Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
2011/3/4 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: On 03/03/11 5:44 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: The name administrator gives the impression of some mythical balance of power, although administrators don't actually administrate - they (un)delete, (un)block and (un)protect, in addition to editing articles and participating in discussions just like everybody else. The name sysop (system operator), used occasionally in English, and more frequently in some other languages (e.g. Hebrew), sounds less like a managerial role, but it's technical and cryptic and requires explanation. Giving user groups exact and real names will likely change the attitude of many users who see these user groups as the powers that be and think that they're impenetrable. You make a strong point. People cherish their titles and the self-esteem. Being able to say I am a Wikipedia administrator, to someone who has never edited Wikipedia gives an impression of importance. Breaking the task into its components leaves each part less prestigious. Most admins with whom i am familiar aren't using their adminship to gain prestige. I'd rather be the guy who wrote a detailed encyclopedic article about every diacritic sign in the Hebrew alphabet than an admin - i find a lot more prestige in it. I am happy about being an admin, not because of prestige, but because having the permission to delete pages without going through some request page is simply useful for writing articles and making the wiki better. Put simply, good admins, who use their permissions to create a better wiki, are not supposed to object to such a change. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:57:37 -0800, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: There are huge flaws in the decision making process. The process of proposal, considered favorable response, overwhelming negative vote is common. It repeats itself, and that too becomes a part of the problem. There are always enough individuals to feel that their immediate rights or prospective rights are threatened to come out and give a sufficient vote to kill any reform proposal. Those of us who would want a more liberal and more flexible policy framework have become jaded. We see the pattern repeat itself, and can no longer be bothered when it comes up again ... if we haven't left Wikipedia altogether. We don't want to wade through the entire Encyclopedia of Witlessness before showing our support for a good reform proposal. A single paragraph of explanation should be enough. But even more, when we have heard the arguments so often, and have seen so many votes, we have no way of knowing that an important vote is happening. The reformers need to make a better effort of canvassing their support. Ray Actually, my experience, based on solely Russian Wikipedia, says that making new policies becomes progressively different. Recently I tried to summarize a discussion which aimed at removing the inconsistency of two long-standing policies. I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile the parties, but failed, and in the end had to state that there have been no consensus reached to alter any of the policies, and the inconsistency will stay as it was. (My summary has been disputed bu one of the users, but this is a different story). Indeed, I feel that better and better explanations are needed to get even the policies which have been long-needed to get seriously discussed. And I do not think this is a matter of canvassing (in Russian Wikipedia, we do not vote, we count and weight arguments, so that the number of meatpuppets is irrelevant), it is just in my opinion the community has grown beyond some critical point. Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 03/04/11 2:04 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: 2011/3/4 Ray Saintongesainto...@telus.net: On 03/03/11 5:44 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: The name administrator gives the impression of some mythical balance of power, although administrators don't actually administrate - they (un)delete, (un)block and (un)protect, in addition to editing articles and participating in discussions just like everybody else. The name sysop (system operator), used occasionally in English, and more frequently in some other languages (e.g. Hebrew), sounds less like a managerial role, but it's technical and cryptic and requires explanation. Giving user groups exact and real names will likely change the attitude of many users who see these user groups as the powers that be and think that they're impenetrable. You make a strong point. People cherish their titles and the self-esteem. Being able to say I am a Wikipedia administrator, to someone who has never edited Wikipedia gives an impression of importance. Breaking the task into its components leaves each part less prestigious. Most admins with whom i am familiar aren't using their adminship to gain prestige. I'd rather be the guy who wrote a detailed encyclopedic article about every diacritic sign in the Hebrew alphabet than an admin - i find a lot more prestige in it. I am happy about being an admin, not because of prestige, but because having the permission to delete pages without going through some request page is simply useful for writing articles and making the wiki better. Put simply, good admins, who use their permissions to create a better wiki, are not supposed to object to such a change. Absolutely, but you only get that warped perspective because you deal essentially with good admins. :-P It's the ones that you don't associate with that I would worry about. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
POR FAVOR DE ESCRIBIR EN ESPAÑOL ,YA QUE NO COMPRENDO BIEN EL INGLES..GRACIAS Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 12:54:05 -0800 From: sainto...@telus.net To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege On 03/04/11 2:04 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: 2011/3/4 Ray Saintongesainto...@telus.net: On 03/03/11 5:44 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: The name administrator gives the impression of some mythical balance of power, although administrators don't actually administrate - they (un)delete, (un)block and (un)protect, in addition to editing articles and participating in discussions just like everybody else. The name sysop (system operator), used occasionally in English, and more frequently in some other languages (e.g. Hebrew), sounds less like a managerial role, but it's technical and cryptic and requires explanation. Giving user groups exact and real names will likely change the attitude of many users who see these user groups as the powers that be and think that they're impenetrable. You make a strong point. People cherish their titles and the self-esteem. Being able to say I am a Wikipedia administrator, to someone who has never edited Wikipedia gives an impression of importance. Breaking the task into its components leaves each part less prestigious. Most admins with whom i am familiar aren't using their adminship to gain prestige. I'd rather be the guy who wrote a detailed encyclopedic article about every diacritic sign in the Hebrew alphabet than an admin - i find a lot more prestige in it. I am happy about being an admin, not because of prestige, but because having the permission to delete pages without going through some request page is simply useful for writing articles and making the wiki better. Put simply, good admins, who use their permissions to create a better wiki, are not supposed to object to such a change. Absolutely, but you only get that warped perspective because you deal essentially with good admins. :-P It's the ones that you don't associate with that I would worry about. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
Amir: your original idea is lovely. Reviving it for a moment: On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 4:31 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote: Now, I found it. Indeed, I exaggerated (not several hundreds, just a hundred, and not overnight, but over two or three days, but the idea is The poll: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum/Archives/2008-07#Global_sysops_.28poll.29_.28closed.29 Yet we now have global sysops. It did take a bit of perseverance. If we selected for and named Facilitators on the projects for their mediation skills, we might have a few thousand of those in addition to our administrators as a pool of people fully competent to carry out any of the suggestions we're discussing -- they all seem plausible and possible to get passed to me. Amir writes: Now i, in general, think that these permissions should be given liberally to as many reasonable Wikimedians as possible. snip In fact it's quite likely that communities will want to give as little permissions as possible to users. Can you explain the apparent paradox above? I would be more strongly in favor of this proposal if it was clear to me how splitting up permissions would give access to them to more people. For instance, I think the ability to see and read deleted articles should be available to basically everyone. Ziko van Dijk's Tell us about your Wikipedia project [1] in 2008 was advertised through sitenotice on Meta and it was quite successful. ...low-hanging fruit. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia Indeed. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
2011/3/3 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com: Amir writes: Now i, in general, think that these permissions should be given liberally to as many reasonable Wikimedians as possible. snip In fact it's quite likely that communities will want to give as little permissions as possible to users. Can you explain the apparent paradox above? It's not a paradox: I think that they should be given liberally, but many community members may think otherwise. It's not very logical, but in all languages that i can read there are many discussions about it, full of confusions and suspicions. I believe that the name administrator is one of the main reasons for this and that's why i suggest retiring it completely. The name administrator gives the impression of some mythical balance of power, although administrators don't actually administrate - they (un)delete, (un)block and (un)protect, in addition to editing articles and participating in discussions just like everybody else. The name sysop (system operator), used occasionally in English, and more frequently in some other languages (e.g. Hebrew), sounds less like a managerial role, but it's technical and cryptic and requires explanation. Giving user groups exact and real names will likely change the attitude of many users who see these user groups as the powers that be and think that they're impenetrable. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 03/03/11 5:44 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: 2011/3/3 Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com: Amir writes: Now i, in general, think that these permissions should be given liberally to as many reasonable Wikimedians as possible. snip In fact it's quite likely that communities will want to give as little permissions as possible to users. Can you explain the apparent paradox above? It's not a paradox: I think that they should be given liberally, but many community members may think otherwise. It's not very logical, but in all languages that i can read there are many discussions about it, full of confusions and suspicions. I believe that the name administrator is one of the main reasons for this and that's why i suggest retiring it completely. The name administrator gives the impression of some mythical balance of power, although administrators don't actually administrate - they (un)delete, (un)block and (un)protect, in addition to editing articles and participating in discussions just like everybody else. The name sysop (system operator), used occasionally in English, and more frequently in some other languages (e.g. Hebrew), sounds less like a managerial role, but it's technical and cryptic and requires explanation. Giving user groups exact and real names will likely change the attitude of many users who see these user groups as the powers that be and think that they're impenetrable. You make a strong point. People cherish their titles and the self-esteem. Being able to say I am a Wikipedia administrator, to someone who has never edited Wikipedia gives an impression of importance. Breaking the task into its components leaves each part less prestigious. Saying that someone has deletion privileges instead of being a deleter disperses the sense of status. The way something is said can make a difference. Perhaps something as small as changing RfA to RfAP (Request for Administra*tion* Privileges) could have an effect by shifting the emphasis to privileges. There are huge flaws in the decision making process. The process of proposal, considered favorable response, overwhelming negative vote is common. It repeats itself, and that too becomes a part of the problem. There are always enough individuals to feel that their immediate rights or prospective rights are threatened to come out and give a sufficient vote to kill any reform proposal. Those of us who would want a more liberal and more flexible policy framework have become jaded. We see the pattern repeat itself, and can no longer be bothered when it comes up again ... if we haven't left Wikipedia altogether. We don't want to wade through the entire Encyclopedia of Witlessness before showing our support for a good reform proposal. A single paragraph of explanation should be enough. But even more, when we have heard the arguments so often, and have seen so many votes, we have no way of knowing that an important vote is happening. The reformers need to make a better effort of canvassing their support. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
I basically agree that the big communities are now too big to take major course changing community decisions. I do not follow so closely what is going on in en.wp, however, the never-ending-story of flagged revisions could be a good example. Another never-ending-story on Global arbcom / Wikicouncil / whatever level it got stuck now is another one. I remember still how in the middle of tough but slowly progressing discussion on global admins on Meta within a day several hundred en.wp users apparently unhappy with the fact that somebody may be rolling back their edits came, voted no, and the proposal was dead. Most of them never participated in the discussion and have never been seen on meta. Having said that, I must add that I am pessimistic. I believe that the Board / Foundation will not take any steps until it is obvious to everybody that there major problems (for instance, a major fork or smth). This is the reason I think Amir's proposal does not have a chance. It may be still implemented on smaller wikis (say below 500K articles) since the communities may decide to implement it, but currently not on the biggest projects. Cheers Yaroslav On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:02:54 -0500, Stephanie Daugherty sdaughe...@gmail.com wrote: I personally am not convinced here that we at at the point yet where we have this level of community brokenness, but we are getting very close if we aren't there already. The consensus process used at the individual project level oftentimes breaks down entirely on very contentious issues with as little as a dozen participants in a discussion. Governance by consensus is an important part of our heritage and future, but as currently implemented, it holds us a prisoner of our own inertia in some key areas. This is a major threat to the future of several large WMF projects, and one that has been getting some media attention, particularly by naysayers. I honestly don't think these issues alone can cause us to fail, but I do believe that if ignored long enough, they will create a set of conditions that will allow it to happen. Once conditions become intolerable to the most dedicated members of a community, the possibility of a mainstream fork - a fork that takes the bulk of the community with it - begins to become a viable prospect. The fallout, obviously, would be enormous. There are a few readily apparent ways that I see that we can reach such a point. - The projects become ungovernable, and the resulting chaos results in a political (in a wikipolitics sense) fork in order to establish a more viable structure. (Likely, and to some degree in motion already) - The foundation itself goes rogue, and tries to impose conditions unacceptable to it's member communities. (Unlikely, but not inconceivable.) - The foundation proves too unresponsive for the technical needs of the communities it serves. (Likely, already happening to some degree.) - The foundation becomes insolvent. (Possible at some point if fundraising efforts fail.) Our communities and the foundation itself need to look at these as serious threats from within to our mission, and decide accordingly how we will deal with them. If we ignore them, and keep our head in the sand, one or more of them may eventually happen, and the outcome won't be pretty. -Steph ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 19/01/2011 06:04, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: I remember still how in the middle of tough but slowly progressing discussion on global admins on Meta within a day several hundred en.wp users apparently unhappy with the fact that somebody may be rolling back their edits came, voted no, and the proposal was dead. Most of them never participated in the discussion and have never been seen on meta. Have you a link? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
I do not have it ready, and I would need to search. May be somebody else has it ready. Some details may slightly differ from what I said, since it was smth like couple of years ago. Cheers Yaroslav On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 06:10:13 -0300, Noein prono...@gmail.com wrote: On 19/01/2011 06:04, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: Have you a link? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
Now, I found it. Indeed, I exaggerated (not several hundreds, just a hundred, and not overnight, but over two or three days, but the idea is still the same) The poll: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum/Archives/2008-07#Global_sysops_.28poll.29_.28closed.29 The proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops/2008_proposal The proposal talk page (where the main discussion was taking place): http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_sysops/2008_proposal Cheers Yaroslav Have you a link? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
2011/1/18 Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com: On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: That's the point - i do think that it's a Foundation-level issue, or more precisely, movement-level issue. That's because RFA is broken discussion are perennial in all Wikipedias which have functioning communities of about 50 regular writers or more. [citation needed] And I don't mean that all facetiously. It'd be worth documenting the relative brokenness of admin selection processes across languages. Ziko van Dijk's Tell us about your Wikipedia project [1] in 2008 was advertised through sitenotice on Meta and it was quite successful. Something like this could be repeated with focused questions about adminship. It won't be complete and precise, but it is reasonable low-hanging fruit. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 5:48 PM, masti mast...@gmail.com wrote: why should tht be decided on foundation level? Do you think communities are so broken that they cannot make their own decisions? This would be the only reason to start discussing enforcement of such major changes I personally am not convinced here that we at at the point yet where we have this level of community brokenness, but we are getting very close if we aren't there already. The consensus process used at the individual project level oftentimes breaks down entirely on very contentious issues with as little as a dozen participants in a discussion. Governance by consensus is an important part of our heritage and future, but as currently implemented, it holds us a prisoner of our own inertia in some key areas. This is a major threat to the future of several large WMF projects, and one that has been getting some media attention, particularly by naysayers. I honestly don't think these issues alone can cause us to fail, but I do believe that if ignored long enough, they will create a set of conditions that will allow it to happen. Once conditions become intolerable to the most dedicated members of a community, the possibility of a mainstream fork - a fork that takes the bulk of the community with it - begins to become a viable prospect. The fallout, obviously, would be enormous. There are a few readily apparent ways that I see that we can reach such a point. - The projects become ungovernable, and the resulting chaos results in a political (in a wikipolitics sense) fork in order to establish a more viable structure. (Likely, and to some degree in motion already) - The foundation itself goes rogue, and tries to impose conditions unacceptable to it's member communities. (Unlikely, but not inconceivable.) - The foundation proves too unresponsive for the technical needs of the communities it serves. (Likely, already happening to some degree.) - The foundation becomes insolvent. (Possible at some point if fundraising efforts fail.) Our communities and the foundation itself need to look at these as serious threats from within to our mission, and decide accordingly how we will deal with them. If we ignore them, and keep our head in the sand, one or more of them may eventually happen, and the outcome won't be pretty. -Steph ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Stephanie Daugherty sdaughe...@gmail.com wrote: Split permissions have been a perennial issue for en.wikipedia for a while. It's proposed every couple months, has vocal support and a handful of even more vocal opponents, and fillibustered into oblivion to resurface a few months later. Rinse, lather, repeat. The only partial success was with rollback, which actually got broken into it's own permission, but it hasn't happened elsewhere. Yes, ok, I get that, but... Where are those particular discussions happening? Again - I follow policy stuff on-wiki and the mailing lists, but it's impractical to follow all of it and still have a functional Life. What venues was this up in, etc. Thanks. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Matters_related_to_requests_for_adminship is probably a good starting point. There's a LOT and I do mean a LOT of material. On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 8:04 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Stephanie Daugherty sdaughe...@gmail.com wrote: Split permissions have been a perennial issue for en.wikipedia for a while. It's proposed every couple months, has vocal support and a handful of even more vocal opponents, and fillibustered into oblivion to resurface a few months later. Rinse, lather, repeat. The only partial success was with rollback, which actually got broken into it's own permission, but it hasn't happened elsewhere. Yes, ok, I get that, but... Where are those particular discussions happening? Again - I follow policy stuff on-wiki and the mailing lists, but it's impractical to follow all of it and still have a functional Life. What venues was this up in, etc. Thanks. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Faith is about what you really truly believe in, not about what you are taught to believe. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
The Protector tool has actually been proposed at pt.wiki at least once ( seehttp://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esplanada/propostas/Expans%C3%A3o_das_ferramentas_de_prote%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_artigos_%2828out2010%29) with mixed reviews at the time. I presume because we were still getting used to the deleters (eliminadores), although the original discussion of the deleter user group already mentioned that possibility (seehttp://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esplanada/propostas/Cria%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_grupo_de_usu%C3%A1rios_com_acesso_%C3%A0_elimina%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_p%C3%A1ginas_%2821mai2010%29 ). GoEThe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 10:24 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: 2011/1/16 Joseph Seddon seddonw...@gmail.com I am going to be quite frank and say that it is pointless to have this discussion on this list. Only a fraction of the english wikipedia community are on it. If you are genuinely serious about this then propose it on the english wikipedia. This is not a foundation level issue nor will it ever become one so put it to the community. That's the point - i do think that it's a Foundation-level issue, or more precisely, movement-level issue. That's because RFA is broken discussion are perennial in all Wikipedias which have functioning communities of about 50 regular writers or more. And in Wikipedias in small regional languages, which have only a handful of writers i often see very confused discussions about adminship which show that they misunderstand the concept - they think that an admin is supposed to administrate, or that they shouldn't write articles until the Foundation appoints an admin, or that they must draft a detailed voting process document to appoint admins - but can't really vote until they have a quorum, etc. (This doesn't mean that i know a lot of languages. These discussions are often held in Russian or English.) I believe that this confusion is caused by the heavy word administrator. Eliminating it and calling the permissions by their actual names - blocker, deleter, protector, reviewer - will likely eliminate this confusion. One could impose a new groups / permissions structure from on high, across all the Wikis, or (probably) ask the developers to add new groups to a specific Wiki on a one-off. It would probably be harmless to enable the more specific groups globally, with local per-wiki decisions as to if or when to allow users to gain access to them, and under what conditions. It would probably be easier to test them out on one project rather than try doing the global step first, to avoid the knee-jerk opposition whenever the Foundation choses to change anything, but I could be wrong. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 16 January 2011 07:45, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: What they do in the Portuguese Wikipedia is not what i propose; it's only close to it. What's listed at [[en:Wikipedia:Perennial proposals]] is very different from what i propose. I don't propose limited adminship; i propose to retire the concept of adminship entirely, because it's an outdated lump of very different things. (And by the way, i have a habit of re-reading Perennial proposals every couple of months.) You would have some people that have all the different things and some that only have a few. The former would, in essence, be admins and the latter limited admins. A checkuser, for example, is not a limited admin. He's a checkuser and it's good that it is this way. Are there any checkusers that aren't admins already? Checkuser is an extra tool given to admins, not a tool given out independantly of other tools. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Are there any checkusers that aren't admins already? Checkuser is an extra tool given to admins, not a tool given out independantly of other tools. On Dutch Wikipedia we currently have 5 checkusers, only 2 of which are admins. The other 3 have never candidated for adminship. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
1/16 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: On 16 January 2011 07:45, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: What they do in the Portuguese Wikipedia is not what i propose; it's only close to it. What's listed at [[en:Wikipedia:Perennial proposals]] is very different from what i propose. I don't propose limited adminship; i propose to retire the concept of adminship entirely, because it's an outdated lump of very different things. (And by the way, i have a habit of re-reading Perennial proposals every couple of months.) You would have some people that have all the different things and some that only have a few. The former would, in essence, be admins and the latter limited admins. Nope, it doesn't have to be this way. There should be no full admins and partial admins; there should be no admins at all. There should be people who protect pages and people who block vandals. Some people may have both permissions. A checkuser, for example, is not a limited admin. He's a checkuser and it's good that it is this way. Are there any checkusers that aren't admins already? Checkuser is an extra tool given to admins, not a tool given out independantly of other tools. It's perfectly possible. Why does one need the permission to block, protect and delete in order to check IPs? I can see how blocking is related to that, but protection and deletion? - Not necessarily. It's just historical residue. In fact, some people may say that a checkuser shouldn't have the permission to block. It is simple to solve this: The technical permissions should be separate and each community can decide whether to allow checkusers to block. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
Nope, it doesn't have to be this way. There should be no full admins and partial admins; there should be no admins at all. There should be people who protect pages and people who block vandals. Some people may have both permissions. The suggestion sounds reasonable to me, but I do not see any way it could be implemented. Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
2011/1/16 Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru: Nope, it doesn't have to be this way. There should be no full admins and partial admins; there should be no admins at all. There should be people who protect pages and people who block vandals. Some people may have both permissions. The suggestion sounds reasonable to me, but I do not see any way it could be implemented. You think that the community will object? I understand where that feeling comes from, but if the community really wants to have administrators that have both privileges, it may continue with the current deal by granting both of them to whoever passes RFA. In fact it's quite likely that communities will want to give as little permissions as possible to users. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
*The closest thing that i found to my proposal is what happens in the Portuguese Wikipedia, which has the Deleters group (it has a lovely name in Portuguese - Eliminadores). * Well, in Portuguese Wikipédia we don't want to spit the adm flag to destroy it. We are only give the chance to someone who only wants to do a part of the Administrator work can help the community without have to pass for all process of be a administrator. What you propose is create a protector, a blocker and a Media Wiki editor to go with the Deleters group and exting the adm flag. That was never in discussion in pt.wiki _ *Béria Lima* Wikimedia Portugal http://wikimedia.pt/ (351) 963 953 042 *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer.* 2011/1/15 Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il 2011/1/15 geni geni...@gmail.com: On 15 January 2011 15:26, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Now, fight. First review the discussion that has already taken place at WT:RFA I suppose that you refer to the English Wikipedia. This list is about more than just the English Wikipedia. Before writing that proposal i reviewed many, many pages of RFA is broken discussions not just in the English Wikipedia, but in Hebrew, Russian and Catalan ones, too. Nowhere have i found a proposal to dump the concept of adminship completely and to split it into several roles, although i admit that i didn't read all the archives through. The closest thing that i found to my proposal is what happens in the Portuguese Wikipedia, which has the Deleters group (it has a lovely name in Portuguese - Eliminadores). The discussions that i did read say that RfA *process* is broken because the questions are repetitive, because the nominees are not required to identify themselves, because there's no provisional adminship, because the desysopping process is dysfunctional, because the bureaucrats' cabal decides whatever it wants without regard to discussion etc. I say that that the A in RFA shouldn't exist. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
2011/1/16 Joseph Seddon seddonw...@gmail.com I am going to be quite frank and say that it is pointless to have this discussion on this list. Only a fraction of the english wikipedia community are on it. If you are genuinely serious about this then propose it on the english wikipedia. This is not a foundation level issue nor will it ever become one so put it to the community. That's the point - i do think that it's a Foundation-level issue, or more precisely, movement-level issue. That's because RFA is broken discussion are perennial in all Wikipedias which have functioning communities of about 50 regular writers or more. And in Wikipedias in small regional languages, which have only a handful of writers i often see very confused discussions about adminship which show that they misunderstand the concept - they think that an admin is supposed to administrate, or that they shouldn't write articles until the Foundation appoints an admin, or that they must draft a detailed voting process document to appoint admins - but can't really vote until they have a quorum, etc. (This doesn't mean that i know a lot of languages. These discussions are often held in Russian or English.) I believe that this confusion is caused by the heavy word administrator. Eliminating it and calling the permissions by their actual names - blocker, deleter, protector, reviewer - will likely eliminate this confusion. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
In his 10th anniversary address Jimmy Wales says: Today is a great moment to reflect on where we've been. What my reflection brings up is that the single thing that probably raised more controversy among the widest range of Wikimedians is not the content of articles about sex, celebrities or geopolitical and linguistic conflicts, but the procedures of appointing administrators. It should have never been a big deal, but it is, in all projects in all languages. The administrator privilege lumps together several very different permissions: * rollback * blocking and unblocking * deleting and restoring pages and versions of pages * viewing deleted versions of pages * protect and unprotect pages and edit protected pages * some PendingChanges/FlaggedRevisions-related permissions, which i haven't quite figured out yet :) Now i, in general, think that these permissions should be given liberally to as many reasonable Wikimedians as possible. I always believed in it, and since most of these actions became visible in the watchlist a few years ago, this belief became even stronger. But some re-thinking is needed. The administrator privilege, as it is now, should be retired and broken up to several separate privileges: * block/unblock * protect, unprotect, edit protected, config PendingChanges on the page * edit highly technical pages - the MediaWiki: namespace, common.css, etc. * revert, delete/undelete, view deleted The permission to revert, delete and undelete unprotected pages can be given to those users who can create and move pages (autoconfirmed). There is no big functional difference between deleting a page and deleting a paragraph in an existing page or doing a major re-write. The difference between reverting and undoing is a matter of civility and a lot of uncivil things can be done without permissions anyway. Limiting these actions only to certain users is quite pointless. Viewing deleted pages shouldn't be a big deal either. Deletion is not so much eliminating non-notable topics and nonsense from existence, as about separating them from encyclopedic articles. It shouldn't be a big deal to let bored people read them somewhere. Eliminating egregiously offensive and illegal content, major copyright violations and BLP issues can be accomplished today with the oversight permission. Controlling Pending Changes, although i haven't figured out all of its intricacies, is essentially an improved version of page protection. It makes sense to give this permission to (many) selected people. It will probably evolve over time, and i believe that it will evolve more organically if conceptually separated from blocking and deletion. Another comment about protection is that protecting system messages (the MediaWiki: namespace) and sensitive CSS and JS pages (commons.css etc.) is very different from protecting vandalism-prone articles (Obama etc.). The protection of these technical pages and sensitive articles should be a different concept. The permission to block should be a separate one. Separating the discussions about giving users the permission to protect pages and to block vandals will not stop the holy wars, but it will focus them. There will be no more comments such as: * User:PhDhistorian may be a good editor who understands Verifiability and who can be trusted to edit sensitive BLP articles, but he has personal grudges with User:FatMadonna and he may block her, so he shouldn't be given the Administrator privilege. * User:VandalFighterGrrrl is excellent at patrolling RC, but she's too inclusionist and shouldn't be given the right to decide about content protection. All of the above is formulated in the English Wikipedia terms. I believe that the English Wikipedia policies for deletion, protection and blocking make a lot of sense and should be adopted by all Wikipedias, but this obviously can't be forced on any Wikipedia. Other projects may have very different understanding of these processes and it's OK. I'm only talking about the technical separation of the privileges. Now, fight. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 15 January 2011 15:26, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Now, fight. First review the discussion that has already taken place at WT:RFA -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 15 January 2011 16:24, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 January 2011 15:26, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Now, fight. First review the discussion that has already taken place at WT:RFA All five years of it going in circles, you mean? Tell me, what would be the result you expect of doing this? Apart from concluding nothing's going to change without outside imposition? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 15 January 2011 16:40, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 January 2011 16:24, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 January 2011 15:26, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Now, fight. First review the discussion that has already taken place at WT:RFA All five years of it going in circles, you mean? Tell me, what would be the result you expect of doing this? Apart from concluding nothing's going to change without outside imposition? The OP might learn not to sign off their posts with Now, fight. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 15 January 2011 16:55, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 January 2011 16:40, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 January 2011 16:24, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 January 2011 15:26, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Now, fight. First review the discussion that has already taken place at WT:RFA All five years of it going in circles, you mean? Tell me, what would be the result you expect of doing this? Apart from concluding nothing's going to change without outside imposition? The OP might learn not to sign off their posts with Now, fight. That is a compelling argument, it's true. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
2011/1/15 geni geni...@gmail.com: On 15 January 2011 15:26, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Now, fight. First review the discussion that has already taken place at WT:RFA I suppose that you refer to the English Wikipedia. This list is about more than just the English Wikipedia. Before writing that proposal i reviewed many, many pages of RFA is broken discussions not just in the English Wikipedia, but in Hebrew, Russian and Catalan ones, too. Nowhere have i found a proposal to dump the concept of adminship completely and to split it into several roles, although i admit that i didn't read all the archives through. The closest thing that i found to my proposal is what happens in the Portuguese Wikipedia, which has the Deleters group (it has a lovely name in Portuguese - Eliminadores). The discussions that i did read say that RfA *process* is broken because the questions are repetitive, because the nominees are not required to identify themselves, because there's no provisional adminship, because the desysopping process is dysfunctional, because the bureaucrats' cabal decides whatever it wants without regard to discussion etc. I say that that the A in RFA shouldn't exist. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
On 15 January 2011 21:55, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Before writing that proposal i reviewed many, many pages of RFA is broken discussions not just in the English Wikipedia, but in Hebrew, Russian and Catalan ones, too. Nowhere have i found a proposal to dump the concept of adminship completely and to split it into several roles, although i admit that i didn't read all the archives through. The closest thing that i found to my proposal is what happens in the Portuguese Wikipedia, which has the Deleters group (it has a lovely name in Portuguese - Eliminadores). It has been suggested before. It's even on the Perennial proposals page on the English Wikipedia. The page about this proposal specifically is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Limited_administrators ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
2011/1/16 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: On 15 January 2011 21:55, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Before writing that proposal i reviewed many, many pages of RFA is broken discussions not just in the English Wikipedia, but in Hebrew, Russian and Catalan ones, too. Nowhere have i found a proposal to dump the concept of adminship completely and to split it into several roles, although i admit that i didn't read all the archives through. The closest thing that i found to my proposal is what happens in the Portuguese Wikipedia, which has the Deleters group (it has a lovely name in Portuguese - Eliminadores). It has been suggested before. It's even on the Perennial proposals page on the English Wikipedia. The page about this proposal specifically is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Limited_administrators What they do in the Portuguese Wikipedia is not what i propose; it's only close to it. What's listed at [[en:Wikipedia:Perennial proposals]] is very different from what i propose. I don't propose limited adminship; i propose to retire the concept of adminship entirely, because it's an outdated lump of very different things. (And by the way, i have a habit of re-reading Perennial proposals every couple of months.) A checkuser, for example, is not a limited admin. He's a checkuser and it's good that it is this way. What i would really like to hear in this discussion is opinions outside of the English Wikipedia. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
