Karl Eichwalder wrote:
It's me. I neither like the term/title sysop nor admin (resp. the German translation "Administrator"). I simply don't want to be responsible, I don't want to defend the WP in court. Etc. pp. Change the word sysop/admin to something else like "advanced user" and I would be happy again.
IMO, "advanced user" is a better name anyway. Even better are "trusted user" and "old hand" (maveric149's suggestion).
GreenMountain wrote:
I think that a sysop should be responsible.
I don't want to be responsible as a sysop; I want to be responsible for my own edits only.
I'm pretty sure that this is just what GreenMountain meant. (Well, change "edits" to "actions" to be more general.) In context, an administrator is responsible for their own SQL queries. But administrators aren't responsible for anybody else's actions.
and they could edit protected pages, and could not delete, or block.
I'm not interested in those actions. I'm just interested in SQL. Maybe the Term/title ("SIP's" (sysops in training)) is good enough; to be translated as "Anwärter" ;)
We already have a position for somebody that wants to do SQL queries but doesn't want to edit protected pages, [un]delete, or [un]block, and who is trusted by other Wikipedians to do what they say. This position is called "Administrator" (or a translation thereof), popularly called "sysop".
Both of these names are bad, IMO. I would support a change in names -- which should probably be taken to <wikipedia-L>.
But in the meantime, if you become "Administrator" on [[de:]] (or whatever y'all say in German), then you will not be responsible for any actions other than your own edits and your own SQL queries. If you doubt my word, I am certain that Jimbo himself will back that up.
-- Toby