[Foundation-l] Fwd: Re: Fwd: Wikimedia-wide globalblocking mechanism?

[mike.lifeguard]

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>If communities are going to insist that a steward desysop himself every 
>time he goes into a project to perform routine anti-vandalism it's easy 
>to see that it is more objectionable that they perform acts 
>automatically without ever logging themselves in.  Perhaps it would be 
>preferable that once a steward has properly given himself sysop rights 
>he retain those rights unless there is a specific objection from the 
>community.  That would be far more acceptable than any kind of automated 
>process.

I'd be fine with that too, but it's really a moot point. This still requires
a steward (or team of them) to go to each wiki individually to make the
blocks - hardly the most efficient method. This proposed mechanism would
simply automate the process, saving time and manpower. When dealing with a
large number of spambots, or a persistent cross-wiki vandal [1], manpower is
often a prime concern.
Can we also try to remember that, as with the change pagemove upon
autoconfirmed, we're talking mainly about wikis with a community not able to
effectively fend off the spammers etc. I wrote [2] at the time that Heller
would be proud of the requests to have wikis with no community ask to opt-in
for such a measure; I think the same thing needs to be said here.
Mike.lifeguard

[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Drini/daylog&oldid=861810
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metapub&diff=prev&oldid=773117