[WikiEN-l] Superusers?

[FastLizard4]

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Well, first of all, I think "superuser" is a very bad name for the
group.  Superuser, as a computing term, is generally synonymous with the
root user - the single most powerful user on the system.  To me,
superuser as the name of a user group on Wikipedia would imply the most
powerful usergroup, which of course would not be true.

Second, I take issue with accountcreator being included.  First, when
accountcreator (which has 66 members) is compared to rollbackers (3,698
members), reviewers (4,926 members), and autopatrolled (1,539 members),
it seems that the superuser group (as defined previously) wouldn't
exactly serve much of a purpose in simplifying matters, as only 66 users
(at the most, as not all accountcreators have all four userrights) would
qualify to be members of the superuser group.  Second, we simply don't
need many people to be accountcreators, and some of the administrators
and users of the account creation project believe that the
accountcreator userright has already been distributed to more users than
needed, and for purposes outside the scope of the account creation
project (for example, distribution of the accountcreator right so
non-administrators could edit editnotices, which is not the userright's
intended purpose).  Also, the accountcreator right is regularly removed
from users that have been deemed "inactive" over at the account creation
tool, and the other three rights usually aren't removed unless the user
does something wrong.  (Note: Statistics in this paragraph regarding the
number of users in each usergroup taken from [[Special:Statistics]] at
the time of writing.)

Also, another change I'd make is that administrators should be able to
grant/revoke this right, as none of the individual rights included
require a bureaucrat.

Sorry if this is a bit long winded. :P
- --
- --FastLizard4 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FastLizard4)

MuZemike wrote:
> I was thinking, after the talk about 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandal_fighters which doesn't 
> terribly look like it's going anywhere, why don't we possibly "bundle" a 
> few of the other userrights into one, such as my proposal below:
> 
> User right: "Superuser"
> 
> Rights included: rollback, autopatrolled, reviewer, accountcreator
> 
> As far as who would grant/revoke such a right, I would personally want 
> bureaucrats to do that job, as that is their natural-given right as 
> bureaucrats (to grant/revoke userrights). Some pros and cons that I forsee:
> 
> Pros: Consolidating userrights, increasing transparency for those are 
> not wiki-experts, less stuff for sysops to do, less confusion
> 
> Cons: Abuse of one of the tools like rollback (as with sysops), trend 
> seems to be for "unbundling" rights instead of "bundling", updating 
> those users who aren't around anymore, dispute on procedures to grant 
> this (i.e. simple request, "requests for adminship"-type voting, etc.)
> 
> I'm throwing this out here to see what people would think. Any thoughts?
> 
> -MuZemike
> 
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