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| - __NOWYSIWYG__ I'm proposing that The Pro-Bending League is deleted. The group seems nothing more than a social hierarchy, labeling users with positions, while having done little to nothing in regards to helping the wiki. It's nothing personal to them, but the group is simply unneeded. --Nozus (wall • contribs) 16:40, April 20, 2013 (UTC) I agree. 17:31, April 20, 2013 (UTC) The organizations intentions and motives are helpful and good for the wiki. Community spirit is without a doubt an integral part of being in this wiki. That there is a user group devoted to this sorrowfully neglected section of the wiki is a great thing.--Boomeraang Squad, always right back at ya. (wall • contribs) 20:17, April 20, 2013 (UTC) A user group like that is not needed. Your motives may be good, but there is no action. Community spirit here is not sorrowfully neglected, in fact, we are one of the biggest community spirit wikis. I'm sorry if you feel disrespected, but the fact remains that this group should be ejected. There is no need for it. --Nozus (wall • contribs) 20:21, April 20, 2013 (UTC) what other constant is there for the maintenance of spirit? There is not one. This wiki, like most others hosts events to maintain a collective community spirit from time to time, but there is not another consistent entity that actively promotes community spirit during the entire year. And if you believe the usergroup is not performing its duties that is a reason for reform, not deletion. Reform is understandable. Deletion is not.--Boomeraang Squad, always right back at ya. (wall • contribs) 20:27, April 20, 2013 (UTC) There is no need for it in the first place. Deletion is necessary for groups like that. Community spirit is achieved on it's own in many ways. The WLS, The BSST, the Fanon Awards, Canon Trivia, Fanon Trivia, etc. Your attempting to do a job that would be done anyways, and the job is barely getting done by the group. --Nozus (wall • contribs) 20:30, April 20, 2013 (UTC) Why is there no need for community spirit? Why is it bad? It violates no wiki policy and helps bring the wiki together. What is wrong with such an entity? Newsletters are for news, not community spirit, and while they certainly are fun they do not fall into that category I already mentioned the others you brought up under the phrase "This wiki, like most others hosts events to maintain a collective community spirit from time to time". And again if you believe the job isn't getting done, then that calls for reform not deletion. If you believe reform is nessacary and that what this usergroup is doing isn't enough, I will throw my full support behind that. It if after all the community that this group serves, and if the community believes it is not actively fulfilling that role, it must adapt and change so that it can meet that role.--Boomeraang Squad, always right back at ya. (wall • contribs) 20:39, April 20, 2013 (UTC) Your misinterpreting me. I'm saying there is no need for a group to generate community spirit; not that it is unnecessary. This group is nothing more than a social hierarchy that does little to nothing. --Nozus (wall • contribs) 20:42, April 20, 2013 (UTC) what social hierarchy? What influence does this bring? I've certainly received none of it. If anything the goal of the group is put its members beneath the rest of the community to serve its needs. And as long as there is a community to serve this usergroup shall be nessacary.--Boomeraang Squad, always right back at ya. (wall • contribs) 20:51, April 20, 2013 (UTC) What is there to reform? Not one of the planned activities has ever been carried out. Not once has the group really done something so spark community spirit. You can't reform a group's activity if it's not there to begin with. 20:44, April 20, 2013 (UTC) We've been planning a new probending challenge for the beginning of may and have made plans to continue this practice at the beginning of each month singe I joined. We're simply waiting for avenge benders questions and instead of using the page we've been using a thread on sparks wall.--Boomeraang Squad, always right back at ya. (wall • contribs) 20:48, April 20, 2013 (UTC) (Edit conflict) Erm, back in the summer we hosted trivia contests to promote spirit. Sadly, due to our own inactivity, while working on something new to help out the community, a lot of users left. Now, just as we start getting ready to rise again, you are trying to have us deleted. Yes, because one activity on nearly a year does not exactly make for an active usergroup. 20:56, April 20, 2013 (UTC) techs comment says it all, we've begun to reform, but before I joined there was essential just 2 active users. Now we have three and are driving to revamp this usergroup. We hope that we can gain more active users and that once this new quiz airs, we can regain the momentum we once had.--Boomeraang Squad, always right back at ya. (wall • contribs) 21:24, April 20, 2013 (UTC) Tech's comments says just nothing that definitely means that the group should stay. The group was formed July 19, 2012 -which means that it has been here for nine months, and in that time, it has done nothing to accomplish the goals it set out to do. "The Pro-Bending League is a user group dedicated to promoting community spirit on the Avatar Wiki. The main goal of this user group is to keep community spirit high, with weekly trivia contests The Pro-Bending Challenge. We aim to engage users across the wiki, to participate in the War Room, and other community wide discussions and events." Let's break that down:
* "Keep community spirit high, with weekly trivia contests" This never happened -unless you count reaching "week 3" as a success. What makes ARG's fanon trivia quiz so popular for example, it the fact that it's not done every week, but only once, maybe twice a year. What makes a prize like the fanon awards special? It's held annually. User of the Month? Monthly -and even that's already pushing it in popularity. Only when the user is really well known is it a popular vote, but otherwise, it just floats along cause it is a regularity, and regular activities quickly become old and lose the community's interest. So basically, one could say that this is not promoting community spirit as not many people will keep participating in this, cause what's the point if it is weekly?
* "Engage users across the wiki" This is a wiki, thus engaging people would also mean trying to tempt them to edit -a quiz now and again will not fix that.
* "To participate in the War Room" Never have I seen an effort to reach this -and how can a usergroup do that? All that you can do is get the word out there that a certain discussion is going on, but the people that care are the editors and they usually know already. The BSST is also the best medium to get that out there -and it is already doing that job.
* "and other community wide discussions and events." Truly important discussions and events are already notified -be it through the boards and highlighting stuff, or be it through the existing news papers, what more does anyone want? If one starts to get spammed with information like that to always participate in things, you also risk having the opposite effect. It is really commendable to strive for community spirit, but in this case the truth is rather simple: there already is sufficient community spirit, this already is a very welcoming community, there already are sufficient projects going on to up the community spirit now and again, thus rendering the existence of this user group rather superfluous. You don't need to be in a user group to organize a quiz every five months or so, that is something one can perfectly do on him/herself. It's not that I don't appreciate the effort, it's just that claiming the necessity of the group is kind of stretching it if you look at it in its essence. 22:52, April 20, 2013 (UTC) Terribly sorry I took so long to respond. My response is this: let's take a look at the rules regulating usergroups shall we: New groups can be created at the discretion of any user. Create a new project page (a page with the prefix Project: or Avatar Wiki:), and link to it from this page. Outline the purpose of the new group and advertise it to interested users, possibly through a blog post or the official community newsletter, The Ba Sing Se Times. After a period of two weeks, new user groups will be checked by an administrator. If the group does not have more than one member, or if the group is clearly for social purposes, it will be deleted. There are no predetermined guidelines for group dynamics and organization, and it is expected that groups can maintain themselves autonomously. Administrators should only intervene or disband a group if it is clear that policy is not being followed. User group decisions are not a substitute for community consensus. If a decision taken by a group contradicts the wishes of the rest of the community, community consensus takes precedence. Established usergroups in which all members are inactive or the number of active users no longer constitute a "group" - such as one active user - after a period of one month, will be subject to deletion. Not one of these is violated by this usergroup. While it is your opinion that it is unessacary, that is just an opinion. An opinion is not a reason to delete a usergroup, just as an opinion is not a Reason to establish a usergroup. What matters is adhering to these rules and that much has been accomplished. I believe it's useful and you believe it's not, but that is irrelevant. It's purpose is being actively fulfilled and that purpose coincides with the rules established to regulate usergroups.--Boomeraang Squad, always right back at ya. (wall • contribs) 23:38, April 22, 2013 (UTC) The exact reasons to which you underlined that an Administrator hasn't deleted the group, is the same reason we are here, the WAR ROOM, a forum used to debate and give circumspect opinions which are used in order to provide community consensus. This is a forum so that the community can decide whether the group is needed, not just members, nor administrators. --Nozus (wall • contribs) 23:49, April 22, 2013 (UTC) To start off, I'll go back to Nozus' original post. It bothered me a little, because the group was never intended to function as a social hierarchy. If there is any real notion of a classed structure, then that is completely inadvertent, and probably comes from nothing more than how the main page gives each member a title and a description. It wasn't my idea to add those, nor one of anybody currently in the group - they were already there when we joined. I had never bothered to do anything about them because it didn't seem necessary. And it wasn't necessary because, in reality, the titles signify little or nothing. Perhaps this isn't entirely clear just by looking through it at the surface, but the group isn't built around any sort of social hierarchy; no users hold real responsibility for the tasks on the membership list, so pretty much anybody can step into someone else's "task" and do whatever. Anybody can contribute questions for a quiz, suggest changes to design, think of new stuff to do, etc. There's no hierarchy. It wouldn't matter if the titles and descriptions weren't there (which is maybe why they should have been removed), so why make it a problem? Lostris brought up some good points. Yes, the group has been long inactive, and its goal is perhaps redundant - which is why deletion was considered in the past. All in all, I agree with the above, and the usergroup should be deleted. A note to everyone in the League: I only use the word "deleted" because everyone else was using it. In reality, it's impossible to actually delete a usergroup. Sure, you can get rid of all associated pages and "officially" mark the group as deleted, but that's about as far as you could go, since no one has the right to suspend a group of users from working together on something unofficially/unorganized. Since everybody clearly wants to go forward with the plan, I say continue it. As I noted before, this group has a fluid structure and tends to work irregularly, so there is no need for official recognition\structure or a page (which would be the only significant losses from "deletion"). 00:59, April 23, 2013 (UTC) My chief disquietude is not partial the group is inactive, it is forthcoming, in slow time but surely, my disquietude is the plain matter of fact a group to forward "community spirit" is unnecessary. A group to promote community spirit is as unnecessary as a group to link the website on message boards, nor is a group for welcoming user necessary, these things should occur generically. In fact, your group is not promoting "Community Spirit" any more than any other person, just by getting people to comment on a blog. Oxford dictionary defines Community Spirit as "a feeling of involvement in and concern for one’s local community." A trivia blog gives me no more feeling of involvement than most other blogs on the wiki, and it completely lacks the inspiration of concern for the community. Promoting community spirit would be a message to users, telling them that the War Room was having a forum that concerned the community, or Telling them a chapter of a fanon they liked came out. Both of those things are already done (Highlighted Threads, Subscriptions). Creating a forum, in fact, is a form of community spirit, by creating this forum, I have both involved, and inspired concern (good or bad) within multiple people. I'm certain that a group to Highlight Threads (which only Admins can do), message fans of a fanon (which authors do), and create forums (which should only be created when concerned about certain issues) are unnecessary, and if the group was following their goal, "promoting community spirit", than they would have to do one of those things, or something else which both concerns and involves community members, which your group currently are not doing, they would need to do one of those unnecessary things (when done by a group). --—Preceding unsigned comment added by Nozus (wall • contribs) 01:25, April 23, 2013 (UTC)
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