My personal two cents on WS:User:Birgitte Arco is that she is a responsible and valuable member of the community generally, and in large measure the soul of Wikisource (tortured, fragmented or otherwise). I was disturbed to hear about questioning of her ulterior motives, and having been involved with Checkuser issues for Wikisource myself, in my experience she acted positively and appropriately.
From my perspective, I would hate to see damage done to the projects
"for want of a nail." The kingdom should not be lost; we should find a way to either grant status on an interim basis or otherwise adjust the guidelines. The vandals have tools, so should we. We must act to defend ourselves - even Wikisource - and not let the primary goal of promoting the projects fall flat in the face of rather arcane administrative details (not that Checkuser isn't important - to the contrary - but it shouldn't be more important than the project itself).
-BradPatrick
========== When I have needed a checkuser in the past I have had to go through third parties on IRC because no available steward felt comfortable fulfilling my request directly. And that makes it hard on me when my blocks are questioned and I am accused having ulterior motives (this was from outside the project). I feel in my case I alerted and consulted with other administrators and people outside of Wikisource enough to feel confident these accusations cannot taken seriously. However, administrators of small projects are being put in the position of deciding between protecting the project legally or from vandalism or else protecting their reputations from accustions of blocking people on unconfirmed suspicions. If I hadn't been trusted by someone who was trusted by stewards, I would have been put in a very nasty postition. If things continue as they are, sooner or later some one on some project is going to be stripped of adminship because they did what they needed to do to protect the project, and didn't think to cover themselves as well as I did.
Birgitte SB
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Patrick, Brad wrote:
My personal two cents on WS:User:Birgitte Arco is that she is a responsible and valuable member of the community generally, and in large measure the soul of Wikisource (tortured, fragmented or otherwise). I was disturbed to hear about questioning of her ulterior motives, and having been involved with Checkuser issues for Wikisource myself, in my experience she acted positively and appropriately.
From my perspective, I would hate to see damage done to the projects
"for want of a nail." The kingdom should not be lost; we should find a way to either grant status on an interim basis or otherwise adjust the guidelines. The vandals have tools, so should we. We must act to defend ourselves - even Wikisource - and not let the primary goal of promoting the projects fall flat in the face of rather arcane administrative details (not that Checkuser isn't important - to the contrary - but it shouldn't be more important than the project itself).
I haven't had any contact with Birgitte, but I'm happy to hear that she is doing as you say. Questioning motives foes hand-in-hand with people's attitudes towards leadership. Even for myself I can easily say that I am the senior active editor on Wiktionary because I can justify that as a function of time. I am also the senior of two bureaucrats, but I prefer not to draw any conclusion about how that translates into leadership. I am hesitant to draw any unwarranted conclusion from the fact that a person is a bureaucrat or administrator. I see Robert cast in a similar role at Wikibooks.
Maybe it's the role of the bureaucrat that should be reviewed. A bureaucrat needs to have the broad support of his community, but he also needs the authority to act when the situation requires even when those actions conflict with the views of other important community members. Naturally if a bureaucrat becomes excessive in taking such measures he will lose broad support.
Bureaucrats should know their own communities enough to recognize the abilities and personalities of their own projects' members. Perhaps all bureaucrats who have built up a certain level of trust and experience should have Checkuser access. I don't particularly want it for myself. I trust that I have enough social skills and legal understanding to use the tool responsibly, but I shudder at the prospect of having to cope with yet another technical skill.
Perhaps the tools available to bureaucrats should be expanded, to cover a wider range of project-specific appointments that are not appropriate for even a steward who does not have experience with a particular project. I would recommend that bureaucrats have the authority to grant the checkuser tool to any project member (not necessarily just sysops); these could easily be for the limited amount of time required to deal with specific problem users. A non-sysop who is granted this tool would be able to investigate and report (confidentially if need be), but leave it to others to take measured disciplinary action.
I also think that bureaucrats should have the right to de-sysop. I think that I would be less hesitant to appoint some people if I felt that could be reversed if my suspicions proved true. It would also make it easier to remove, without prejudice, any sysop that we just haven't seen for a long time.
Ec
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