[WikiEN-l] someone after non-active admin accounts

[Jay Litwyn]

"Thomas Dalton" <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:a4359dff0905210757r6bf68360m80277e6491df3d6a at mail.gmail.com...
> 2009/5/21 Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>:
>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>> 2009/5/21 Jay Litwyn <brewhaha at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>:
>>>> Nothing is to do here. Adminships, last time I checked, are already 
>>>> subject
>>>> to a time-out under admins open to recall. I do not think it matters 
>>>> whether
>>>> it's three months, twelve, or fifty months. If that's the length of 
>>>> your
>>>> term, then it does not matter if you go into a coma due to a bad batch 
>>>> of
>>>> homebrew: You're still an admin. The subject is whether it is ever 
>>>> proper to
>>>> hand over accounts. Maybe it's proper to hand an account over to your 
>>>> wife
>>>> or secretary; probably common practice. I think there are some
>>>> organizational accounts around; they're clearly identified as such. I 
>>>> saw
>>>> one that had a specific scope in botanical medicine.
>>>
>>> The English Wikipedia has never had a policy of desysopping inactive
>>> admins whether they are open to recall or not (which far from all
>>> admins are). Adminship is for life unless the account is compromised,
>>> you do something seriously wrong or you resign. I don't know if there
>>> is a specific written policy against handing over account, but I doubt
>>> the community would accept such an action, especially for an admin
>>> account. It certainly isn't common practice. Role accounts are usually
>>> banned on sight. They used to be allowed for certain things, but went
>>> out of fashion years ago.
>>
>> Not strictly true, but they are very limited in what they are used
>> for. Mainly for contact purposes.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_contact_role_accounts
>
> I did say "usually". Also, not that that page says all those accounts
> should be indefinitely blocked. You aren't allowed to actually *use* a
> role account, but they are allowed to exist to make contacting a group
> easier in some cases.

If I had known that when I saw it...there *was* an org-named account in a 
category about wikipedians interested in herbalism, and either it's gone or 
out of the category, so I couldn't tell you if there was actually only one 
person behind it. There was another one dedicated to a search engine that 
had some peer-to-peer capability that I did not understand -- didn't find 
it, because I don't remember the name of it. I don't remember where to look, 
either. (Maybe I will after I volume-level my tracks for CJSR). Contacts 
were being made on the talk page, so for all I know it is out of commission 
under "Wikipedia is not a social networking site" (I am sure you could fool 
a lot of people on that one, and not, as it happens, me).