[Foundation-l] Adminship tools on Commons

[jkelly at fas.harvard.edu]

  Alison,

Quoting Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com>:
> otherwise (books/source/pedia/tionary/etc) I do wonder whether the same
> should apply in all cases to commons, specifically because commons is a
> resource for *all* the Wikimedia projects world-wide, and not strictly a
> "local" project at all.

  I think that it is worth pointing out that, in general, Commons is reasonably
open to granting adminship to users and that many Commons users are especially
aware of Commons' need for dedicated admins fluent in languages that are not as
well represented as they should be.

  That said, this needs to be balanced against the very same point that you
brought up; because of Commons' nature as a multi-project resource, a deletion
on Commons can impact dozens of projects, for instance.  Projects without local
uploads are, in effect, relying on the Commons community to make smart choices
about who can delete their images.  I think that Commons in general does do a
good job of balancing these concerns, and I'll note that we get more complaints
along the lines of "some admin did something that impacted our project" than we
get "this dedicated Commons user didn't get adminship even though our community
supported it".

  Incidentally, I think that the Commons bureaucrats made a reasonable decision
in the case being discussed.

                            Jkelly