[Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers are very precious part of the global scheme

[Anthere]

I am not entirely sure I understood all what you proposed Tim :-(

Tim Starling a écrit:
> 
> There is no sense in giving developers administrative power. Developers 
> are good at programming, not management of a community. By wrapping up 
> their ability to contribute with their ability to rule, they are made 
> effectively unaccountable. Nobody wants to remove someone's developer 
> access if it means they can't do much needed progrmaming work. 
> Administration of the encyclopedia also distracts them from programming, 
> a task which they have a rare skill and motivation for.

Understood.
Developper are good at programming
They may or may not be good at administration, and they may like or not 
like taking care of administration.

I hesitate at using the word management, because I do not see pushing 
button "ban", "sysop", "unsysop" etc... as management.

pushing these buttons sounds to me like "we trust the guy to listen to 
the community global opinion, and to do what is a natural consequence of 
the global opinion and to report what has been done to the community".

As you do.

I do not think the actual power of *decision* is in the hand of the one 
pushing the button.

> Wikipedia should not be a technocracy, ruled by those with knowledge of 
> computer systems. Wikipedia should be a democracy. Those in power should 
> be accountable to the community at large, and ideally selected from and 
> by the community at large.

Accountable and selected by the community yes

Selected like with a vote
Accountable such as having to follow rules set by the community, and 
having to report

> I have written a feature giving people with the "developer" flag set in 
> their wiki user accounts a level of administrative ability similar to 
> what developers with shell access are capable of. Specifically, such 
> users are able to set arbitrary user rights for any user on any 
> Wikimedia project. They may create sysops, desysop, create bureaucrats 
> or other developers, or any other user-rights operation you care to 
> mention. This feature is operational right now, and I've been using it 
> for the last couple of weeks to make bureaucrats on various wikis.

So, there are people with a flag of developper, with extended bureaucrat 
powers, with no shell access

And other people with a flag of developper, with shell access and 
extended bureaucrat power

did I understand well ?

> The feature is easy to use and does not carry the security risks of 
> write-access to the database. At the moment, it is not possible to 
> rename user accounts or change the history of articles through the web 
> interface, but such features are planned.
> 
> I suggest we use this feature to split the roles of developer and site 
> administrator. Specifically, here is what I think should happen:
> 
> 1. A policy should be instituted disallowing any developer from using 
> their power for administrative purposes, except where there is no other 
> way to perform the relevant operation. New developers applying for shell 
> access should be made aware of this policy.

ok


> By "administrative purposes", I mean exercises of power for any other 
> purpose than testing and implementing software.
> 
> 2. A small number of users should be made "honorary developers" (perhaps 
> a better title can be found). These users should be selected by putting 
> forward nominations and then conducting a vote, similar to the vote now 
> conducted at the English Wikipedia for sysop access.
> 
> 3. These "honorary developers" can lose their developer access by a 
> community vote giving a majority in favour, by an arbitration committee 
> ruling, or by Jimbo's decree.
> 
> It should be possible for a developer to hold both shell access and 
> community blessing. Such people would take the role of both programmer 
> and administrator. However as I said above, we really have a lot of 
> programming work to do.

You do not mention rules.
Would they have specific rules to follow ?
New power should implies more rules to follow

Right now, Erik is typically having this kind of power and 
administrative task.
That means
*he participates in setting the rules
*he decides when the rules must be applied
*he implement the decision
*he eventually forget to report :-)

I would like to suggest that at least two rules are necessary

rule 1 : no decision alone : depending on the urgency, Jimbo decision, 
arbitration committee decision, full vote (like for sysoping someone), 
poll (like urgent desysoping)
I think this rule is very important. No decision taken by a ''honorary 
developper alone''

rule 2 : report mandatory. Depending on the action taken, on the mailing 
list, on the wikipedia sysop vote page, on the poll page

Breaking of any of these two rules (without a damn good reason) means 
suspension of "honorary developer" position.

No power should be entirely in a couple of people hands without rules. 
And the more power, the more the rules need to be enforced.

-------

Last : when there are questions about the actions of a "honorary 
developer", the one questioning should be granted free speech and public 
  place to talk.