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@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgardner@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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