User:Useight/RFA Subjects/User access levels

New user levels at test, may be in MediaWiki 1.4 (Archive 24)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:User access levels

Too many sysops... Not enough sysops... Mini-sysops? (Archive 25)

I appreciate this isn't something it'd necessarily be possible to do right away due to technical issues, even if everyone thinks it's brilliant idea (hah!), but just to float the idea: if some people think there are too many sysops, and other people think there's the lack of sysops to perform specific sysop-only tasks, would it be a good idea to split up the permissions (to a greater or lesser extent) and create 'mini-sysops' able to do those specific required tasks, without necessarily having the full generality of the Mighty Admin Powers -- such as they are? For example, if there's concern about the use of blocking powers, give those out less freely, if there's a need for people able to implement page-move/page-deletion votes more speedily, give those out more readily. Alai 03:24, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It all seems like a violation of the "should not be a big deal" principle. The system seems to be working currently, no need to introduce more complexity. Rhobite 04:02, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

blocking isn't a problem since it will be noticed.Geni 04:55, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, I remember hearing at one point that MediaWiki was going to be getting fine grained security permissions. Anyone know what happened here? - Ta bu shi da yu 04:10, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Mediwiki 1.4, which we are currently using, does support fine grained permissions. However, this was implimented for the benefit of other sites using mediawiki. There are, as yet, no plans to grainulate powers on wikipedia (except perhaps to give the arbcom and/or stewards the ability to check for socks instead of a developer doing it); when it was suggested, a large number of people (myself included) vehemently opposed it. →Raul654 16:54, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Isn't introducing fresh criteria for becoming a sysop, and simultaneously dealing with complaints that there aren't enough, already straining the 'no big deal' principle, however? Anyhoo, just a thought. Alai 04:24, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that mini-sysops are possible, but I'm not sure we should introduce that complexity. I mean, I could see a possibility that (say) 2/3 would make a mini, and 80% a full, but if the objections preventing someone from being a full are substantive, then maybe they shouldn't have any sysop abilities.

I would prefer full or nothing, and if a sysop abuses things like blocks and deletes, they should have to stand for another vote, as recently happened. Just my 2c. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 04:32, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there will be additional levels of permission available in MW 1.5, but I agree with Cecropia: we have enough bureaucracy as it is; no need for further levels of complexity. — Dan | Talk 04:51, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Alai, you have a point. I think the post-your-criteria meme is detrimental to the RFA process, but most people seem to be OK with it. In my opinion RFA should be more of a common sense thing and less of a checklist. Agree with Cecropia though, there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to move away from the all or nothing model. Admins understand that abuse of power will result in losing all of their privileges. Rhobite 05:24, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

The only feature I can see that would be useful to a "mini-sysop" would be the rollback feature. I wouldn't mind so much of allowing users who part take in RC patrol to have the rollback feature. It's kind of the idea that you give a small power, for not that big of a required responsibility. I would support for the implementation of an "RC" level user. Giving the rollback feature is still a responsibility -- a responsibility that they do not abuse the power. Giving it to all users is a bad idea because edit wars would be rollback wars and that would be problematic for the system. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:25, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just to provide some data: meta:Administrators of various Wikipedias list the ratio of admins to users for various wikipedia, raning from ~50 users/admin (Swedish wiki) to ~1000 users/admin (spanish wiki), with 420 users/admin on the english wiki. Some smaller wikis may even have ratios of 7 users/admin. Just for the info. -- Chris 73 Talk 07:04, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

Having followed this and a lot of other cooperative internet projects for some time, I chiefly agree with Cecropia and Rhobite. I see no need for implementing Alai's idea right now. If Wikipedia has problems in need of fixing, which I imho think, then this surely isn't one of them. Cheers! --Johan Magnus 08:00, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Isn't saying that there are too many sysops a bit like saying there are too many trusted users? Filiocht 09:29, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

An overal comment is that the problem is not so much the number of admins but the number of admins who carry out admin duties. I'm not sure how this number can be increasedGeni 04:55, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be more explicit that the status is for the purpose of carrying out said duties... (The one 'meme' there can be little arguing over is the 'what duties would you help out with'.) Perhaps a de-sysopping procedure would underline the intended relationship between the two. Alai 05:10, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There's no harm in having a veteran contributor with rarely-used sysop rights, is there? Remember there are no sysop duties here. Sysops are not required to actively exercise their powers. Rhobite 05:17, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I'm aware of that, I'm suggesting perhaps there's an argument they should be. I don't know though, I'm really just trying to explore the design space here. Are there too few admins; too many; not enough chore-performing by the existing cadre? (Based largely on the comments here, not on direct personal experience.) Alai 05:24, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There are a number of posible causes of harm. Every increase in the number of admins increases the posibility of someone getting hold of one of the passwords (imagain a deletion bot thrown at the images section). It gives a false impression of the real number of active admins. Admin powers are more likely to be used incorrectly since the user has less reason to keep an eye on procedure and rule changes. It makes it more difficult for users to know who to contact. It means that adminship becomes more of a status thing rather than clearly being a janitorial roleGeni 05:31, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

On the other hand, there is no real way to ensure that someone will actually use their sysop powers in a janitorial way once actually promoted. It's just guesswork, based on their previous contributions, and they can't be held to it, unless of course my re-election proposal mentioned at Wikipedia:Super-user is adopted. Rad Racer | Talk 18:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Requests for adminship reform (Archive 27)

Hello all, I have in past stayed away for voting in RfA because I think it's a flawed system. With recent events, I have been even more convinced of this, so I have drafted a proposal for changing the entire procedure. I've sent it to the wikien mailing list, and it is also available at User:Talrias/Adminship reform. Please be rough! Talrias (t | e | c) 17:59, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Apparently you propose to give potential new admins powers for a week under supervision of another mentor admin, who gives a recommendation at the end. Maybe I missed something vital, but if you want people to read everything you shouldn't bore them with details first. --MarSch 11:20, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough, I have reorganised and summarised the proposal. Talrias (t | e | c) 11:54, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That is much crisper. Thanks --MarSch 19:54, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

this is really a solution in search of a problem. Maybe it will solve a problem in the future, but I see no indication that the RfA process is flawed, and therefore no need to fix it. Sure, it can become a popularity "contest". So what if some people are elected with 100 votes? Good for them. Joe D. User may be elected with a mere 20 votes, but since the outcome is the same, I really don't see the problem. By default, we should be opposed to introducing new rules and procedures. The problems we do have with admins is not straightforward abuse, it is slightly obnoxious behaviour with some throwing around of weight. nothing arbcommable. I think there is good reason to be sure a user is not a complete jerk before making him an admin, and if that means a "popularity contest", so be it. We just need to remember the "it's no big deal" mantra from time to time. dab (ᛏ) 20:21, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Does your suggestion apply to returning admins? - Ta bu shi da yu 28 June 2005 05:24 (UTC)

To be honest, I hadn't considered that. My answer would be that seeing as returning admins have already been admins before, there is no need to be mentored and they could be fast-tracked to the end (the decision to be made by the bureaucrat). However, if the person had not been an admin for a substantial amount of time and the admin policies had substantially changed, I would suggest they went through the mentoring process again. Talrias (t | e | c) 28 June 2005 17:56 (UTC)

I don't really see abuse of admin powers by new admins as being a major concern and therefore little reason for the mentoring program as suggested.--nixie 28 June 2005 05:33 (UTC)

Why are many nominees rejected on RfA then? Surely the only reason for not making someone an admin is because of fear they might abuse them? Talrias (t | e | c) 28 June 2005 17:56 (UTC)

Nominees are rejected either because they have done something in the recent past which means the community doesn't trust them or because they don't have enough experience/interaction on the Wiki, which are both valid objections. I don't think mandatory admin school will address either of these objections.--nixie 28 June 2005 23:05 (UTC)

I think it would - if someone is untrustworthy, either they will not find a mentor, or their actions will be watched carefully and any abuses will be quickly detected and reverted. If they don't have enough experience, if they are able to find a mentor, that mentor will be able to inform the adminee if they are making wrong decisions. At the end of the mentoring period, if they are unsuitable in the mentor's and bureaucrat's opinion, they will not become permanent admins. I expect every admin (and probably every Wikipedian) has made at least one bad judgement. Learning from a mentor can only be of possible benefit, and will help address both of these objections. The feedback period is intended to allow other admins and users to comment on whether the person is trustworthy and has enough experience to become an admin - with the benefit of seeing them taking decisions that admins actually have to take, rather than relying on their promise to do so! Talrias (t | e | c) 28 June 2005 23:15 (UTC)

Self-protectionship (Archive 28)

I have declined nomination as an Admin several times, for reasons I don't need to go into again here, but I would like to be given the power to protect my own User page, which is being constantly vandalised, and to unprotect it when I want to edit it. Is this possible? Adam 13:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

We don't have the technology to do that. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 13:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

In the most technical sense, Mediawiki has fine-grained permissions such that he could be given the power to protect and any page, without any of the other powers admins have (blocking users, deleting pages, 'etc). However, on Wikipedia we have never actually used those, nor do we have any plans to. In practical terms, it's a lot more hassle than it's worth. →Raul654 21:52, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Adam. My own advice would be to apply for adminship anyway (you'll be a shoo-in). Just because you HAVE adminship powers doesn't mean you have to use them, by the way. If you prefer, you can be like the queen of England and be a kind of figure-head admin - but all of us would be really thrilled to have you on board as a fully fledged one! David Cannon 13:37, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh no you wouldn't. I would not be the Queen of England, I would be Ivan the Terrible. Adam 13:39, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I was hoping for something closer to Mad King Ludwig. David | Talk 21:05, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I just don't want to be George - Tεxτurε 21:49, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

BD2412's proposal (Archive 30)

RFA is bent, but not broken. Here is my proposal to diffuse some of the problems that have arisen in RfA. It may be horribly complicated, and technically impossible to implement at the moment, but I think that if the technological framework existed, it would work wonders towards reducing the incivility and politicization of the RfA process. I call it "gradual adminship", and the basic idea is that instead of getting all the admin powers at once, an editor should be granted them in stages, giving the community the opportunity to see how that editor uses the powers he has before he gets more.

There are four basic abilities that an administrator has that the typical editor lacks. These are:

1. Rollback button
2. Protect/unprotect pages
3. Delete/undelete pages
4. Block/unblock users

I propose that, instead of getting all four of these in one fell swoop, editors must seek and receive approval for each one individually, in order. Furthermore, the standards for granting each power should be adjusted to match the breadth of that power. In other words, anyone who has a few hundred edits and, say, 50% support should get the rollback button (which basically is a shortcut for doing something any editor can do manually); protecting and unprotecting pages should require a higher level of support (say, 60%), but should not really be a big deal, because any editor can sit and watch a page and revert at least the first few objectionable changes to that page; the power to delete and undelete pages should then require 70% support, and the power to block users (which I think is the most potentially confrontational ability) should require 80% support.

Editors who have been granted a power would have to wait a certain period of time - say 4 weeks, to ask for (or be nominated for) the next one. A list would be maintained of which editors are at which level (with a clear disclaimer that a higher level brings no greater say in consensus issues). In this scheme, a bureaucrat is just like an admin with one more level of power, that being the power to raise admins from one level to the next. De-adminship (also a frequent topic of discussion) would be a reverse version of this process - inactive editors would gradually lose powers as they remain dormant.

I welcome comments. -- BD2412 ^talk 18:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

• This is not a bad idea. I support this. Also, with ppl like me, this would be a good way to prove ourselves worthy of proving that we are good admins once we are at "stage one" of our adminship. --Admiral Roo 18:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Doesn't seem bad. I would expect more problems with the gradual de-admin process, but not many... I suppose a protect-happy admin could fairly easily lose unblock privileges and then be blocked temporarily, so I guess that works. To respond to Admiral Roo, though, I don't think it will affect the prove you're a good admin bit at all. That comment seems to most frequently arise with regard to vandal reversion: People will likely still expect slow-style rollbacks in advance, and will likely formulate new non-reversion expectations for awarding additional responsibilities. — Lomn | Talk / RfC 18:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

institution creap. Oh and the second abilty you are giving out gives the power to vandalise every page on wikipedia simultainiously.Geni 19:17, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

My opinion is that the current system works. Reason? I can't think of any failed applications that should probably have passed, and certainly no successful ones that should have failed. I also think the above suggestion would introduce much unnecessary bureaucracy. Current problems (i.e. Gordon) are a result of his lack of understanding of our policy, and importantly, how it is applied. Martin 19:25, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

To Geni: the second ability you are giving out gives the power to vandalise every page on Wikipedia simultaneously. Could you clarify that? What second power? How would it give the power to vandalise every page on Wikipedia simultaneously? — JIP | Talk 06:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I think he's referring to the implicit third part of the ability to protect and unprotect pages: the ability to edit protected pages. Much of the boilerplate text of the site (such as the tagline "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia") is on protected pages in the MediaWiki namespace. Edit one of those pages, and you can put Goatse on every page of the encyclopedia. --Carnildo 07:15, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

And how does that differ from what admins can do now? — JIP | Talk 07:26, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we should split rollback out from the rest, since it's simply a faster way of doing something that every user can. --Carnildo 19:37, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

m:instruction creep. Vote for a trusted person or vote against him/her. Rollback function is not a really big tool anyways. Even an IP can revert. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:38, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Nichalp to an extent, but not wholly. This is how I see it: deleting is a power withheld from new users because they might abuse it for vandalism. There's no reason we can't give any user who has proven themselves not to be a vandal. I am thinking of GordonWatts here. I guess the rollback tool can go here as well. Blocking and protecting (along with allowing editing of protected pages) can be considered powers granted to users trusted to look after disputes if they arise. I don't see why a distinction shouldn't be made here. That's with the proviso that the bottom tier is "no big deal at all". [[Sam Korn]] 20:06, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

And there is even an emulator of a rollback button that you can add to your monobook.js. --Celestianpower ^hab 20:41, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

• Well, my point is that it would be less contentious to be granting people individual powers at a time as opposed to the total package that comes with the current adminship process. -- BD2412 ^talk 20:50, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

• I support this idea. I don't see it as creep but disentanglement. - Tεxτurε 21:14, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I do not support this idea. Think of how contentious RfA's occasionally get...do you want this to happen 4x as often? We're just creating more bureaucracy. Adminship should be no big deal...having to apply separately for each power makes it seem like a very big deal. Ral315 21:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I do think that a request for an individual power would be much less contentious than a request "for adminship" as we have now. I recognize that it would create an increased load in terms of the voting, but I don't think it would be 4x as much, since not every user will want to go up each level (just as not every admin wants to be a bureacrat), and those who lack the support to go, say, from level 2 to level 3 would simply not be able to apply for level 4 powers. -- BD2412 ^talk 22:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Just for clarification, are you expecting people to go for the rollback after 4 weeks, Protection 4 weeks later, etc...? So, you get all of the powers in 4 months - enough time to get experience of responsibility, disputes and a grounding in WikiPolicy. --Celestianpower ^hab 21:21, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

• Something like that, but of course you would not have to seek an additional power every four weeks... we had an AfD recently where the admin candidate quite clearly expressed that all he wanted was the one-button revert. Certainly a user could opt to go to that level, and no further, and not worry about whether they were trusted with the power to protect or delete or block. In fact, that user had made a similar suggestion to the effect that users could be given a short-term blocking power, receiving the power to impose longer blocks on a path to having full admin powers. I would also support that if it can be done. -- BD2412 ^talk 22:04, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this proposal. It adds far too much bureaucracy and makes the whole process needlessly complex. Yes, there are some problems with the current RfA process, but it works just fine for the vast majority of candidates. There's no need for such a radical revision. Carbonite | Talk 21:59, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Would you support a process for editors to get the one-button rollback separately from the more contentious admin powers? -- BD2412 ^talk 22:04, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I do support separating rollback from the "real" admin powers. In fact, a while back I proposed a similar process whereby "super-editors" (bad name, I know) would have access to rollback only. However, instead of request the power, users would gain rollback automatically after a certain number of edits and time spent on Wikipedia. In cases of problem users, a bureaucrat would remove this power. The specifics were never really fleshed out, but I believe it would be workable. As for the rest of the admin powers, it makes sense to keep them as a package. Any problems with RfA would be exacerbated by requiring multiple requests. Carbonite | Talk 22:14, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Suppose instead of a super-editor, we call this a "junior admin", and throw in the ability to temporarily protect pages and block non-admin users? That would make this a slightly more graduated system where recipients of these powers would be able to demonstrate that they understand when it is appropriate to use them. I don't think any kind of advance should be automatic, however - anyone could easily rack up 1,000 edits endlessly tweaking their user-page, or edit-warring over the content of Britney Spears-related articles. At the very least, they should have to ask a bureacrat, who could review the editor's contributions for signs of bad behavior. -- BD2412 ^talk 22:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, rollback isn't really a true administrative power. It's more like a handy tool that admins have access to. Any user, even anon IPs, can revert a page; rollback just speeds it up. In contrast, page protection and blocking are impossible for non-admins. RfA works fine the vast majority of the time. Most users are promoted or rejected overwhelmingly. The contentious RfAs simply stand out so much that they seem more common. I just can't support a system where a candidate would have to go through multiple RfAs to gain all the admin powers. The candidates that pass easily now would face a greater burden while the obvious rejections would still get rejected. A few borderline candidates might benefit from the proposed system, but that gain would be far outweighed by the increased bureaucracy and sense of hierarchy that would be created. Carbonite | Talk 23:17, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

To tell the truth, I see nothing wrong with the current policy. No major problems have been experienced until G.W's adminship failed, and I don't think that any changes should be made because he is unhappy about the outcome. G.W should just do what everyone who fails does; try to improve his contributions, address the problems that prevented him from being promoted, and wait one month to try again. The policy should not be changed; it has worked up until this point and no one has complained. Additionally, edit counts is a good measure of a person's contributions. Ofcource many other things should be considered, but the only way to tell if someone is truly committed and experienced is if he has made many edits in many different namespaces. I fully concur with Martin and Carbonite .

Journalist ^C./ ^{Holla @ me!}

G.W. is not the only applicant where such a problem arose - see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Leonard G.. -- BD2412 ^talk 22:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

He failed right? Well, to tell the truth, he is a very good editor, however, he hasnt gotten enought experience with wikipedia. Mind you, he does good work uploading pictures, writing articles etc, but even though he has been here since Feb 2004, he had trouble setting up his own nomination until I had to offer to help. Also while he has over 10,000 edits, not even .01% are to the Wikipedia namespaces. You see, so far, the process has worked. Those who should become Admins do, and the others dont. Ofcourse the process has its faults, but nothing is perfect, and the candidate always has another chance in one month.

Journalist ^C./ ^{Holla @ me!}

So what's wrong with giving him (and others who try and fail) some minor tools and something to work for? -- BD2412 ^talk 23:02, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I just dont think anyone should be given the powers in stages, its an unnecessary procedure with uneeded complexities; first it was just Admin, then Bureaucrat, but now it would be "level 1 Admin", "Level 2 Admin", "Level 3 Admin" then "Level 4 Admin". I still feel that the user can try again if he fails. Adminship will become a big deal, and, according to Jim Wales, it shouldnt be. Most of the time, users who fail deserve to fail; maybe they are immature, unready, unscrupulous ect. So far, community consensus has been competent in promoting new admin.

On second thought, how about letting the process run, then if the original request receives only 50%, then only the Rollback botton is given, but if the person gets the standard support (upwards of 80%), he gets all four powers? The way I see it, many persons are ready for all 4 powers now, and to make them wait 4 months after they had initially qualified for Adminiship would be unnecessary.

Journalist ^C./ ^{Holla @ me!}

Too complicated. Rollback is not a major power, so there shouldn't be any lengthy procedure involved in getting it. --Carnildo 00:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I would personally support a proposal along these lines. The crux of the problem with adminship in general at present is that a great deal of "lip service" is paid to adminship not being a big deal, but the actuality is that it is treated as if it is a very great deal indeed. If we really are saying adminship should be no big deal, in the spirit of Wikipedia:Assume good faith we should at least give people the opportunity to prove they are trusted users, and to gain tools to assist their work on Wikipedia as they increase that trust through demonstration of good work.

I do not feel that new users should immediately be considered "not trustworthy", rather that they should be given the chance to demonstrate trustworthiness - and, if found necessary, have those privileges revoked as swiftly as they were granted. In addition, the incremental system would provide a much more manageable approach for dealing with problem admins, since it would be possible to "turn off" specific privileges depending on the incident that has occurred.

It would, I believe, reduce the present view of adminship as a status symbol down to its rightful place as a set of tools. Obviously, such a proposal would require developer assistance; however, as a professional software developer, I would be certainly willing to do the technical work (with the blessing of the MediaWiki development team, obviously) and I do not expect it would require a great deal of ingenuity to implement. --NicholasTurnbull 22:11, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

• This is definately a solution searching for a problem. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:48, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

• • On the whole, I tend to agree with Ryan. Given my description of how the process works further up the page, it seems to me that it's doing fine. Sadly, Gordon's rejection illustrates very well why it's working: a lot of people just don't trust him, so his RfA failed. Now he's kicking up a fuss (the wrong response, IMHO) rather than reflecting on why that might be so (the right one, ditto). To change the process in response to this situation would be foolish, I believe. As for edit counting, my view is that people are entitled to vote the way they vote for whatever reason they see fit. Personally, when I vote here I never edit count but I do not have the right to impose my reasoning on others, just as nobody can force me to start edit counting in future. Filiocht | Consensus is not achieved through voting 07:16, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that RFA gets it about right. I think it errs on the side of approving nominations and we don't really see a lot of issues involving admins. There are some to be sure but the fact is that very few get de-admined. The de-admin process comes up from time to time but never really gets much play because at least up to this point there hasn't been a huge need for a more defined process. So I think it's working fine. If regular users got a rollback button I'd be fine with that. It'd sure make RC patrol easier and it's something users can already do, providing a faster way to rollback would be a good thing. Rx StrangeLove 20:14, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Rollback button (Archive 34)

I read in one of the previous archives some discussion about giving admin powers in steps (BD2412, I think). Most people thought it was too instruction creepy, and overly complex. But my question is, why doesn't every logged-in editor have the rollback button? Is it a matter of possibly allowing an easier edit war? Has there been discussion somewhere else about giving this power to all logged-in editors, and if so, where? Thanks. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 16:12, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a proposal, requests for rollback, which would give just the rollback tool to editors who asked for it and are not opposed. Talrias (t | e | c) 16:21, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Seems like a good proposal, but it seems fairly dormant. Is there anything new happening there? Is it any closer to being possible? --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 16:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

In a sense, the RfA process is just that. Let us not forget that, asides blocking and deleting, being an admin is not too different than being a user. I'd like to think that a user with an established track record and approved/voted by their peers won't be starting "easy" edit wars as often as a "regular joe" that has just joined WP.

--Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 16:37, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not only about edit wars - the rollback button produces extremely unhelpful edit summary, and when a user is tempted to use rollback in non-vandalism reversions it could lead to misunderstanding and tension between users.  Grue  16:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Grue has just hit the jackpot. I agree with him 100%. --Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 16:50, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

But couldn't they just use the script available, or even just make that their edit summary anyway? It is not really an "added feature" since people can already do it, it just might take a little bit longer. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 16:55, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe that delay discourages some users, or so I believe. --Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 17:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

It also discourages non admins from going on RC patrol...Borisblue 14:55, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I have just applied. Maybe I can be a test case, SqueakBox 16:52, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Look that something similar is being discussed at AN, whether the unhelpful edit summary can include an extra variable to make it more helpful. Titoxd^(?!?) 16:57, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I think is still in "proposed" mode, Squeak. I would vote for YOU, though. --Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 17:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Here's a whacky thought - what if we could give non-admins a rollback button that could only be used on anon edits? Most vandalism comes from anons anyway, and this would avoid rollback-related conflicts between logged in users.  BD2412 ^talk 17:03, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I have made it clear in my application that I know the difference between using it for vandalism and reverting, and I would expect the same scrutiny as an admin in my use of it, SqueakBox 17:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Well do vote for me. I am aware we are in proposal mode, and if it doesn't lead to being given said button because it isn't official policy that is okay, SqueakBox 17:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Abrams proposal might encourage anon vandals to sign in, if such a move were technically feasible, SqueakBox 17:10, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Godmode light, but if you abuse it, I will delete your javascript page and protect it ;-) Just ask User:Sam Hocevar where to get it, it makes non admins able to rollback. I use a more advanced godmode to block users from their user page, and I'd recommend it to anyone who becomes an admin. Redwolf24 (talk—How's my driving?) 03:09, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't work in OSX though on Opera :( Stops when it tries to get the edit box. Oh well, I'm glad I have the real version now :). Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 03:12, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

It works great on Firefox and Safari. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 03:48, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Deleting someone's monobook.js isn't going to do the trick I'm afraid, what with Firefox's greasemonkey and Opera's user javascript. Still, there's always RfC (and worse) for revert warriors. --fvw* 03:36, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Checkuser (Archive 34)

I just have one question. How the hell did checkuser voting become policy with only a 5 day vote, if this is the state of the wiki please tell me and I'll take a very long vacation right away because frankly I think it is a bullshit decision, all other reasonings aside in terms of checkuser rights. 50 votes (plus 4 neutral/comments) does not make a consensus by any means especially when we have no policy currently on it's use and the process so far of using checkuser and the guidelines for it are not layed out and nobody has even attempted to lay out. I propose that we immediately close all checkuser votes and remove the option from the main RFA page until a clear consensus for or against can be seen and if a consensus for it is achieved then until a clear policy regarding it's use can be found. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 02:03, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Agree, seems Raul654 removed it. Checkuser is a very vital process, and it's important to set out guidelines for it. Ral315 W_S 02:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Requests for checkuser access removed (Archive 34)

I have removed the requests for checkuser access. It is a clear example of overreaching. Checkuser access is governed by the foundation privacy policy, the application of which has still not been decided. It is inappropriate to be holding votes on it (checkuser access) before Jimbo and/or the board have made any decisions regarding access. (FWIW, Anthere is currently advocating a proposal on meta where wikis with arbitration committees and can designate one or [preferably] more of their members to have access) →Raul654 02:08, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, you beat me to it. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 02:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll assume that this was a good faith attempt to deal with the rampant vandalism problems we've been having lately and I apologize for getting a bit hot under the collar there but this was a travesty of the system. I support more people having checkuser since it would make the job a lot easier, however I think we need extremely strict guidelines including.

1) board approval/comment due to privacy policy and legal issues

2) COMMUNITY CONSENSUS (bolded for emphasis>)

3) checks and balances

4) guidelines on use and contingencies for misuse and/or mistakes in use

And that's just to name a few things, I urge everyone to think up new things that we need before this can be implemented since this is one of those things where we really can't afford to make mistakes for a dozen different reasons. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 02:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Regarding arbcom use I'd definitely be in favor of having the arbcom have checkuser access assuming that legal and privacy policies can be worked out, in that case consensus for each person might not really an issue either since the community has alreaedy voted that they trust these people to be arbitrators. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 02:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Honestly when people say things like "the rampant vandalism problems we've been having lately" I have to ask what they're talking about. Cool Cat's thermometer thingie seems to be more or less permanently stuck on Defcon 5, so either the vandal detection bots are all asleep at the wheel or we really don't have much of an acute vandalism problem. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 02:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Tony, I assume that people have a perception that we have recent "rampant vandalism problems" just because we have more tools and bots to detect them all. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 02:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Good point. We should all make a habit of checking our perceptions in case they should happen to be incorrect. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 02:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Tony, did you somehow manage to miss the vandalbot attack that made WP:AN, WP:AN/I, and WP:RFAr unusable to non-admins for a couple of days recently? --Carnildo 04:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The proposal Raul referred to is at meta:Proposed CheckUser Policy. It was written by Datrio, one of the stewards, with the intention of applying across all Wikimedia wikis rather than just the English Wikipedia. Angela. 02:23, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Just for the record, I don't particularly care for some aspects of Datrio's policy (it contains a lot of unnecessary bureacracy); I do think a more limited idea of giving access to all stewards and arbitration committees is a sound one. →Raul654 02:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Under the circumstances, should this be tagged "official policy"? --Tabor 02:31, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Somebody misguidedly designated the Quick and Dirty proposal as Wikipedia official policy. We don't make policy with 50 votes. I have changed the designation (at least for now) to rejected. There has been enough serious alarm at this to warrant that lable, I think. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 02:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

>80% is by far not a rejection. I've reverted. Titoxd^(?!?) 02:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I wish you much luck convincing anyone to heed a "policy" where only 50 people voted on a wiki this size. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 02:40, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

It is not policy and it has not been rejected; it's currently under discussion at a higher level of Wikipedia. So both of you hold your horses. →Raul654 02:42, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Raul, I retagged it as a proposed policy, even though it did pass. Part of the policy requires a permanent policy to be drafted, and that's all I said. Titoxd^(?!?) 02:46, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I would disagree that it passed. I would state that it's not even a proposed policy at this point, but merely a discussion pending the adoption of a Wikimedia-wide policy. Note that one project at Wikimedia cannot override Wikimedia general policy, most especially the privacy policy, no matter how many "votes" it scares up to do so. Kelly Martin 03:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

Well, I see the need of this checkuser thing since I do lot of patrolling, but after thinking a while, I realize we dont' actually need to know the IPs. What we need is just the ability of knowing if 2 given users are from the same ip (true or false) for making sure of sockpuppets, not needing to know the ip itself. So I propose that admins are given only this ability (deciding if 2 edits come from the same ip) and not the ip itself. -- (drini's page|☎) 02:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

That doesn't do as much as you might guess at first blush to protect user privacy. We need to decide to change our privacy policy first, then we can grant tools. Our highest obligation is to be honest to our users, and not place the project in legal peril with a dishonest privacy policy. --Gmaxwell 02:44, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if I'd trust the 600 admins to never abuse this power. Also this wouldn't be undoable (much like page history merges (which not everyone knows how to do, which may be a good thing) and image deletions) as you can't erase minds. There's too many legit sock puppets, like that Cute Little Doggie one. But at the same time having a requests for checkuser system might not be too great as every person running may get opposes such as I DON'T THINK ANYONE SHOULD HAVE THIS POWER... etc. People like Rainbowwarrior1977 are pretty rare, and needing to checkuser is too, and when you need it, get evidence and ask a developer. Yes the sockmasters seem common (like murderers played up on the t.v.) but there aren't as many as you'd think. Now I should stop procrastinating my homework... Redwolf24 (talk) 02:50, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not even so much about abuse. It's about being wrong. What I want to see is a solution that doesn't permit the user of the private info for fishing, because fishing (i.e. finding users that we'd have no reason to suspect otherwise) is where the false hits of the system will bite us the worst. There are many ways to inhibit fishing, one is to simply give access to very few people. There may be others. The existing proposals do nothing to inhibit fishing. --Gmaxwell 03:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not proposing anything dishonest here. I'ts not like it would be a secret tool. It's just another proposal. -- (drini's page|☎) 02:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Our privacy policy isn't the clearest thing in the world, but it's clear that the proposed systems wouldn't be consistant with it. As far as I know we need the board to change the privacy policy. I'm not saying anyone here is trying to be dishonest, but if we were to impliment such a change we would make the project dishonest. --Gmaxwell 03:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the point of a such a simple sockpuppet check would be in a case such as the recent vandalbot attacks (which, incidentally, are the reason for this whole mess). It should be blatantly obvious that the users k8932kj3@as and as0d9r!23, both of whom replace WP:VIP with identical nonsense, are sockpuppets, even without a formal check; but blocking the underlying IP, as was done in the recent case, obviously requires knowing that IP itself. Kirill Lokshin 03:01, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Bots are pretty much always going to require developer intervention. If someone goes through the trouble of making a vandal bot, they are going to make sure they circumvent all our normal tools. Perhaps if we worked on making less enemyes this would be less of a concern? --Gmaxwell 03:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Be nice to the vandals and Wikipedia:Don't make enemies are both redlinks. Pity. You could go and pre-emptively slap {{rejected}} tags on either of them if you happen to dislike them, though. -Splash^talk 03:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

It has always been well said that prevention is far better than cure, and it seems to me that most of this checkuser controversy (and, indeed, other measures against miscreants) is an effort to cure the problems with vandalism - which, incidentally, is already coped with moderately well by Wikipedia's existing immune system. What we really need to do is pour energy, effort and time into coming up with ways of preventing the vandals from making vandalism edits; or better yet, prevent them from having vandalistic tendencies at all, and making legitimate editing more worthwhile than scatological efforts. Such measures would, of course, not entail the creation of further risks through wider allocation of sensitive information. Let us, rather than wrangling over checkuser, apply the {{sofixit}} cliché and work on making strategies to preempt vandalism via prevention. I propose some kind of Vandal Reduction Initiative to further this cause. If any of you fine Wikipedians would care to join me, I would be greatly honoured. Regards, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) (e-mail) (cabal) 03:29, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism is like Death. It will always exist. As long as the wiki is open, and "YOU can edit this article" remain guiding principles of the wiki, which if I understand Jimbo's opinion, it will, we will have vandals. There will always be stupid people with nothing better to do than engage in destructive behavior, just as there will always be termites eating wood. Our only recourse is to maintain vigilance and effort against vandalism, and to work as a counter-force to vandals. Fortunately, the system is designed to give those on the side of constructive rather than destructive change the advantage, but to assert that we could possibly stop vandalism is inaccurate, in my view. Ok but maybe we could reduce it... Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 06:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

That being said, I still think a reduction initiative is a good idea. I'd love to help. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 06:58, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I have added Wikipedia:Be nice to the vandals if anyone is curious. Marskell 18:29, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

So great!! vandals are actually kids in need of wikilove :) -- (drini's page|☎) 22:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

And another section

We really need more admins with the right access to cope with vandal-bots like the one some days ago signing up accounts from a large number of different IP's. It was frustrating to see how much trouble that bot made without anyone here being able to tell if the bot was using a specific IP-range and what IP-range that was, or if it was some zombie net or some other random collection of IP's. Many people here wasted a lot of time doing reverts and blocking all the different vandal-accounts the bot signed up. The whole thing was utterly silly, frustrating and a case of overprotection of a vandals privacy not getting to know his IP's. By simply choosing to vandalise through user-accounts he suddenly got all these privacy rights and was basically untouchable and immune to all the good people doing vandal-control. To have people with access doing sock puppet investigations is fine and well, and I believe we have enough people doing that. But we need more admins around who can react on clear cases of mass vandalism like that bot. I'm quite sure this isn't the last time someone with access to a large IP-range doing vandalism like this, no matter how nice we are to people, and when it happens again we should be able to kill it right away, and not having to sit around powerless and wait for some of the few people with checkuser access to come around and take notice. Maybe make a version of the tool only available on new and blocked accounts, or something else that will cover this need. But we must stop overprotecting vandals and waste the time of all the people who work hard to keep vandals from ruining wikipedia. Shanes 03:33, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The vandalbot hasn't gone away... just a few hours ago today it created nearly 300 new "garbage" accounts (see Special:Log/block or Special:Log/newusers around 01:13–01:32 UTC today). Supposedly, creating a new login account on a blocked IP address has now been disabled, so this would mean that the vandal burned through nearly 300 separate IP addresses (can we get a verification?). At peak, he was creating about 30 new accounts per minute. And don't forget that back on August 26 a Willy vandalbot was doing about 75 pagemoves per minute. If it seems like the level of vandalism is rising, it's because it is. Like it or not, we seem to be caught up in some kind of arms race and things are indeed getting worse. -- Curps 04:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I honestly don't see a problem here. The minute one of these chaps sticks his head above the parapet, RC lights up like a Christmas tree and the revert-and-block squad goes to work. So we're supposed to be impressed that they can write a script to fill out a form? --Tony Sidaway^Talk 04:30, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I guess you missed the part about 30 new accounts per minute? We're seeing escalated bot-driven vandalism that is very hard to cope with by any traditional means, and I believe it's getting worse. -- Curps 04:50, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I just want them to be blocked so they stop vandalising wikipedia. But we can't block them if we don't know which range they are vandalising from. Shanes 04:33, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I do think Tony has a point. Attacks happen. They're a pain (and do seem to be worsening), but they get dealt with. Wikipedia's still functioning, so they couldn't have been too terrible. But as much as I agree with those statements, I think they miss a nuance -- to me, the real problem here is that, yes, we have people who stand ready to help beat back the tide of vandals. But wouldn't we rather have those people spend more of their time building an encyclopedia? It's a resource issue. Given that, I think there should be more efforts made to find ways to help people stem the tide more efficiently. · Katefan0^(scribble) 04:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The past is not a guarantee of the future. We are in an arms race that we will eventually lose if we stand still. Tony is far too complacent. Recent changes like the move log, newuser log, pagemove revert were good, but we need to keep moving forward and add more security and integrity features. I would strongly urge that fundraising monies should perhaps be used to hire a full-time Mediawiki programmer who could work on such things (starting with captchas for account registration) and a full-time or part-time ISP liaison person who would be on a first-name basis with the abuse contacts at the major ISPs and whose responsibility would be IP address tracebacks and vandal accountability issues (and just in case anyone was wondering, no, I would absolutely not be a candidate for either position). -- Curps 05:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with Curps. Attitude seems to minimize the problem. When I commented on the warning of an impending botnet attack ([1] at the bottom) most people just shrugged and moved on. If we can take actions to prevent these events, why wait until they happen? -- (drini's page|☎) 22:23, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I remain opposed to the use of captchas for registration because of their impact on disabled users. Kelly Martin 15:42, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Me, as well. It completely contradicts the WP philosophy. Now, perhaps if people were given the option of captchas, email verification, or hashcash, I would like that (even though it's a lot of programming). We need a few more checkuserers, but we shouldn't let the vandalbots force us into a compromise if at all possible. ~~ N (t/c) 23:57, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

"Rip"ping and ToSsing major (Willy-style) vandals (Archive 34)

As a supplement or alternative to the expanded use of Checkuser (see above discussion), I'm thinking of proposing an idea which could be called, for lack of a better name, retroactive IP or reveal IP (acronym: rip). That is, in cases where vandalism was serious and persistent enough, the IP address of the sock puppet in question would be retroactively made public and would appear in all log files alongside the username for the edits in question (the latter would require a software upgrade, though). For instance:

09:56, 18 October 2005 Astor family (diff; hist) . . William on wheels IP = 123.234.123.234 (Talk | block) (→Members)

This would be restricted to cases of prolonged, egregious, and seriously disruptive vandalism (willy etc) that if unchecked would threaten the integrity of Wikipedia — especially vandalbots — but would not apply to garden variety vandalism. It would also be restricted to edits made in the past week or so (for practical reasons, because apparently logs aren't kept much longer than that, and also because a statute of limitations would be desirable).

The appeal of this idea is that it would not create privacy worries for ordinary users (or even garden-variety vandals); it would only affect the "privacy" of those who richly deserve to forfeit it. The Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy does appear to explicitly allow public release of IP information under such circumstances (item 5 in particular would apply).

The decision to "rip" a vandal would have to be made quickly (within a one-week time window, before the log information is lost), so prolonged debate, voting or committee discussion would not work. For this reason, such decisions would probably have to be made by individuals belonging to a restricted group of persons in position of high trust (bureaucrats? arbcom members? some new level with a "revealuser" privilege?). Next to each edit in a log file, such users would see a "revealuser" link, and clicking on it would flag that edit (or all edits by that user less than a week old) for IP reveal. Such "rips" (or "reveals") would be logged, and the logs would be publicly viewable the same way as blocks and page deletes, providing accountability.

The followup would be that once the IP addresses are public for all to see, anyone sufficiently motivated could use ARIN or RIPE or APNIC to contact the ISP abuse contact and notify them of a terms of service (ToS) violation by their customer (we could call this two-step process "ripping and ToSsing" vandals... for some reason, this violent imagery is oddly appealing at the moment). Each ISP knows the name, address, e-mail address and phone number of each of its customers and logs their Internet browsing activity: if we provide a list of IPs and timestamps from Wikipedia logs, that's all the information the ISP need to identify the customer in question. Note, we would not be subpoenaing the ISP to supply us with this information, we wouldn't engage in RIAA style litigation; we would simply ask them to apply their terms of service (ToS) to the customer in question, whose identity would remain unknown to us. The ISP could decide to boot their customer off or at least give the customer a stern warning by phone or e-mail.

On the other hand, we might discover that the IPs in question are open proxies... so much the better, we can then block them. Worst case, we might discover a zombie botnet, but I would hope that anyone who controls a resource like that would have enough plain common sense to stick to extorting companies and financial institutions and leave us alone... would anyone really be silly enough to risk getting Mitnicked with no possible reward (financial or otherwise) other than to annoy us? And in this case, the ISP would notify their innocent customer that they have a spam/spyware/virus-infected computer and encourage them to disinfect their machine, so a botnet puppetmaster wasting his time on us would end up losing resources as a result, a financial opportunity cost with respect to whatever other fun-and-profit activities he uses the botnet for.

Of course, this would require a SMOP ("small matter of programming"), to modify Mediawiki to allow flagging edits for retroactive IP reveal. But it might be considered worthwhile if it helps mitigate the vandalism problem without the privacy issues that would result from expanded Checkuser use. -- Curps 05:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

This would also appear to be compatible with the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy (item 5 in particular would apply, allowing for public release of IP information under the circumstances described above). -- Curps 07:37, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Why a technical solution? If this is ever justified, just request that a checkuserer do it. ~~ N (t/c) 12:55, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Concur with Nickptar on this; if there is cause for a vandal's IP to become a matter of public record the user who does the checkuser can add an appropriate template to their user page. No need for this, and the risk of accidental or malicious misuse is too high. Kelly Martin 15:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

There are a couple of reasons: I believe David Gerard mentioned that running checkuser is fairly slow as currently implemented, since it needs to do a rather involved database query looking for other edits and other users that may have used the same IP range (I will ask him to comment here). In yesterday's case where nearly 300 garbage accounts were created in the space of 20 minutes or so, I believe it would not be practically possible to run checkuser on them all or even a significant fraction of them. Yet it's precisely in the case of such high-volume vandalbot sock creation that we need IP information the most. There may be 300 open proxies that we'll never know about. By contrast, just revealing the IP addresses would be hardly any load on the database at all. Checkuser is a full-blown sockpuppet check, "revealuser" would not not be, it would just be making the IP address public, no more and no less.

Second, the followup once you know the IP address is just as important: you can do open proxy checking, you can check ARIN and RIPE and APNIC, and you can contact the ISP to report a ToS violation, you can block an IP address or an IP range. Doing all of that can be a quite labor intensive and time consuming operation, and does not scale well if there's only one person doing it. By contrast, if the IP information is public, other members of the Wikipedia community can effectively contribute to the followup. So there is much less of a burden on a single individual like David Gerard to handle the entire process from start to finish, which in practice means it is not done much of the time (especially any sort of ToS followup). He could investigate just enough to see that reveal-IP is warranted, then do so and leave the rest up to others.

The "revealuser" decision-making privilege would be limited to a limited number of highly trusted users (not admins, perhaps bureaucrats) and its usage would be logged. If we really have to worry about malicious misuse on the part of bureaucrat-level or higher persons, then we have far bigger problems to worry about.

The main reason for rIP (reveal IP) is to enable ToS followup. The latter (or just the threat to do so) can be surprisingly effective. After all, many vandals use their ISP for other non-Wikipedia activities and e-mail, and losing their e-mail address or having to explain loss of Internet connection to other family members (or their department head) can be a significant deterrent. It's had some modest success recently for extremely persistent anonymous IP vandals using a broad IP range, and this proposal would simply enable us to use it for extremely persistent sockpuppet vandals as well.

And note there's another safeguard: the ISP itself. With ToS followup, all we would do is hand a list of IP numbers and timestamps to the abuse contact at the ISP, namely a list of links to Wikipedia edits. The ISP itself would have to be satisfied that there was a significant ToS violation (according to its own definition and its own terms of service) before it lifted a finger. And in no case would the ISP be revealing any identity information to us; however, they know the names, phone numbers and e-mails of their own customers and will be in a position to take whatever steps they deem appropriate (the most severe penalty would simply be dropping the customer).

The likelihood of abusive use of "revealuser" would thus be very low: first of all, it doesn't even involve checking for sockpuppets (checkuser would still be used for that where warranted), so there's less of a privacy issue to begin with, and there are two levels of safeguards: a highly-trusted bureaucrat-level person with "revealuser" privilege would make the decision, and the vandal's ISP would also have to be satisfied for any real followup to take place.

Checkuser and "revealuser" are really two different things for different purposes. Checkuser was mostly designed, I believe, to detect whether two users are sockpuppets of one another and is an inefficient tool against large-scale automated vandal disruption (especially vandalbots). "Revealuser" on the other hand simply wants to stop large-scale disruption by enabling us to close open proxies or resort to ToS where necessary. And I believe that "revealuser" would be entirely compatible with the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy (especially point 5), whereas greatly expanded use of checkuser might not be. -- Curps 19:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

When you put it that way, it sounds like a good idea. ~~ N (t/c) 19:54, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Curps, just a quick comment to say I think this is a superb idea. Very neat and effective. And furthermore, the log and user limitations should allay all the PP concerns folks expressed about that other proposal. Very fine work. Now if only someone would code it :) encephalon 21:18, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, excellent idea. I particularly would like to see this done. Andre (talk) 21:44, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Agreed also and well put. Implementation remains. Would existing bureaucrats be grand-fathered into it? Should it be a general vote or (heaven forbid) an essentially unilateral power granted? I actually favour the latter. I didn't like yesterday admins suddenly swarming to grant particular admins new abilities. Give it to stewards to start with perhaps, and work from there. Marskell 00:20, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges (Archive 36)

There has been a proposal for a while to allow editors to request rollback privileges, as a step 'in between' admins and regular users. The discussion has died down but it seems that most people consider it a good idea. The main issue is that no interface exists for enabling rollback privs, so we must either ask a database user to enable the prevs, or ask a dev to create such an interface. So what would be the best course of action,

1. Open up requests for rollback (either here or at WP:RFR) and ask a database user to grant them;
2. Post a feature request and not do anything until it's implemented
3. Consider the proposal impractical and forget about it

Radiant_>|< 23:45, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Two looks like the best course of action to me, although I do think there is a rollback user status coded, I remember it was enabled at one time, but it is currently disabled. Once we know we can technically make users rollback only, then we should start with RFRs (which I fully support). -Greg Asche (talk) 23:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Since we are fairly liberally creating admins - is there a great need for this? Is it not just annother set of polls to distract us from article work into process? Are there many people we'd trust with rollback but not with other tools? And would rollback be awarded significanly earlier than adminship? Would the few extra roll-backers make much difference? It seems to me most obvious vandalism is reverted pretty quickly. In any case some non-admins have rollback already (I think monobook alterations can give it). I suspect folk want rollback - as without it admins beat them to revert - well, so what, as long as it is reverted? --Doc (?) 23:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

A quick glance at the talk page makes clear that this proposal lacks consensus. Even if the technical ability exists, the process needs either a poll or more time in discussion before it can be put into practice. Incidentally, it would be nice if further discussion could be directed to Wikipedia talk:Requests for rollback privileges rather than here. — Dan | Talk 00:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, there is a way to do allow rollback to non-admins via javascript. Because of it's potential use for vandalism, I won't describe it or say much more than that it exists here, but there is a way. All it requires is for a proven vandalfighter to ask someone who knows about it (i.e., me) and after a quick check to prove they are legit, it can be applied. Plenty of non-admins have it, and quite a few admins know about it; I would suggest activating RfRoll as a place for users to note themselves, and a trusted admin (as it takes an admin to edit someone else's monobook.js) could check the user and grant the code. -- Essjay · Talk 14:31, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I find Essjay's idea interesting as it would lead to an informal process. However, my only concern about creating a class of rollbackers whose hierarchy would be between the editors and admins is that it would complicate things on RFA for people who may not be interested in rolling back but interested in other admin tasks. Personally, I may just need the rollback tool but I'd still go for an RFA as additional abilities in the hands of a trusted wikipedian definitely wouldn't hurt. --Gurubrahma 14:46, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I just want to make sure I was clear; the rollback function currently available to non-admins is a javascript application, so it doesn't actually extend any extra priveledges, it simply automates the revert process. Rollback is not a permission, like deletion or page protection, but an automation of an existing function; for example, anyone can have a rollback button that works, because anyone may edit a page, however, a non-admin could not program a working blocktab via java, as they do not have the permissions necessary to access the block function. Therefore, it isn't actually creating a new level of users, it is simply allowing users who have demonstrated that they are not vandals to automate the existing revert process. -- Essjay · Talk 14:54, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• I don't want to seem mean here, but do we really need this? I mean we are here to make an encyclopedia, and some of the benefits of becoming a janitor is the rollback button. I'm sure if someone wanted it, they could just add in the javascript in their monobook.js. It's notable and nice that users fight vandals, but I did it for quite awhile w/o the rollback button. Also, admins as it is get into disputes over rollback, because it doesn't give a reason for the rollback. For normal users, I think it's better if they have a macro, or type in the reasons why. IHMO. «»Who?¿?^meta 15:09, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Not to be rude, but please direct this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Requests for rollback privileges, where it belongs. — Dan | Talk 02:19, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I've moved the talk to Wikipedia talk:Requests for rollback privileges where it belongs as per Dan's uggestion. Let us continue there. Thanks, Dan. --Gurubrahma 09:12, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Let the ArbCom do it (Archive 36)

In Steve's RfA I see many people voting that the case should go back to ArbCom. That's cool. ArbCom consists of trusted users and they make the right decisions most of the time. And "Wikipedia is not a democracy" as well - it's not the right of normal editors to choose who should be de-sysopped. Well, why don't we relegate the process of admin selection to ArbCom as well? Surely they'll be able to select the right people for a job? Now the deletion process - the tainted AfD - it is better off coming to ArbCom hands as well - let them choose which articles to delete and which to keep. Also there is a vandalism problem. But it has an easy solution! Let the ArbCom monitor each edit and select only those edits that are good for Wikipedia. See where I'm going? Nupedia wasn't a democracy - that's why it's DEAD. ArbCom shouldn't do everything, surely YOU can decide whether Steve fits YOUR admin criteria or not. Let the ArbCom do its own work.  Grue  06:56, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

The one issue that there is with this is that even though everyone who says it should go back to arbcom is absolutely right, putting it back on arbcom is not a valid RFA vote and doesn't fall under any Wikipedia guideline and as such I assume that the beaurucrat will probably disregard those votes even though that's unfortunate. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 07:06, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

"Putting it back on arbcom is not a valid RFA vote and doesn't fall under any Wikipedia guideline." Under what guideline is ArbCom using RfA for a referendum on user behaviour? That's what this is. Archived now, but to repeat: "The Arbitration Committee is the last step in the dispute resolution process — it is a last resort to be turned to when all else has failed." Here they are treating RfA as a last resort and essentially abrogating a basic task of theirs. The people voting remit are absolutely right regardless of whether the bureaucrat closing feels s/he must ignore the votes. Marskell 07:17, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you entirely, it's not in any arbcom procedure or precedent either, however arbcom does at least seem to have the ability to create precedent to a certain extent, much of which while not directly creating new rules and guidelines does not entirely fall under any existing rule or guideline. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 07:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Everyone has the right to create precident. The point of the vote was to see if the community still supported him as an admin. It is perfectly valid to say "we'd rather not do this" even though it is unusual in an rfa. This is not a normal rfa so the voting options don't have to be normal either. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 09:36, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

"Let the ArbCom do its own work"? Isn't it part of the ArbCom's "own work" to handle disputes like Stevertigo's case? Or does it exist merely to determine the consensus of normal Wikipedia users? As per User:Marskell, the ArbCom is the last step in the dispute resolution process. Them asking us for opinions doesn't sound like a "last step". — JIP | Talk 07:51, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• Sorry, Grue, but please see slippery slope and appeal to ridicule. Radiant_>|< 10:34, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm not an expert in logical fallacies but "if P is used to prove Q and using similar argumentation to P can be used to prove a wrong statement then Q is wrong" must have some fancy name as well.  Grue  11:05, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Correct. That would be Reductio ad absurdum, but note that RAA is both a rhetorical technique and a logical fallacy, and I'm afraid you're using the wrong one. "P implies Q, but Q is false" proves that P is false. However "P implies Q, and P taken to extremes would imply R, and R is false" does not imply that P or Q is false. Hence, slippery slope. Radiant_>|< 12:20, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• I believe the core of the issue isn't that the RfA has been brought to gain community concensus on whether Stevertigo should be an admin. As has been noted multiple times elsewhere, he's been brought here at first against his will as, unintended or no, a virtual lynching. ArbCom, assuming it had any cognizance at all of RfA patterns, knew there was no chance of Stevertigo passing such an RfA. If ArbCom were not ArbCom, and this were somehow just a dispute say on AfD, there would be a number of people saying this whole thing was brought in bad faith. There was no rational way in which ArbCom could conclude that bringing the RfA was not an abrogation of process. In essence, a case was brought before the Wiki-equivalent of the Supreme Court, Stevertigo was found guilty of heinous crimes, and then asked to stand before people (initially against his will) and ask those people if they liked him or not. Now that it is with his will, he is using it as a process to gather material evidence of what he sees as ArbCom's misbehavior. I can well understand the motivation. How else do you defeat an ArbCom decision except by foisting them upon their own petard? I expect Jimbo will have to step into this mess. This is NOT what RfA is for. This process is being used for purposes well separated from what RfA is supposed to be used for. This fight between Stevertigo and ArbCom has spilled over outside of the ring and out onto the streets for all the world to see. ArbCom and Stevertigo both clearly know that this RfA has zero chance of passing. That's not what it is being used for. Not only is Stevertigo suffering public humiliation over this, but ArbCom is suffering as well. The RfA as it now stands is 15 in favor, 29 against. Stevertigo would need another 51 more support votes just to clear the bare minimum 70% to get into the grey area for affirmation. This RfA will nevertheless continue for another 6 days, the mudslinging will continue, the debates will continue and the embarrassment all the way around will continue. This situation was forseeable and avoidable. ArbCom certainly has the power to set precedent, and what a precedent they have set! Personally, I feel that an RfC should be brought with ArbCom as a whole one of the parties to it. Is that any abuse of process? I don't think so, but that's open for debate. It's most certainly a more appropriate venue for this debate than RfA. Of course, that begs the question; if it eventually goes to RfAr, what then? ArbCom ruling when it is party to the dispute? Obvious grounds for Jimbo stepping in. Better yet, ArbCom can prevent continued embarrassment for all, and summarily revoke Stevertigo's admin status and close the matter. But at this point, I have some empathy for Stevertigo's desire to use this RfA as a means of gathering evidence against ArbCom. Maybe an RfC should be brought. --Durin 12:17, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with your interpretation - this is about consensus to de-sysop - so it must require 70% oppose votes. Guettarda 15:07, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I think someone already has asked the ArbCom about this, and they clarified that it should be run like a normal RfA - 80% support is required in order to retain admin rights; any less results in de-sysopping. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Stevertigo's RfA, where Raul states, "His RFA it to be treated like any other - less than 70% and he loses his sysophood, between 70 and 80% is the bureacrat's call, and greater than 80% is approval." Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 15:10, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course, this further underscores that it was a bad idea. Not only was it a new precedent to foist on RfA but no clear instructions were provided here.

As for an RfC, I don't know under which. User conduct RfC doesn't seem right as no one is being accused of a specific policy violation, attack etc.—just the majority don't like this business. I can sue Clarence Thomas but I can't haul the Supreme Court into civil court. It would, in a sense, be piling one dubious precedent on another. After ArbComm it's Jimbo I suppose. Marskell 15:26, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

In addition, it wouldn't make much sense for a user to remain an admin with only 31% support (69% oppose). Why would a new candidate need 75-80% support, but an admin who was found by the ArbCom to have abused his powers need only 30% support? In any case, Flcelloguy is correct; the ArbCom has already clarified that this is like a standard RfA. Carbonite | Talk 15:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that the question is "should we de-sysop", and there is no consensus to de-sysop. In all fairness, it should take 70% to desysop. Right now, 69% of the people who have voted oppose the idea of de-sysopping by these means. A clear majority actually reject the process altogether. So I don't think there is any consensus upon which to act. Guettarda 07:03, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

As I see it, the question is "Now that the ArbCom has shown that Stevertigo abused his admin powers, should he remain an admin?" There's very little support for Steve retaining his adminship. In fact, if you look at some of the support votes, they're actually opposing the ArbCom sending the matter to RfA, not supporting Steve's adminship. Requiring 70% to desysop just doesn't make sense. If adminship is no big deal, why should it be so difficult to remove a admin who's been proven to have abused his position? Carbonite | Talk 13:04, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Alternate proposal: Allow votes for provisional adminship (Archive 38)

This idea is simple. Allow voters on RfA the option of voting Provisional support or something similar. People who are able to pass the post with normal support votes would not be affected by this proposal at all; but if someone does not get enough full-out support votes to pass muster, and has enough provisional votes to make up the difference, then they are elected as a provisional admin. This would be exactly like a normal admin, but they would have to be re-elected after a set period of time (say, three months). Naturally, they could become a full admin on that second vote if they got enough normal full-support votes, after which no more voting would be necessary; they could continue on as a provisional admin if they still needed provisional votes to squeak through; or they could lose their provisional adminship. Candidates would have the option to pre-decline provisional adminship in their nomination acceptance if they find the idea distasteful, requiring full support/oppose votes from all voters, or to decline it after the vote if they decide on seeing the totals that it's not what they want. This proposal would allow for a measure of later review for some candidates without the chaos or bad blood of widespread reelections; indeed, by allowing for more nuanced votes, it would hopefully take much of the edge out of RfA. --Aquillion 05:22, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

To me, this is instruction creep. Make a way to de-admin people who abuse the privileges as easily as admins are made, and such a thing becomes very unneccessary. Friday (talk) 05:26, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

A streamlined de-adminship proposal, though, represents a far more serious form of instruction creep; no matter how carefully you word your criteria for de-adminship or how cleverly you set up the process, it would still be open to abuse and would become a set of rules and procedures that every single admin would have to know by heart if they wanted to avoid the risk of spurious de-adminship. Indeed, no matter how they ended up being handled, offical de-adminship proceedings would amount to a new structure on the scale of RfC, RfAr, or RfA itself, with all the attendant rules and regulations. Provisional adminship, on the other hand, would serve as a purely optional alternative available to voters and candidates, allowing for a way to defuse some of the nastier adminship proceedings without substantially adding to the rules under which most people operate. --Aquillion 05:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

• First, it is instruction creep. Second, the issue attempting to be addressed is incivility in the RfA process. This can and should be addressed with individual incivil contributors in RfA, not by modifying the RfA process. --Durin 11:45, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

"Admin-lite" proposal on Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team (Archive 39)

There is an ongoing discussion on Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team about introducing an article Custodianship for Featured Articles. The Custodian would have admin powers to revert and protect only the article to which they were appointed custodian. The idea is a form of "Admin-lite" to maintain featured articles to a high standard. You may wish to voice your opinion on this discussion here. Seabhcán 22:59, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Check User Status (Archive 40)

Is there anywhere on English Wikipedia where I can request this sockpuppet check feature?Voice of All^T|@|ESP 21:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Due to the new policy, only the ArbCom has the ability to set who is a CheckUser, and there were 5 CheckUsers just promoted, so I doubt it is possible right now. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:42, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

The assignment of CheckUser rights on en is the sole responsibility of the Arbitration Committee. At the moment, the Committee is not currently looking for additional people to give CheckUser rights to; if and when the Committee feels that more are needed, the Committee will (presumably) recruit additional candidates by whatever means it feels are appropriate. Kelly Martin (talk) 18:36, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

request for checkuser privilages (Archive 45)

I have removed this section because it has been tried and established several times that the only ones who can give out checkuser are Jimbo, the board, or the arbcom and have stated that they are currently comfortable with the number of users who have checkuser power at the moment so voting people to have checkuser would serve no purpose and could in no way be binding or even helpful in most cases. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 01:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, is this with regards to finding a user's IP? JHMM13 (T | C) 21:43, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, see m:CheckUser. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 10:29, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Lets just call it a Janitorship (Archive 51)

I think it would blow the foam off the mystique of adminship (and thereby reduce the vitriol that occasionally arises in adminship debates) if we change the name of the position from "Administrator" to "Janitor". bd2412 T 18:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

How many janitors do you know that carry shotguns? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:34, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• Or dynamite for that matter. :) --Durin 18:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

(Checks to see if the shortcut WP:RFJ is free...) --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:48, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• It comes with a price ;) --Durin 18:55, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

If we do that, can we rename bureaucrats to Janitor's Closets? Cause we're providing mops :P — Ilyanep (Talk) 21:02, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Bureaucrats are the janitors of the janitors! :-) bd2412 T 21:10, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Excellent idea. Then we can move all the sex out of #wikipedia and put it there. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 21:13, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Let's not. That would be about as effective as renaming it "Articles for Deletion". — Phil Welch (t) (c) 21:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. Why induce even more confusion? --maru (talk) contribs 02:43, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

• Support renaming.

<snickers>

Kim Bruning 21:34, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we can find a better name, something not as clearly identified with a real world occupation. Like "muckers" or "slimers" or "grimers" or "scummers" or "scrubbers". NoSeptember ^talk 09:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

What about "moperator"? —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 09:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

How about we call ourselves the Plumbers? --maru (talk) contribs 02:43, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

• I say we call adminship "level 3". IPs and new users are level 1, regular users are level 2, Admins are level 3. ArbCom is level 4, We can call b'crats level 5. Everyone wants to level up, after all. --W.marsh 17:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes! :) I'm level 2.5. -Zero^Talk 17:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm...I dunno if 'crats should be above ArbCom. — Ilyanep (Talk) 22:38, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Better make you sure you don't get hit by a nasty undead, could bring you back down (or would you prefer a Nintendo rather than a D&D reference?). JoshuaZ 22:42, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Makes it sound like Arbcom is a necessary step in a chain of promotion, but it's just a committee - one can become a 'crat with no Arbcom involvement, and vice versa. bd2412 T 22:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

• Somehow I think renaming would decrease the responsibility that admins feel, perhaps leading to recklessness. - Tangotango 17:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
  • responsible? us? (keep the current name!) Grutness...wha? 01:13, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
• Adminship/sysopness/janitorial engineeritude; whatever you want to call it does not completely describe the position. By implication, admins have been seen as higher/more credible/more important than other users. Similarly, Bureaucrat is even higher than that, but basically, it's even less of a "boost" unless the individual with the title separately, by his/her action, has the respect of the community. Let's look at what admin really is: it's a removal of certain restrictions on what an editor can do in the namespace--rollback button (made less important by scripts), article deletion/undeletion, article protection/unprotection. Everything else is assumed by custom, and is not mandatory. I would support removing bcrats for inactivity, but not admins. A more proper term would be "unrestricted editor," "senior editor," or "full editor." If we have to have a "sexy" term, than let's go all the way: "Fuehrer." -- Cecropia 18:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Based on your comment, a sysop is a "user with the regulator removed." NoSeptember ^talk 18:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Quite so. How about runamuck? -- Cecropia 18:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for "wild cannon". Kelly Martin (talk) 22:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

• Trustee? --Ligulem 22:33, 5 April 2006 (UTC)--Ligulem 08:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
  • "Clerk"? Hiding talk 22:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
    • ALready taken. One substantial change that I may make if no one objects is the removal of the phrase "Administrator rights" on the guide for adminship with the replacement of "Administrator abilities" which sounds less inviting. JoshuaZ 22:46, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Better yet, how about, "Administrator responsibilities" - since the tools must be used wisely. bd2412 T 22:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
        • That crosses the line from better phrasing to outright manipulation/Orwellianism/Huxlixism what have you. To paraphrase Brave New World. "I'm so glad I'm an editor, and I don't have the responsibilties of an admin. A user is the best thing to be." Joking aside, that would be such an obvious word choice trick that everyone would assume you really meant abilties/rights/superpowers. JoshuaZ 22:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Is that "trustee" as in "prison trustee"? In that case newbies are "fish," regular editors "inmates," bureaucrats are "screws." Angela is a "warden" and Jimbo is "commissioner of corrections. If we adopt those reasonable terms, I'll put my name back up for bcrat tomorrow! -- Cecropia 23:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
    • On Wikpedia:Requests for screwing, no doubt. -Splash^talk 23:55, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Wherever, I'll support. Cecropia, are you going to do it? I'll create the page Splash references tomorrow if you will! KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:59, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
    • lol. I was thinking along the lines of Trustee. But the "commissioner of corrections" for Jimbo isn't that bad :-). However, anybody who likes can call me "fish" for the rest of my wikilife if Cecropia puts his name back up for bcrat in turn. --Ligulem 07:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Flattery will get you everywhere, but I don't see my name proposal being passed anytime soon, so I can't fantasize about polling my fellow screws to figure out which inmates get to be trustees. :D -- Cecropia 16:10, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• sanitation engineer, garbage collector, trash collector, etc. --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• Rubbish remover... --Durin 16:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• Kings and Queens of Blockville. Lord Bob 16:22, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• "Clean" (reader) "virgin user" (anon editor), "casual user" (account holder), "junkie" (admin), "pusher" (bureaucrat).-gadfium 05:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
• Ooh, ooh, progressive ranking! Shit disturber (vandal, etc.), shit smeller (reader), shit stomper (casual editor), shit shoveller (editor), shit cleaner (euphamism for "sanitation engineer", ie, admin), gives a shit (bureaucrat), gives and takes shit (steward), makes the shit (developer), King of Shit (Jimbo).

• Custodian: 1) a person who has responsibility for or looks after something, such as a museum, financial assets, or a culture or tradition 2) a person employed to clean and maintain a building. That's always seemed like the best term to me. It actually describes what's done. We're not actually administrators at all. I think it's better than janitor though, because, while they are both more accurate than administrator, custodian communicates the importance of wikipedia in a way that, I think, "janitor" detracts from. - cohesion^t 07:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Very apt term. See also Custodian. --Ligulem 08:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Like it. bd2412 T 01:16, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Nice, I do too... -Mysekurity ^[m!] 01:21, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Bah. I remember in my grade schools it was the custodian that mopped up the vomit. :P — TheKMan^talk 02:28, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes admins here get to "mop up vomit" ;) - cohesion 20:00, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

• What about "mop" or "broom"? -Mysekurity ^[m!] 01:21, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Specialist admins (Archive 55)

With the massive expansion of Wiki in all directions there is now a need for "specialist" admins. Concentrating on a particular subject area and knowing it in depth is an asset to be encouraged, not something to be criticised. Likewise admins who specialise in e.g. vandalism are greatly needed. Tyrenius 03:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Not particularly relevant, but I get this impression that the way that RfA happens at the moment, is encouraging people to become specialist CDVF operators, because it is a very high-profile way to get name recognition. I think that there is a need to promote core article editing and manual watchlisting some more, because there are a lot of times when people deliberately put in misinformation and it never gets picked up for a few days, or perhaps never, because CDVF only picks up words which are likely nonsense. Also, promoting people with a solid article editing background at RfA is important, because I think that they tend to watch out for more subtle degradation of Wikipedia such as linkspam, POV edits such as hagiography, subtle bias on lower-profile articles.For example [2] at Jessicah Schipper was added and it wasn't until I turned up on Monday to check my watchlist. I'm guessing that I was the only regular monitoring that article?ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! - review me 04:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm quite confident that no new levels of admins will be put in place soon. You could still apply for adminship, have it pass and then work on your concerned area. I don't see the point of this post. NSLE _(T+C) at 04:20 UTC (2006-05-11)

I'm not suggesting a new level. I'm talking about the criteria which are often used at the moment to assess whether someone is suitable for adminship, when they can be e.g. criticised because they have concentrated on a particular area of subject matter, or because they have spent a lot of time vandal fighting and not much on articles. I am suggesting this should be seen as something positive, not something negative.Tyrenius 04:28, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. There have been edits I’ve been stumped over RCPatrolling. I could not tell if it was vandal nonsense or perfect article creation. The articles are sometimes opaque to anyone unfamiliar with the subject area. I realized that looking at Sukh’s RfA. He spoke very clearly of the need to be able to protect areas he understands well enough that vandalism is obvious.

As to levels, I think it is something we could think about. A sort of limited, clearly delineated level of admins below the current level, say assistant admins could be useful. See my comments at assistant admins w/ limited power above. Wikipedia has an astonishingly large number of editors but comparatively few admins.

The policies and procedures are very daunting to try to understand. It would be easier to master them one section at a time, gain authority commensurate with ability, and grow into the job a little at a time. Wikipedia has grown beyond the size where even admins know one another. With the exception of Bastique , I voted on people in the latest round that I’d never heard of before.

This may be why we are not promoting people that are probably qualified and ready-- we have insufficient information and are going with best guess based on edit count and (perhaps bizarre) minutiae. I’m thinking of the proposed Amgine compromise. Had the idea been fleshed out and presented ahead of time and with the knowledge that he would be too limited to wheel war, it would have eliminated that objection. If we say from the start that user xyz will be given just enough power to be useful but not enough to damage the project, we could see a needed increase in admins with minimal risk. (Good night, Y'all, past my bed time.) :) Dlohcierekim 04:46, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

While I think I understand where Tyrenius is coming from, I'm not sure I agree with him. Sure, a generalist who focused on AFD, RC patrol and AFD is likely to have a better chance at having a successful RFA than a person who has created a couple FAs but has only edited a single subject area, it's still important that a prospective admin knows what Wikipedia is about and how it works. If that means waiting 6 months instead of 3, so be it. The average person can get through most tasks without being an admin - the important exception being page moves that require deletion. And for that you need only ask someone who is an admin. If you decide you would like to be an admin, a little RFA involvement and some *FD votes and a few comments at the Village pump or AN(I) can easily compensate for lack of earlier participation. It's a relatively small price to pay. It's better than the alternative, which is giving people admin powers who don't know policy. Guettarda 04:59, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

We already pretty much operate on a specialist admin model. While there are a few admins around who have done pretty much everything most settle down into one area.Geni 05:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I will be more specific. I suggest the following are suitable credentials for being an admin:

1) Editor has specialised in a certain subject area, and has shown a good quality of edits, the ability in any disputes or talk to be reasonable and courteous, and has reverted vandalism, then left the appropriate test tags on the vandal's talk page. The editor states his main intention with adminship is to deal with vandals and edit-orientated matters, such as page moves involving deletion/redirects (in his "specialist" area). The lack of contribution to Afd, Rfa, AN etc etc should not count against him, because these are not skills he needs.

2) The editor has done very little article editing, but has demonstrated a dedication to a particular area, e.g. vandal fighting. The editor says his intention as an admin is to continue vandal fighting. The lack of article editing should not count against him. If the editor has been dedicated to any other specific area, e.g. AfD, and states that as an admin that is the area he wishes to work in, then lack of participation in other areas should not count against him.

This is what I mean by specialisation being a good thing in the selection of admins.

An admin who wishes to do vandal-fighting in the subject area in which he is proficient does not need to have participated in RfA etc, and it is counter-productive to encourage him to do so, as it uses up the time he would otherwise be spending in creating good quality articles. I understand that someone who does specialise in a certain subject area would wish to have admin powers, so they can further their ability to look after that area. I can't see the point of encouraging them or expecting them to learn about other areas which they will not need to make use of.

Taking part in RfA, AfD, Village Pump and AN does not necessarily mean people understand policy. There are other ways that should be acceptable to demonstrate an editor's understanding of policy, one of them being good edits. That also shows the editor's ability to master policy and put it into practice, an ability they will then be able use for the practice of adminship also.

Tyrenius 06:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm concerned about the prevailing belief by some that adminship is necessary for vandal patrol. Rollbacks are great, and the ability to block can be useful, but neither are essential and carry a risk of abuse in the hands of an unskilled user. It seems that there's a mountain of RfA's with the primary purpose of "I want to fight vandalism." A noble goal, of course, but adminship is much more than dropping a {{test5}} onto anon's pages.

As far as participation in Wikipedia space not necessarily being an indicator of experience, that's true, but I tend to have more trust in well-rounded admins than one who may be focused solely on one task. Wikipedia is more than blocks. And deletions. And RfC's. And so on. Tijuana Brass^¡Épa!-E@ 06:47, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaphs but we need admins who are prepared to go through the various deletion quews day in day out.Geni 06:59, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think specialist admins are a good idea. I think administrators should know how to do everything admin related, such as closing XfDs, reverting vandalism, blocking etc, or should at least know where to look it up. While I clearly specialise in fighting vandalism myself, I have responded to 3RR requests, requests for page protection, closed AfDs etc. If admins want to go into a specialist area, then fine... --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of the Sith} 07:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

How much do you know about copyright?Geni 08:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd say I know enough. Either way, I know where to look it up! WP:COPY. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of the Sith} 08:06, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Bad image list?Geni 10:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Is this your curiosity or are you trying to get me to trip up? --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of the Sith} 14:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to this line of reasoning, since I used it myself (I stated repeatedly that I'm not primarily interested in vandal fighting). But the flip side of it is that there's only the one switch. The community has to flip that one switch and then hope the admin doesn't go back on what they said in their nom about what they want to do. And (read the current DRVU kerfluffle for an example of, at least in my view, an admin going back on campaign promises) that's not an easy thing to ensure. Absent subdividing the switch into many pieces (which I oppose for reasons well documented by others elsewhere, it's instruction creep), and absent a way to take adminship away more easily when transgressed, the community has to pass judgement on the total package, as Lord Deskana and others say. My area of interest is not vandal fighting but it was fair to test me on aspects of it, and so on. Full marks for the idea though. ++Lar: t/c 10:55, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I feel that the arguments against my point actually support it. To wit, what is needed are sensible, level-headed individuals, who don't necessarily know how to do everything, but know how to find out how to do something if necessary, and have the discrimination and self-awareness not to overstep the mark, but to use their powers judiciously. All of these qualities are needed for e.g. good article editing, as an editor will have had to acquaint themselves with the various policies such as NOR, V, NPOV etc, not to mention Footnotes. Anyone who can research, understand and put into practice all of this (and avoid 3RR, NPA etc as well—all dangers of editing) has demonstrated the ability and maturity necessary for adminship.

I am not suggesting that admins are then expected to do only what they have stated in the RfA, but that this is their initial interest, which may well get expanded as they learn more. I think it is a mistake to see a simple switch from ordinary editor to admin. I realise that this gives the powers of an admin at a simple switch, but obviously adminship is a learning curve, just as editing is, and any admin who doesn't see themselves initially as a "newbie" admin who needs to proceed with caution step by step, does not possess the right attitude to be an admin.

The right qualities can be gauged just as accurately, if not more so, by an in-depth examination of article edit contributions and conduct as they can by edit counts and wiki namespace contributions etc. I have severe reservations about expecting potential admins to take part in a variety of activities, e.g. AfD, in order to prove they are "well rounded", as it can easily encourage "clocking up" the edit counts in the right spaces, but this does not necessarily equate with quality. It is quite obvious that some of these contributions are in fact being made fairly mindlessly in a "follow my leader" way, simply in order to tick the right boxes, although the editor may not have even bothered to check out the article. It is much easier to get away with one-liners, when someone else has already set the precedent, than it is with more substantial article edits.

The big flaw in the system is that there isn't the ease of dealing with admin transgressions that exists with ordinary editors' transgressions. That is something that needs attending to.

Tyrenius 03:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Re. the comment I'm concerned about the prevailing belief by some that adminship is necessary for vandal patrol. Rollbacks are great, and the ability to block can be useful, but neither are essential and carry a risk of abuse in the hands of an unskilled user. They are not essential, but for an editor who has a conscientious involvement with a particular subject area, they are the natural next step, when wishing to contribute to Wiki. Manual reverts become frustrating when they have to be done day after day to the same article (see Vincent van Gogh for example. Furthermore, for an editor who is spending time on good article contributions, the process of contacting admins and waiting for a response etc, eats up valuable time and energy, which could be used better if the editor was able to police the articles in person.

The second point is about the "unskilled user" and I certainly don't suggest giving powers to such a person. My point is that a proficient editor has already demonstrated that they are capable of skilled application of Wiki requirements. If abuse has not occurred in the editing process, there is no reason to suppose the person is going to change character and suddenly start becoming abusive in an admin role. Of course, there are no guarantees and people can change, but this is a general possibility, and applies just as much to the current criteria for admin suitability. Tyrenius 18:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

That idea can also apply to Requests for rollback privileges, which is simlar to what you have suggested. The only question I have about this is that admins already specialize in particular areas, but it is useful (if not preferable) to have them at least be somewhat familiar with other areas of policy outside their area, in case they decide to go do something else. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 19:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Admins should be people who have demonstrated themselves as capable individuals, and who therefore, if they decide to expand their area of operations (which they will most likely do), are people who will do this sensibly and have the requisite mental and psychological resources. Mere familiarity through voting in Afd, RfA or whatever is not a demonstration of these qualities, and is a superficial qualification. Anybody carrying out a new job has to learn about it. What is needed are admins who have demonstrated they are capable of learning and can recognise their abilities and limitations at any stage of this learning process.Tyrenius 23:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Apprentice and journeyman admins (Archive 57)

An idea came to me the other day for an alternative to the present adminship process. While many people are happy with the way things are, the criticisms of the present process are:

• It is a source of ill will and is generally unpleasant for many candidates
• Some candidates are ultimately promoted even though we know little about them, because they have edited extensively and maintained a low profile
• The process is increasingly politicized, with the result that admins are people who are good at behaving politically rather than being good at building consensus
• Good candidates are being turned away if they have been involved in controversey, in some cases even though they were widely believed to have been doing the right thing
• Many RFA voters find that they are voting on candidates they do not know
• There is an overreliance on edit counts due to a lack of other metrics
• Vandalfighters frequently become admins even though vandal fighting has little to do with most admin-specific activities

I remind those who were not here for the genesis of RFA that many of what are now hard-and-fast rules of RFA (that RFAs close in one week, that 75-80% is the promotion threshold) were arrived at originally with relatively little thought.

I propose an alternative process:

1. People interested in adminship must find a sponsor who is already an admin. Each admin may sponsor up to four candidates at a time, including journeyman candidates (see below). It would be expected that an editor would be involved in Wikipedia for at least 2-3 months before seeking out a sponsor.
2. The sponsor and the candidate ("apprentice") work together for a period of at least 1 month during which the sponsor helps the candidate learn the "way we do things." Sponsors may retract their sponsorship at any time if they feel the relationship is not working and this may well become common. In like fashion, candidates may retract their apprenticeship if they believe things are moving too slowly.
3. When the candidate and the sponsor both believe that the candidate is ready for adminship, the sponsor proposes adminship for the candidate. A vote much like the current RFA process ensues, with due weight being given to the judgement of the sponsor and his/her past history of successful or failed sponsorships as well as the merits of the individual candidate. (It is expected that a "reject" outcome would be rare)
4. The sponsor and candidate continue to work together for a "journeyman" period of 60 days, during which the sponsor can retract adminship if he/she believes that the candidate is misusing it (expected to be very rare and could be handled on m:Requests for permissions).
5. At the end of the "journeyman" period the new admin may continue without formal supervision and may sponsor other candidates if they choose.

This serves several goals. First of all, it makes the process less divisive since the candidates are mainly working with one admin who is expected to know them well and work with them to be sure they have the necessary judgement, and impart the necessary knowledge. Second of all, since sponsors are accountable to the community for candidates they present for adminship, there is a focal point - someone trustworthy who has been given the task of understanding the candidate, their abilities, and their motives. Third, it provides a more well-defined process for candidates. Candidates know what to expect, and can choose sponsors who are reasonable and will work with them to get through everything. Finally, it provides a means for newly minted admins to have a reasonable level of supervision until they've been using the tools for a while.

If this is something we want to do, I would suggest a transitional period of two months during which candidates may either follow the traditional RFA process or seek out sponsorship.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm...I'd be open to a process like this one and I'd be willing to see what a trial run of such a process looked like . — Ilyanep (Talk) 21:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

As a non-admin who might at some point become an administrator, I was hoping that there might be some sort of mentoring system in place. This sounds like a great idea to help new administrators become proficient at mopping. Kukini 22:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds interesting. Reminds me of the Old Jedi Order. This seems a bit like the "Admin Coaching" I see WP:ESP is already doing. I'd be interested in mentoring a few admin candidates if this process were to see a trial period. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of the Sith} 22:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

It will be interesting to see what y'all decide. Kukini 23:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Jedi Order perhaps you compare with, but speak like yoda you must avoid. Kim Bruning 21:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Prodego ^talk 00:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a major problem with trying something new, but that amounts to a ton more work, especially in the candidate stage watching over the user and teaching them the ropes. I know for one I would certainly not have the time that it would take to do that. But you may be on to something with the journeyman(woman) stage where it is considered easier and less a big deal to revoke the adminship if it's not going well. Though the problems you note are there to some degree, I don't believe RfA suffers from a very great false positive problem, and what false negative problem there is could be fixed by less editcountitis and less reticence to de-admin when needed. A change such as your proposal would amount to voluminous amounts of time to change a process that's basically working fairly well. I wouldn't oppose it as an additional option for those willing and or desiring to do it instead though. Promoting admins requires reading community consensus for the candidate, it doesn't require doing it exactly through the current method. - Taxman ^Talk 03:02, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The idea that rejection would be rare under the proposed process is not valid (other than the fact that the clueless newbie candidates will be gone). Because a candidate who is a bad choice for adminship will still have some supporters and friends, one of those supporters will do the process with the candidate, and when the time comes, the candidate will fail, and the coach will be upset that the community did not appreciate his coaching efforts and abilities. Ultimately, it still comes down to whether we trust the candidate, no matter how much coaching, training, or probation they go through. Every single one of the recent controversial candidacies (that were rejected for anything other than not enough experience) would have had just as much resistance under an apprenticeship type process as they did under the current process. Training is a good thing, to be encouraged, but we won't be able to use the fact that one has been trained to get around the fundamental issues that make candidates fail. NoSeptember ^talk 06:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, those fundamental issues still haven't been explicitly elucidated, (or perhaps I may have missed them). Would you care to give it a shot, maybe on a new page, and link here? It might be insightful. Kim Bruning 11:26, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd love to help out with this process. To an extent it already exists, (the infamous "irc cabal" sometimes sort-of mentors people already. :-) )

Maybe we'd like to have only specific people be mentors to start with, to catch some of the problems seen by NoSeptember.

I'm thinking this might help a LOT with the actual Big Problem behind the scenes, namely: lack of acculturation. Kim Bruning 11:26, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Kim's point is a valid one. The lack of acculturation, as Kim puts it, is a major factor in several particularly vexing distractions we now face that are unrelated to adminship.

To Taxman's point, I agree that we would have to make very sure that there are enough people willing to act as sponsors. There are some people who very much enjoy that sort of thing, and like many Wiki-related tasks, people will choose to participate in areas they find compelling to them. Given the growth rate of the admin group I don't think the process would be unworkable, but we would certainly want to be sure there are enough sponsors willing to participate before making such a change. I would think that we would want to compile a list beforehand, in fact.

To NoSeptember's point, I think that the reasons most people are turned down fit into one of four categories: (1) inexperience, (2) misunderstanding or confusion on the part of the community, (3) candidates who don't respect the way we do things, or (4) candidates with irredeemably poor judgement. I think that my proposal addresses 1, 2, and 3; particularly, it helps acculturate users so that they don't make the stupid mistakes that can result in adminship being denied, and it provides a sponsor to be sure that experience requirements are met and that the community understands the candidate. While there are those candidates who simply have irredeemably poor judgement who we would never want as admins, I anticipate that they would have trouble finding sponsors; any who made it all the way to the community approval stage would then be an embarassment to the sponsor making the process self-correcting.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I've already found some people willing to be sponsors. We can start any time :-) Kim Bruning 15:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of sponsors not being friends of the candidates (i.e. we should assign coaches randomly). If you can convince a thrid party that you are ready for adminship, that would be much more credible than a known supporter saying you are ready. NoSeptember ^talk 16:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The couple of experiences I've had with random assignment weren't too encouraging. It's better to have folks decide amongst themselves. This is not a big problem though, we can sort that out. :-) Kim Bruning 21:58, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the four reasons people are turned down mentioned above are basically correct. We would reduce the number of rejections if we prevented people making stupid mistakes, but is our goal to reduce the number of rejections? Being rejected for stupid mistakes, learning, and then passing on the next attempt, is also an ok path to adminship. Is the fact that the candidate has to fail once first - all that bad for us as a community? Apprenticeship is fine, but it should not be mandatory. There is an Admin Coaching program here, which is really just a program to bring coaches and candidates together without a bunch of rules. NoSeptember ^talk 16:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

My reply is below. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 02:35, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

What would the candidate and sponsor actually do during that month? How do you prepare someone for adminship when they can't actually do the admin tasks because they aren't an admin? What kind of mentoring would candidates get? How is a sponsor meant to spot a bad admin any easier than just going through the last months contribs before voting on an RfA? --Tango 16:40, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Funny how different people have similar thoughts at about the same time. My thought was that an informal approach to mentoring might already be occurring either via "IRC Cabal" or otherwise. It might be that experienced admins might be willing to offer and that a particularly bold pre-candidate might ask a respected admin for advice or at least an honest appraisal.

A sponosor good help with the critical thinking part of the job and helping the candidate understand policy. They could serve as a resource for questions about, "what would I do about this? They could also ask the sponsor to explain the reasoning behind decisions that require elucidation. :) Dlohcierekim 18:56, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The biggest job a sponsor would have would be to get the candidate to learn our culture, and grasp the unwritten rules underlying the wiki. It's quite surprising to see the difference in efficacy between a normal but acculturated user, and a non-acculturated admin. Note that most tasks currently done by admins do NOT necessarily require an admin bit. Kim Bruning 22:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

How do you teach someone culture? I would think the only way to learn that is to get involved. A particular person to go to to ask specific questions might be good, but I'm not sure I can see the point of having that for a forced month. If people don't have any questions, the sponsor is useless. --Tango 22:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

You teach people a particular culture by working together with them and showing them how you do things and/or explaining how things can be done better/more efficiently. Hmm, is the Apprenticeship article of any use? Kim Bruning 12:29, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Could you be more specific? How do you "work together" with someone on wikipedia? What do you actually intend these mentors to do? Not what you hope to achieve, what they'll actually do. What kind of things would they be explaining that can't be learned just by watching what other people do? --Tango 13:36, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

We'd like to formalise the "watching what other people do" part a little, to be sure the candidate has actually seen everything seeable, and hasn't missed anything. We're also introducing a whole "watch and then try for yourself" part, with an expert standing by to fix any problems if you happen to make mistakes. Basically, um, in short, well, apprenticeship. It's a kind of learning system known since the middle ages. There's probably centuries (in the literal sense) worth of articles and studies on apprenticeship explaining *how* and *why* it works. We'll just be stealing the concept and using it in a simplified form. :-) Kim Bruning 14:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Apprenticeships are useful because the things being learnt aren't done in the open - you need a special arrangement in order to watch someone making a table. You don't need any such arrangement to watch an admin closing an AfD (or whatever) - there are even archives so it isn't time dependant either. As for "having a go" that's what the concept of WP:BOLD is all about - we should (and usually do) encorage everyone to just have a go and someone else will come along and fix it if you go wrong. That happens already - we don't need a formal system for it. --Tango 16:17, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, in an ideal world, everything admins do would be out in the open.

To my immense chagrin, there are actually people out there who are constantly pushing to close, obfuscate, and hide large parts of the admin processes. This includes at least the Counter Vandalism Unit, and certain foundation employees.

There's also some unavoidable ad-hoc interaction, which you won't be able to track on wiki.

But even on-wiki, it is often difficult to reconstruct a particular incident. See how long it takes the arbitration committee to come to a finding of fact. If you only have a partial view, you can quickly draw incorrect conclusions, and get a very biased picture.

For all these reasons, it's actually quite handy to have an expert along, and to watch what's happening.

One of the key skills to learn is in fact where to look in the first place, to be able to map out the entire set of relevant interactions for a given situation. If nothing else, that's a useful skill to learn, which several of our current admins might in fact not posses :-) Kim Bruning 10:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Any attempt to get rid of self noms must be opposed. It would be one of the first steps to setting up a real cabal.Geni 19:09, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I recently asked some consultants to look in on wikipedia culture. They basically concluded that it was mostly clans with a little hierarchy thrown in for good measure. So self noms are basically not doing what you'd hope they do, all you're getting is multiple fractured cabals fighting each other, which isn't really useful either. I'd like to get some more ad-hocracy into the mixture, which at least *is* possible to introduce with a sponsorship system, I think. Kim Bruning 22:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing that their comments are (unfortunately) to remain private? If, by some chance, you could make them public, I think they'd probably make for fascinating reading. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 22:31, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me, I was meaning to ask 'em. Though hmmm, I need to find a good moment... Kim Bruning 22:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

At least self-noms allow new clans to form - without them there is a risk that you'd be stuck with just the clans that currently exist, they'd fight it out and eventually one would reign supreme and become a cabal. A rather melodramatic prediction, certainly - call it playing devil's advocate. --Tango 22:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh geeze, TINC already! :-P What "cabals" there are are pretty informal. There's no secret handshakes, or initiation rites, or anything like that. I don't like the concept of clans and cabals anyway. I'd prefer if everyone to work together with everyone. I'd also like for people to be allowed to be more creative. I think we can achieve that more easily with a sponsorship system. A self nom could just as easily be a person approaching a sponsor-type-person themselves. Kim Bruning 22:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Self noms along with outher community driven processes tend to be a an imporant element in makeing sure TINC. You can't form one because you can't be certain who is going to be promoted next week and begin to make your life difficult.Geni 00:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Fine. So keep self noms. Kim Bruning 10:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the four reasons people are turned down mentioned above are basically correct. We would reduce the number of rejections if we prevented people making stupid mistakes, but is our goal to reduce the number of rejections? Being rejected for stupid mistakes, learning, and then passing on the next attempt, is also an ok path to adminship. Is the fact that the candidate has to fail once first - all that bad for us as a community? Apprenticeship is fine, but it should not be mandatory. There is an Admin Coaching program here, which is really just a program to bring coaches and candidates together without a bunch of rules. NoSeptember ^talk 16:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

NoSeptember raised several interesting points above, which I'd like to discuss. First of all, NoSeptember asks whether it is a goal to reduce the number of rejections, citing what I would call a try it--fix it--try it sort of approach to adminship. The point that I would make is that while such a path is indeed valid, it is tough on candidates, because a failed RFA is frustrating and leads to wikistress for the candidate, the candidate's supporters, and all too often bystanders caught in the line of fire. In my view, a failing RFA is a rather blunt tool for helping candidates to improve.

Noseptember also points out the Esparanza admin coaching program and suggests it as a voluntary alternative to the proposal I make. While it is true that Esparanza's program offers mentoring in a less formal atmosphere, I believe that there are three key limitaitons to the Esparanza program. First of all, it is under the auspices of Esparanza rather than being a truly project-wide initiative. While this is not the place to discuss Esparanza's strengths and shortcomings, suffice it to say that Esparanza is not universally revered. Secondly, I believe that the informal nature of that program is a weakness. A key element of my proposal is a sort of sense of accountability of sponsors for candidates that they present. An informal process doesn't do that. Finally, as things stand, candidates are free to ignore the admin coaching program, and many if not most do exactly that. We don't even ask about mentorship or coaching in the standard RFA questions.

Others have raised concerns about the possible rise of clans or cabal(s) as a result of such a structure, particularly if self-noms are discouraged. I'm not concerned about this but there is the possibility that an overly insular culture could develop over the course of years and the project could get stuck in some sort of rut. I think that's a real risk albeit one that will take five to ten years to become a factor. As Wikipedia policy becomes less fluid, that sort of timeframe is more important than it was. But as things stand today, I believe that losing the valuable institutional memory and wiki culture is a far greater and more present risk. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 02:35, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

• Wiki culture has and will evolve over time. Its evolution should not be considered a risk. Rather, the people who fear that evolution need to adapt to the reality; this project has and will evolve. For a number of reasons, I will oppose any RfA reform effort that makes self nomination impossible. Over the last 11 months, there have been 95 successful self-nominations. That's 1 of every 5 successul nominations. By forcing such people to be non-self nominations, you are further increasing the politicization of the process as candidates will now have to in essence campaign for someone to nominate them, rather than simply nominate themselves. --Durin 17:59, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Meh, you can keep your selfnoms. We can run both systems in parallel.

Would you care for a small wager on which system will be the most successful?  :-)

Kim Bruning 18:20, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I reluctantly agree with Durin. I was a self-nom, and I clearly remember that I wasn't chummy with any admins in particular at the time of my nomination. That isn't to say the apprenticeship idea is a bad one - it sounds like it's worth a try - but we have to account for the fact that some people just edit in areas of the encyclopaedia where you don't run into admins very often. Perhaps they might observe your work, but you wouldn't be aware of it unless they talked to you. Even today, if not for IRC and the mailing list (which I now avoid as much as possible due to a lack of time), I would probably know very few admins personally. The apprenticeship system being put forward relies a bit too much on personal relationships which, while not a bad thing, should not be a minimum bar for RfA. For instance, we have an active Malaysian/Singaporean subcommunity on Wikipedia, but only about three of us are admins, and two of these are from Singapore. Any Malaysian editor wanting to apply for adminship would probably know very few admins, if - as most Malaysian editors do - he keeps to Malaysia-related topics. However, because I don't have much time to devote to editing/mentoring and I don't devote all my energies to Malaysian articles, I would - at best - know these people only superficially, so I would have difficulty sponsoring any particular candidates. (And in case anyone is wondering if we need admins who spend most of their time on one topic, rollback is a pretty handy tool - and in really heated arguments, page protection as well.) I'd like to see this apprenticeship system work, but as usual, the main barrier it must surmount is getting people involved. Johnleemk | Talk 18:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't an apprenticeship system give you the opportinity to quickly get together some more .my admins? You could seek out people who you think would be able to learn. :-) And I know folks who can help so you wouldn't have to do it on your own. Kim Bruning 18:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd be very much opposed to this as a requirement and I wonder if it weren't a requirement whether it would really fly. To begin with, I'm emphatically opposed to the idea that there's anything wrong with self-noms. If you're confident you're ready, good for you—let your record and behaviour speak for itself. Secondly, I'm not an admin after 15 months and lots of edits and I think I'm acculturated rather well. If I ever nom myself, I'll go over the reading list, re-check the policies top-to-bottom, and then just do it. There are probably more non-admins in the 5000 to 10000 range than people think; the sponsor would be an unneeded formality in many such cases. Marskell 18:43, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not a requirement. Kim Bruning 10:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

• In reply to Uninvited's comment: as I run the Admin Coaching program at Esperanza, I've ran into several hurdles that can make a Wikipedia-wide project collapse. One of the problems I've seen is that a few coachees are "overenthusiastic" and actually irritate their coaches because they want to have a perfect RfA, to the point where several of them complained to me as the coordinator. While coaches should be accountable for their coachees, the tendency brought up above effectively causes coach burnout. However, the most pressing issue I've found is that admins are not always willing to help other users. Even in a smaller project like Esperanza, we are running a significant backlog, as I don't want to overload coaches, nor to pile on users to the few active coaches, thereby forcing David Gerard's Law to be true. If a project-wide process for this is done, I would really like to know where all the mentors would come from, or otherwise force applicants to provide their own. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 18:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

  Apparently I'm still on the coaching program (I did join), but I only ever got assigned one person, who consequently never did anything and for all I know has left. What's with that? Kim Bruning 10:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

• The pool of sponsors is any current admin. Of course, this has two immediately apparent problems; one, an additional expectation for admins that they be able to handle sponsoring people effectively. Think; "Oppose - This editor would make a very poor sponsor of potential admins" could be a reality. Second, and considerably more significant, we create a group (admins) where the only people that can get in are people approved of by one or more of those that are already in. If you're going to do that, you might as well just restrict RfA to admins only. --Durin 19:08, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Meh, no, I'd like the sponsor pool to be a bit smaller than that. Some non-admins can be sponsors too. <very very innocent look>

I think adminship via sponsorship might actually work faster than via self-nom. But whatever, if you think self nom works better, it's not going away anytime soon. :-) Kim Bruning 10:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Provisional admins?

(new subsection as it's related, but different)

I think having sponsers/apprentices is a little on the complex side, due to the many reasons outlined above. However, I also think the current Rfa system could do with improvement as at the moment, it is a leap of faith. All we have to go on are the persons history as an editor, but the skills required to be a good editor and good admin are quite different, in my view. Also, a person could be seen as very good at compromising with other editors, but we have no idea if this will carry over to admin space. Will they become a Roosevelt admin, "Speak softly and carry a big mop", or a rogue admin "I don't have to speak softly anymore because I have a big mop"? We just don't know. Maybe we should have Rfa's as now, and once successful, they become an admin, but have "provisional" status for the first X months, at which time there are reconfirmed (simplier process, with a lower threashold, so it's not a second Rfa, as even good admins tend to receive flak.) Any comments? MartinRe 14:33, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

• You put your finger on the core question here--will an editor-come-admin change once they have the adminship? Or, to put it another way, how can we tell whether someone's hiding their "true" character in order to gain promotion? The problem is that instituting more stages, whether through apprenticeship or a probationary period, does not really solve that problem. An apprentice can keep on his best behaviour until the apprenticeship is over; so too can an admin-on-probation. One way to keep people on their best behaviours is to have a sunset clause for all admins: their admin status lapses after a year and must be renewed. But this raises another question. There are sometimes when, frankly, it's better that an admin is willing to step on peoples toes: to go into an edit war and be quite firm with one or both sides--to be willing to lose a bit of popularity. The current process has its flaws, but I'm not sure that any other will be able keep bad people from being, well, bad. Bucketsofg✐ 15:41, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

• Good idea, although I'd still have the threshold at a decent level for the 'confirmation' - say 65% or so instead of the 80% for an RFA - since any admin who annoys over one third of the people he comes into contact with is doing something wrong. Cynical 16:24, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Another way to take pressure off of RFA?

I think that as long as becoming an admin is a priority for a lot of editors (which it is...a big deal) any probationary adminship or mentoring system will just cause editors to smile, nod and supply answers they know are acceptable/expected. Moreover, groups like CJ and Esperanza will advocate for their members without being as critical as an outsider might be. I think the only real solution is to raise standards (which won't happen) or put into place some easier way of policing admins. We need to have a way to temp de-admin people that have transgressed on their admin tools. The prospect of a day/week/month as a non-admin will keep people closer to the pack I think. That takes the pressure off of RFA and makes the process not quite so final. Rx StrangeLove 16:52, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

What kinds of transgressions would warrant a short de-admining? If the mistake is in good faith, a warning should suffice, if it's not, they need to be de-admined until there is a reason to trust them again. I don't see the point of short breaks. --Tango 17:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Wheel warring for example. As it stands, once you're an admin it's pretty hard (and time consuming) to reverse. So unless you go way overboard or get noticed by the wrong person you're an admin for life. We need real consequences for admins that are acting out. I'm not talking about good faith mistakes, it's the bad faith ones that need attention. What normally happens when an admin gets blocked is that half the time someone else unblocks right away, or the block is a short one that doesn't have any impact. I think it's be much more effective to force the admin to participate in Wikipedia as a normal user for a while to bring home the consequence of his or her actions. Now, if permanent de-admiing becomes easier then this wouldn't be necessary. The point I'm trying to make is that there are nothing really stopping an admin from acting out right now...and as I was saying above probationary adminship or mentoring won't be effective. Rx StrangeLove 15:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Surely wheel warring requires permanent de-adminship. I thought this could be done through ArbCom. I've never really been involved in ArbCom and have only read a few archived discussions - is it too hard to get admins demopped that way? --Tango 16:01, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, it depends on the issue I think. A couple months ago we had several de-sysoppings happen nearly instantaneously over the pedo-userbox thing. But generally it takes a full ArbCom action which I think many people agree is unwieldy and too time consuming. It doesn't stop at wheel warring though, there's things like ongoing and inappropriate blocking, ongoing disruption and/or deletion abuse that would warrant a block of this kind. I think we need to be able to warn admins in some manner that falls sort of a long drawn out ArbCom action. The problem with using normal blocks to so this is that even if they do stick, they cut off all editing permissions. It might be more useful to show the target of the admin block what life is like without the admin bit for awhile. Just to repeat myself a little, we should have some way to give admins a timeout short of a full blown ArbCom finding. Rx StrangeLove 17:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC) Rx StrangeLove 17:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

"A mop and a bucket" (Archive 69)

In going over the backlogs of failed and successful RfAs, I'm really starting to come to the following conclusion: FEAR.

I agree with thet trust issue, and so on. I agree that it "should" just be about receiving a mop and a bucket.

But instead it's about the perception that being an admin is equivalent to being a member of "management". (With all that goes with it: power, prestige, control, etc.)

However, from what I've read on actual explanation pages (policies/guidelines/essays/etc), that's not what being an admin is about (as noted above).

I've been through more than my share of management classes/conventions/what-have-you.

And one of the over-riding questions/discussions is about how do you as a manger get your employees to listen to you. Note the word "get". In a business situation, you need to manage your people effectively, and in the end, if you "need" to (if force of personality, whether positive or negative, doesn't work) there is always the implied threat from the "hire/fire priviledge". Or even the direct threat, (though rarely necessary).

So how do we deal with the perception that being an admin makes one a "manager"?

Hire/fire priviledge. In our case, that's the block/unblock ability (user right).

I once proposed a lessening of this ability (on a page that was at the end of it's historical life, apparently...). But the more I see the fear to trust someone who claims to want to help in some way with "the backlog", because of unsurety of how they will use the "other" abilities (typically implying blocking), the more I think that maybe the ability to block/unblock should be an additional right to be requested (to be given by bureaucrat level or higher), rather than just "part of the package deal".

I think that this would deal with nearly all the complaints/concerns on this page.

If for some reason someone believes that things such as intimidation, or block reversion warring doesn't go on, I'll reluctantly give them diffs, but at this point, I would rather not, if possible, for obvious reasons.

Implementation:
1.) Remove the ability to block/unblock from all admins not of at least bureaucrat level (checkusers should probably keep it too, for related reasons).

This means that all current admins retain "the mop". (No "review" would be necessary - Arbcom can effectively deal with removal of blocking priviledges, and the admin would still have "the mop" to continue to help with that ever-present "backlog").

This doesn't create a "middle" sysop between admin and bureaucrat, just a "right" that may be added, similar to checkuser or boardvote.

Gaining the ability could be implemented through an RfB page, or through bureaucrat/steward concensus, or both.

While I've seen a few suggestions that come close to this, I haven't actually seen this. Any comments/thoughts would be welcome. - jc37 02:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

You've apparantly forgotten about vandals, the primary target of blocks and bans of all sorts. If you restricted the block ability to a tiny minority of a tiny minority, how would we keep up with the WP:AIV board? --tjstrf 02:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect and meaning no ill intentions, I believe that removing blocking power from administrators is an absolutely horrid idea. Administrators have to deal not only with disuptive editors where blocks may be problematic if handled incorrectly, but also dedicated vandals that require a quick block. If only bueraucrats had blocking power or gave blocking power to a select few, it would simply take too long to protect the encyclopedia in the case of vandalbot/AOL attacks and create an unnecessary division between administrators, sort of like creating a "senior" admin group. Blocking, along with protection and deletion are necessary tools that are needed by administrators every hour, maybe even every minute. If someone cannot be trusted with one part of the admin tools, they shouldn't ge them in the first place, and if they misuse them, arbcom shouldn't hesitate to act as they see fit. Naconkantari 02:54, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Naconkantari, but I believe the poster above is trying to make another point - RfA is indeed continuing to become ridiculous. On the other hand (and on a somewhat unrelated tangent) I don't like calling it just a "mop and a bucket", because the LAST thing we want to do is make admins look BAD or MEDIOCRE, because that ruins so much potential for role modeling and so on. We WANT users to learn from the actions of admins; we WANT new users to look up to experienced, community-approved users.

In other words: it's about balancing "object due to a mispelling in an edit summaru" ridiculousness with "Oh, here's the mop". :-) — Deckiller 03:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Forgotten? Not at all. I don't think that this would be a "tiny minority of a tiny minority". What I do think is that it provides an extra "check" (an extra "nudge", if you will) on admins, and would provide a way to see us gain many more admins, since I think the process would be less bogged down. I am only guessing, but I would guess that most of the blocking is done by less than 100 admins out of the 1000. I'm not suggesting that it need only be a "select few". But I do think that we don't need 1000 blocking admins, but we could definitely use all 1000 admins working on the other areas of wikipedia. This would "jump start" that process.

I see many benefits, with no liabilities. - jc37 03:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

One must remember that there are only 24 bureaucrats and 21 stewards, amounting to 45 editors, who cannot possibly stem the horde of vandals that Wikipedia faces everyday, let alone have time to block established users when warranted by ArbCom, Jimbo Wales, etc. --physicq210 03:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocking is one of the powers given to Admins which I would use least, if ever. Admins should be aiming to resolve disputes - and using force is rarely a good way to do this. Blocking someone so they can cool down is a bit of an oxymoron. A skilled Admin can achieve a better result by communication. And I've reverted a few hundred vandalisms, and with appropriate communication, most of these have not recurred. Stephen B Streater 03:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

While I agree with you (I'm not an admin myself) that admins should use blocking as a last resort, removing the privilege to block will only turn Wikipedia into a graffiti board; see WP:AIV if you want an example of the vandalism troubles this place faces everyday. --physicq210 03:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The question in my mind is whether blocks just treat the symptom, not the cause. A blocked vandal will just return another day. A reformed vandal can join the forces of Good. Stephen B Streater 03:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• "...there are only 24 bureaucrats and 21 stewards, amounting to 45 editors, who cannot possibly stem the horde of vandals that Wikipedia faces everyday..." - I think you totally misunderstood the suggestion. I'm not suggesting limiting the ability to block to those Bct and above. I'm suggesting that the ability to block be separate from the "package deal" of being an admin, and Bct and above can grant it (by what process it is granted should be discussed, whether by a RfBlock page, or by concensus of Bcts, or whatever). I'm suggesting that all current admins lose the ability, and basically we "start over", and have the 45 you mentioned assign the ability to whomever the community/they feel is worthy of those tools. And agreeing wholeheartedly with both SBS's comments : ) - jc37 03:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

What would happen in the time period when only 45 editors have access to blocking? I'd imagine that the vandalism would be most severe. Just because sysops don't use blocking every day doesn't mean that they don't need it. Also, as I said above, this would create an unnecessary class of "senior" admins, much like the giving rollback to regular editors proposal that failed earlier this year. Naconkantari 03:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Naconkantari. Not only does this proposal add an entirely new layer of unneeded bureaucracy, but it is a solution in search of a problem. While there were a few questionable blocks and a few fears of intimidation (I'm not an admin; do I suffer such fear?), to impose a broad-ranging solution on a minute problem is not the way to go. I agree, however, that the RfA process has become a tad too intense. --physicq210 03:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• "What would happen in the time period when only 45 editors have access to blocking?" - I presume that that wouldn't last for long : )
  Another bonus coming from this idea would be that Bcts could give temporary blocking powers as they see fit (to handle certain situations, or for a set length of time), so if there was a sudden outbreak of vandals, The Bcts act, giving out temporary blocking ability as needed for the crisis, which go away after the crisis is resolved. This makes it intuitive, and useful. And again, I don't think we need 1000 admins who block, but I think we could definitely use more than 1000 admins with the "rest of the package".

And as an aside, obviously anyone with checkuser or oversight would have the ability to block/unblock, since it's directly related. (I'm not certain why those with oversight aren't automatically checkusers, btw). - jc37 04:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The bureaucrats simply cannot act fast enough if there is a serious threat to the encyclopedia. It takes at least 5 minutes on IRC to get the attention of a steward and be sysopped on a wiki to stop vandalism, even more if there are none online that have access to the ja.wiki cluster. Naconkantari 04:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I still do not see the rationale behind your proposal. May you please elaborate? Thanks. --physicq210 04:25, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Be happy to, but it may take me a moment : )

While you're waiting, check out this semi-related comment. - jc37 04:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

(responding to the query first)
As I mentioned above, a big part of the issue with approving admins is "trust". As it currently stands, Admins have several abilities (also known as rights or powers).

See also:

• user rights
• m:Help:User rights

What is given in the "package" is merely a matter of programming.

If you remove "block" from that group of rights, you still have an admin who can still perform the necessary tasks of Wikipedia. They can still go through and help with the AfD/TfD/CfD/MfD/etc lists. They can still help with the Image issues, and/or copy vios. They can still use rollback, and protect pages, and help in that way vs vandalism. They can still edit protected pages. They are also available to aid Bureaucrats with whatever, whenever the need arises. And simply any number of additional things.

And we need those things done. "Backlogs" are obviously not helpful.

But at the same time, the community trust in admins has apparently become a bit strained. Perhaps it's all the recent controversies. Perhaps it's that several admins have decided to call themselves "rogue" admins, and that may sound less than trustworthy, however the rogues may define it. Perhaps it's the apparent current belief that policy is made through saying it is, rather than attempting to discuss it (apparently discussion has become as evil as voting, in many instances). Perhaps it's the curtness, the ignoring, and in several cases, the simple lack of civility, or worse, personal attacks that is becoming more prevalent from admins.

Are all 1000+ like this? no, of course not, but it only takes a few active admins to set a "tone".

In looking over Special:Ipblocklist, I note that it's primarily a group of a couple dozen admins who are actually doing the majority of the blocking (and how many of those are autoblocks?)

So, looking at it from one side, only give the ability to block to those who will use it, thus making those who have it more closely acconutable.

And from the other side, give the "other" admin abilities more often, and more freely, because that question of trust is an easier "pill to swallow". (Deleteion and blocking are the two ways in which it can be viewed that something is "taken away". Only one of the two should be in any "package", and deletion is more important for admins than the ability to block.)

And this is obviously not going to be something that suddenly happens one day. I'm sure that if it's implemented, there will be a list of whom will start with the ability to block, before the mass removal of the ability from all admins. A simple, smooth transition.

I could probably write more, but before I do, does this better clarify? - jc37 05:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Just a little note: perhaps you may realize that the "rogue" admin thing is a joke and is only intended for humor? --physicq210 05:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

From my interpretation of your answers, I still cannot see why we should force admins to reapply for the blocking privilege. You mention that only "a couple dozen admins...are actually doing the majority of the blocking." This does not justify revoking the privilege for everyone else. Do we eliminate college education because only a few can get a 2400 on their SATs?

You also mention that admins are often criticized for their "curtness, the ignoring, and in several cases, the simple lack of civility, or worse, personal attacks." If this is true (and having been watching WP:ANI for a while, it is true), then we should look into the transgressors' behavior, not embark on an initiative that doesn't address the problem, which is admins being rude. Do we punish the masses for the transgressions of the few?

While your proposal is well-intentioned, I cannot see how your rationales prove your argument. I stand by my opposition to this proposal. --physicq210 05:40, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I know that that was the original intention. However, it's becoming/become a catchphrase into something more serious, to the point where that page is starting to look like misdirection (which is likely not it's original intention, but how it seems to be currently being used).

I take exception to the euphemism "punish". The across the board removal of block from the "package" does not "punish" anyone. Although it's interesting to note that "taking away" is immediately seen as "punishment", which immediately illustrates my comments about blocking and deletion.

In addition, from what I've been reading, only about a third of admins are active, and only about a 10th of those are directly involved in blocking/vandalism on a consistant basis. Since that 10th is likely to re-receive the ability to block, I don't think that this transition is problematic whatsoever.

In any case, I appreciate your comments (and of course your opinion, whether for or against the idea). - jc37 06:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

---

Blocking blatant vandals is a clear-cut action; it is easier and less problematic than many of the other admin functions. Blocking an established user is going to be reviewed and can be undone. There is no problem with the current level of blocking access, and you seriously underestimate the number of blocks that need to be done. —Centrx→talk • 04:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Additionally, your proposal of Bureacrats granting and revoking blocking privileges at will would turn into a giant confusing mess. We don't need a circus act every time we want to block an AOLer. --tjstrf 04:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, how do you "undo" a 12 hour block? It'll likely expire before anything can be done, and if you pursue it after-the-fact, how does that make you look? A lot of what's going on is that people are playing the "perception" game. Once you are defamed by an admin, it's suddenly in your court to defend yourself, even if you may have done nothing wrong. Now Arbcom may sort out the mess (and I've been reading quite a few cases where they have.) But it's just something that can be so easily avoided. And with so many other "willing" admins, I'm sure that admins might be less frivolent with things like the edit summary when blocking. (Read through the current list, and think of how many of those could be a bit better described. Also, how many sound like a shout of frustration?)

As for Bureaucrats gra/rev piviledges "at will", that was a suggestion of a possibility if necessary. There is a page on meta (I can't find it at the moment) in which editors from sister projects/language projects request for "temporary" abilities in order to perform some task. This is no different. - jc37 05:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, your analogy doesn't make any sense either. Admins aren't managers firing people by blocking them, and even if they were any of the other managers could hire them back, and even if no one hires them back, the employee can just return under a different name and be hired again. Doesn't make any sense. A better analogy with regard to blocking would be soldiers fighting zombies, in which situation you would actually want as many sane people as possible to have a gun. Also, what makes you think someone who can't be trusted to block should be trusted with any of the other admin tools? Either the admin is trustworthy and intelligent, and they get them all, or they're not. —Centrx→talk • 05:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Just because admins aren't managers, doesn't mean that they are not perceived that way. Please read the analogy again.

And the "zombie" reference as an anology to socks/ip vandals, is interesting, but I don't think it's as applicable in this case, else all admins would have checkuser, oversight, etc etc etc. (And for that matter, every user would have admin rights...) It's already a tiered system of rights. This isn't suggesting doing anything "beyond the pale". - jc37 05:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

One suggestion (Archive 72)

One thing that can be done to improve the RfA process, would be to create a sort of apprenticeship period for editors, who seem like they will be good admins, but lack the editing history some of the other editors who participate in RfA would like to see. This should not be applied to editors with less than 3 months experience or 1,000 edits. Nor will it be applied to candidates that will breeze through the regular RfA process. Users who are apprentice admins would not have all the tools of an admin, but can assist in some of the backlog projects. If they refuse to do so, then they lose their apprentice title in 30 days or some other agreed upon time period. Ramsquire 20:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Esperanza's admin coaching is a program that addresses most of your points. Rama's arrow 20:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not familiar with this program, do you have a link to it? Ramsquire 21:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:ESP/AC. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, TawkerbotTorA's recent RFA highlighted that it is not at present possible for bureaucrats to give "some admin tools" without giving others. -- nae'blis 21:08, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

There's extensions that can be used to do that, though. Technically, it's just a matter of creating a user group in LocalSettings.php, grant permissions to the group, and then give bureaucrats the ability to grant it and remove it. However, the devs won't do it unless it is generally-agreed to be a good idea, though. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

New kind of semi-Admins: the Revert Users (RU-Users) (Archive 73)

A new category of users can be invented with partial Admin capabilities, they will have the possibility to revert much easier, but not to block editors. Blocking the editors will be done as today. What do you say? Wissahickon Creek ^talk 20:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Ever seen WP:RFR? --Lord Deskana (talk) 20:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

This can currently be done by normal users, using a code in their monobooks, as I have. --Alex (Talk) 20:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict) I, personally, don't see the point in that. Non-admins can just use Vandal Proof or Vandal Sniper.--KojiDude ^{(Contributions)} 20:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Holding any sort of discussion on this is pointless as a vastly similar proposal was rejected by the community, as seen by WP:RFR. --Lord Deskana (talk) 20:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Vandal Proof is hopelessly slow for me, so I stopped using it. Also, my rollback tool is much quicker and more accurate. --Alex (Talk) 21:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how others feel, but you're starting to bug me. How many new sections have you started in the last couple of days, either on long-dead proposals or aimless questions? -Splash - tk 21:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I share your concern Splash, but he's just inexperienced - I've advised him to study policy and process more and gain some experience. Rama's arrow 21:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

This is the thing: he's not inexperienced in the least. -Splash - tk 21:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The account was created yesterday, and he has little over 100 edits. I'd say that qualifies as inexperienced.--KojiDude ^{(Contributions)} 21:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

It would ordinarily, yes. But the thing is, the owner of the account is not a new editor, is my quite distinct feeling. When owners of such accounts do this kind of thing, it annoys me greatly. -Splash - tk 21:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

“ I know millions of things that won't work. I've certainly learnt a lot. ”

- Thomas Edison. Rama's arrow 21:31, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Those of us with Vandalproof have all the rollback power one could ask for. Rather than creating a new level of admin, I think it would be better to lighten up a little when a nom expresses a desire to use the tools in an area they feel competent in. The very-model-of-a-modern-wikiepdian ideal may be a bit too unattainable for some who could help out within a limited scope.Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 00:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The very model of a modern Wikipedian? Would that be someone who understands the history of Wikipedia perfectly, is an expert in esoteric template markup, and can vote "delete, non-notable" but not write articles? Or someone who is actually good? In other words, are you using the phrase in its original, satirical connotation, or in the literal sense? --tjstrf Now on editor review! 03:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

He was probably refering to Wikipedia:Song/The_RfA_Candidate's_Song. --Tango 10:39, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother with admin rollback for vandal fighters, rollback scripts are good enough for me, even though I'm on a slow connection. You just have to put up with the additional bandwidth usage for about four months, then apply for adminship. MER-C 08:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)