On Fri, 2003-05-09 at 22:31, Erik Moeller wrote:

I would like to request developer rights on the English Wikipedia. This would allow me to execute write-access queries on the database, and as such, to grant sysop privileges to other users. I would like to help with the sysopping, which seems to be right now only done by a couple of people. Since I read wikien-l daily and intend to continue to do so, I usually catch sysop requests on time, but can currently do nothing about them.

I am one of the developers (which does not automatically mean Wikipedia DB access) and currently a regular sysop.

Seconded. Erik has contributed useful code to the project and demonstrated responsibility.

I'd also like to remind people of proposals mentioned at: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_details_special_page whereby the sysop process could be better automated by a nomination / confirmation system. Something like:

* anybody (or perhaps any sysop) could nominate a user for sysophood * the nomination would be displayed in a prominent log page of some sort * after a delay of a couple or a few days, that user automatically becomes a sysop * IF AND ONLY IF at least one other sysop seconds the nomination * UNLESS any sysop (or perhaps any user) rejects the nomination during the waiting period

It's very clumsy to require manual database mucking to deal with common user account stuff, and creates delays when the small number of developers are busy or difficult to communicate with. As much as possible, a wiki community should be able to run itself.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)