Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Anthere wrote:
The reason for the 25 votes limit comes from two reasons
- A community with less than 25 users is unlikely to really need
frequent checkusers, because it is a project with reduced activity. So, it can not be a heavy load for stewards.
- A community with less than 25 users has a rather serious risk to have
a rather little known editor become a checkuser, rather than a trusted oldbie. If we start handing out status just as we do for sysop status on small projects, I think there will be abuse. I say this from my experience, as I had to unsysop several sysops on small projects (the guys did not know our basic rules, behaved like dictators with the handful of editors, put advertisements on the main page, controlled povs etc...).
I am perplex that the en.wikibooks does not have a big enough base of editors to vote on a check user... I am quite lazy, so I will not go to the stats page to check. But can you roughly say how many active editors per month the project currently has ? How many very active editors per month ?
ant
Since the stats page hasn't been updated since November of last year, it is completely useless to even gague what the current activity is on any Wikimedia project. I can only use the current activity on the Wikibooks staff lounge to even remotely gague what the current user activity level is, but I would guess it is pretty close to about 20 user at the absolute top. Really stretching it perhaps we can get to 25 total at the most.
And as for advertising this, I guess we could put it in bold 40 point type on the project main page with a link to a special page only for this kind of request. I think that is way over the top and something that is not needed in this situation. The advertising was more than adequate, it is just that this is a very unreasonable request.
As for a "community with less than 25 users unlikely needing frequent checkuser scans", I think this is mistaken totally what is going on. en.wikibooks has numerous links from within Wikipedia, and is being hammered by vandals that have moved on from Wikipedia, indeed with excellent training on how to be a vandal on Wikipedia, and taking on other projects as well that don't have quite the same pool of administrators.
As for handing out checkuser status to people who are not trusted oldies, that is totally rediculous as well. There are admins and bureaucrats on en.wikibooks who are also admins on other projects, including meta, wikinews, and even en.wikipedia. Active ones at that. I see absolutely no reason why the standards for giving somebody bureaucrat status when you can't also give them checkuser status.
Furthermore, what abuse could possibly happen with somebody having checkuser scans? Really, at the most extreme? With bureacrat status I could give admin status to a whole team of 'bots that would then in tandem go through and systematically delete every page on a project and block every user. Talk about damage to a project. With checkuser privileges, all you have access to is just the IP address of each user. So the absolute worst damage is that they publish on an external website (making it harder for the board to go after that user) all of the IP addresses of every user. Which is worse? Really, think about it.
More to the point, show me a single user that has been given checkuser rights on any local project besides a Wikipedia and meta. This would be a contrary example to prove me wrong. If not, why not? Because checkuser rights are not needed except on Wikipedia?
I am waiting for your feedback on the various options I have proposed; Even if none please you, please be kind to comment on them.
meanwhile, in case there is an urgent need on wikibooks, I propose to have Karynn be a temporary checkuser on en:wikibooks whilst a solution is found out. She is an experienced checkuser and she has agreed ! (and it is free of charge !)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Kelly_Martin. See her as the Brion Vibber of the old days (he carried on our requests when necessary).
ant