I agree with what's been said in this thread so far. An admin of a large wiki shouldn't be allowed to unblock themselves, if another admin blocked them.
However, on small wikis, this would lead to a first-mover advantage situation, so admins should be forbidden from unblocking themselves if there are more than a certain number of admins (and bureaucrats). I would recommend a threshold of five admins. Notice that if there are only three admins (with Nemo's proposal), if one admin blocks another admin, the situation reduces to a "shoot first to win" between the two remaining admins. If there are five admins and one blocks another, there will still be three uninvolved admins left to argue it out :) The Cantonese Wikipedia recently came close to a situation where an admin might get blocked for bad behaviour. A few users presented a strong case that an admin had been acting against policy. Because we have a dozen admins, a few other admins were able to discuss the matter, and issued strong words of admonishment to the unbehaving admin, and the unbehaving admin disappeared from the wiki since then. Thinking back, one of the concerns we had was that an admin could unblock themselves anyway, so there was actually no real course of action to take other than desysopping (we have a bureaucrat; not me). If this feature of "no self-unblocks on wikis with lots of admins" was in place, then the threat of a block would have had more teeth. Deryck ([[User:Deryck Chan]], yue.wp sysop) On Thu, 29 Nov 2018 at 12:32, billinghurst <[email protected]> wrote: > Well said Nemo Bis. There is an ever increasing autocratic approach to > what used to be community decisions. Societall matters used to be discussed > openly on wiki, or in list, then to have the technical components on > phabricator. Now it seems that the societal are taking place in > phabricator, away from the society and predominantly with the technical. > That is undesirable IMNSHO. > > I would think that the easiest and means to apply this is for large wikis > only, and run some checks on the medium sized wikis to understand the size > of the issue, and the consequences prior to implementation. Leave the small > wikis alone. > > -- billinghurst > > ------ Original Message ------ > From: "Johan Jönsson" <[email protected]> > To: "Wikitech Ambassadors" <[email protected]> > Sent: 29/11/2018 3:06:34 AM > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Removal of unblockself rights on wiki > > > > 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 > -- > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors >
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