I might be wrong, but wouldn't taking powers previously only usable by a relative few and allowing a great deal more people to have them, tend to democratize things?
Are you suggesting an automatic way of granting sysop status? If so, I like it.
No, what he suggested (and with which I agree, though I'm not quite sure how to implement it yet) is a third status in between J. Random Anonymous user and sysop, which will be able to edit protected pages and use the "move" function, and which will be automatically given to someone who hangs around for a while.
What's the purpose of the sysop status, then?
The only reason we had the sysop status originally was that we really did need to "delete" some pages, and at that time, our delete function was royally destructive, i.e. it deleted the page and all the history. So it was too powerful to have people using it indiscriminately. But we wanted to let a few people use it, because it really was useful.
Now, if the delete is no longer destructive in that way, i.e. if there's a way to ordinary users to revive a deleted page, then we don't really need sysop status except for "old hand" type of functions.
As I see it, we should *strive* to have only one level of user, in spirit.
I am comfortable with these levels:
1. Not-logged-in -- you can edit pages, etc., but you're penalized in some minor respects. The reaso for this is that it's more productive for people to choose a consistent identity, rather than possibly having a different ip number every day. And if you remember '24', it's a pain to have to refer to someone by a number.
2. Logged-in -- you can do anything that's not 'royally destructive', i.e. anything that's not irreversible, EXCEPT edit some protected pages. Again, we like to keep the number of protected pages to a low level to just dissuade some of the more annoying and lame vandalism attempts, like putting spurting penis pictures on the homepage.
3. Old-hand/sysop -- should be granted in an apolitical manner based on being essentially "legit" -- sysops should be able to do a tiny number of destructive (irreversible) things, IF we need to have those abilities for some reason. (For example, some kinds of deletes do need to be irreversible for legal reasons.) This status should be granted more or less automatically, and whatever privileges it give should, by strong social custom, NEVER be used "in anger", i.e. to "pull rank to win an argument". There are only technical reasons to even have such a status.
4. Developer -- should be granted the ability to run arbitrary SQL commands. MAYBE this should not be part of the software, now that developers can log in to the machine directly using ssh. Access to this should be highly restricted to people who (a) are techies actually working on stuff, maybe development but maybe writing and running some ad hoc log analysis scripts, etc. and (b) who agree that 'developer' status should NEVER NEVER (DOUBLE NEVER) be used "in anger".
----
The main role that the Cunctator has taken for himself here is very much appreciated by me... I think that a big part of our success is openness and non-cabalism. Social pressure works better than the iron rule of code.
--Jimbo
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org