On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 4:34 PM Federico Leva (Nemo) <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Brian Wolff, 27/11/18 18:45:
> > I'm still open to communities who want to continue to have the old
> > behaviour to opt out of the new behaviour - The primary thing here is
> > that the default has now changed, so that anywhere that was using the
> > old behaviour for no other reason then it was the default is now using
> > the new behaviour.
>
> The problem with this is that the right to unblock yourself is clearly
> something of use in unforeseen emergencies, not something for which
> you'd usually write up a consensus discussion or a guideline 5 years in
> advance.
>
> I understand the feeling of urgency in doing such changes by fiat in
> response to apparent threats, but I hope you do appreciate the potential
> for such permission changes to alter the power structure and social
> workings of the wikis in ways we don't fully anticipate. This change may
> seem small, but it does dismantle one component of the reciprocality of
> administrative powers on the wiki.
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Administrator
>
> In particular, such a new default means, on wikis with 2 sysops, that
> one sysop has the capacity to unilaterally and irreversibly block the
> second sysop, and that in any last-resort controversy the permissions
> encourage and give a prize to whoever shoots first. (Which is already a
> common problem in online communities, see StackExchange with their
> "fastest gun in the west" dilemma.)
>
> I think it would be wise for such a default to be changed only on wikis
> which have at least 3 administrators *and* a bureaucrat.
>

There's an ongoing discussion about reaching out to wikis and ask them if
this will be a problem, and how to solve the problem of one admin blocking
the other(s) on small wikis, in this Phabricator task:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150826

//Johan Jönsson
--
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