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For the first time since, well, never, there's strong support at RFA (so far) for giving some users a new userright. The proposal is that some users will be able to block new-ish accounts, and presumably also see deleted contribs. I've weighed in there, saying both that clerks would be ideal for this, and that what I'm expecting from a vote at UAA would so much better than what we get at RFA. Opinions welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 22:05, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

That discussion wound around and around and came out ... not supporting any initiative, but at least not opposing the clerking initiative here. That got me thinking: the kind of Wikipedian who does well at RFA these days might be described as well-rounded, mature, communicative, and willing to do a lot of things they're not particularly interested in doing in order to conform to community expectations. Wikipedia needs these people, and Wikipedia also needs people who do a lot of patrolling of new contribs and new users, apparently motivated by the fun of competition with the other patrollers and the fun of participating in something big and important, but not interested in searching for the "big picture" or telling people what to do or conforming to RFA norms. For a while, Wikipedia found a way to "co-opt" and assimilate the patrollers: we dangled shiny barnstars and even shinier mops in front of them and talked up the advantages of being a proper adult and sitting up straight and eating your vegetables. But it just isn't working any more; the "adults" at RFA have decided that the role isn't suitable for people they identify as "not adults", and I'm not going to tell them they're wrong; the community is what it is. But even if we "fixed" RFA, it wouldn't matter, because the patrollers are largely uninterested now, as Carl's infamous table proves (from roughly 200 active admins left who joined in each of the years 2004-2007 down to 11 who joined last year ... yikes). But the patrollers are still doing the things they've always done, and many of them are very, very good at it ... in fact, many of the people who are "clerking" at UAA are better at making those judgment calls than all but just a few admins. They'll keep doing it as long as we give them the appropriate respect and don't micromanage where we have no business micromanaging. They know that it's mostly their work and their judgment that makes the noticeboards work. They're completely capable of deciding what "clerking" at UAA should mean and what tools they need and how they want to foster competition; if we let them do it, then my guess is within a few months we won't need a lot of as many admins to handle the load at UAA. This may annoy admins who enjoy the work at UAA and don't want to be upstaged (I admit it annoys me), and it may scare people who haven't been looking at UAA all day long as I have, and so don't know what many of our patrollers are capable of. (UAA is one of those annoying boards where we erase everything as soon as it's handled, in the interest of suppressing rather than advertising what the promoters and vandals are doing, so either you have to check the history or just watch it all day to know what's happening.) But at some point, you have to make the call that's in the best interest of Wikipedia. And for people who think that I'm trying to be a "populist" here ... "More power to the people! Vote for me!" ... I'm going to back off from UAA for a bit and see what happens. "If you love something, set it free." Also, I've got a bunch of articles to write and copyedit. apparently I'm having a difficult time backing off :) - Dank (push to talk) 19:25, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
P.S. I'm going to be talking about the clerking experiment for 5 minutes at the NY Wikiconference next week; I'd appreciate any subjective evaluations that anyone wants to make on how good a job non-admins have been doing at UAA lately. I think a number of them have been doing a very good job. - Dank (push to talk) 20:14, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
Feedback would be appreciated; it's hard to talk about what is or isn't happening with the UAA clerking experiment without at least subjective evaluations. - Dank (push to talk) 14:05, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree with you on this point. Some people have been very helpful, and knowledgeable on how to do clerking stuff in UAA. I think it's a good idea to have them do this in a more organized, and more "official" fashion. I do not entirely agree, or are comfortable with, the other side of the idea, of giving non-admins some parts of the bit though. FWIW. -- Alexf(talk) 15:04, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
Striking that bit, with a sigh. One reason is that I haven't gotten a response yet from User:MGodwin on his legal opinion about letting non-admins see the deleted contribs just for new accounts and just when they've done something blockable. I also didn't get much support for the idea at RFA or WP:Vandal fighters. As anyone who hangs around UAA knows, you can't make the call on a promotional name unless you've got a link between their username and what they're supposedly promoting, and the articles that provide the evidence you need are often deleted, so I think we're stuck with no possible userrights for UAA clerks, which means UAA will always be admin-intensive. But if clerks can and want to carve out a role for themselves, and are content with the right to stick "clerk note" in front of their comments, then great. - Dank (push to talk) 15:35, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
Salvio indirectly mentioned (at WP:UAA) the subject of seeing deleted edits ... the best I can tell, it's not going to happen for non-admins. This is good in a lot of ways, but without any userrights, it may be a bit of a struggle to convince people around the wiki that clerks are worth the faith we're putting in them. Also: should we ask new page patrollers who see a possible username violation to mark the page as patrolled, report it to UAA, and then only tag it for deletion after the question's been resolved at UAA? This would lessen the dependence of patrollers and clerks on admins, which seems like a good thing. - Dank (push to talk) 16:30, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
It would make sense to let non-admins block (new)users who have gotten a level four warning or whose username has triggered one of the thousands of filters. Mr. R00t Talk 20:26, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Message in User Reported section

Why is there that template:

at the top of the User-Reported section on the page? I understand the majority of it but why the "...There might be votes at the end of September, with promotions to "clerkship" for some..."? It seems unnecessary. Mr. R00t Talk 03:57, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

We've had an uptick in the quality and quantity of reports and discussion by non-admins since that notice went up. The lesson I take from the endless discussions at WT:RFA is: when considering something new, discussions about how it's going to save or kill the wiki bore me. If the opposition to "clerkship" was significant, we would have seen it by now, so my advice would be: if you're interested in running for clerk, go ahead and start a section here saying you're running and we'll figure it out as we go. I for one will be happy to listen to your argument for what you want to do and why you'd be competent at it, and I'll try to give you a reasonable rationale for my vote. There are a few candidates who would be outstanding no matter what "clerkship" means. To recap, we're not talking about extra userrights, that's dead, and not even about any special rights or responsibilities; we're just talking about the right to claim that you've gotten support from the community in the role and the right to stick a {{clerk note}} ( Clerk note:) in front of your posts. Many of us suspect that might do some good, but what good it does exactly, we'll just have to see, it probably depends entirely on who we get and what they do with it. - Dank (push to talk) 04:18, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
A lot of the things here need the ability to block people and view deleted contribs. I realize that someone or other at MWF has shown concerns over letting non-admins view deleted contribs. I can see why the ability to block people belongs only to admins. But that leaves me with the idea that nothing is left that the clerks could do other than talk to the user (which is helpful if they aren't already blocked by the time the page finishes loading). I'm going to run right now and see what happens. Mr. R00t Talk 17:55, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Right, there's nothing special at clerks can do, so why do we even need clerks? Dank, I support such ideas when there are actual things like userrights or technical issues that only clerks can do (such as rollback, reviewer, SPI clerks, ACC, etc.), but when all a clerk can do is display a template that says they should be trusted? That really isn't much and only creates artificial divisions between users. To be clear, I would support it if there was something more concrete instead of just being able to use "clerk's note". Regarding the trust issue, if User A has been around long enough, made good contributions, and handled administrative issues in the past, he would be trusted. User A won't need the "clerk right", so he probably won't seek it. If User B is a new user, doesn't know what he's doing, etc., he still won't be trusted despite being an UAA clerk. Also, this will likely attract permissions gatherers... Netalarmtalk 03:06, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
There are artificial distinctions all over the place on Wikipedia ... for instance, the coordinator elections for WP:MILHIST are going on right now ... and the general outcome is: if you get good people, they do good things and make it work. Speaking of which: we vote on coordinators for MILHIST once a year (now), allowing only support votes, and the top 15 vote-getters become the coordinators, as long as they get at least 20 votes each. Would that be a better way to do clerk elections? - Dank (push to talk) 18:37, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, that's a content related project, not an administration one. Artificial distinctions generally should not exist IMO, but they're less of a problem if they're on a informal content project. UAA is an administrative noticeboard, not an informal content project. Good people get good things going, and there's no need for such artificial distinctions. Netalarmtalk 21:44, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Request for clerkship: 1234r00t

Request for clerkship: Fridae'sDoom

Completely messed up

TFD of a username block template

Resolved
 – Discussion closed as keep GiftigerWunsch [BODY DOUBLE] 16:23, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

One of our blocking templates, Template:Uw-causeblock has been nominated for deletion. Discussion that led to it's creation is here, deletion discussion is here. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:02, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

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