There's a backlog of alias and implication suggestions.

Average implication suggestion about 3 months old.
Average alias suggestion about 4 months old.

If it's allowed and possible not to offend anyone with this, I would like to ask if admins are aware of this problem and what are the current plans to address it.

Delian said:
Just wanted to mention it. In a forum thread. Yep. I'm not saying anything should be done about it.

That right there needs to stop.

Anyways, not only do we want to make sure aliases and implications are airtight, we are also made up entirely of volunteers. This includes admins.

Volunteers meaning we need to do other things in real life to earn a living.

Meaning sometimes we can't devote 2-3 hours checking through pages and pages of a certain tag - with no prior discussions - in order to confirm that, yes, this alias/implication would work.

If you want to speed things along, be the change that you want and contribute to those discussions.

A month ago I brought it up in PM with parasprite, in the context of some of mine that haven't been fully addressed, and he said that he and Dash were going to hammer on the queue soon, once some RL stuff is taken care of.

@Knotty_Curls
I'm sorry if the last statement of mine offended you. It wasn't my intention to do so. I edited it out now. So please let's not not offend each other or get overly defensive.

I simply wanted to point out that there may be a problem in the alias/implication suggestion-approval process. Are admins aware of this? I don't know. Do they have plans to improve it? I don't know. But you can't deny the fact that, the backlog of suggested implications and aliases is growing, and that this is a problem. That's why I made this thread to discuss this and possible solutions.

@imagoober
Thank you for the info. Let me think for a bit.

To quote/paraphrase Ratte when I conversed with them long ago, "we have lives of our own, that does not revolve around this site". That is the literal grist of the "backlog", that there is more important things to do than just maintain E621. And with one or two admins working on the site in general, unlike most who focus on the content therein, there is going to be an unavoidable buildup of things they'll need to do.

So, honestly, just wait.

Current administration is made up of users who specialize in one or two areas of the site - our main alias/implication duo, Parasprite and RD, are, like @imagoober mentioned, occupied with other things at the moment.

Ok so, it seems the problem is that admins simply don't have time to process all the A/I suggestions.

In this aspect, I think that just waiting would be the worst solution to this problem. I mean, even if the admins magically obtained a lot of time, there's no telling when's the next time RL would call them up. Personally, I also think that the backlog has grown too large and it can't be processed anymore even if the admins had the time.

So, are there any solutions possible other than waiting?

Well, there is waiting, more waiting, and the option called waiting. You can't demand that an admin, because only they can handle these, pay attention to the implications and aliases. You shouldn't pester them, that only irritates them and takes time away when they could be handling the aliases and implications (read, study and/or read into and/or think it over), or stuff more important like bug fixes and etc.. Reaching a declarable solution in any of the implications/aliases can make it easier, but they still have to weigh the pros and cons, and they have the ultimate say. Even then, such a solution may not be logical because sometimes a group of admins may need to get involved, which further delays the request.

I'm not implying that we should pester them. I'm implying exactly the opposite. We should absolutely not pester admins unless it's absolutely necessary. But the current A/I suggestion system does not allow that, and admins are always required, even for the most simplest and logical suggestions. So let's do some thinking on how to improve the system, so that less admin time would be required.

The current suggestion system is like this:

1. Suggestion created. (state after: Unapproved; level: member)
2. Suggestion verdict. (state after: Approved / deleted?; level: admin; )

The system could be changed to something like this:

1. Suggestion created. (state after: Unapproved; level: member; complexity: Undetermined)
2. Determine suggestion's complexity. (state after: Feedback required; level: janitor+; complexity: Simple/Tricky/Complicated)
3. Feedback and/or voting. The higher the complexity, the more votes and feedback is required from privileged+ users. (state after: Waiting for Verdict; level: privileged+; complexity: Simple/Tricky/Complicated)
4. Suggestion verdict. The higher the complexity, the higher the required level of user who provides verdict. (state after: Approved / Denied; level: Simple -> janitor+, Tricky -> mod+, Complicated -> admin )

About the feedback/voting part, it could be set up in a way that votes count more or less, depending on member level, and that normal members could vote also.

There could also be an optional phase, Waiting for Cleanup in case a cleanup is required before the suggestion can be approved.

I like that, also if it gets automated somehow based on the current system they dont need to do the whole "approved" in thread thing they can just, set it, and we can view it view the updates as they go through.

Delian said:
Suggestion verdict. The higher the complexity, the higher the required level of user who provides verdict.

I really like this voting idea. Reduce the work load on the 2 admins. Could be a voted in wiki project. If it's just janitors, mods, admins then there should be no problem.
I'd imagine there would be discussion. What if the community could vote in tags, or remove these voted tags if it was a mistake. Voted tags could also be automatically removed if they don't get used.

Looking over my old aliases & suggestions. I have never gotten a response and it's a year old. This system doesn't work. I can accept that and never suggest another tag, fine by me.

*hidden my previous comment because it is easier to retype*

This wouldn't work because it is not going to change a thing. At all. Only two admins are willing to do this, and the janitors are a specific rank that they elected for, or at least the little application had shown when I filled it out, and you can't trust anyone else to make decisions for the benefit of the site.

Ranks do not denote status as a member of the staff, only staff members are members of the staff. Privileged members are no more powerful than regulars, and the only pseudo-rank that can be argued is a staff member who withdrew from their position and is now a contributor (which means they may have wisdom to share, but cannot act on it).

Furthermore, I do not think it is clear enough that being an admin does not mean devoting your time, knowledge, and effort to babysit over every little action, be it tickets to posts to alias and implication projects. We only have one admin who does takedown requests (NotMeNotYou), and Ratte does the bulk of tickets because it suits them. I don't think you understand just where every power is, the alias and implication admins are just as busy (or busier) as(than) the other admins and mitigating the project is just going to make their job harder, because invalid or wrong aliases/implications will go through and they'll have to fix it. This includes janitors too, they shouldn't have to work on implications/aliases if they don't want to, and they don't have to.

It should be kept in mind that any implication/alias that isn't a very clear "yup, that can't be anything but that" needs to be carefully considered to make sure it won't end up messing things up. That's one reason why many suggestions are intentionally left unresolved for a length of time: it gives people time to weigh in and potential conflicts to be noticed.

One way to figure if good/bad is by people weighing in on the threads to say "yay," "nay," or "maybe... as long as we consider 'X'."

And the other way is for the approving/denying admin to do some personal in-depth research to make sure it won't mess things up. No comments on a suggestion? Then it's all on the admin.

The honest best way to help speed the process for aliases and implications is to weigh in on the threads created for them. Including an explanation/reason *why* you are for or against is particularly useful in that regard.

imagoober said:
A month ago I brought it up in PM with parasprite, in the context of some of mine that haven't been fully addressed, and he said that he and Dash were going to hammer on the queue soon, once some RL stuff is taken care of.

She* :)

parasprite said:
She* :)

:O

I am the person who does those and I haven't had time lately after returning to the site. I'll be clearing out the list in a few days and maintaining it thereafter

Don't worry, it'll get fixed this week

parasprite said:
She* :)

I always end up looking at users' profiles to see if they say what gender they are like I do, and end up disappointed that I have to guess simply because I forgot.

Rainbow_Dash said:
I am the person who does those and I haven't had time lately after returning to the site. I'll be clearing out the list in a few days and maintaining it thereafter

Don't worry, it'll get fixed this week

This is a good time to say thank you for your work. You and everyone else.

Clearing up the backlog in a few days feels like that scene in Bruce Almighty where he answers 1 million prayers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi5nwacBzTg
post #729583

Siral_Exan said:
This wouldn't work because it is not going to change a thing. At all. Only two admins are willing to do this, and the janitors are a specific rank that they elected for, or at least the little application had shown when I filled it out, and you can't trust anyone else to make decisions for the benefit of the site.

I know you're afraid that the site that we both love could be harmed. I know how you feel, but you need to have a little bit more trust in yourself and the people around you. Admins aren't all-powerful beings who always make the right decisions and someone who you should always rely on. They're humans and you need to understand that the more trust you put in them, the larger the burdens they need to carry.

Anyway, the suggestion to the system I proposed is merly a draft. I'm sure it could be polished in a way that would work for both regular members and admins. So if someone has a better idea or would like changes to my idea, I'm all ears.

Wodahseht said:
The honest best way to help speed the process for aliases and implications is to weigh in on the threads created for them. Including an explanation/reason *why* you are for or against is particularly useful in that regard.

That's true in either case. Feedback is almost always needed. It's a valuable thing so, I think it should not be wasted. I think it would be a good idea to know when certain suggestions need more feedback. So that we can more easily focus where and when the feedback is needed. See the 3rd stage of my suggestion? If a thread could be marked with different color or some text, to indicate when feedback is needed, wouldn't that make admin's life easier?

Delian said:
That's true in either case. Feedback is almost always needed. It's a valuable thing so, I think it should not be wasted. I think it would be a good idea to know when certain suggestions need more feedback.

As long as the feedback is useful.

Pending aliases tend to stay open for three main reasons:
1) The tag requires cleanup before it can be aliased, and nobody's found time to sort it out. This is especially common for disambiguations.
2) The discussion has reached a stalemale: opinions are split, and nobody's budging. Those require more discussion, except usually most folks are already tired of the argument and don't want to continue it.
3) The current feedback is not useful enough. Arguments such as "someone might search for it" tend to be ignored, because those can be applied to anything.

pixelPile said:
Looking over my old aliases & suggestions. I have never gotten a response and it's a year old. This system doesn't work. I can accept that and never suggest another tag, fine by me.

You have no pending aliases or implications. Either they've been deleted, or you didn't properly submit them.

parasprite said:
She* :)

My mistake, sorry.

You say that I am afraid and that I need to trust people, so: have you ever heard the saying that if anything bad can happen to X, it will happen without regard to time (it is more simply known as anything bad that can happen). A lot of instances where you (not individual) can actually see or think that a system is coming down, or something bad happens, has happened in the world before; when others there say they didn't. Normally, it blindsides people, but practice a bit of precognition and you won't be "afraid", you can instead be prepared. It is useful to study past events and see how you can prevent it if it occurs again in the future. Everything comes down eventually, and it is better to make sure to have a backup plan to immediately instate over trying to fix it when it is not broken... yet.

Furthermore, I don't put blind trust in people. The people who have my trust are the people who have demonstrated it before. It is mostly admins who have my trust, along with other people who frankly should be of an elevated status. Give me one good reason that I cannot counter in this system, and you may have my trust... but obviously, you may not believe (trust) me.

I do not appreciate being insulted by claiming that I am afraid and that I am not trusting in people. I do not have any reason to trust anyone I do not interact with on a daily basis, and I do have people I trust (and hopefully vice versa) on the site's IRC that you may not be part of; and I am not afraid because this is not a problem that'd need a workaround.

If you want an idea worth merit from me, I do wonder why some of our janitors aren't admins yet. There are specific ones that are active on everywhere on site, and have done a lot of work for the site. Maybe having them as admins would solve your problem.

Genjar said:
You have no pending aliases or implications. Either they've been deleted, or you didn't properly submit them.

The latter. I formatted the text manually instead of using the submit :p.
https://e621.net/forum/show/166797

pixelPile said:
The latter. I formatted the text manually instead of using the submit :p.
https://e621.net/forum/show/166797

I created it manually for you.

parasprite said:
I created it manually for you.

Thanks for fixing that.

Personally, I though Janitors also took care of those too. Maybe that's an idea

This has now grown to:

• Average implication suggestion about 5 months old.
• Average alias suggestion about 4 months old.

Any news regarding processing the backlog, or improving the approval process?

Related: forum #211224

Well, you can see that Parasprite is no longer an admin, and they were pretty much one of the two who did aliases/implications.

What do you expect this to accomplish?

What if we go through the current requests and list the really obvious ones here? Would that speed things up?

By "really obvious", I mainly mean the "X is a type of Y" ones.

Siral_Exan said:
What do you expect this to accomplish?

I dunno. Maybe some admin will come by and go like, "Oh.".

Delian said:
I dunno. Maybe some admin will come by and go like, "Oh.".

I see that as more "pushy", though; I can't say I see benefit in capitalizing only one asset of the forums. You took a 3 month hiatus from the forums, and the first comment you make is is a glorified bump post... that really rubs me the wrong way, because you seem to ignore the bugs and features part of the forum, and active discussions the admins sometimes have to "babysit" and give input. The admins are doing worthwhile stuff, even if you count the forums alone.

This is a good example of tunnel visioning. And tunnel visioning is a bad thing, it makes you ignore the bigger picture.

You stalker!

And, I will remain on hiatus until this issue is fixed. Think of it however you wish. So, see you again in 3 months!