Gaz Lloyd
Gaz Lloyd Talk • Contribs • Last 20 Forum - Main - User talk edits • Edit count
No doubt many of you know Gaz and the great work he does around the wiki. He's been an admin for almost 8 years, and in that time has been involved in pretty much every area of the wiki imaginable. Today, he runs the wiki's discord server, 'owns' the wiki's clan chat, handles requests for "The Wikian" title, is steadily working on our calculators amongst many other notable contributions. In his experience as an admin, he's had his fair share of difficult decisions and he has shown that he is a responsible, trustworthy and reliable admin.
With the above in mind, it is my pleasure to nominate him as the wiki's newest bureaucrat. User:Cqm/Signature
I, Gaz Lloyd, accept this nomination for bureaucratship. I understand that the only difference between bureaucratship and the administrative ability that I already have is that I am able to assign user rights. I understand that I may not, for any reason, delegate any form of adminship to any user who has not passed an appropriate RFA or RFB. Lastly, I understand that the respective agreement in regards to standard adminship still applies. Signed, 
@Gaz#7521 17:36, March 5, 2017 (UTC).
Questions for the nominee
1. What bureaucrat work do you intend to take part in?
As Cam mentioned, I've sort-of been doing bureaucrat 'work' for some time now. Being the 'leader'/'owner' position in the clan chat since release almost 6 years ago, an IRC manager for approaching 5 years, and the server 'owner' for our Discord server since creation almost a year ago. I'm also a checkuser, formerly a revision-deleter (until that was given to all admins), have access to our Twitter and Facebook, and Events Team member (though, I've pulled back into a more guiding role now - and Jill has been doing a fantastic job the past few months getting events running regularly at high level bosses). I also have been to and plan to continue attending RuneFests representing the wiki.
Of course, bureaucratship would bring determining consensus on RfAs and applying admin/bot user rights. @Gaz#7521 17:36, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
2. What have been your most helpful contributions to the RuneScape Wiki, and why?
I don't know if it is as directly helpful as editing, but its hard to top getting an in-game title. It's pretty sweet. (I can't claim too much responsibility for that, since Shauny did all the actual work of coding it and getting approval from Mods Kelpie, Osborne, and Balance (if I remember correctly).)
For on-wiki stuff, I've been involved in a lot of projects. One that I'm particularly proud of - and is on-going - is the disassembly data project, which, with around 500 data submissions, has resulted in some great calculators for Invention. (I remember catching an Omid stream where he was explaining to his viewers how to use those calculators.) Another favourite is picking up the Revolution bars from Cook and greatly expanding them to cover many more situations - I see these pages recommended all the time, too.
Finally there's the more mundane things of running our magic scripts to have Infobox Item generated automatically for pages in an update, and keeping the Infobox Monster new generator up-to-date. (Both of these inherited from Cook.) I do enjoy seeing the new stuff in an update, grabbing what information I can about the new items and filling in the pages with what I can gather.
Regardless of what happens with this RfB, I plan to continue editing as I am now. @Gaz#7521 17:36, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
Directly with editing, not recently, I don't think.
The most recent notable conflict is likely the de-clan admining of 5-x. I continue to believe that removal of his adminship was the right thing to do for the health of the clan, especially since it is almost exactly the same reason why I de-admined him the first time (see RuneScape:Clan Chat/Requests for CC Rank/5-x (3) for my reasoning on that). His attitude was declining despite being warned by myself and other administrators in the past, and he had increasing hostility with other clan admins. I admit it would've been better to have a more visible discussion, rather than just between admins on discord.
If you have any conflicts that you think I should comment on, please let me know. @Gaz#7521 17:36, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Additional questions (asked by the community if necessary)
- Looking back at previous discussions, particularly those relating to users, can you name some cases where the determined consensus was wrong in hindsight and what lessons should be learned to avoid such instances in the future? User:Cqm/Signature
I'm not sure if you're referring to a specific discussion, so I'm just going to talk about a few RfAs. Admittedly, a lot of the more recent ones are either straight supports or user withdrawn. There also aren't a lot of 'bad' closures in general that don't get a backlash and are overturned, so...
RuneScape:Requests for adminship/Urbancowgurl777: I think that Karlis is very correct in his re-closing. Everyone is different and the issues the opposition brought up were made bigger than they ought to be. As I mention in the next question, having your own opinion or venting in private to a friend doesn't mean it can't be put aside when working on the wiki or in public.
RuneScape:Requests for adminship/AnselaJonla: Knowing what eventually happens regarding Ansela makes some of the comments mentioning behaviour in chat and 'rough edges' almost prophetic. Ignoring our 'future vision', I cannot disagree with the closure, consensus seems pretty clear. If there's anything to learn, maybe "pay more attention to minor issues in an RfA"? However, I cannot agree with that - it seems at odds with fergie's RfA above, where the minor issues brought up were blown out of proportion. Maybe the issues brought up in Ansela's RfA were made smaller, but with the context of the time they were rightly outweighted by the reasons of the supports.
As for threads, we really tried to prepare for Invention with Forum:Inventor, but we were still in a bit of disarray with the update. It hit so many pages and we had no prior playtesting. I suppose we can take from that "don't make policies or plan widespread changes ahead of time without really knowing how stuff is going to work", but it's not like this really happens, and updates of this scale are all-but nonexistent (maybe more with expansions? We will see). I would be surprised if we get another game update that means the 16,000 item pages need a new parameter/template
If I missed your point or the discussions you were referencing - or if there's any other discussions - please let me know. @Gaz#7521 21:15, March 8, 2017 (UTC)
- I was hoping you might cover user or clan based forum discussions, such as Forum:Problems with AnselaJonla Part 2 as it's more recent and was eventually re-closed after a somewhat disastrous initial closure. While considerably less common, removal of rights discussions could arguably fall within the role of a bureaucrat. How would you approach such discussions whether you were making the initial or subsequent closure, and how do you think they should be handled compared to RFA? User:Cqm/Signature
- With reference to Forum:Reforming the Clan Chat (and its archive), how much weight do you think should be placed on interactions between users in non-official mediums when determining the best course of action and/or consensus? User:Cqm/Signature
This involves a lot of case-by-case context, I think, but here's some general thoughts.
How relevant the logs are - how much they should form the basis of decisions - is some combination of:
- Negativity of the contents of the log
- Number of editors involved and amount of wiki work resulting from the group
- If the external account(s) are also involved in representing the wiki
- Original context of the logs
- How much the group spills over into the wiki or our official media
So, as a few examples to expand on what I mean:
The skype group in the mentioned thread eventually became pretty negative, and this spilled into the wider clan chat which is when it became unacceptable - it was no longer the private conversation it should have remained. There were a number of editors and community members in that group, and at least some edits resulted from it. While the skype chat had been closed earlier that year. The main focus of the thread being the issues in the clan chat. With all that in mind, the logs have some weight.
In RuneScape:Requests for adminship/Urbancowgurl777, the logs have significantly less weight - maybe none. A person venting to their friend privately is a lot less relevant if they can put that aside for when they participate in the wiki or official media. This is the key difference between these two conversations (fergie and cook, and the skype group): fergie kept her venting private and acted appropriately on-wiki, whereas the skype group did not remain private and negatively affected the clan chat as a result. As such, the logs with the skype group have much more weight during the discussion.
Obviously, there are always exceptions, for example Forum:Assessing Hallowland's Character - while the in-game conversation is not official media, it is essentially in lieu of just posting a confession on their user page, and is not the only thing in the case against Hallowland, so it is pretty important. As I stated in the first sentence, these things should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. @Gaz#7521 21:15, March 8, 2017 (UTC)
Discussion
Support - Can we just speedy yes this? User:TyA/sig 16:34, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Support - Speedy yes it is... 
Sparky Kitty the Wikian
16:39, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
- Also.. he is been a very helpful person... sign him up.
Sparky Kitty the Wikian 16:52, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Support - Salix of Prifddinas (Talk) 16:55, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Support - pls 
Metal Angel cut your wrists 17:23, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Support - Request for Closure this 
Coelacanth0794 Talk 
17:26, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
support - that gaz is one swood guy. 
Archmage Elune TalkHS 
fetus is my son and I love him. 17:28, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Strong oppose he didn't even answer the questions smh Support - hardworking dude who don't need no woman but maybe he only wants clv 
ThePsionic 
17:32, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Strong support - I'm very happy that Gareth agreed to accept this. He is my top choice for bureaucrat (in case you couldn't tell by the fact that I nominated him for this position six years ago) and has bureaucrat tools everywhere except the wiki. Gareth has always been active on the wiki, and giving him bureaucrat tools will be a benefit to the wiki. My only regret is that this didn't happen earlier.
Also, to address concerns that popped up six years ago that Gareth might be "influenced easily," despite my personal belief that was never the case, I would argue that in the last six years Gareth has shown significant personal growth. When Gareth has a strong conviction he sticks to it, regardless of what others may say to him (as I personally found out several times, to my chagrin). While it's true that he doesn't participate in "deep" or "philosophical" discussions often on the wiki, I can personally attest that Gareth does indeed have those opinions and is more than capable of articulating them on the wiki if necessary - the fact that Gareth does less public exposition than some other administrators shouldn't be held against him. As he's shown in 5-x's RfCCA that he linked to above and in many other threads concerning the clan chat, he is more than capable. My point here is that the concerns brought up in 2011 are not valid now. Also addressing the point that we might not need any more bureaucrats, should anyone want to make it: I would argue that we should have more than one bureaucrat actively involved in the community. Right now, we really only have Cam. Sure, we have bureaucrats from literally a decade ago that we can get ahold of fairly easily, but for something that is truly contentious we would probably all prefer someone that's still active to deal with it. --LiquidTalk 19:41, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Support - *rubberstamp* --Deltaslug (talk) 21:07, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Support - Are we really having a vote on whether Gaz should get this? 
NYX TRYX | EDITS
22:01, March 5, 2017 (UTC)
Oppose on the grounds that I should be the bureaucrat - Which one of us has closed more RfAs in the last day? Exactly. ʞooɔ 09:49, March 6, 2017 (UTC)
- wow @Gaz#7521 21:15, March 8, 2017 (UTC)
Tree Support (and of the whole of Exeter's Tree army) --User:Exeter Fun/Signature 10:02, March 6, 2017 (UTC)
- Silly tree, forgetting to close the bolding... :P Salix of Prifddinas (Talk) 10:23, March 6, 2017 (UTC)
Strong support - for clan daddy :) Superiosity the Dragonrider
: User:Superiosity/Signature chat 11:08, March 6, 2017 (UTC)
Support for Gaz. And cook me pls too :D Ajraddatz (talk) 01:01, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
Extreme super support Why wasn't this a thing years ago? Gaz deserves this more than any wikian that I can think of Pikachu lv95 (talk) 01:33, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
Support --Iiii I I I 03:26, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
Support - --
Caek iz ossum
talk om nom 03:47, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
Support - goz Star Talk 
04:01, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
Oppose - Gaz is a valuable editor who has been active for many years and who knows the wiki well. He engages in tasks I’d like to see bureaucrats involved in with his extra efforts in managing our community features and in giving direction to growing the wiki by doing things like the reddit survey. However I feel that becoming a bureaucrat should be about more than just acknowledging the things that Gaz is currently doing. The way I see it, being a bureaucrat is mostly about dealing with other users. The bureaucrat usergroup grants rights to make other editors administrators and to give out bot flags, after determining consensus on these requests. On occasion we also require bureaucrats to deal with more unpleasant discussions, such as removing the rights of established users.
I would expect someone wanting to become a bureaucrat to have shown that they are able to explain their opinions well; have a good understanding of the wiki’s policies; and determine consensus effectively when closing threads. I can’t say I have seen this from Gaz, because he does not frequently participate in commenting on discussions or in establishing consensus in closing threads.
I am also concerned looking at how Gaz handles difficult situations that occur within community features. When there are problems with users, I feel that Gaz avoids these situations and taking action to fix them. For example, Gaz gives the removal of 5-x’s clan admin rank as an instance of him dealing with user conflict, but I would say that despite being aware of problems with 5-x Gaz did not address the problem and only stepped in after Cook decided to remove 5-x’ clan rank. Before doing so Cook did ask for other admins’ opinions, but Gaz did not make a suggestion to have a more formal discussion at this time. Given Gaz says above that he thinks that this would have been preferable, I am worried that he was not confident in saying so at the time and that he may be too open to being influenced by others. This is an issue to me, because I would expect a bureaucrat to be comfortable in dealing with these type of user-related situations. 
IsobelJ
19:55, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
Support - Gaz is the man and has never not been the man Ronan Talk 02:33, March 12, 2017 (UTC)