Well said Nemo Bis. There is an ever increasing autocratic approach to what used to be community decisions. Societall matters used to be discussed openly on wiki, or in list, then to have the technical components on phabricator. Now it seems that the societal are taking place in phabricator, away from the society and predominantly with the technical. That is undesirable IMNSHO.
I would think that the easiest and means to apply this is for large wikis only, and run some checks on the medium sized wikis to understand the size of the issue, and the consequences prior to implementation. Leave the small wikis alone.
-- billinghurst
------ Original Message ------
Sent: 29/11/2018 3:06:34 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Removal of unblockself rights on wiki
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.
There's an ongoing discussion about reaching out to wikis and ask them if this will be a problem, and how to solve the problem of one admin blocking the other(s) on small wikis, in this Phabricator task:
//Johan Jönsson
--