I made a bunch of people sysop. I think I got everyone who requested it. Plus, I got a few more besides.
The only thing I ask of sysops is that you not delete pages unless you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that there will be no controversy about it. :-)
If we have fights about deleted pages, then I think the best thing to do is to implement some form of nondestructive delete.
But, better to just not fight in the first place. :-)
--Jimbo
p.s. Anyone else who wants sysop, just email me.
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com
I made a bunch of people sysop. I think I got everyone who requested it. Plus, I got a few more besides.
I didn't even know there was a sysop privilege. Does wikipedia come with a long laundry list of specific privileges, like VMS? When was sysop implemented? What does it consist of? I must confess that when I first encountered the wikipedia, I was immediately attracted to it because, unlike arch-rival nupedia, it didn't come with a few dozen pages explaining why an intellectual lightweight such as myself with no advanced degrees is unlikely to have anything of value to offer. Now I find out that even the wikipedia organization includes the concept of a "sysop". This, in itself, is not something I find alarming, but it does lower wikipedia a peg on my opinion scale and potentially on larger scales such as the mythical "public relations".
The only thing I ask of sysops is that you not delete pages unless you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that there will be no controversy about it. :-)
According to the Reality Cracking school, it's impossible for anyone to delete anything. So why make it a rule for people to obey?
If we have fights about deleted pages, then I think the best thing to do is to implement some form of nondestructive delete.
I assumed you already had. Perhaps periodic posts of compressed content to obscure administrative regions of usenet? Or if even that is no longer part of the commons, maybe intellectual commoners like myself could be recruited as volunteers for the relatively simple tasks involved in downloading and archiving compressed wikipedia content.
But, better to just not fight in the first place. :-)
That would be a good first commandment. Perhaps a good second commandment would be that all records of infighting that somehow arises within the wikipedia organization be destroyed.
:-)
--Jimbo
p.s. Anyone else who wants sysop, just email me.
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Lorraine Lee wrote:
I didn't even know there was a sysop privilege. Does wikipedia come with a long laundry list of specific privileges, like VMS?
No, just is_sysop.
When was sysop implemented?
In the old site, we locked the homepage due to people putting disgusting pictures there. I said that anyone who wanted the password could have it, so as to preserve the wiki-consensus-nature of the homepage.
When we moved to the new software, it became the case that there isn't just a single password, but each member can have privileges.
And I just now got around to saying "anyone who wants can have".
What does it consist of?
Very little. First, it means you can edit the homepage. Second, it means that you can delete pages including all traces that the page ever existed. But this latter will probably change.
We don't want sysops to be special or set apart from regular users. Anyone can be a sysop. All it means is that you're not a vandal.
According to the Reality Cracking school, it's impossible for anyone to delete anything. So why make it a rule for people to obey?
Well, I'm afraid I don't know anything about that.
If we have fights about deleted pages, then I think the best thing to do is to implement some form of nondestructive delete.
I assumed you already had. Perhaps periodic posts of compressed content to obscure administrative regions of usenet? Or if even that is no longer part of the commons, maybe intellectual commoners like myself could be recruited as volunteers for the relatively simple tasks involved in downloading and archiving compressed wikipedia content.
Now I really don't even know what you are talking about, sorry. :-)
The issue of deletion is that administrative deletion, unlike deletion by an end user who merely blanks the content of the page is (a) irreversible, in that the history is deleted as well and (b) beneficial, in that it turns the page back into a nonexistent state so that links to it will not indicate incorrectly that the page exists.
Administrative deletes should be reserved for mere uncontroversial typos that don't serve any useful function, and for really awful vandalism that shouldn't exist on the site. It should also exist for copyright violations! If someone puts copyrighted material on the site, we have to delete it bigtime.
--Jimbo
On mar, 2002-03-26 at 16:56, Jimmy Wales wrote:
The issue of deletion is that administrative deletion, unlike deletion by an end user who merely blanks the content of the page is (a) irreversible, in that the history is deleted as well and
I've checked in the beginnings of the semi-permanent delete code to the CVS repository; a deleted page will still be kept hidden in the history (old) table until it is removed by a (not yet implemented) periodic sweep of unlinked histories or restored by another trusted user using the (also not yet implemented) page undeletion tool.
Jimbo, I'd feel better about all this if you could install that on the running machine when you have a chance. I don't expect anyone to abuse their delete priviledges deliberately, but there may be disagreements over appropriateness or accidental deletions (I'm sure I'm not the only one who's hit a "yes, I'm sure" button automatically before noticing that I'd been asked about something other than what I had intended!). There's also the possibility of vandals breaking into someone's account (think of insecure passwords, or leaving the login cookie open on a public machine...), and I'd prefer that potential damage be minimized.
(b) beneficial, in that it turns the page back into a nonexistent state so that links to it will not indicate incorrectly that the page exists.
Of course, it's even better to add actual content yourself. :)
Administrative deletes should be reserved for mere uncontroversial typos that don't serve any useful function, and for really awful vandalism that shouldn't exist on the site. It should also exist for copyright violations! If someone puts copyrighted material on the site, we have to delete it bigtime.
Would it be useful to have a single-version delete? ie, the ability to drop a single old version of a page from the database, leaving in its place a notice of removal. That way, gross vandalism (copyrighted or illegal material) put into an existing article could be cleanly removed from the database without going so far as to delete the whole article history.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On mar, 2002-03-26 at 02:47, Lorraine Lee wrote:
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com
I made a bunch of people sysop. I think I got everyone who requested it. Plus, I got a few more besides.
I didn't even know there was a sysop privilege. Does wikipedia come with a long laundry list of specific privileges, like VMS?
As far as I know, there's just the one.
When was sysop implemented?
Since we had the PHP script, at least. Before that, there were similar priveleges conferred to users who had asked for the administrator password. (Handed out pretty much willy-nilly to anyone who asked for it -- not much of a cabal, eh?)
What does it consist of? I must confess that when I first encountered the wikipedia, I was immediately attracted to it because, unlike arch-rival nupedia, it didn't come with a few dozen pages explaining why an intellectual lightweight such as myself with no advanced degrees is unlikely to have anything of value to offer. Now I find out that even the wikipedia organization includes the concept of a "sysop". This, in itself, is not something I find alarming, but it does lower wikipedia a peg on my opinion scale and potentially on larger scales such as the mythical "public relations".
Is_sysop isn't *that* great. Here's what you get:
* Ability to permanently delete pages including their history. (Which I'm not convinced is entirely wise a function to have at all.)
* Ability to delete uploaded files. (Regular users already can upload a blank file to overwrite obnoxious material, so this just keeps the upload directory cleaner.)
* Ability to edit pages that have protection set to "is_sysop" * Ability to protect/unprotect pages
* Ability to ban an IP address from editing access. (However, this function is limited and, I think, buggy.)
* Ability to run SQL queries on the database. Not useful unless you really know what you're doing.
Jimbo:
If we have fights about deleted pages, then I think the best thing to do is to implement some form of nondestructive delete.
What I would recommend for a non-destructive delete is to move the article from the 'cur' to the 'old' table in the database, then remove it from 'cur'. The article will then still be in the database with its complete history, but wouldn't show up in regular links, searches, etc.
It ought to be relatively simple to then set up a "restore deleted pages" function.
Lorraine:
I assumed you already had. Perhaps periodic posts of compressed content to obscure administrative regions of usenet? Or if even that is no longer part of the commons, maybe intellectual commoners like myself could be recruited as volunteers for the relatively simple tasks involved in downloading and archiving compressed wikipedia content.
Speaking of which; Jimbo, we really need to have a periodically produced database dump tarball available.
But, better to just not fight in the first place. :-)
That would be a good first commandment. Perhaps a good second commandment would be that all records of infighting that somehow arises within the wikipedia organization be destroyed.
Trotsky who? :)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On mar, 2002-03-26 at 17:18, I wrote:
Speaking of which; Jimbo, we really need to have a periodically produced database dump tarball available.
Hey, I just noticed that there *is* a database dump available now at http://www.wikipedia.com/tarballs/ (as of March 21)! Awesome, thanks!
However, the old usemod database has vanished from there. Since the old edit histories aren't merged in yet, this is a problem... (There are still a few articles left that got damaged by bugs in the conversion script, and it would be nice to be able to restore them.) I dug around my hard drive and found a saved copy that seems to go up to December 20; is there a more recent one still available?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Hi!
Speaking of which; Jimbo, we really need to have a periodically
produced
database dump tarball available.
Hey, I just noticed that there *is* a database dump available now at http://www.wikipedia.com/tarballs/ (as of March 21)! Awesome, thanks!
However, the old usemod database has vanished from there. Since the
old
edit histories aren't merged in yet, this is a problem...
We should also keep in mind, that in about ten years there will be scientific studies about the evolution of certain Wikipedia articles, and in about 25 years there will be an old Wikipedia tarball lying next to an old Linux kernel in the [[Museum of Free Software and Open Source]] (existing since 2017).
Even today it would be nice to see the complete history of an article - is this an problem of discspace or speed? Can it be solved?
Bye, Kurt
Kurt Jansson wrote:
Even today it would be nice to see the complete history of an article - is this an problem of discspace or speed? Can it be solved?
Some of the very oldest history is lost forever... the Usemod script had a length of time parameter that was set to 30 days for awhile, without my really thinking much about it.
There isn't really any permanent problem with disk space, although the server is getting a little bit cramped at the moment. Disks are cheaper than ever, with no end in sight to the price reductions.
--Jimbo
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