi-protected, so that you can only edit it if you log in to wikia. (Thus everyone will have to sign up for a wikia account in order to submit characters.) You should subscribe to be notified of changes on your character sheet; the reviewers will notify you of approval or changes needed by making comments directly on your character sheet.

 

[covaithe]

I've created interim versions of both of the wiki pages mentioned. I've not locked them; feel free to go in and improve them if you think of a way to do so.

Before making this proposal, I went over the charter and the character creation guide, thinking to have updated text for those in hand before kicking this off. But it turns out that it's not too bad; we'll have to make some changes, but the bulk of it is still fine. This pleasantly surprises me. There's still a chunk of work to do to update all taht stuff, but I now mentally estimate it in minutes rather than hours.

Transitioning between the old review process and the new review process could be a bit painful. I'm not sure what to do about characters that were submitted two months ago. Do we just ask everyone to resubmit using the new method? I guess that's good enough, but if someone somehow misses the announcement that they should resubmit, they could be waiting a very long time. I'm sure at least a few people will find a way to miss the change. I guess it can't be helped, but I'd welcome ideas to try to smooth the transition.

Likewise, the Approved Characters page is likely to be inaccurate for a while, until everyone has been submitted for approval at least once. I suppose it could in theory be recreated from scratch by going through every character sheet in the wiki and checking what the last level they were approved at was. I certainly don't plan on spending the time to do that. Ideas for this are welcome too, though I don't think it's a very great tragedy if it's just incomplete for a while.

At some point someone should document the review process in more detail, in the wiki probably.

 

[covaithe]

I should add, in case anyone missed it, that there is more background and discussion on this proposal in this thread.

 

[garyh]

I enthusiastically vote YES on this proposal.

 

[Mewness]

I like the proposal, and if it passes I'd like to be an SR.

 

[TwoHeadsBarking]

Yes

 

[Luinnar]

Yes, I think it is a great way to help with the problem.

 

[CaBaNa]

I'd like to get back into actively reviewing characters, consider me for SR.

 

[Luinnar]

Since it has been at least 48 hours and there has been 3 Yes votes and 0 No votes, the proposal has passed.

If anyone else with a history of reviewing character sheets would like to volunteer to be a Senior Reviewer, this would be a good place as any to do so

 

[BenBrown]

Someone needs to put links to these new pages in the L4w wiki front page, since they're official.