Board Thread:Community Announcements and Events/@comment-4799587-20140912224150/@comment-1738746-20140916100658

Harold Burned-Mane wrote:

Rainaftersnowplease wrote: We've got someone fighting cancer and you want to take her admin away because she hasn't been on a wiki for a while? Do you have any idea what cancer actually is, or do you think she's just ignoring the wiki because she feels like it?

I'd assume that contributing to a wiki or giving its other contributors an explanation for her continued inactivity is the farthest thing from her mind right now, as it should be.

You don't take something away from someone because they're fighting cancer and aren't contributing because of it. You don't say "well when you decide you want to come back you can have your rights back", you tell her "they'll still be there if you're ever able to return." She shouldn't have to go through the process of getting them all over again if/when she is able to return to the wiki.

Admin rights aren't there for a select group of people who need to be active all the time to have. That's not the point of a wiki. The point of admin rights would be to give as many trustworthy people as possible the ability to make the wiki better if they are able to. It's literally the entire point of crowd-sourced knowledge. That means they should be revoked only if a current admin has been shown to be using their privileges in a way that harms the wiki. Inactivity does not actively harm the community or the wiki itself, and that's why once you get flagged, you get to retain that status even if you're inactive for a time.

Again, I think it should go without saying that inactivity due to cancer shouldn't lead to the removal of those rights anyway. It hasn't been a while. It has been almost two years. People aren't stupid, they know what cancer is. I had two family members with cancer, thankfully none of them died from it.

Inactive admins serve no point to the wiki. If We are going to remove the other inactive admin's flags we should keep hers only out of pity for her condition.

I know people might think that removing her rights is heartless or mean, but she has given no notice in the past 2 years if she is coming back or not. I still standby what I said. That removing her rights, leaving a message on her profile and if she comes back given her rights back, is the best course of action. Some people think leaving her account listed as an admin is a way to memorialize her and show support. But I think there are many other ways that could be done.

For instance next to her name on the list of admins(be it inactive or past) you could write.

GramsJ (Memorable Admin) or GramsJ (Notable Admin)

You could also leave a textbox on her profile, something like this:

_______________________________________________________________________________

This user is currently fighting cancer (Put an image of the icon used for cancer, I think it was a scarf. Though I don't really remember what it was.)

GramsJ is currently fighting cancer, due to that she couldn't stay active in the Elder Scrolls Wiki. She was a former admin and contributed greatly to the wiki (List a few contributions). The Elder Scrolls Wiki wishes her luck on her fight against cancer and hope she will come back so she can reassume her position as one of our admins. If you want to leave a supporting message do so on her talkpage.

________________________________________________________________________________ Jeez, you're talking about her like she's already dead :/

Why not just change their title to Inactive Admin, rather than strip them of their rights? That way if the person does return, they can still edit with the rights they had before without people having to re-vote and whatnot plus they're still honoured for the work they previously did before becoming inactive, plus people are aware that while they have admin rights, they're inactive so they should contact an admin who's not. For a person to achieve an admin status, is no easy feat; they must have made a significant impact on the community and made great contributions. Why take that badge away from them? Would you take away the medal of a veteran soldier simply because he doesn't fight in the army anymore? I love how people also just assume others become inactive because of laziness; GramsJ is proof that we jump to conclusions too fast. You have no idea what's happened in that person's life, and who are you to say what may or may not happen in the future? I just find it extremely sad that all the hard work this one member has put into an amazing Wiki site will be forgotten and for nothing through no fault of their own, and many other admins will probably suffer this same fate.