Wikivoyage talk:Administrators/Archive 1

So, I just took User:(WT-en) Karen Johnson off the list. It's been more than three months since Karen has been contributing to Wikivoyage, and as mentioned on this page, that's about time to change the privileges on her user account. --(WT-en) Evan 12:14, 19 Jan 2004 (EST)

”Administrator” name change

I've been thinking a bit lately about the Wikivoyage concept of Administrators and I'd like to change the name of this role to something that reflects the job a bit better, Two thoughts I had were "Janitor" and "Steward" (like "air steward" with the travel connection see...). Here's my reasoning for the change:

It's a burden, not a privilege: "Admins" exist to keep things running smoothly for all users. It's not a reward or even an indication of how good a contributor someone is (I'd say “Not all great contributors are admins, but all admins should be great contributors”). The new name should better reflect this.

All contributors are equal: Sure, "admins" have access to things that other users don't, but it's because they have more responsibilities not more power. (There are a lot of great users who have turned down the offer of Admin status). Things like votes for deletion or any other discussion should not be weighted towards the few folks who will do the actual deleting... oh, and It's pretty easy to start throwing "But I'm an Administrator" into arguments about policy, not so easy to get on a high-horse about being a "Janitor"

"Administrator" is used by lots of other sites to mean other things (often an authoritarian role or "superuser"), the different name would make people realize that there's something different going on here-- ire. we try to have a pretty egalitarian system/anarchy and everyone should be on equal footing whether it's their second post or second year...

Thoughts? (WT-en) Majnoona 19:01, 10 Oct 2004 (EDT)

I like "Steward". And, yes, I think the word "Administrator" is too loaded. (p.s. you forgot to sign.) --(WT-en) Evan 17:53, 9 Oct 2004 (EDT)

I like "Janitor". =) (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:39, 28 Dec 2004 (EST)

Janitor. -- (WT-en) Colin 13:53, 28 Dec 2004 (EST)

Hey, do folks think we are ready to move forward with the administrator name change? -- (WT-en) Mark 08:15, 26 Jan 2005 (EST)

I know this fell by the way-side ages ago (ok, not surprisingly right in the middle of my first trimester of pregnancy!) but I was just remined of the idea and I'm still interested in making the change to "janitor" -- the same reasoning still stands.

How difficult would this be to execute? I don't think the word appears in too many places... (WT-en) Majnoona 22:56, 4 Nov 2005 (EST)

So where is this? It seems to want to die... but I'd support it. -- (WT-en) Ilkirk 12:46, 15 Nov 2005 (EST)

Bump

Lets do this. There has never been an objection (for some five years), and the benefits as enumerated above are pretty clear. We've also discussed this here, where there was only support for the change. Speak now or forever hold thy peace. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 21:37, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

I don't like it. "Admin" is a well-established term on wikis, and "janitor" doesn't capture the extra responsibility involved in adminship. We do a lot more than just cleaning stuff up. (WT-en) LtPowers 21:49, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

I don't understand this objection. It is noted above that administrator is a well-established term on other wikis, and the purpose behind the name change is precisely to emphasize that sysop status means something different here, that we have an egalitarian ethic, and that administrators have no more authority in decisionmaking than other users. What is the extra responsibility of which you speak? Sysops are supposed to use the extra tools according to policy, but this is true of all tools available to any user. The only accepted difference is functional, and the extra functions all exist purely to help keep things clean. I would ask you to please address the existing arguments above. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:02, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

I'm puzzled by your tone. I expressed my opinion on the topic; I'm sorry if you felt I didn't adequately address every argument previously presented. You seem to be implying that if I can't specifically refute every argument, then I shouldn't bother writing anything. Maybe I'm just tired, but that's how your response reads to me. I'll wait and check back tomorrow and see if I understand things differently then. (WT-en) LtPowers 22:09, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Sorry, didn't mean to come across as harsh, I just wanted to understand your objection better in light of former arguments. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:46, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Agreed with LtPowers. I note that this proposal has appealed to a number of people who continue to be strong contributors here over the course of a long time. But personally, although I recognize the good intent, "janitors" strikes me as cutesy and a dash pretentious in a faux-humble sense. And the rationale as described above is overstating the potential power of a word change. An egalitarian atmosphere is established by conduct, not cosmetic steps. (And her logic was proven flawed by time — nobody has been throwing "but I'm an administrator" into policy arguments over the last four-plus years.)

I also agree that "janitor" doesn't fully capture the responsibilities of adminship, at least as I see them. Admins should have a strong knowledge of the site's policies and precedents, and should be prepared to patiently explain those to other users. God bless Mr. Schulte, my grade school janitor, but he didn't know bunk about anything other than the physical plant of the school. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 22:31, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Agree with Gorilla Jones. If we're going to go with goofy/cutesy, I'd rather go with something more neutral that sticks to the theme of our wiki, like "adventurer" or "journeyman" or "frequent traveller" or something. That said, I'm perfectly happy with things the way they are, and the suggestions above are straight off the top of my head. But I definitely think "janitor" just sounds too lowly to be a position for which you have to be nominated and voted upon. After all, if admins are janitors, what does that make burocrats? Sewer line workers? (WT-en) Texugo 00:22, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Plenty of latent objections, it would seem. But to be clear, bureaucrats are in my view simply users we have decided to trust with the ability to flip sysop switches—nothing more, nothing less. I sometimes do worry that members of the community, from new users to experienced ones, lose sight of the fact that these little titles carry with them no authority. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:46, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

It's true that authority is vested in the community as a whole, but administrators are the executors of that authority, at least for functions that require that extra level of trust. Which, to my mind, fits the definition of "administrator" pretty well. To an extent, all Wikivoyageers are, or should be, janitors, in the sense of cleaning up articles and keeping things tidy—admins are just entrusted with the really dangerous tools. =) (WT-en) LtPowers 13:03, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Neutral, ever so lightly swaying against a change - but I really don't care either way --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 14:21, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Deletion

So I've been an admin for over a month now... and haven't actually used any of my abilities yet. Has the page deletion mechanism been re-enabled yet? (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:39, 28 Dec 2004 (EST)

I think it's part of the whole personalization of pages (including skins, etc.) that has been disabled. Evan says he's going to work on it when he gets back. But I figured out how to do it anyway. When you click on the history link, you get a URL like

   http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/index.php?title=Wikivoyage_talk:Administrators&action=history

If you change the word history to delete you can delete an article. But do not use this for deleting an image (image delete has a more complicated url) -- (WT-en) Colin 13:57, 28 Dec 2004 (EST)

Restoring images

I just checked, and yes, an image can be restored from history. Just go to Special:Log/delete, click on the name of the image, and then click the "restore X deleted edits" link, and you'll get a form asking if you want to undelete. --(WT-en) Evan 20:22, 9 July 2006 (EDT)

Use of the admin "rollback" functionality

The "rollback" button for admins is a hugely useful tool, but it unfortunately does not provide any way to indicate why an edit is being rolled back. That's not a problem for things like obvious vandalism, but in other cases it really would be nice to know why an edit was rolled back - even a simple note like "revert - see Project:External links" provides more explanation to a user than just "Reverted edits by 131.202.9.234 (Talk); changed back to last version by 84.145.230.254". I'm guilty of over-using that button as well, but it would be really, really helpful to others if admins made an effort to do at least one of the following in cases where the reason for a rollback isn't blatantly obvious:

• Use the more manual Project:How to revert a page process and provide an edit comment explaining why the change was reverted.
• Leave a note on the article's talk page explaining why the change was reverted.
• If multiple changes by the same user are being reverted (and the changes are not vandalism) either provide an edit comment by using the manual revert process for at least the first revert, or else leave a note on the user's talk page explaining the reason for the revert.

This is just a suggestion; feel free to ignore as always, but I do think it would be very helpful to others. -- (WT-en) Ryan 15:21, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

I've made this request before, but would it be possible to modify the "rollback" functionality to give admins the option of including a comment? I can see the use of an explanation, but I'm going to be cleaning up a lot less junk if I have to go through the non-admin process for most fixes. I do try to leave a note if the edits are made by a registered user, but it seems less likely that explanations will reach the ears of "drive-by" editors. -- (WT-en) Jonboy 15:28, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

I agree about this... I wonder if we should start collecting these ideas on an Project:Administrator handbook? --(WT-en) Evan 15:32, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

I like that idea, as long as we keep an eye out for the slippery slope of making Admin-stuff too "in-crowd" ish... (WT-en) Maj 15:44, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

Having the option to specify a reason for a revert would be helpful. And to be clear, I'm not proposing that admins do any more work than a normal user, I'm just asking that unless the edit being rolled back is something like "asdfasdf Bob is gay and I rule!" that at least one indicator of why the edit was rolled back is given. Most registered users start out anonymous, and if an anonymous user adds a link to their favorite nightlife guide and that contribution is then rolled back without comment that user is unlikely to contribute here again. However, if either the rollback comment OR a note on the article or user talk page refers the user to Project:External links then the user may realize that they are still welcome to contribute, but that in this case we just don't link to external guides.

And yeah, a Project:Administrator handbook would be useful for explaining how to use things like rollback, block, delete, etc. I don't think it would be any more "in-crowd" than any other page that explains Wikivoyage functionality, provided everyone has access to read and edit the page. -- (WT-en) Ryan 16:10, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

Agree with Ryan on all counts. For that matter, I think an Administrator Handbook would be useful as a tool to help non-admins understand just what the admins are doing/can do. However, it's not necessarily the most "urgent" thing to work on; no opinion on that. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 20:09, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

Wikivoyage in swedish has an Administrator Handbook called Manual för administratörer which has been in use since Jan 14, 2006. It is a great help for our admins when dealing with everyday admin issues. When a new admin is elected, he/she gets an administrator template on his/her talk page, containing a link to the manual. (WT-en) Riggwelter 12:54, 4 October 2006 (EDT)

Is there any way it could be translated to English? I believe something like that could be very useful to all administrators. Does anyone else think we should start this? I agree with (WT-en) Ryan and (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill comments above. We could provide guidelines and also it would help explain to all Wikivoyageers how Administartors operate or should operate. -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 15:07, 4 October 2006 (EDT)

I have started on the translation and I expect to put it up on Shared for review sometime during christmas 2006. (WT-en) Riggwelter 16:21, 13 December 2006 (EST)

request for IP ban

We need help on preventing IP 85.66.44.101 from adding Camping Haller to Budapest again and again--although it belongs to Budapest/Pest and already placed there. Repetitive warnings on the user talk page don't help, changes reappear again and again. Let me know if there's a better place for requests like this. Thanks. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 16:21, 9 May 2007 (EDT)

Project:User ban nominations -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 16:24, 9 May 2007 (EDT)

Guidelines

The page doesn't actually spell out what's required to be accepted as an admin, so I plunged forward and laid out the criteria I've seen applied in nomination discussions. Edit away. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:14, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Nicely done! Looks just about right to me. I think the only thing I'd change is that the magic number of three months has been bandied about before, but I don't know if that's worth enshrining here. --(WT-en) Evan 23:25, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Terminating administrator privileges

Can one of the bureaucrats please revoke my admin rights. I will be taking an indefinite leave from Wikivoyage. Updating and maintaining wiki's are supposed to be fun and enjoyable, but lately Wikivoyage just has not been that. I have 5 firefox tabs open at the moment, 3 of them require speedy deletion, but the adverts seems to be more important than my nice shiny deletion button, they loaded, my delete button did not. So, I will yet again have to log out, log in and reopen all those tabs and frankly I can't be bothered. This is feeling more and more like my corporate job, filled with frustrations and management that does not care or listen. I may or may not be back sometime in the future, but for now I think I'll find myself some place else to play. --(WT-en) Nick 09:30, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

I'd hate to see you leave, although I certainly sympathize with your frustration. (We've been losing a bunch of great contributors lately...) In any rate, in the past we've leaned towards not removing administrative status, even when the user requests it and will not be editing for a long time. If you do decide to edit in the future, even for a day or two, I'd rather that you have the sysop functions, rather than have to re-nominate you for admin. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:39, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

Nick, I'm in agreement with Peter. There's plenty to do on Wikivoyage that doesn't even require the buttons. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:06, 21 October 2008 (EDT)

Me three, and I certainly share your frustration. This has really become painful, and the spam-idiots aren't affected by the pain. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 16:28, 21 October 2008 (EDT)

Supposedly all is back to normal now, if you're still missing your tabs, head over to shared and speak up so that IB knows – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 18:35, 24 October 2008 (EDT)

Inactive admins

We need to either revise the three month policy or de-activate several admins. We have 2 at more than a year inactive (User:(WT-en) Huttite, User:(WT-en) Ilkirk), 3 close to one year (User:(WT-en) Pjamescowie, User:(WT-en) TVerBeek, User:(WT-en) Tsandell), and a few others at more than five months (including the site's (WT-en) founder). Good folks, of course, but the policy should either be revised or enforced. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 23:34, 25 December 2008 (EST)

(background 1, 2, & 3) The argument against de-activating inactive admins is straightforward: inactivity isn't a reason to stop trusting users who have been given sysop status, and if such users return, we'd be happy to have them retain their privileges. The argument in favor is that unused sysop accounts present a "security risk." I'm not sure why though—even if some vandal hijacked a sysop account, they couldn't really do anything that would be hard to fix. And the probability of that happening seems very small to me in any rate. Unless I'm missing something, the only reason I can see why we should revoke sysop privileges is in case of abuse. So I'd say revise. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:16, 26 December 2008 (EST)

I agree with Peter. If a user goes permanently AWOL (>2 years), I think it's fine to de-sysop them, but 3 months is just silly. (WT-en) Jpatokal 06:09, 26 December 2008 (EST)

I agree as well. I've even come damn near three months myself in the past. Even at two years, I don't see any special need to de-sysop them. (WT-en) Texugo 06:15, 26 December 2008 (EST)

Let's revise to 2 years for now? – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 18:23, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Support -- (WT-en) Texugo 18:57, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Support --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 20:43, 3 May 2009 (EDT)

Bureaucrat rights

I would post this at Wikivoyage:Bureaucrats, but I'm still waiting for special:import to be created, so I can import the old page from wts...

I think it would be worthwhile to re-enable the functionality we always had for bureaucrats to be able to remove admin flags (I'm not sure we really need to be able to remove bureaucrat flags, but I guess it doesn't matter). This came up here. Basically, it just seems like a pain to have to go to Meta to do something so simple as remove an admin flag from a bot once it's done, or to remove an admin flag that was accidentally added. Any objections? --Peter ^Talk 17:28, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Explanation of project page change

I added the following text to the policy:

If valid concerns with a nomination are raised by a member of the community that cause them to oppose a nomination, it is courteous to allow the nominee or nominator some time to respond to the concern or to withdraw their nomination. The decision is not a vote, and piling on oppose votes adds no weight to the issues raised, and can be embarrassing to the nominee.

I think this reflects a consensus I've seen develop over at Wikivoyage_talk:Administrator_nominations and elsewhere. If you disagree, by all means lets discuss. --Inas (talk) 22:24, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Admin noticeboards?

Swept in from the pub

Where are the admin noticeboards? There has to be some place to raise hell and tell the admins how corrupt they are, right? Berean Hunter (talk) 21:44, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

There is Wikivoyage:Vandalism in progress if you need AIV, but a separate board would be helpful... --Rschen7754 21:45, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

If you have any issues, let them be stated here. If this page gets overcrowded, we can split it if we need to. --Inas (talk) 21:49, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Or just contact an admin directly. Our names tend to be spattered all over recentchanges, so it's pretty easy to tell who is paying attention at any given moment. And we check each others' user talk pages. --Peter ^Talk 21:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the replies. I was just surprised that any wiki has been able to operate without one.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 22:34, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Believe it or not, Wikipedia operated without one for quite a few years. They're a burden of success, unfortunately. Manning Bartlett (talk) 03:03, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Local Checkusers

Swept in from the pub

During the transition phase, I was nominated as a potential checkuser. The purpose was to ensure we had coverage of this function in case of any disruption during that phase. After some discussion with the stewards, it was decided that at that busy time, they were experienced, better qualified and quite willing to maintain that function. They also pointed out that under normal circumstances they didn't get involved in performing checkuser functions on wikis that have their own local checkusers.

I'd like to start a discussion on whether we would like to have our own checkuser function.

The advantages are:

• Local wiki, local ownership of administrative functions.
• Declaration of our project maturity
• Freeing up stewards to dedicate their time and talents to cross-wiki functions rather than local ones.
• CU would only be used as determined by our own local policies

The disadvantages are:

• The stewards will no longer generally get involved in CU on the local wiki
• There are many more stewards, and at least one can usually be obtained quickly via IRC.

If you see other disadvantages or advantages, please feel free to edit my list. Otherwise if you have an opinion, please state it. Obviously if we have a consensus against local checkusers at this time, I'll decline my nomination. If we have a consensus that we should have them, then we need a minimum of two, and probably three, so there will be some recruiting to do. Personally, I do feel we should have the function local, but I don't think it is a big deal. I personally can't see us using the function very often at all. --Inas (talk) 02:12, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

CUs get a subscription to mail:checkuser-l and checkuser wiki access, which is helpful for being aware of issues crosswiki... but of course whoever serves as CU will have a lot of extra emails to read :) and they will have to learn how to use the tool. Also, CUs will lose their tools if they haven't used them in a year per the m:CheckUser policy. --Rschen7754 03:55, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, some things to clear up first:

1. Do we need our own checkusers? On how many occasions has the function been used since we joined WMF? Since official launch?
2. Will we have our own policy that varies significantly from WMF policy? In what ways will it differ? I think this is something that should be worked out before we try to decide if and who the CU's should be.

• • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:06, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

During the launch we had to rely pretty heavily on the function to halt block evasion. Our need for CUs has declined lately, simply because things slowed down after the banners went down. That would actually make this an easier time to develop our own CUs, since the volume of work would be less, while figuring out the methods.

Our own policy simply would not be allowed to differ from the general privacy policy on Meta, so I'm not sure that we would see any substantive difference in how local CUs would operate compared to how our stewards already operate here. --Peter ^Talk 15:38, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

There's small differences on each project I believe, but every local CU policy has to remain within the bounds of what the policy is on Meta. The CU log is only viewable by local CheckUsers and m:Ombudsmen, but you can get a sense of how often CU is used on enwikivoyage by looking on the Meta rights log. --Rschen7754 18:31, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

On Danish Wikipedia where I'm from we use the checkuser tool very little. In my opinion you do not need to use the check user tool unless someone is trying to manipulate votes or if it is really important to know "the identity" of a user.

In most cases the simple solution is to block vandals and users with too many bad edits and/or to revert the edits.

So one question to ask before you decide is do we need local checkusers or can the admins handle the things with the current tools? --MGA73 (talk) 18:45, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

It is an interesting question, but it really is quite a different question to the one at issue now. The CU function is exercised at the WMF sites. It has been and continues to be available here for use within the appropriate guidelines. The only question at issue is whether we want this function local or exercised by the cross-wiki stewards. Having this function local would not result in any increase in its use. --Inas (talk) 22:02, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Funny, we just ran a CU in the past 20 minutes ;) Search the block log for "block evasion" to get an idea of how our project has been using the tool. For us, we tend to be pretty reluctant to hand out blocks, so enforcing existing bans becomes more important. We have a pretty persistent problem with a party that has been blocked per Wikivoyage:No real world threats. --Peter ^Talk 22:08, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Spambots tend to be CUed a lot. I'm not sure how that interacts with the privacy policy as then the IP is immediately globally blocked by the same steward, though. --Rschen7754 23:15, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I guess it depends on the type of "bad edits" there is on the different wikis. If adding text like "Sex is fun" or "Xx is a big fat whore" or adding a lot of spam is the main problem then there is no need for CU. If block evasion is a problem then CU would be a good idea.

I checked the edit made by the user referred to above and I do not know the history for the block (there no link/reference to who the original and blocked user is) but I guess the "old users" here could tell who it is just by reading the text. You could decide to say "Blocked users should not edit at all!" and remove the edit or you could decide to let it stay and say "Well if it makes him/her happy then who cares. Lets get on with our life." All I'm saying is that only Wv community can decide is you need CU or not. So you should choose CU if you need it and not just because Wikipedia has it. --MGA73 (talk) 07:46, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

It's not just block evasion - as a SPI clerk trainee I've seen sock farms with dozens of socks created just so that a vandal can start a massive revert war over and over. Sometimes they do this to game the autoconfirmed restriction so that semiprotected pages can be vandalized. Being able to find these "sleeper accounts" with CU is a good use of CU. --Rschen7754 08:31, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Happily, our Wikivoyage:Consensus policy (unlike WP's 3RR) puts a stop to edit wars regardless of sock activity—the page goes back to the status quo until a consensus is forged on the talk page, and users who refuse to go along with that process by warring get temp blocked, the page gets protected, etc. Cleaning out socks by a known vandal who has already been blocked to avoid a little vandalism war on semiprotected pages, however, is a potential use. --Peter ^Talk 20:38, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Can I please drag everyone back to consider the issue at hand here. At the moment I'm not getting a feel for what we want to happen, because everyone is discussing other important, but independent, questions. If you don't want the CU function used at all, then it is an issue to take up at Meta. If you'd like change our policy on banning users so that we still allow them to make edits under other accounts, then by all means state your case over at the appropriate policy page.

The CU function is part of our policy right now by virtue of us being under the WMF banner. The tools are being used here. Could you please consider whether you would like local wiki or cross-wiki stewards to perform the CU functions, as currently performed and allowed by the guidelines on meta, in line with the policies that we have here at WV. --Inas (talk) 00:29, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

• Well? --Rschen7754 07:12, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I vote for sticking with the stewards performing this function for now, I don't see any real benefit to handling locally at this stage, let's revisit it in a year or something? – cacahuate ^talk 03:56, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I too vote for the centralized steward function. This seems like a function that is used rarely, but needs quick response when it needed, which is good reason to rely on a central pool of stewards. The reasons for localizing seem largely symbolic to me, and I don't see a need for a local policy distinct from WMF policy. The only bummer with centralizing is that none of our guys will have access to the CU mailing lists. I only wish there were a way to elect two CUs for this purpose, but retain the option of using the WMF stewards as needed. — Ravikiran (talk) 06:50, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Cacahuate and Ravikiran. I don't see a need to press forward, especially with only two checkusers. I think we'll have better response time and more expert analysis with the stewards, freeing Inas and Peter to keep writing great travel content. LtPowers (talk) 03:29, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with all the above; if you're interested in more "independence" so to speak, oversight / OTRS might be an easier step. --Rschen7754 02:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Admin criteria

The criteria for nominations has always been at Wikivoyage:Administrators#Nomination, and those have indeed been the criteria used to judge nominations for nearly a decade. A checklist was added to Wikivoyage:Administrator nominations, to help make the process more clear to potential nominators who may not have looked over this page carefully. But, as the nomination for Rschen7754's admin status to be made permanent, instead of temporary, shows, the list added to the nominations page doesn't match the agreed upon list here in the addition of "Have a history of article contribution." That has now been construed as contributing content. As contributing content has very little to do with administrative functions (editing protected pages, combating vandalism, etc.), and as that has never been a requirement before, I think that bit should be struck to bring the nominations page back in line with our long-standing policy. --Peter ^Talk 15:51, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

For reference, the nomination page looked like this [1] before the recent change, directing nominators to verify that nominees would meet the criteria at Wikivoyage:Administrators#Becoming an administrator. I don't think the addition of a checklist was ever meant to supersede the policy here. --Peter ^Talk 15:56, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree completely with your comments. LtPowers (talk) 17:36, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Nominations by consensus

Also in Rschen7754's nomination it was pointed out that our policy is to resolve admin nominations by checking to see whether "there are no outstanding objections." Is there a good reason we shouldn't resolve nominations by consensus, which is the policy by which we decide everything else I can think of? Unanimity is a pretty high bar, which can encourage the sort of participation that our consensus policy aims to prevent. --Peter ^Talk 16:23, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I would be in favor of wording it something like "strong consensus". Here are Wikipedia's guideline on the subject, which I think are worth considering to see what we can use to clarify on our procedures:

"Consensus at RFA is not determined by surpassing a numerical threshold, but by the strength of rationales presented. As a rule of thumb, most of those above 80% approval pass; most of those below 70% fail; the judgment of passing is subject to bureaucratic discretion (and in some cases further discussion)."

Obviously everyone who opposes an admin nomination will feel that their objection is valid, and while we should discuss those objections and try to resolve them, on subjective decisions like this one having some objective guidance as to how to view oppose votes when there is 80+ percent support would be helpful. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:06, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd worry a bit only about the numerical values. Wikipedia is huge, and therefore is less prone to outlier cases where we have very few people commenting, and also less susceptible to gaming the system. But otherwise that wording seems right. --Peter ^Talk 17:46, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It would seem strange to me if the "no outstanding objections" clause was intended to require unanimity. Note that as recently as 2009, the page only stated "After the deadline for discussion, if there is consensus in favor, a bureaucrat will grant them admin status." The specific rules were moved from the nominations page in February 2010 by Inas. That said, the language has survived almost entirely unaltered since Evan's creation of the nominations page in 2003. If we look at this early discussion, however, it appears possible that the "outstanding objections" may have only intended to be applied to admins' objections. It's hard to say. LtPowers (talk) 17:52, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm obviously biased in the matter, but even before my nomination I was wondering about the standard of unanimity - I'm not sure that will always be sustainable, especially as the site grows. --Rschen7754 19:33, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I am even more biased by the issue - it would be good if someone could actually clarify this issue with some sense of whether interpretation of either whether 'objections' - (however few) are in fact the casting vote, and as to whether the notion of 'unanimity' has been in fact mis-used? Rschen's comment about the sustainability of such a notion is quite significant, from my perspective, at least sats (talk) 09:14, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm an admin on the largest wiki (enwiki), and it's rare nowadays to have an unopposed RFA. dewiki apparently is pretty difficult as well. I think the fundamental question is whether enough admins are being promoted to serve our needs. --Rschen7754 09:53, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we could focus on unresolved objections rather than the number or proportion of objectors? I am still amazed that we we wish to keep the process of revoking admin privileges secret and hidden. -- Alice^✉ 09:55, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

To be honest I think that is missing the point at which Rschen and I have made comment - in the larger wikis objections are part of the course, to focus on them as important here is possibly the wrong path in the long run sats (talk) 10:14, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

My comment was not intended to address either your own or Rschen's comments but rather the starting comment by [[User:Peterfitzgerald.

I would prefer to see us address objections rather than objectors. That would mean we could ignore an insignificant or irrelevant objection made by a numerically large number of objectors but still recognise a significant bar to becoming an admin raised by only one person. Either we're serious that we don't vote or we're not. -- Alice^✉ 10:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Sats/Rschen + Peter: I agree that with a growing project we will need to become a bit more wikistyle. In the past we always achieved consensus withour objections. Seeing the last objections, worry me a bit because unrelated critics resulted in lenghty discussions. At the moment we are small, so i think the treshold most be high. I would prefer to say 80% is the bottom line and there must be a minimum amount of edits. In the WV de community eligible users need at least 50 edits in the main space, if we raise that to 100 edits, that would be fine. jan (talk) 13:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I think we may be overthinking this. First off, implied in the "no outstanding objections" clause (as illustrated by the historical data that indicates it may have only been intended to apply to admins' objections anyway) is "no outstanding valid objections". For example, Alice's protest vote of "Wait" on Rschen's nomination was correctly ignored; it did not constitute a valid outstanding objection. Second of all, the criterion has always said consensus, not unanimity. (The fact that we've always had the latter has obscured this fact.) Consensus does not mean "everyone agrees"; it means "everyone agrees that their views have been recognized and addressed to the best extent possible, even if they don't necessarily agree that the final result is optimal". To that end, I think it's right and proper that an objection not be considered "outstanding" if the objector feels it has been addressed, even if it's not been addressed the way he or she would have liked to have been. With these two clarifications in the understanding of our extant rules, I think this problem goes away. LtPowers (talk) 14:54, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

We never reached any resolution on this issue. LtPowers - can you propose some updated text based on your proposal above? It would be good to get this clarified before the next admin nomination. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:42, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I think my point was that the text doesn't need to be updated; the text has existed and worked fine for years. It's just that now that we're hitting edge cases that we didn't before, we have to remember what the actual intent behind that text always was. In fact, I kind of took the silence after my last comment to be general assent to that interpretation. LtPowers (talk) 13:43, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the existing process worked for years because we almost never had an admin nomination that received just one or two objections. As to your interpretation, my own nomination was derailed by Evan's single objection years ago, so I do think the intent was unanimous support. Given the comments from Peter and others above there are others who interpret currently policy as requiring unanimity, so updating the wording to either reflect your interpretation of having objectors agree that their concerns were addressed, or moving to a "strong consensus" interpretation, would avoid future confusion. I've proposed wording for a "strong consensus" change, but if we don't use that then a proposal for wording that reflects your ideas would also be helpful. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:36, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, I do think the "outstanding objections" clause needs to remain. We just need to interpret that in a spirit that doesn't permit filibustering. I suppose we could word it as "Any objections have been addressed, withdrawn, or deemed irrelevant," but that seems a little too direct to me. Or we could limit the objections clause to active administrators. LtPowers (talk) 19:21, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

What about the following, which includes your concerns but makes it clear that unanimity is not required:

1. there is a strong consensus supporting the nomination from the community, including at least two administrators,
2. the user has indicated a willingness to take on the job of administration, and
3. attempts have been made to address any relevant objections to the nomination, and those who object have been given sufficient time to argue their case or withdraw their objection

-- Ryan • (talk) • 22:38, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

"Strong consensus" seems stricter to me than "support of the community". Was that your intent? LtPowers (talk) 01:05, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Given that the current criteria is unanimity, "strong consensus" seemed like a way to indicate that we don't require unanimity but there needs to be more than just majority support. Would some other wording be better? -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, assuming you're correct about requiring unanimity, that criterion doesn't come from item #1, which only says "support of the community"; it comes from item #3, which says "no outstanding objections". So changing #3 as you've proposed eliminates any possible unanimity criterion; changing #1 isn't necessary to do so. So I was curious why you changed it. LtPowers (talk) 14:37, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the word "consensus" would work as well as "strong consensus," but I like Ryan's three point explanation. "Consensus" is a lot clearer than "support of the community," and #3 is a helpful explanation of how objections should be addressed. --Peter ^Talk 21:59, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Let's change "strong consensus" to just "consensus" in the proposal above. Any objection to updating the policy page? -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:02, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Outstanding objections?  ;) I think the revisions better represent our actual practice, so I'm okay with changing them if it will help understanding. LtPowers (talk) 01:56, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Since the proposal received consensus from the community (including two administrators), I had previously indicated a willingness to update the policy page, and all outstanding objections have been addressed, I've now gone ahead and made this update. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:06, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the admin nominations page and recent nominations, is this really a problem? The key is in the presence of the word outstanding. Objections are valuable input into the process of selecting admins and as long as they are taken in good faith and discussed neutrally, the project benefits from the discussion. For example, in Rschen's nomination (which appears to have prompted this discussion) I objected on the grounds that he hadn't really contributed any travel material to what is, after all, a travel wiki. There was a discussion and, taking the comments - the good faith ones, that is :) - into account, the objection was withdrawn. Seems to me that the process worked well. The problem with requiring consensus is that there simply aren't enough editors !voting to judge consensus adequately and there are too few bureaucrats to make the judgement as is done on Wikipedia. A 'crat chat', for example, is a non-starter. Given the size of this project, it might be better to stick with points 2 and 3 above and drop 1. --RegentsPark (talk) 14:59, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree the process has worked well, but you've completely lost me with the end of your comment. We get a large proportion of our most active editors commenting on most admin nominations; that seems more than sufficient to judge consensus. And how many bureaucrats are necessary for a "crat chat", whatever that is? It only takes one to look at the raft of "Supports" and flip the bit. LtPowers (talk) 16:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm biased by the nature of an RfA on Wikipedia where the discussions tend to be substantive. Here, on the other hand, there really isn't much discussion (cf. this - where, I notice, there was one oppose that went away following a discussion), not really enough to arrive at a consensus - at least not in the Wikipedia sense of weighing different arguments. That's what I meant by the difficulty in judging consensus. I suppose you do only need a couple of crats for a crat chat but a wider set would be preferable.--RegentsPark (talk) 17:20, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

See to me, consensus was obvious and clear -- anyone who had objections had ample opportunity to speak up, and most of the site's major contributors participated. And after Saqib withdrew his objection, opinion was unanimous. How is that not consensus? LtPowers (talk) 19:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

m:Requests for comment/Activity levels of advanced administrative rights holders

Swept in from the pub

Thought I'd mention this here (I think EdwardsBot will send this out in a few days). It should not affect the English Wikivoyage that much as there's already an inactivity policy here, but I know there's a lot of you who hold rights on other Wikivoyages and who may be affected by this. --Rschen7754 10:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

What is the inactivity policy here? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:55, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

According to Wikivoyage:Administrators, you get desysopped if you are gone for 2 years. --Rschen7754 11:05, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if this policy has ever really been enforced. It seems like there are a number of former WT admins whose rights have been transferred when they began editing here (even if it has just been a handful of edits). For example, WT founder Evan (also a bureaucrat). I don't think it's a bad policy to have. AHeneen (talk) 03:26, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

AHeneen, so far no elected admin/bureaucrat has violated our policies, so there was no need to enforce such policies. I agree that might be useful to implement the two year policy. jan (talk) 20:21, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Emphasis on elected, eh? -- Alice^✉ 07:19, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

On WP, administrator accounts that have no edits for at least one year may have their admin privileges removed. Can't we make it same here? --Saqib (talk) 11:45, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Since our list of inactive admins is a bit high at this point, having some sort of rule like this might make sense. Presumably a renomination would pass easily if an admin wanted to come back. I'd suggest 2 years, though. --Peter ^Talk 19:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

The other reason this is usually done is to make sure that inactive admin accounts don't get hacked into, which could cause problems. --Rschen7754 03:02, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment on inactive administrators

Swept in from the pub

(Please consider translating this message for the benefit of your fellow Wikimedians. Please also consider translating the proposal.)

Read this message in English / Lleer esti mensaxe n'asturianu / বাংলায় এই বার্তাটি পড়ুন / Llegiu aquest missatge en català / Læs denne besked på dansk / Lies diese Nachricht auf Deutsch / Leś cal mesag' chè in Emiliàn / Leer este mensaje en español / Lue tämä viesti suomeksi / Lire ce message en français / Ler esta mensaxe en galego / हिन्दी / Pročitajte ovu poruku na hrvatskom / Baca pesan ini dalam Bahasa Indonesia / Leggi questo messaggio in italiano / ಈ ಸಂದೇಶವನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಓದಿ / Aqra dan il-messaġġ bil-Malti / norsk (bokmål) / Lees dit bericht in het Nederlands / Przeczytaj tę wiadomość po polsku / Citiți acest mesaj în română / Прочитать это сообщение на русском / Farriintaan ku aqri Af-Soomaali / Pročitaj ovu poruku na srpskom (Прочитај ову поруку на српском) / อ่านข้อความนี้ในภาษาไทย / Прочитати це повідомлення українською мовою / Đọc thông báo bằng tiếng Việt / 使用中文阅读本信息。

Hello!

There is a new request for comment on Meta-Wiki concerning the removal of administrative rights from long-term inactive Wikimedians. Generally, this proposal from stewards would apply to wikis without an administrators' review process.

We are also compiling a list of projects with procedures for removing inactive administrators on the talk page of the request for comment. Feel free to add your project(s) to the list if you have a policy on administrator inactivity.

All input is appreciated. The discussion may close as soon as 21 May 2013 (2013-05-21), but this will be extended if needed.

Thanks, Billinghurst (thanks to all the translators!) 04:33, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery (Wrong page? You can fix it.)

Fully protecting departed admins pages

Swept in from the pub

Is this policy? Usually one leaves them unlocked so others can leave notes of appreciation for their years of service. It is unfortunate to see both User:Peterfitzgerald and User:Jc8136 leave. While they and I may have differed on some minor points I respect both of them a great deal for the work they have put into making WV what it is today. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:19, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm concerned about fullprotecting their talk pages, as it leaves people no way to bring up concerns to them. --Rschen7754 06:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I've only protected the user page of Jc8136, and his talk page is not protected. Peter protected his user page and talk page himself. --Saqib (talk) 06:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Obviously they would be unprotected should they request them to be. It should be their choice. --Inas (talk) 06:54, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Clarification

When the equivalent page was started at Wikitravel and then forked here, the idea behind Wikivoyage:Wikivoyagers by location was

• a) to provide a harmless bit of self-identification for editors
• b) to provide a utilitarian list of editors that might have particular local knowledge

The latter function has been largely superseded by the "Docent" facility for our general readers, but I still find it useful to know what region of the planet other editors self identify with.

I was, therefore, a bit surprised to find that, after 10 days, my own entry was entirely removed just now.

I don't want to be accused of edit warring by simply replacing it, so may I have some guidance, please? --118.93nzp (talk) 01:26, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Sure, while you're most welcome to have your username mentioned in the list but that is not your user page so keep things simple and understandable as everyone do. --Saqib (talk) 01:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes the world is not entirely cut and dried and simple. I do agree that one of our tasks is to make our planet more understandable to travellers through the medium of the English languages,

I do also agree that that page is not my user page, but I wonder if you could address the purpose of that page and why you thought fit to delete my entry entirely and unilaterally and without discussion (and perhaps the timing is interesting too).

I do think that this is one page where, without allowing politics and religious and jingoistic tensions to raise their ugly heads, we could be a little more flexible in how people self describe their location?

After all it may be a bit of a painful reminder for a Palestinian living in Hebron to be required to "voluntarily" place himself in the Israel section or a Kashmiri Muslim to be removed by you from the "Asia" section and plonked in "India".

What serious harm does it do to leave User:Peaceray's self=placement in Oceania rather than in the USA section? My ancestors on one side of my family came to this area of New Zealand some 500 years before the Duke of Marlborough achieved renown at the battle of Waterloo or Nelson at Trafalgar, so who are you exactly to say that where I live and work should not be called by me in my entry by its official local name as decided by the NZ government via its agency, the NZGB? --118.93nzp (talk) 02:10, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you on this one, nzp. Sorry, Saqib. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:21, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't much mind what people write on that page, as long as it's comprehensible. What 118 wrote there wasn't, to me. LtPowers (talk) 20:23, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Are you saying that's an adequate reason to edit or revert what someone posted there? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:42, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

@LtPowers: I'd be happy to work with you to make it more intelligible that I live and work in the region of the South Island of New Zealand that is officially named by the New Zealand government agency exactly as I have named it there. (I also internally linked to the two of our regions that cover the same geographical area as the official name). --118.93nzp (talk) 21:55, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

This is English Wikivoyage, It would be reasonable to provide a translation or description of place names that are not likely to be familiar with many of our users and contributors. It would also be reasonable to include the local region name preferred by the user, in case it is understood by the reader. It would be polite/civil to ask the editor to provide a translation/explanation before reverting. Assume good faith. It helps keeps the feet away from the mouth. This is also my interpretation of LtPowers' comment above. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:00, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I broadly agree.

This is the entry (the only one for New Zealand) at the time it was deleted:

New Zealand

South Island

118.93nzp - Te Tau Ihu (o Te Waka-a-Māui) or the "Top of the South" (not a translation)

I don't wish to go into the nature of my job or pinpoint my own and my family members regional connections but the local English name for the area is the "Top of the South" - even though that is not a translation of the official name. I've doubly internally linked the official name of my region to our two relevant Wikivoyage regions so as to provide a "description", Peter. I'd certainly welcome any concrete advice on how to make this clearer without adopting the ugly and inaccurate names of English martial heroes from a couple of hundred years ago. Coming as you do, from the "Rainbow nation", I'm sure you understand my request for a little cultural sensitivity here... --118.93nzp (talk) 06:37, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Personally I don't much care what you put on that page. I'm mildly curious about the officialness of this name, so I'd be interested in a link or citation for that, but it's not important. What I don't understand at all is why you hyperlinked "Te" to Marlborough and the rest of the name to Nelson. That seems completely weird to me, so I'd be interested in your explanation. Then perhaps we can help to make your political statement in a more comprehensible way. Nurg (talk) 10:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Sub-optimal venue for important policy discussion

I am concerned that User talk:Saqib is an unsatisfactory location for important policy discussions.

This is because that venue is not open to all editors, since Saqib often summarily removes (rather than archives) comments that he does not like.

For example, in this edit, Saqib removed material directly germane to his own Rfc. This is the material that was removed (one comment is retained for the context of the excision):

By the way, I am wondering which of the Wikivoyage policies "prohibits publishing of personal information and indirectly also commenting on them". It is embarrassing that a user who intentionally used personal information in a really bad context is protected by such policy. I have not seen the contentious edit, though. I don't know what exactly Saqib published, but I have to say that the threat looked really bad. Let's sit and giggle! --Alexander (talk) 13:57, 24 November 2013 (UTC) Although a sensible and well thought out policy, I am not aware that w:WP:DOX has ever been adopted (or, indeed, referenced in prior discussions on the English languages Wikivoyage). I'm also not aware that w:WP:DOX is mandated by the WMF. Nobody has ever provided any evidence that myself (or Alice or Frank or Tony) have ever intentionally damaged any article in mainspace (or template or policy). The disruption to improving our travel guides has been caused by name calling and "playing the proposer rather than the proposal" in policy discussions - this going as far as blocking and proposing to ban all four on specious and trumped up charges. Of course, many editors on the periphery of resistance to style and syntax changes find personality politics interesting and absorbing and may become obsessed with conspiracy theories and sockpuppet allegations, leading to reduced time for them to make more productive edits. This, however, is their voluntary pastime and diversion and should not be interfered with unnecessarily. It is also far better to have these obsessions carried out "on-wiki" lest they develop in an even more malignant manner "off-wiki". However, when their obsessions leads to edit warring and attempting to drive away and harass bona fide editors, that should be stopped - if not voluntarily, then by administrator action. Screenshot of EN Wikivoyage admin Saqib's actions regarding his own user talk page Atsirlin: Saqib was correctly warned, in my view, not to harass editors by publishing or threatening to publish personal information about editors on WMF projects. The fact that he himself has abused the additional tools given to him as an admin and hidden this warning from view (rather than deleting it or archiving it as an embarrassment) may be seen as reprehensible. (Equally, and giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming good faith, it may have been just a technical error on his part.) It would have been better if he had called for the warning admin - or a neutral third party - to hide the formal warning from view. (At this stage, I think it better that he unhide the formal warning he has hidden and ask for more neutral assistance). That said, I have no wish to restrict Saqib's editing (this project should be in the business of encouraging and educating bona fide editors, not driving them away or blocking them unnecessarily) - other than that he conform with explicit WV policies in future and not continue to abuse admin tools. --118.93nzp (talk) 14:13, 24 November 2013 (UTC) I realised it was a mistake on my part so I've nothing to say in my defence and I'm ready to voluntarily give up my admin tools incase a proposal emerge. --Saqib (talk) 14:55, 24 November 2013 (UTC) I don't think you're the worst admin here by a long stretch, Saqib, and I'm sure you'll grow wiser and less ignorant as you continue to edit. As long as you stop trying to edit and hide other's words (without a good reason justified by policy) I don't see any reason to remove your extra janitorial equipment. Please just confine their use to combat vandalism rather than enhancing your position in content or policy disputes. My suggestion is that we metaphorically shake hands and each go away a little wiser from this experience. If it will help you understand what may be a puzzling situation with Alice, Frank, Tony and myself and move on to more productive concerns, I'm still happy to phone you right now if you will e-mail me (in strict confidence) your land line phone number. --118.93nzp (talk) 15:04, 24 November 2013 (UTC) I haven't received an email from you and I do request that you stop using the " 118 & co. " construction as an explicit and continuing allegation of sockpuppetry. Nobody else has my password and I make my own editorial decisions. Please also re-read my comments above. I have not requested that you be de-sysopped. --118.93nzp (talk) 15:14, 24 November 2013 (UTC) It does seem strange that you should request comments here in an Rfc and then selectively remove comments that you don't like. --118.93nzp (talk) 15:29, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I should also like the double lie that I (or Alice or Frank or Tony) have ever called for him to be blocked, banned or summarily de-sysopped, redacted.

Although wounds are still raw, I feel it likely that Saqib will be more circumspect about "outing" editors in future and I would like to see blocks and bans used the way we used to instead - as a very last resort and only when warnings and education have patently failed.

I do believe that Saqib needs to stop his regrettable tendencies towards censoring others civilly and lawfully expressed opinions, but that is no reason to ban him from improving our articles.

In short, it would be turning a comedy into a tragedy if Saqib or anyone else thought they needed to resign over what, ultimately, is a matter of editor education and policy clarification.

--118.93nzp (talk) 22:53, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

How do we know if a nominee is sufficiently familiar with the project policies?

For that matter, how does anyone know whether they understand the policies well enough to be an effective admin and avoid too many blunders? At present, if I am not mistaken, it is up to the supporters to assess the nominee by previous behaviour, which is inherently only partly relevant, as they have not yet had the opportunity to show their colours in the more tricky aspects of admin work, and up to the nominee to assess their own familiarity with the policies. With the added complications of WMF policies which apply though they are not mentioned on WV, and the continuing changes and developments in policy both on WV and in WMF, this can be a bit of a minefield. Assume good faith, and When in doubt, ask, are useful blunder-avoidance strategies, but not always effective. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:15, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, questions are asked to assess understanding of policies. However, I would hate to see us get to the point of 30 questions like some RFAs there. --Rschen7754 06:36, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

With that being said, this was a tempest in a teapot, in my opinion, since several admins thought that such behavior was inappropriate (and Nurg came to the same conclusion independently). --Rschen7754 06:38, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I would propose that new administrators begin with a probation period, which I would measure in number of edits rather than chronologically. At the end of that period, one of three things would happen:

1. the new administrator, having demonstrated adequate knowledge of policy and responsible use of the tools, continues in his role,
2. the new administrator, having behaved in an utterly irresponsible way, is desysopped, or
3. the new administrator, having made one or more significant mistakes but having generally acted in good faith, is counselled by other admins as to the policies or procedures he'd neglected or misinterpreted and the probation period is extended.

With all due respect to Saqib, the suboptimal degree of familiarity with policy, and minor but frankly annoying errors in judgment, that characterized his tenure as administrator even before this incident demonstrate to me that he'd have benefitted from a procedure such as described in option #3.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 09:55, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Who would determine if "the new administrator, having behaved in an utterly irresponsible way, is desysopped"? --Rschen7754 09:56, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

A consensus of current active non-probationary administrators would make that determination, I imagine. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 09:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Frankly, I think that desysopping would happen far less often than the other two possibilities; most users who would behave irresponsibly would likely be weeded out during the nomination process without the switches ever having been flipped. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 10:02, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, I would agree that we should tighten up the adminship process a bit, for the reasons stated. I do think that even if this incident hadn't happened, there is a significant chance that he might have lost adminship through some other incident. Perhaps a temporary/permanent sort of deal like I went through may be worth considering. --Rschen7754 10:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Precisely, but rather than having to be re-nomimated for permanent adminship whenever someone gets around to it, the process would happen automatically after a certain number of edits. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 10:08, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the default should be retaining permanent adminship unless there are significant objections. --Rschen7754 10:11, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I like where this is going, but I think it would be good to hear other editors' thoughts on the matter. I've added a pointer to this thread on Wikivoyage:Requests for comment. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 10:13, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

It sounds reasonable, concurrent with making some policies clearer and perhaps changing some. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:31, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Additionally, regarding scenario #3, I would argue that a limit be placed on the number of probation extensions that a prospective permanent admin is allowed. Good faith or not, some people just aren't cut out for the job. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 11:07, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest no more than two, after which they couldn't be nominated again for at least a year. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:13, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Though one could argue that this would naturally happen by itself as people wouldn't be willing to keep extending indefinitely. --Rschen7754 11:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I'm not a huge fan of the whole probationary thing - if someone requires a probationary period to see if they'll be a good admin then they were probably nominated prematurely, and I suspect people will be really hesitant to de-sysop someone who went through a successful nomination. Why not just require that nominations include links to several revisions made by the user in policy discussions that demonstrate that the nominee understands consensus building and exercises good judgement? -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:59, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

First of all, Ryan, regarding "people [being] really hesitant to de-sysop someone who went through a successful nomination": as I said above, of the three possible scenarios, de-sysopping would probably happen least often. In fact, I would wager that it wouldn't happen any more often than it's happened in our community thus far—and, with the exception of various incidents involving IB, no one in the history of this project has ever been stripped of their admin tools involuntarily. Also, what your objection neglects is that under my proposal, the very definition of "a successful nomination" will have changed: it will no longer end with "congratulations, welcome aboard"; it will end with "okay, we'll give you a try for x amount of time and then we'll see what happens". I bet that if voters go into the nomination process with that in mind, they'll be more likely to make an objective decision when it comes time to audit the probationary admin.

Secondly, my issue with your counterproposal is that "several revisions made by the user in policy discussions" isn't a large enough sample set to really determine how competent an administrator would be. For example, if I had a crystal ball when Saqib was nominated and I could foresee all the decisions he'd eventually make as an admin, I'd very likely have opposed his nomination as premature. However, enough of his decisions were good that, if his nominator had linked to a half-dozen random diffs, it could easily have been made to look like he'd be an exemplary administrator. This is especially true because any editor who nominates a fellow editor as an admin, ipso facto, is going to be biased in favor of supporting his nomination (or else why go to the trouble?)

I really think the probationary period is the right way to go. At worst, it's an extraneous but harmless extra step; at best, it will prevent situations like this one from occurring.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that's correct, AndreCarrotflower - especially if it leads to clearly signposted and documented revocation procedures. --118.93nzp (talk) 20:06, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Also worth mentioning is that even if they have doubts about a nominee's qualifications, in order to avoid hurt feelings editors under the current setup are often reluctant to oppose their nomination. I know for a fact that I held my nose and voted support on that basis several times. Therefore, the results are often skewed in favor of supporting the nomination when the rest of the community may, in reality, actually have doubts about whether the nominee is truly qualified.

Under my proposal, those who may be skeptical will know that any problems with a newbie admin will be addressed and will have to be rectified before s/he is taken on to our admin team on a permanent basis. In return, nominees would be given a chance to prove themselves and assuage any doubts others may have, and would also be assured that in all but the most egregious of cases, any mistakes they may make will be dealt with in a way that seeks to educate, rather than penalize, them.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:31, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I like the proposals, particularly if they let a new admin hand back the tools without loss of face. These are usually people who have already spent a lot of time on WV, and it would be good if people could return quietly to being editors. AlasdairW (talk) 22:51, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest we make two changes to policy.

Firstly, (like Ryan hints at) we say nominations should be accompanied by evidence of janitorial tasks and meaningful contribution to policy discussions over a period of time. This may help with the premature nom issue.

Secondly, we make the resignation process more pleasant - amending our policy to say "Not everyone is cut-out to be a administrator. If you find that your fingers are calloused from the hours with the mop in hand, we'd love you to stay around as just a contributor. Just let a bureaucrat know, and you can go back to normal editing and pretend it was all a bad dream". --Inas (talk) 03:33, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Both suggestions seem eminently sensible to me. --118.93nzp (talk) 04:04, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Ending administrator privileges

Swept in from the pub

Wikivoyage:Administrators#Ending_administrator_privileges currently states Unused high-privilege user accounts are a security risk. For this reason, administrators who don't use their user accounts for two years will be notified by email and their privileges will be revoked. Administrators who know they don't have the time or interest to continue as admins should request to have their privileges revoked voluntarily.

Isn't two years rather long?

The same section continues: Administrators who abuse their privileges can have those privileges revoked via nomination.

Where should that nomination be made, please? --61.29.8.41 10:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC) —The preceding comment was added by Alice (talk • contribs) 0:52, 24 January 2014 UTC

At the admin nominations page, not that it's ever been needed. Powers ^(talk) 13:29, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Powers. --61.29.8.41 22:40, 24 January 2014 (UTC) —The preceding comment was added by Alice (talk • contribs) 22:40, 24 January 2014 UTC

This isn't suspicious at all... --Rschen7754 20:22, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Sixty one, do you have some special admin in mind, perchance? ϒpsilon (talk) 21:00, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Two in particular who no longer participate actively here on the English version of Wikivoyage.

Personally I think the inactivity period of 2 years is excessive if we are really concerned about security risks. I also feel that where the same admin uses more than one named account to perform functions that can only be performed by admins, unless there are very special reasons, then each account should be clearly linked to the others on the user page.

Before taking this any further, I would like a clear consensus to develop as to whether two years of inactivity is an appropriate period or whether it should be shortened. After all, if the "defrocked" admin feels like becoming active again, it should be a relatively trivial matter for them to become nominated again. --61.29.8.41 22:34, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Before taking this any further - Ypsilon, why bother. Let us move on and not feed the attention-craving drama queen here. PrinceGloria (talk) 22:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

For the record, our previous 3-month inactivity level (which I don't think ever resulted in a de-sysop) was lengthened by consensus to 2 years in here. Powers ^(talk) 01:53, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again, Powers, that's helpful. —The preceding comment was added by 61.29.8.41 (talk • contribs) —The preceding comment was added by Alice (talk • contribs)

It seems that the probability of a security breach is low and the consequences of a security breach are reversible, therefore the security risk is quite minor. Unless someone counters that opinion, two years seems fine to me. Perhaps the wording about the security risk could be altered to make it clear that the risk is minor. Nurg (talk) 03:28, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

The global standard is 2 years, though it is set to try and be longer than most wikis' rules, if they exist. It's fairly easy to get a steward to desysop in an emergency. With that being said, when/if this wiki gets local CU/OS, a security breach of one of those accounts could be a serious issue, and a stricter standard would be necessary. But that's for another day. --Rschen7754 03:35, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Seems to be something that isn't actually an issue in practice. I guess if an admin account ever did get compromised then the policy may need to be reexamined, although the 'worst case scenario' doesn't seem particularly damaging. Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:29, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Leaving aside the security issue, do we really think that our policies change so little over a 2 year period that inactive admins will still be entirely familiar with them? --61.29.8.41 10:16, 25 January 2014 (UTC) —The preceding comment was added by Alice (talk • contribs) 10:16, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

The policy wording makes it purely a security issue. Is there any reason conflate it with policy familiarity which also appears not to be an problem? Andrewssi2 (talk) 13:09, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks like a solution looking for a problem, and the problem doesn't exist. Yes, our policies actually do "change so little over a two-year period". There's a very strong status quo bias, even the most trivial change (like deleting empty skeleton pages imported from another wiki) immediately gets calls to re-create empty skeletons and proposals like {{listing|wikipedia=...}} exactly deadlock after long discussion and die. No reason a returning admin shouldn't be able to be up to speed in a minute or two. K7L (talk) 18:05, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I think there is a lot of truth in what you write, K7L. In one way the status quo bias is comforting and useful, but you are certainly right in implying that this bias does create a duplicate penalty where search engines are concerned. The inability to make needed changes has recently been addressed by Ryan in a discussion he stated on consensus. However, that discussion does seem confused about the difference between overturning and reversing an existing consensus (such as thankfully happened with front-linking URLs and that is still awaiting a rational compromise with linking to tertiary sources such as our sister project Wikipedia where the topic is out of scope for a travel guide) and not allowing the normal wiki freedom of creation/modification where no consensus to prohibit or clear policy already exists.

Going back to my original 2 questions, Powers has answered one definitively and it seems that, at the moment I am the only one in favour of reducing the period from the maximum of 2 years allowed by the WMF. --61.29.8.41 22:46, 25 January 2014 (UTC) —The preceding comment was added by Alice (talk • contribs) 22:46, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Consultation on the creation of a separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS

Swept in from the pub

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all,

I'm preparing a change in who can edit sitewide CSS/JS pages. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which are executed in the browser of all readers and editors.) Currently all administrators are able to edit these pages, which poses a serious and unnecessary security risk. Soon, a dedicated, smaller user group will take over this task. Your community will be able to decide who belongs in this group, so this should mean very little change for you. You can find out more and provide feedback at the consultation page on Meta. If you are involved in maintaining CSS/JS code, or policymaking around adminship requests, please give it a look!

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 08:45, 12 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)

I looked at this yesterday. The current situation is that the community elects whomever it wants as admins, and the admins all get the block button, the delete button, the edit-Javascript button, etc. In the future, the community will still elect whomever it wants to do these things, but the edit-Javascript button will be assigned separately from the block, delete, etc. buttons. From the POV of the bureaucrats, you'll tick two boxes instead of one if you want someone to have all of the former rights.

A sensible approach (and one that many non-technical admins at other wikis seem to be hoping to take advantage of) is to assign the screw-up-sitewide-Javascript button only to the people that we want to have it, rather than everyone. There's no rule against all the admins at a wiki having it (or against non-admins having it, for that matter, if you find someone who will do technical work but doesn't want to be bothered with requests to block vandals or delete pages), but it makes more sense to only assign it where it will be useful.

On a practical level, we should probably make a list of the current admins (all of whom currently have this ability) who want to continue working in this area, so that the bureaucrats can add them as soon as the software is in place (end of this month?). For the future, maybe we should add a few lines at Wikivoyage:Administrators to describe this; we can probably take text from m:Technical administrators. I don't think we need to create a complicated process for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

As an admin on this project, I have never yet had the need to edit sitewide javascript, and don't have the skills to do anything useful with it anyway, so not having the button would make no difference to me. As is the case on most WMF projects, we elect our admins by consensus, and give the bit to those we trust. So far it has worked pretty well. Anyone we trust to be an admin, we trust to edit the js if they find it necessary. I suggest that anyone who is an admin on Wikivoyage and actually wants the bit can be given it. Presumably this will be logged for all to see in the usual way. Conversely, if anyone wants the js bit, without the mop and bucket, they could apply in the same way as for admin. I don't see any advantage in separating the process. Just my opinion. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 20:25, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

For me this would be great! I'm not active enough to be a "real" admin (and I don't think I should be), but I do have a high degree of proficiency with html/css/js. I'd love to be able to fix some issues I've noticed on the homepage, as well as improving its mobile experience. --ButteBag (talk) 13:42, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

New user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS

Swept in from the pub

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all!

To improve the security of our readers and editors, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which contain code that is executed in the browsers of users of the site.) A new user group, interface-admin, has been created. Starting four weeks from now, only members of this group will be able edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage).

You can learn more about the motivation behind the change here.

Please add users who need to edit CSS/JS to the new group (this can be done the same way new administrators are added, by stewards or local bureaucrats). This is a dangerous permission; a malicious user or a hacker taking over the account of a careless interface-admin can abuse it in far worse ways than admin permissions could be abused. Please only assign it to users who need it, who are trusted by the community, and who follow common basic password and computer security practices (use strong passwords, do not reuse passwords, use two-factor authentication if possible, do not install software of questionable origin on your machine, use antivirus software if that's a standard thing in your environment).

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 13:08, 30 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)

This user right can be assigned now. Special:ListUsers/interface-admin will have the list once anyone has been assigned to it. I think (from the above discussion) that the sensible thing to do is for any interested admin to go to Wikivoyage:Administrator nominations and post a simple request for it, ideally during the next week or two. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

User:Atsirlin, User:Globe-trotter, User:Ikan Kekek, User:LtPowers, User:Nurg, User:Pbsouthwood, User:RolandUnger, User:Saqib, User:Shaundd, User:WOSlinker, User:Wrh2:  This means you (and maybe a couple of other admins, too).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Since this new group was created to improve security, just wondering if we should keep with the 2 years of inactivity for removal as per the admin group, or if it should be a bit tighter, removal after 1 years inactivty? -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:39, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I do not have the skills to make use of this user right, and will not be applying for it, but I agree with WOSlinker on the 1 year inctivity removal. Getting it back should also not be a problem after removal for inactivity if the user comes back and is active again. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 04:49, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree completely with Peter. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:09, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Inactivity check (mid-2018)

Inactive administrators

These accounts seem to have been inactive for more than two years:

• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Cjensen~enwikivoyage
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jc8136
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Nicholasjf21
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sapphire
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sertmann
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Thehelpfulone
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Tsandell
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Felix505
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Bill-on-the-Hill

and these are borderline inactive, and might benefit from a friendly note:

• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/JamesA
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sumone10154
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Texugo
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ravikiran_r
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/RegentsPark
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Querent
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/JuliasTravels
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Gorilla_Jones
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ClausHansen
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Cacahuate

BTW, since m:Inactive admins happens to match our two-year limit, we might want to remove our wiki from the list at m:Admin activity review/Local inactivity policies#Wikivoyages and let the stewards deal with it after we've processed this list manually. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:20, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: Just wondering if you've seen this? There a few inactive admins to sort out. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:40, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

I have seen it but honestly haven't made it a priority. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:14, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

So it might be an idea to think about desysopping these people, then? I am happy to take responsibility for messaging the following admins (using the template here) whom I have found to be inactive for two years, and for reporting back on any replies that I receive:

(Desysopped admins are struckthrough)

• User:Bill-on-the-Hill - desysopped 2018-11-09
• User:Cacahuate - desysopped 2018-11-09
• User:Cjensen~enwikivoyage - desysopped 2018-11-09
• User:Felix505 - desysopped 2018-11-09
• User:JamesA - desysopped 2018-11-13
• User:Jc8136 - desysopped 2018-11-09
• User:Nicholasjf21 - desysopped 2018-11-09
• User:Sapphire - desysopped 2018-11-09
• User:Sertmann - desysopped 2018-11-09
• User:Thehelpfulone - user as good as accepted desysopping in 2015 (see below)
• User:Tsandell - desysopped 2018-11-09

But I can't send such a message if there isn't the commitment from a bureaucrat to do the deed.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:40, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

I could take care of it. I think we should probably allow 2 weeks' notice. But before you do this, are you sure we want to include Sapphire, given her historic role with Wikitravel? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:40, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer! Um, I don't know who Sapphire is, only that she hasn't edited since November 2014. Would it be better not to contact her? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:46, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm noticing some of the same names being contacted as last time we did the inactivity check. I think it's a violation of the spirit of the policy for inactive admins to claim they'd prefer to continue having the sysop tools, only to then lapse into inactivity again almost immediately after no more than one or a few token edits. What do you think about some kind of probationary period, where inactive admins who reply in the affirmative to these emails have a certain length of time to prove the sincerity of their intention to return to active status, after which time the sysop tools are pulled? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:00, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Thehelpfulone replied to the last notification (2015) with "Thanks for letting me know!", but didn't edit at all afterwards. I would take that as permission to desysop him/her.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:10, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

And I agree with Andre's idea. How about a probationary period of one month? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:13, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Also, the deadline I specified was 7 November 2018.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:25, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but I thought Sapphire was Evan's wife or girlfriend. Maybe I'm confusing her with someone else. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:29, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I guess I agree with the proposed probationary period, unless we're informed of extenuating circumstances that would warrant a shortish extension (no more than 3 months, I guess). Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:30, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't agree that Evan's wife/girlfriend, or even Evan himself, need to be exempted from the two-year inactivity rule. He's obviously due a certain degree of respect as our founder, but by the same token, I think it's safe to say that he lost his w:Benevolent dictator for life status when he sold us out to Internet Brands for a quick buck and then promptly disappeared from any meaningful involvement in the community, and I also think it's safe to say that even aside from the IB thing, his legacy as head of this community could objectively be described as "mixed". I have no bone to pick with him, but I don't see why, at this point in time and for these purposes, we would need to regard him differently than any other inactive user. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:38, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Let's await a consensus on this. Also, isn't the problem with inactivity the potential for hacking? Surely, Evan remains a trusted user, although he's pretty inactive here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:01, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Hacking is certainly what I'm concerned about. Evan has been active in the past 7 months, and while I agree (for reasons to do with hacking) neither he nor his relations should be exempt from any policy, it doesn't seem too likely that it will need to be applied to him. I think we can treat Sapphire like any other user, and I will send the messages to her tomorrow morning UK time if there are no objections overnight.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 22:17, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Very minimally active, though the point of my comment was not necessarily that he should be desysopped now. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

In any event, Evan's userpage identifies his wife as User:(WT-en) Maj, who apparently has been inactive for so long that she never even bothered to port her username over to Wikivoyage at the time of the move. Also, I took the liberty of going through some of the deleted revisions of Sapphire's userpage, and it appears that he self-identifies as male, so it's not Maj under a different username. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:33, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Right. I had a false memory. Thundering, please go ahead and contact Sapphire. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:38, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

User:Thehelpfulone should have been desysopped in 2015. I see no reason not to desysop now and will do so. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:18, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Oops, I guess ThunderingTyphoons!' question about the length of the probationary period got lost in the shuffle. I think a better way to go would be a longer probation period (say, three months) combined with more stringent requirements vis-à-vis the edits themselves (say, at least ten edits in mainspace totaling at least 1000 bytes collectively). I'm not married to those numbers in particular, but those are the lines along which I was thinking.

Regarding vulnerability to hacking being the main reason why we desysop inactive admins, I don't know that I agree with that. In my view, when the community confers administrator status on a user, that's not only an expression of trust in that user's judgment on the part of the community, but also a pledge on the part of the user to commit him- or herself to this community in return: not only to make good use of the sysop tools, but also, in a more general sense, a reaffirmation of their intent to keep building our travel guide into the best in the world. In other words, admins should be prepared to be here for the long haul. As Majnoona said all those years ago in the very first entry on this talk page, admin status is not a feather in one's cap: it's a responsibility, even a burden. But what function do sysop tools that are going unused have, other than feathers in the cap of those inactive admins? I know that in the vast majority of cases they're doing no harm to the site, but all the same it seems like a violation of the spirit of the policy of what we want being an admin to mean.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:17, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, your second paragraph kind of chimes in with another thought I had. The project page says "Wikivoyage has 57 administrators." which while technically true, belies the true number of active admins who are on here most days, and who are most likely to help out new users, contribute to discussions like this one, deal with vandals, and do other admin-y things. Looking at the full list, I put that number at no more than 15, and that's including users like Alexander who mainly edit on other wikis.

I guess the only issue I have with giving a three month probationary period is it just drags out the process, increasing the likelihood that we will lose track of time or forget that we're supposed to be making a decision. The amount of discussions we have that just go nowhere because it takes so long that everyone moves on is also, I suggest, why we have a list of 11 inactive admins (rather than three or four) who need to be contacted now. Not ascribing blame, that's just how things are here, and anything we can do to speed things up should be tried.

Plus, I'd have thought somebody's true commitment, once restated, would be obvious within a month. If they're editing every day or at least a few times a week, they're back. If you hardly see them in the first month, unless they tell us they're going to be away or busy for a bit, what are the odds of them coming back for probationary month #2 or #3?

And at the end of the day, if we do remove the admin status of an inactive user who actually does come back as a regular at some point in the future, it's only a matter of Ikan (or soon, yourself!) pressing a button to make them an admin again.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:31, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Maybe, when we do these inactivity checks, we should list all the active admins first and then deal with the others instead of listing the inactive ones. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:14, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

It's November 8th, time to pull the trigger. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:24, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes. And for the record, I haven't had a single response.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:50, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Nor have any of them edited to "reset the clock" - I just checked.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:58, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll take care of this later tonight. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:31, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

[unindent]: I've desysopped all the folks on that list except for User:JamesA. His last edit was on 12 November, 2016, which is 3 days less than 2 years ago. So maybe to play things by the book, I should wait 3 days before desysopping him. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:51, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks; it's down to about 50 administrators now, but the problem is that the Administrators page doesn't seem to be updating. It currently says 56 administrators. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:35, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Did you just volunteer to edit it? :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:05, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

That doesn't get edited manually. The raw text reads "Wikivoyage has {{NUMBERINGROUP:sysop}} administrators", with the template calling from Special:ListAdmins. At any rate, it appears to have refreshed itself between then and now; Wikivoyage:Administrators is showing 47 admins, and ListAdmins doesn't show any of the recently desysopped people from above. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:31, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Yep, it's working now. It probably refreshes only every day or so, since mostly there's not much need for it to update speedily. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:45, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: Sorry, I didn't mention in the first place that the number displayed is done automatically. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:03, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Inactive bureaucrats

What about bureaucrats, though? Do we ever "desysop" them? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:45, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

We'd need to request intervention from a steward to do that. Certainly there is a case to be made for doing so, as some of our bureaucrats haven't edited in five years. K7L (talk) 15:48, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

And according to WV:Bureaucrats, the bureaucrat position "shouldn't get into the wrong hands". Sounds like even more of a security risk than administrators. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:00, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, this is needed just as much as desysopping. By my reckoning, there is only one bureaucrat who hasn't edited for years, and that's User:Hansm. He hasn't contributed to any WMF wiki since 2014, and should be taken off the bureaucrat list immediately. With the agreement of other users, and particularly actual bureaucrats, I will request a steward to do that within the next few hours.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:25, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

• I support taking this action. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:27, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

• User:EvanProdromou has made six edits since 2013, none of them to mainspace travel content; most of these posts are merely responses to comments noticing his absence. User:Texugo has made two edits since 2016. User:Hansm hasn't edited since 2013. Wikivoyage:Administrators#Ending administrator privileges draws a clear line at two years inactivity; the wording of Wikivoyage:Bureaucrats is a bit less clear, but there is an inference that a bureaucrat is an "administrator in good standing". I'd support removal of bureaucrat status (which is basically their ability to give 'sysop' or 'bot' status to others) on grounds of inactivity. K7L (talk) 17:09, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: K7L, I agree: we need to take into account not only how long it has been since someone made an edit, but also how active they are/have been. If someone made only 2 edits over the past 2 years, that's almost as good as making no edits at all. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:17, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Yep. And perhaps some consistency with admins too. I was going to suggest that at the next round of desysopping, we follow Andre's suggestion above testing an admin's commitment with a trial period. If they fail to return to regular contributions within that period, they are desysopped. It shouldn't be okay just to post a talk page note of "I'd rather remain an admin / 'crat. Thanks! Bye!" and then disappear for another extended period. Desysopped / debureaucrated individuals can always be reinstated if and when they return. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:40, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, and I would again say that in Evan's case, simply being the founder of Wikitravel should not confer any special immunity from the two-year inactivity rule. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:35, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Since April 2015, Evan has published 3 edits, at the time of this writing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:57, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

April 2015 isn't crucial. 2 years ago is 11/11/2016. I support de-Bureaucratizing the folks who haven't posted in 2 years. Other stuff should probably be discussed separately, even though it's related. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:36, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Request made. All the other Wikivoyage Bureaucrats have made edits to Wikivoyage this year, and therefore, are not likely to be threats to the site, which is the most important issue. I'm sympathetic to the idea that being an Admin or Bureaucrat implies continued edits and participation in policy and organizational discussions, but we're all volunteers here, so many of us may be unable to give priority to this avocation for some period of time and possibly come back, or not, and I don't think we really need to spend time or effort extending the desysopping beyond accounts that have been inactive for over 2 years. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:07, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

I understand the motivation, and since I was originally a pretty strong advocate of the rule, I'm happy to stand by it. I agree, unused accounts with high levels of access are a security risk. --EvanProdromou (talk) 20:02, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for giving your opinion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:10, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

User:Vituzzu has not acted, so I just posted a request on User:Bsadowski1's Meta-Wiki user talk page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:02, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

That has to go to m:SRP, which is the official request page. --Rschen7754 03:34, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I would have never known that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Request posted there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:12, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

It's been taken care of. Wikivoyage now officially has 8 bureaucrats. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Good news. That admin/bureaucrat check was a long process. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikivoyage now officially has 8 bureaucrats... but we still have as many pressing the virtual "snooze" button and dozing off for another two years as we have bureaucrats actively editing or carrying out any administrative function. In future, should the inactivity requirements be stricter for bureaucrats, given that the ability to issue or revoke sysop flags is something which could do damage in the wrong hands? K7L (talk) 04:19, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I would say the rule for bureaucrats should be at least one usage of the sysop tools (i.e. deleting a page or file, blocking or banning a user, protecting a page, editing an abuse filter, granting admin status to or withdrawing admin status from other users) in the past two years, rather than one of any kind of edit. Frankly, if it were up to me, that would be the rule for admins too. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:56, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

We don't need to spend time on this. Unless there's a security issue, let's move on and spend time on something else. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:58, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Just removed the page from my watchlist. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:02, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Inactive patrollers

Hopefully this can be very quick, but there's two who could have their status removed.

The first is me, since I'm an administrator and I don't have the ability to remove the status myself. Should be pretty quick.

The other one is User:Rubbish Computer, who hasn't made any edits since late December 2016, so their 2 years will soon be completed.

However, is there much of a security risk with patrollers? Is it necessary to remove their status after 2 years? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Waste of time. There's no security risk.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:07, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Okay --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:10, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Difference between Patrollers and Admins

I was thinking of nominating a Patroller for Admin, but before I broach that topic, I though I would make sure I know what the differences are between Patroller and Admin. I guess Patrollers have a rollback button for a series of edits but can't block users' posting privileges or change anyone's status. Is that right? Anything else I'm overlooking? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:25, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Patrollers can operate the Recent changes patrol and patrol edits, which admins can do as well. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 05:14, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

By the way, if you're thinking about the user I believe you're thinking about, I think he's a good choice and would support. He has often reverted vandalism and, therefore, would be a good choice for admin. Like ARR8, he is trustworthy. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 05:18, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Is there anything else Patrollers can do other than patrolling recent changes or doing anything else an auto-confirmed user can do? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:06, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

According to Special:UserGroupRights, the only additional things a patroller can do is review changes and rollback. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 07:24, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:36, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: Autoconfirmed users can't patrol changes. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:15, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Inactivity check (November 2019)

We do this inactivity check once a year or thereabouts, and it looks like our admin team has been uncommonly dedicated of late (give yourselves a pat on the back, folks!) because this time around there are only three names on the list of admins facing a desysopping:

• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ClausHansen
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Gorilla_Jones
• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Torty3

Notably, I have not yet sent the customary notification to their user talk pages because I'm unsure of the wording of the sample letter posted at Wikivoyage:Administrators. It says "should you wish to retain your status, simply come on back and make an edit... that resets the clock", yet the last time we did this, we seemed to be moving toward a consensus that "it's a violation of the spirit of the policy for inactive admins to claim they'd prefer to continue having the sysop tools, only to then lapse into inactivity again almost immediately after no more than one or a few token edits" and that restoration of the sysop tools to formerly inactive admins should be contingent on a genuine "intent to keep building our travel guide into the best in the world". I continue to have the same opinion I did at that time, and would like to clarify where the community stands on that issue before we go making promises to these three users that we may or may not intend to keep.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:07, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

This is really a security issue. I'd keep things simple and use the existing message. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:36, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Let's tweak it to sound something like this: "if you return to editing, that resets the clock." I agree that one edit every two years is not what keeps an admin in place. The current language encourages admins to make the rare edit to "reset the clock." --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:42, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Selfie City. Security is one part of the issue, but it's not the whole issue. Being an administrator entails a responsibility to contribute to the site. It's not just a "feather in the cap" that we give out to people we like. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:33, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

"Return to editing" is ambiguous. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as reinstating admin status is then at the discretion of the community and can reflect the actual state of things (i.e. an apparent intention to return to editing on at least a semi-regular basis) rather than rigidly applying a policy to the letter which allows for people to abuse the spirit of the offer (token editing, then lapsing). On the other hand, ambiguity could lead to disputes, and/or allow for bias to affect the judgements of those deciding whether or not to let someone stay an admin.

I would always argue on the side of clarity, to prevent future problems arising, and think it best that if the current policy is to change, then we should specify a minimum standard of what "return to editing" means. For instance, we could ask for a minimum number of edits, or for a regular editing pattern to be maintained over a significant period of time; I believe I proposed six weeks before, but it could equally be one month, or two months... --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:04, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Return to editing should mean at least a few edits a week over a period of several months, IMHO. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:21, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

February 2020

Let's get this solved.

It seems to me the thrust of the policy needs to be changed from "a single edit resets the clock" to "we require administrators to be at least semi-active." The notification should thus be sent post-factum, informing them that we have removed their administrator privileges, and that if they want to regain them, they will have to return to at least semi-regular editing:

Thanks for your service as a Wikivoyage administrator. As you may be aware, our Wikivoyage:Administrators policy indicates that administrators who have not edited on the English Wikivoyage in over two years should have their administrator flags removed. This is for account security purposes, not a reflection of a loss of trust or any disappointment.

As such, we have removed your administrator flag as of [today's date]. If you ever decide to return to Wikivoyage as an active editor, your administrator flag can be restored by request.

If you have any questions or concerns, let me know.

Thoughts?

By the way, to the three identified by Andre, we can add User:AHeneen, whose only edit since 2017 was to inform me that I could remove their docent status.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:50, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

At first, I frowned upon the idea of removing administrator status and then informing the former administrator that this status has been removed. However, on second thoughts, I think it's the right course of action. Therefore, I support your proposed adjustments to our practices in this area. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower, Ikan Kekek: Any thoughts? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:28, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry; as you can imagine, there a lot of things I'd intended to do over the past month or so that have fallen through the cracks. I think there's still some ambiguity around the exact definition of "return to Wikivoyage as an active editor", but rather than let this policy get bogged down trying to pin that down, I think it's reasonable to do as ThunderingTyphoons! suggested - namely, to send out those notices now and desysop these inactive admins immediately - and resolve the rest later. (More than likely, in fact, it will be a moot point; I think we've yet to see an admin who's come under threat of desysopping truly return to active editing.) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:47, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

By the way, while I obviously can't desysop anyone, I'm happy to distribute the message to the relevant talk pages and email addresses, as I have done before.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:01, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Just to clarify: We're talking about people who haven't "actively edited" for at least 2 years? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:19, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek - No. "Active editing" is the bar to clear if you want to be re-sysopped. As for being de-sysopped in the first place, AFAIK no changes to the status quo are proposed: any nonzero number of substantive edits within the past two years (meaning actual contributions to our content, as opposed to e.g. brief talk page messages acknowledging the desysop warning or, as AHeneen did, permitting the removal of docent status) remains sufficient to ward that off. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:35, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

(ThunderingTyphoons!, do I have that right?) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:39, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely right.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 20:04, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

OK. In that case, I don't really care whether we desysop them first and then contact them or if we contact them first and then in virtually every instance desysop them. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:27, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Done. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:20, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ One more thing. Should we explicitly make an exception for EvanProdromou? He's no longer active these days, but given that he was the one who founded this site in the first place, perhaps we can make an explicit exception for him because of that. If we don't make such an exception, it would only be a matter of time before his administrator privileges are threatened again. The dog2 (talk) 16:57, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this, as I'm sure it's likely to divide opinion.

For my part, I don't see any reason to treat Evan any differently; all he has to do is make an edit at least once every two years, which isn't a big ask (and something he has so far managed), and he keeps his admin privileges.

If he were to ever default on that, lose his admin flag, and subsequently decide to return to regular editing, I'm sure he'd be welcomed back with open arms and that restoring his flag would be both easy and uncontroversial. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:17, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

That's likely to be true of any of these folks. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:05, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Evan founded Wikitravel, of course, not this site, even though this site started with content from WT. Nurg (talk) 08:49, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Nurg - More precisely, Evan founded Wikitravel and then sold it out to mercenary commercial interests, leading directly to the defection of, and the creation of this site by, the German and Italian communities, as well as a whole host of problems for us at en: and the other communities who initially chose to stick it out with Internet Brands, which 12 years later we've still not completely sorted. By way of responding to TT and Ikan's assertion that "I'm sure he'd be welcomed back with open arms [as an active editor]" and "restoring his flag would be... uncontroversial", I agree with the former statement but very much disagree with the latter. I wouldn't go so far as to say he should be desysopped now, but status quo bias dictates that it should be more difficult for a person to gain sysop tools that they don't currently have than to keep sysop tools that they do already have. Should Evan ever lose the tools due to inactivity and express a desire to get them back, I think that questions regarding his trustworthiness and dedication to this community in light of his sale of Wikitravel to Internet Brands would most likely, and quite rightly, factor into our decision. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 11:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

If you rent a house, and your landlord sells up to a new landlord who later turns out to be an arsehole, is the old landlord responsible for the new landlord's behaviour? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:37, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

That's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. The ownership of rental property is by its very nature a for-profit venture. OTOH, Wikitravel was originally not-for-profit. And the act of selling a not-for-profit with a volunteer workforce to a private company who openly intends to draw financial gain off the back of said workforce's unpaid labor raises some pretty hefty ethical issues vis-à-vis the seller, regardless of whether a majority of said workforce ultimately chose to gloss over said ethical issues. The fact that Internet Brands had a terrible reputation certainly compounded matters, but that's not to say that if he'd sold to some other for-profit company with a sterling track record of competent website management there would have been no problem. IB's for-profit business model is the core of the issue, ethically speaking, not their bad behavior. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:14, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

This is all purely hypothetical at this point, though, so I'm going to drop the issue. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:17, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I just made a new user IP block-exempt

Hi guys. I just made User:南渔晚舟 [2] IP block-exempt as, according to a message received on my talk page, she is unable to edit Wikivoyage from the PRC. I'm assuming good faith on the part of both users, and am just giving you a heads up as it's a brand new user with 0 edits, but if anything turns out to be amiss there'll obviously be an extra step to take when blocking.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:20, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

User:瑞丽江的河水 was the user who alerted TT - this user is a sysop on Chinese Wikipedia and is extended-confirmed on English Wikipedia. The user who was made IP-block exempt has 3 edits on Meta, that's it. 82.3.185.12 17:49, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Should this page be archived?

Should this page be archived? 82.3.185.12 18:01, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessary at the moment. We've not yet reached a point where the page is difficult to navigate, nor is it rapidly growing longer. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:18, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Allowing global sysops on this wiki

Swept in from the pub

Hi, I propose allowing Global Sysops to work on this wiki. It is currently not enabled because the community has more than 10 admins/3 active sysops, but I strongly recommend that the community opt-in because they often help in combating spam and vandalism (eg GRP). As an en.wikibooks admin, I can attest to the work they do and have no issues with them at all. Thanks in advance, and please ping me if you need further input, since I don't watch this page.

P.S: Global sysops won't interfere with normal Wikivoyage matters (for instance they do not have access to Special:UserRights) - their role is codified in the policy page and is more or less handling spam or vandalism. This wiki can enact a global rights policy if needed. They'll only help you. Leaderboard (talk) 12:48, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Seems like a compelling argument. Was there ever a discussion in this community about prohibiting Global Sysops here? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:45, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

I support this. Thanks for bringing it up, Leaderboard. —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:02, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

I also think this is a good idea, particularly regarding vandals that are active on several projects simultaneously; just makes it easier to shut them down. Antandrus (talk) 16:10, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

I have to say that there's one specific global sysop who, if they had any administrative powers at Wikivoyage, I would likely leave the project. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 16:22, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Sure, why should we not allow global sysops clamping down vandalism here if they come across it? --Ypsilon (talk) 17:16, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

There's at least one global sysop, who I do not plan to name to protect their privacy, who from experience elsewhere I hold absolutely no trust in and do not think should be holding any mop-role. I am uncomfortable acting on projects where they hold such roles, and in particular find the relative opacity of global sysops (who tend to just dip in and out of a project rather than being consistently contactable on them) to outweigh the role's intentionally limited scope in terms of trust and communication, as it makes it difficult to discuss disputed or inappropriate actions. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 17:41, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet: If you have a genuine reason that a particular GS should not be operating here, your wiki can come up with a global rights policy that would require GS to stop acting if asked to by an admin (this is the case in en.wikibooks). Secondly, you can consider filing a Meta Request for Comments or contacting a steward - GS are held to a high standard and I'm aware of GS having their rights revoked for relatively minor misuse. This also applies to contact - at the very least you should be able to contact a GS at meta (and they are also required to have a user page). Leaderboard (talk) 18:26, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't expect a request to remove the relevant user's mop likely to pass, and I do expect one to be a clusterstorm I don't want to start. I'm not a local sysop, and I'm too drama-avoidant to ask one. I square those circles by just not participating on GS projects. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 18:39, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

To be clear: The difference would be that currently, stewards have the right to rollback edits and block accounts on this wiki, but the proposal is to allow another class of users who are not stewards but global sysops to rollback vandalism and spam, though they won't have the power to block any user. That seems OK to me. I would not want to lose Vaticidalprophet's participation, though. Is it that you don't believe one of the global sysops will restrict themselves to rolling back only vandalism and spam? I don't think it works for you to be opaque about who this individual is, do nothing about it, and just threaten to leave this project if we accept more help with spam and vandalism. I urge you to address what's concerning you by starting a thread on the most appropriate Wikivoyage talk page, which I suppose would be Wikivoyage talk:User rights nominations. You need to name the individual in question and provide some information about what they've done that's objectionable if you'd like admins on this site to assist you. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:50, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

You could also report any GS actions you see objectionable and let us discuss whether we agree. Then you don't have to take action at Meta yourself. Better yet, tell now what kind of objectionable things you think they might do. –LPfi (talk) 19:54, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

"Better yet, tell now what kind of objectionable things you think they might do" -- I'm concerned about a history of overly harsh/uncivil edit summaries and responses, and particularly of deploying those responses to edits that were closer to wording disputes or malformed but good-faith technical requests than to actual spamdalism. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 20:15, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

That kind of behavior can be a significant problem, but semi-accusing someone in public can be a problem, too. Would you be willing to e-mail more information to an admin? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:31, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

I emailed more info to an admin and got, paraphrased, "I can't do anything in email, talk publicly", which was when I made that comment. I have to confess to being a little frustrated by the appearance of ping-ponging, even though I know it's only an appearance. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 23:54, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind my correcting the record. I said I can't do anything by myself. A single admin does not constitute a consensus. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:46, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, what do you think a single admin can do, other than pledge to watch the edits of the global sysop in question? We try to keep things as transparent as possible on this site, except when dealing with matters of security that need to be kept private and hiding edits that violate privacy, contain threats or libel or certain kinds of vandalism. We don't discuss this kind of thing in private, but if it's considered harassment, I guess there should be a way to do that. Fellow admins, should we discuss this by email? What would you like to do? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:54, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

I should say, I retain a strong preference for airing this publicly and dealing with it openly. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:56, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: Airing an issue publicly is always the best approach, but the decision on this rests with Vaticidalprophet. The question is whether you believe, based on what VP has told you, that the issue with the specific sysop is sufficient to prevent us from giving global sysops the power to rollback vandalism and spam. I trust your judgment on this. If you want other opinions, though, then asking VP to permit you to send the email to other admins, or to post it here, would be the next step. Ground Zero (talk) 02:04, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

The thing is, I'm not sure. Vaticidalprophet, how would you like to proceed? I'd be willing to copy your emails and send them to some other admins for more opinions if you like (I don't think my hands would appreciate copying them and sending them to every one), but the easiest way to get the opinions of the community is definitely to air this publicly. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:42, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

I think that any single admin can be a second set of eyes, to look over the information and decide whether some further discussion or action might be appropriate. That might involve contacting other people (e.g., stewards or another global sysop), sharing a public opinion about whether the facts seems concerning to you individually, engaging the GS process about whether this person should continue to participate in that way, or other actions that seem appropriate based upon an independent evaluation of the facts.

We have had a problem with people (at other wikis) who get in trouble and then use selective quotations and links to incomplete discussions to discredit anyone who accuses them of bad behavior. Because of this, I think that "public trials" based on a single editor's concerns should be avoided when reasonably feasible. It is often helpful to get a second person's opinion before posting names publicly, and we need to remember that posts on public pages are on the internet forever. I appreciate Vaticidalprophet's restraint in this matter. I hope that we will in the future make it easier for editors to seek advice from the people they trust. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:17, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: A correction to a couple of your notes:

• "stewards have the right to rollback edits and block accounts on this wiki" - they technically can block accounts, but are not supposed to unless in the case of a serious emergency (such as a compromised account going rogue). If this proposal passes, stewards will be able to block users for the same reasons that global sysops can.
• "allow another class of users who are not stewards but global sysops to rollback vandalism and spam, though they won't have the power to block any user." - that is not quite correct. You've actually mentioned global rollback, users of which are allowed to rollback, but not block, on every WMF wiki including this (unlike GS, there is no opt-out option). The key thing global sysops can do is actually blocking, deleting and other sysop-level actions. What they cannot do is, for instance, change user rights or interfere in normal Wikivoyage matters. Leaderboard (talk) 07:57, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

• I hope people see this threading (we usually just put the last reply last). Thanks for the clarifications. I consider blocking an account a change in user rights and I'll bet many other readers do, too. I gather you're talking about changing the status of an account to, say, autopatroller or admin. I would never expect someone from outside Wikivoyage to do that kind of thing. In terms of stewards, they have come here and very helpfully blocked cross-wiki vandals, so it makes a lot of sense that I consider them to have the right to block accounts on this wiki. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:28, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Ikan Kekek: Actually, they do no blocking here. The help you refer to involves blocking/locking globally, and that is done at Meta. Stewards will not generally block an account on Wikivoyage locally unless there is an exceptionally strong reason to, if global sysops cannot do the same thing. Leaderboard (talk) 07:29, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Just for the record, yes, I am happy for you to copy those emails, and I apologise for inaccuracies in my summary of your response; I was trying to be as nonspecific as possible and accidentally erred into wrong specifics. I'm not quite in a position to write at length today and am unsure when I will be, but I am absolutely fine with (and noted at the time) transparency about the email's contents in the context of admin-to-admin communication, including if it closes with the outcome of "we don't think this means we shouldn't have GS at all". I continue to be unsure about the virtue of saying in public what I said in confidence for reasons noted both in the emails and by WAID. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 07:06, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

OK. Maybe I can send some emails to a few admins and other admins could choose to share those with other admins. I'd normally want the opinion of trusted non-admins, too, though. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:31, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Without knowing specifics: I suppose a GS would interfere mostly with users that get caught by filters for globally banned users and vandalism. The issue would be harsh language against false-positive new editors, including borderline test edits. I don't know whether harsh language from a GS is much worse than the same from a regular or regular-posing troll – the newbie would not see the difference. When it comes to more seasoned editors, I suppose the issues can be sorted out afterwards, and the problem GS could be asked to keep away even if there would not be reason enough to go to Meta. There might of course be problems that haven't some to my mind. –LPfi (talk) 07:55, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

@LPfi: In my experience, the issue you have described is not likely to occur, as they don't usually warn users for the first test edit or so. Leaderboard (talk) 08:04, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: Thanks for sending a copy of the email. I'm not particularly concerned about this. The diffs in the email have harshly worded edit summaries, yes, but they strike me as not particularly relevant to the GS discussion, because they are ordinary edits on en.wikipedia, not admin actions with the GS user right. Any user is already free to come to Wikivoyage and revert unhelpful edits, they don't need GS permissions for that. Let's give the GS thing a shot, and if problems arise we can reconsider. The Wikibooks-style policy, where local admins can ask global sysops to stop using their user rights here, seems like a good idea. And I agree with Ikan Kekek that it would be better to have an open discussion instead of sending diffs around through email. —Granger (talk · contribs) 10:11, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Granger. If such careless edit summaries became a problem on Wikivoyage, I wouldn't hesitate to ask their author to be more considerate. Most reasonable people are willing to change once they're made aware that their behaviour is upsetting people. In the very unlikely scenario that an unreasonable GS refused to edit more respectfully, through some misguided superiority complex or whatever, then I'm sure we could take action one way or another. There's no realistic scenario whereby a GS is harming Wikivoyage, and the WV community is powerless to intervene. The threat of losing a good contributor notwithstanding, I think the definite benefits of allowing global sysops far outweigh the possible costs.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:27, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

I understand Vaticidalprophet's desire to preserve the friendlier atmosphere that we have in Wikivoyage. I had to learn about that when I came here from Wikipedia. But I also agree with Granger's and ThunderingTyphoons' comments above. We should not assume that this sysop will start editing in Wikivoyage. We should not assume that they will use careless edit summaries if do come here. We should not assume that this behaviour will turn into abuse of sysop privileges. And we should not assume that the sysop will fail to change their behaviour if we ask them to. Ground Zero (talk) 10:52, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, everyone. I hope no admins feel slighted that I didn't send you the copies of emails. I selected only 4 admins to send them to, with the understanding that they could send them to more admins if they so choose. The reason I did this was simply to save my hands: had I tried to send them to all admins or even all active admins, I would have risked a degree of injury. Inevitably, there was a degree of randomness in who I sent them to. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:10, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

What kind of contributor are you if you're not willing to risk a permanent repetitive strain injury for the benefit of Wikivoyage? Where's your commitment to the project? ;-) Ground Zero (talk) 18:39, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Hah! Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:03, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

As long as we're allowed to reverse this decision in 6 or 12 months' time (if problems arise along the lines of what Vaticidalprophet said or some other reason and there is consensus to revert back) then this is definitely worth a try. We have to see how it plays out in practice rather than discuss hypotheticals and predictions. Gizza ^(roam) 23:14, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I'm seeing consensus to enable global sysops. Could a suitably qualified user close this successfully, so that I can make a request to the stewards to remove Wikivoyage from the opt-out wikiset? If local policy requires that this proposal hold for a set period of time, let me know. Leaderboard (talk) 07:37, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

There's definitely a consensus. No closing is done or needed, and there's no preexisting policy on what to do with this kind of proposal except the rule of consensus. My opinion is that you don't need to wait any longer to act, but in an abundance of caution, you could wait another 24 hours or at least another 12 hours or so to see if anyone else objects. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:45, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

It's Done now, by steward Martin Urbanec. Thanks for supporting this proposal. Leaderboard (talk) 09:22, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks are due to you and him. We appreciate the help. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:00, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

A bit late to the discussion but FWIW (having been an admin here and a GS/steward as well) - I don't see an urgent need as there is a sufficient base of admins, but it can't hurt. This is a medium-sized wiki and the discussion could probably have gone either way. Global sysops and stewards are generally cautioned to not do anything controversial on projects with active admins. BTW, all the other Wikivoyages have global sysops enabled. --Rschen7754 18:13, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Talk page protection

To everyone who may know about todays incident, you'd know what this is about, but for those who don't, in a nutshell, here it is and to keep it per WV:Deny.

There's an LTA out there who has for a month or so, vandalising numerous wikis and replacing them with sexually explicit images, and I've been reverting most of their edits. Sadly, that LTA decided to take the piss out of me, and all my talk pages have been subjected to vandalism. I'm not going to provide a list of all the IPs and accounts used, but [3] and [4] in most particular. Also see the history for voy:fr:Discussion utilisateur:SHB2000 (warning do not click the diffs unless you are prepared to see sexually explicit images). I've been getting threats like "Fuck Off Shb200 and Die" (plus much more threats much worse than that), and so to prevent any further disruption to this project, I've had to protect my talk page. This is not to add on top of GRP who already vandalises my talk page on a WMF project every 3 days. Not to also forget userpage vandalism (although largely rev deled)

Furthermore, I am also not reopening my IP talk page, again, due to this same incident, and to keep disruption from this project. It was a hard decision I had to take, but sadly I had no choice. I know this will quite concern some users, but this ongoing disruption, ever since April from numerous LTAs, has really taken its toll.

I'm happy to answer any questions regarding this. Do note, my meta talk page is open to all, so communication from IPs and newbies isn't fully cut off. Feel free to email me if needed.

--SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:11, 26 September 2021 (UTC)