Brian Wolff, 27/11/18 18:45:
I'm still open to communities who want to continue to have the old behaviour to opt out of the new behaviour - The primary thing here is that the default has now changed, so that anywhere that was using the old behaviour for no other reason then it was the default is now using the new behaviour.
The problem with this is that the right to unblock yourself is clearly something of use in unforeseen emergencies, not something for which you'd usually write up a consensus discussion or a guideline 5 years in advance.
I understand the feeling of urgency in doing such changes by fiat in response to apparent threats, but I hope you do appreciate the potential for such permission changes to alter the power structure and social workings of the wikis in ways we don't fully anticipate. This change may seem small, but it does dismantle one component of the reciprocality of administrative powers on the wiki. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Administrator
In particular, such a new default means, on wikis with 2 sysops, that one sysop has the capacity to unilaterally and irreversibly block the second sysop, and that in any last-resort controversy the permissions encourage and give a prize to whoever shoots first. (Which is already a common problem in online communities, see StackExchange with their "fastest gun in the west" dilemma.)
I think it would be wise for such a default to be changed only on wikis which have at least 3 administrators *and* a bureaucrat.
Federico