On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 7:54 AM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
As many will be aware, English Wikinews very recently desysopped fourteen or fifteen people - including Jimmy Wales. This was done by project consensus, and despite jwales asking for the privilege back the consensus seems to be "no" or "only on a temporary basis".
Since there are no visible sysop actions for jwales, the only real use has been to see deleted stuff.
A suggestion has been floated that a third way would be a new privilege to see everything. Something that - I think - should be granted to all board members and likely all staff. I don't just mean for Wikinews, but across all languages and all projects.
This doesn't strike me as something particularly difficult to implement, but there are some wrinkles to iron out with it.
First, my assumption is all Board members should have this priv. Staff? Probably, but most definitely Mike Godwin.
Should it include oversighted edits? Is this even technically feasible?
Are there any circumstances where someone could be elected to a project ArbCom without sysop? Should they then have this privilege?
Who should be permitted to grant the privilege? Bureaucrats, or just stewards?
Anything else?
Brian McNeil
This sort of idea has been tossed around for a while now, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comments/Wikimedia_Foundation_staff_permissions for the proposal and the talk page (mostly, if not totally) in support.