Tim Starling wrote:
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
On 10/19/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com>
wrote:
Pakaran made a comment on irc which really makes a
lot of sense to me
Why could not be bureaucrat be allowed to give bots on their local
projects ? They are more likely to know the peoople as well as the rules.
This is a deliberate constraint put in place for reasons unknown to
me, I can't see why local bureaucrats can't be trusted with the full
Makesysop interface, which would allow them advanced control over user
rights such as granting/revoking any right on the wiki. I can't see
this becoming a problem, as it would cut down on the overhead of
getting a steward to grant bot rights and in case some bureaucrat goes
AWOL we can always quickly clean up the mess (which I don't see
happening in the first place since these are trusted individuals).
The current power structure reflects the outcome numerous discussions I
had on the subject, with developers, users and probably most
influentially, Sunir Shah. My personal preference was for an IRC-style
model, a two-level system where sysops could sysop or desysop anyone.
But I was talked out of it by IRC and wiki experts alike.
The bureaucrat model was pioneered by Brion and Snok, and I introduced
stewards as a way to completely displace the power of developers within
the wiki power structure. The current model has a population of people
holding various rights proportional to the quantity of demand for use of
those rights. The aim is to give away the minimum amount of power needed
for oversight and a timely response, not to give the maximum amount of
power allowable by considerations of trust. This seems to mirror
sentiments in the general community. Desysopping is rare and potentially
destructive, so the ability is only given to a small number of people.
To answer Avar's objection directly, you can be a trusted individual and
still be rash or arrogant. We minimise power to minimise the damage done
when trusted individuals act in anger. I'm not talking about damage to
articles, I'm talking about damage to egos, and there's no rollback
button for that.
It may be that there's not enough active stewards at the moment, and
that may be leading to tensions. But I think the system we have has been
quite effective in general, so if steward workload is a problem, we
should just get more stewards.
I'd like to make a comment about this.
Some editors complain that they are not enough stewards because things
do not get done in a speedily enough fashion (ie, within one hour.
I do not agree with that approach.
There are mostly 4 situations
* request for being a sysop on a small project. Most of the time, it
takes at least two weeks because
**some editors asked the status without signing with their names (eh :-)
**we request that a "request for sysophood" be created and that editors
list their names here and that they get support. We will wait AT LEAST a
week then. If editors asking for sysop status were reading requirements
before asking, they would gain time for sure.
*request for desysoping someone. Except for urgent cases, I, at least,
wait on purpose before doing it. I know of many examples of people
asking and retracting afterwards. Besides, often, editors asking for the
desysophood fail to provide a link to justify the request. So, we wait.....
*request for having access to check user status. These are likely to
wait for a long time, because I think no user should be given that
access before a policy is set
* request for having bot status. And here, yes, there is a lONNNNNNNG
waiting time. Because when we get request, we get them for 50 different
projects sometimes. And mind you, this is *really* a boring task to do
them one by one. Additionnaly, each project may have different rules for
granting bot flag, so if we are serious, we must check each project
rules. Not adding that sometimes, the bot creator fails to created the
user name in the project, which is a loss of time for us.
All in all, the bot request is frankly the ***more*** painful by far.
And granting bot access is likely not controversial.
Which is why I support giving bureaucrat the ability of doing this.
The fact that bot access can only be granted by
stewards is not a
deliberate constraint, and I would have no problem allowing bureaucrats
to both grant and revoke it. The steward interface is general, so they
can grant and revoke anything, but the bureaucrat interface has to be
extended for each new ability. Rollback is another example of a right
which could potentially be granted at the bureaucrat or sysop level. It
certainly wouldn't be practical to require stewards to grant it.
-- Tim Starling
Yes, I am aware it would require some technical changes. Rollback is
also a good example. Still, I think both should move to the realm of
bureaucrats... This is why I am asking for feedback. Till now, nobody
opposed the idea...