[WikiEN-l] Sysop status

[Erik Moeller]

> I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*.
> 
> I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of
> people who have been around for awhile sysops.  I want to dispel the
> aura of "authority" around the position.  It's merely a technical
> matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone.
> 
> I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted
> sysop status is a really special thing.

There are a few problems:

1) Page deletion. We have an undelete feature, but it is painfully slow
because we haven't cleared the archive of deleted pages for -- well, ever, I
guess. It is also not chronologically sorted so you have to check both the
deletion log and the undelete list to get somewhere. That's why deletions are
currently not reviewed much by other sysops (the only ones who can see the text of
the deleted pages). There have been deletions I disagreed with, although
rarely. My guess is that one reason Cunctator is wary of giving sysop status
away too freely is because of the lack of review in this area.

2) Protected pages. We haven't implemented the cool "edit a copy of a
protected page and let that replace the page after n hours" feature yet. We also
don't have a list of protected pages, as far as I can tell, and are not logging
page protection/unprotection. Since page protection is a rather severe
action, I'm worried that there might be a hidden inflation of protected pages,
especially in the Wikipedia: namespace (where I already disagree with most
protections that are in place). Sometimes protections also stay in place
accidentally.

3) IP blocks. Blocking an IP is very easy, but currently IP blocks do not
expire. For some reason, sysops also seem to be afraid of unblocking IPs other
people blocked, so we still have IP blocks that are a few months old. Again,
I don't think our current system can accomodate much more sysops in this
area.

All of these problems can be solved through software and some better
explanations on the respective pages. However, currently they still exist, so I
think you should take the sysop nomination process a bit more seriously.

Regards,

Erik

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