--- "mike.lifeguard" mike.lifeguard@gmail.com wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote: If communities are going to insist that a steward
desysop himself every
time he goes into a project to perform routine
anti-vandalism it's easy
to see that it is more objectionable that they
perform acts
automatically without ever logging themselves in.
Perhaps it would be
preferable that once a steward has properly given
himself sysop rights
he retain those rights unless there is a specific
objection from the
community. That would be far more acceptable than
any kind of automated
process.
I'd be fine with that too, but it's really a moot point. This still requires a steward (or team of them) to go to each wiki individually to make the blocks - hardly the most efficient method. This proposed mechanism would simply automate the process, saving time and manpower. When dealing with a large number of spambots, or a persistent cross-wiki vandal [1], manpower is often a prime concern. Can we also try to remember that, as with the change pagemove upon autoconfirmed, we're talking mainly about wikis with a community not able to effectively fend off the spammers etc. I wrote [2] at the time that Heller would be proud of the requests to have wikis with no community ask to opt-in for such a measure; I think the same thing needs to be said here. Mike.lifeguard
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Drini/daylog&oldid=8618...
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metapub&diff=prev&oldid=...
As I said before [1], stewards should be allowed to opt-in the wiki's with no community. Disscussions only need to happen if there is an active community. I also don't mind opt-out if everyone gets comprehensible notification about the system and how to opt-out.
The idea that people check the wiki's block logs on a regular basis and would even know what such block would signify if they saw them is unreasonable. The only time people completely uniformed about this system are going to discover it, is when they are already experiencing a problem. And they will speculate amoung themselves about what these blocks mean and come up some strange bad faith ideas. And once they are alll worked up about this, they will confront the stewards with these bad faith accusations. And it will be quite hard to explain things to them at that time. Do none of you remember all the other times we have been through situations like this?
The recent messages on this thread show that those responding to me are twisting what I say without even considering the compromises I suggest. So I am done commenting on this. Just don't pretend I was suggesting something as foolish as a wiki with no community come to a local consensus on opting in, because I was not.
Birgitte SB
[1]http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-February/038322.html1
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