Having read through this entire thread, I have to ask: would there have
been any value in, instead of desysopping non-staff (because there appears
to be a possibly-valid argument that non-staff did most of the
administrative work on the wmf wiki), instead making it clear that unlike
on all other wikis, +staff users had the final say in any
administrative/editing dispute on the wmf wiki? That is, since Sue says a
large part of the problem was non-staff making staff justify themselves and
their decisions endlessly, why not just short-circuit that particular weak
spot and otherwise let work carry on? I guess the operative questions here
would be something like:
1. Was there actual misuse of admin tools being done by non-staff?
2. Were there other, non-misuse issues that arose from non-staff having
+admin (i.e. we already know about "too many challenges to staff", but was
there anything else that made non-staff admins suboptimal? this would
include even things like "it looks weird to outsiders to have non-staff
changing 'corporate' content")
3. If there weren't other issues, could the issue of "non-staff
challenging staff decisions" have been corrected with a less-drastic
solution (such as clarifying who had final say in things)
4. Is it true that non-staff admins do significant portions of the work
on that wiki, such that their loss will now cause the wiki to go un- or
more-poorly-maintained?
5. If 4 is true, what solutions can we/the WMF put in place to pick up
that slack so the wiki doesn't become worse?
None of these questions are intended to apportion blame or determine who
was "right", but they may help us figure out why actions are being done,
how we could have routed around this huge blow-up, and where to go from
here.
-Fluffernutter
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Sue Gardner
<sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
My understanding is that administrator rights
have been removed from a
small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic
editing
rights.
Far more than basic, actually. The WMF wiki is unusual in that it
allows insertion of raw HTML by any registered user (this is because
the donation forms used to be hosted there; they're now developed on a
dedicated site). Regular users also have permission to edit the
MediaWiki: namespace, which helps with translation. This means that
regular users can add arbitrary code that will be executed in the
reader's browser, something that only admins can do on most of our
other wikis. There are >600 registered users on the WMF wiki.
While I understand the frustration with admin access being restricted,
volunteers on this particular wiki are still trusted with
extraordinary rights (without prejudice as to whether that
configuration should be broadened or narrowed in future). I asked
Philippe yesterday, and he said that account requests from Meta would
continue to be processed (by JamesA and himself going forward). As Sue
says, having the overall governance responsibilities on the wiki
clarified is a normal step. Sorry for the rocky transition; no
disrespect was intended.
The original text on
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Welcome (written in
2004 when there was no WMF staff) with regard to the Board resolving
all disputes should indeed be updated; the Board delegates day-to-day
operational responsibilities to the organizational staff, and while
the sentence is technically true, it was written at a time when that
delegation was not possible. Nonetheless, it was clear from the very
beginning that the WMF wiki was not operated according to the
community governance practices established in other wikis because it
serves a distinct purpose.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
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