On Thursday 06 June 2002 11:53 am, lcrocker wrote:

I am also persuaded by Cunc that they should remain on the user list. It's clear that we must have the feature--we tried living without it, and it didn't work.  So all comfy anti-elitism aside, the feature is needed, so it stays.  Given that, I think secrecy is a far greater sin than elitism.  If we have the feature, we should not be ashamed of it or downplay it.  Showing those settings on the user page will also encourage newcomers to ask about them, which is a good thing--it gets people involved and interacting with the community, even if that interaction might initially be a complaint.

Is this currently enacted yet? As it is, at least non-logged in users (possibly regular users too) can't see who has what status on the user list, and there is no indication on sysops' user pages that they are sysops (same for developers).

I guess I could live with this if it is OK with Jimbo and Larry and so long as any mention of this is a link to a strong statement saying that sysop status isn't anything really special.

Also, before anybody thinks of the idea, please don't display sysops' user names differently on RecentChanges -- we don't want vandals to know just when and when not sysops are working on the wiki.

Cheers!

mav