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It is 18:33:32 on August 23, 2024, according to the server's time and date.

+ Mop please

Just say NO to performance-enhancing rugs!

Can I please be reinstated to the Cabal? Inactive for a long time, hence the -sysop, now returning to some part time Cambodian article editing and a bit of mopping. It's nice to be back. Cheers, Paxse (talk) 13:21, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Done, welcome back. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:31, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Only ten minutes this time, The Rambling Man, you're getting better. ;) Acalamari 13:39, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Ta muchly! Damn edit conflict Acalamari! Just what I was going to say! Nine minutes is now the new Olympic standard ;) Paxse (talk) 13:42, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, since Team GB won their first gold today, I feel invigorated and I'm very pleased I beat my personal best. I'd like to thank my trainer, my family.... The Rambling Man (talk) 13:51, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I've seen records being broken, but this fast...well, I suspect he's sitting on some performance enhancing rug... Is somebody checking all this please? Wifione ^Message 02:08, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Hm. Would that be it? I don't think it enhances performance that much, but it sure enhances the look of a foyer! — Coren ^(talk) 23:31, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Wait, our 'crats are using performance enhancing rugs? And I looked up to these guys! ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Talk to me} 00:11, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to assure everyone that the Arbitration Committee is forming an Anti-Textile Subcommittee to investigate allegations of illicit use of fabrics on Wikipedia. Users wishing to assist should apply directly to the committee after submitting a USD$50 application fee to the Hersfold's New Carpet fund. Hersfold non-admin^(t/a/c) 21:20, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Inactive administrators, August 2012

Resolved

This month's round of inactive administrators are due for desysopping today:

• Borisblue (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Daveydweeb (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Matt Crypto (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Robth (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Seb26 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Regards, — Moe ε 09:27, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Done. Note that despite July's rush of RFAs giving us six new administrators, eight were desyopped in the same month, resulting in a net gain of -2. This year there have been 17 successful RFAs, and 60 desysoppings due to inactivity, resulting in a net loss of 43 administrators to the project. This figure does not include users who have requested the addition or removal of their sysop flag at this noticeboard. WilliamH (talk) 18:02, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, quite unfortunate really. The only positive I can gain from that is that, we have more active administrators from the recent RFAs than we did before. We dipped down into the 680s in the number of active administrators and now we are almost back to 700. Regards, — Moe ε 20:44, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Revising the user rights for the Education Program extension

Hi! I'm seeking feedback for the configuration of user rights on the revised version of the Education Program extension, which we're hopeful can be deployed in the next few weeks. The user rights configuration will be rearranged to avoid a Wikimedia staff role as bottleneck or control point for the user rights. Please take a look at the proposed configuration and give feedback. The nominal plan would be to have bureaucrats control the "Education Program administrator" flag, which would be the main right for controlling other user rights and administrative features within the new "Education Program:" namespace. Thanks!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

(As the signature suggests, I'm now working for WMF. I'm essential the community liaison for the education program, so please feel free to bring related issues and frustrations to me. -Sage)

• As I have noted at the linked discussion, I do not believe it is appropriate for the WMF to create namespaces and user rights hierarchies on this project in order to administer its programs, when they have an Outreach wiki that is specific to this very program. Our community has never been given an explanation of why this is being done, and has no control over these new user rights. This sets a horrible precedent for the WMF to create namespaces for its own purposes, which are purely administrative and not related to our project itself. Risker (talk) 04:42, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
• I'm going to add something very specific here. Bureaucrats are selected by the English Wikipedia community to handle rights requests as approved by the English Wikipedia community, not by the WMF. They do not have that mandate, nor should it be assumed that it is in the best interests of either the community or the WMF to take on such responsibilities. The appointments for "Education Program administrator" will be made by the WMF, not by the community. Risker (talk) 04:58, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

It's not appropriate whatsoever. We have never been given an explanation of why this is being done, and once such a flag is handed down, we have no stake in what goes on in a new project space, one which we can't edit, and one for which there is no consensus anyway. As Risker says, bureaucrats enact only decisions made by the community. I will take any bureaucrat who uses their community-bound position to enact rights which do not have community endorsement - thus constituting an enormous infringement of the community's rights - straight to the Arbitration Committee, and they should lose their bit straight away, no questions asked. WilliamH (talk) 05:16, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Aye, and I thought we'd already discussed this. (Ok, it was actually a kerfuffle relating to granting a staff member these rights (linky), but wasn't actually a discussion along these lines). Bureaucrats are elected primarily due to their ability to interpret community consensus; they won't flip an admin bit unless the community agrees that it should be flipped, and they don't grant a bot flag unless the community and BAG agree that it's appropriate to do so. Unless there is a consensus amongst the community to allow the WMF to go over their heads in granting these rights, I agree with William - any bureaucrat granting these rights is abusing their ability to do so. As it is, I don't see that there is much support at all amongst the community for the program as it's being proposed. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 17:59, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely. If the "education program" staff cannot find the time to manage a right that might be needed once in a month or two, then they should let "education program admins" themselves assign the status. This is not within Bureaucrats' remit (giving permissions when the community has a consensus to do so). I personally support people using Wikipedia for course projects, etc, that benefit the broader world rather than being collected for grading, handed back and thrown in the recycling bin. However, I do not see the benefit in this formalized education program; I know one current Wikipedia sysop who very successfully ran a class without any of its features. -- Pakaran 18:00, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Certainly it's possible, especially for very experienced Wikipedians, to run successful Wikipedia course assignments without any involvement with a formalized education program. For those who don't want to use it, nothing will change. But there are also a lot of classes that really need some formal structure to help them run a successful Wikipedia assignment. The point of this extension is to reduce the organizational workload of Wikipedians trying to help with or keep an eye on (or when things go badly, clean up after) those classes.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the concerns and sentiments expressed so far. It seems very strange that the WMF is making and running a namespace which we can't even see (as far as I know), and then wanting us to grant rights specific to that namespace without specific support from the community for the namespace to even exist, let alone have exclusive userrights useful to only that namespace. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:33, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The idea here is that the community can and should be involved in this namespace. Rather than having some sort of WMF staff role built into the system, bureaucrats would be given technical control of the 'education program organizer' flag (not 'admin', to avoid confusion about the other admin role) and assign it based on community consensus. The sort of de facto inherited consensus is the current way the education program roles are organized for the United States and Canada education programs: there are recognized Regional Ambassadors, as well as a small number of Wikimedia Foundation staff, who've been doing things like welcoming new classes and ambassadors into the Wikipedia Education Program. (If accepting that de facto consensus as a starting point isn't acceptable, I guess we could do an RfC to establish explicit consensus for flipping the switch initially.) I expect a better, more traditional consensus-based system for assigning the organizer flag could be implemented for later additions and subtractions to the organizer group.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

You've missed the point. There is no community consensus for the actual existence of the flag. We are not going to give out flags whose very existence is not supported by the community. WilliamH (talk) 19:37, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Establishing consensus for the existence of the flag is what I hope will come out of the discussion I linked to start with.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I guess the main problem is this, then. Rather than proposing the idea and allowing the community to provide input, the Foundation has simply said "this is how things will be run, now give us support for it." It's backwards to how things are normally done on Wikipedia, and frankly the Foundation, of all people, should understand that. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 21:02, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

It's especially disconcerting when we are told (paraphrasing) "here's the RfC to get community consensus, but we're starting it in 10 days regardless". This is one of those cases where it's not better to ask forgiveness. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 02:31, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Quite. WilliamH (talk) 21:39, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Alas. We're in a tough place. I wish I could go back a few months and start the discussion off right, since now we're coming up quickly to the start of the new term. But please keep in mind that the new extension will be a key aid to the community members and newcomers working on the education project, and will have almost no effect for those who aren't involved with it — except to make it easier to see what's going on with the classes. The ambassadors and professors have been asking for a better way to set up course pages and track students since the beginning of the education program, and in that sense there is a long-standing consensus that this is wanted. I'll say in a personal capacity that I think it's really, really important to make the education program into more fully a community project.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic but don't see how this can be sorted by the 10th if you want the involvement of this project's bureaucrats. As others have rightly said, we will not grant new user rights without a community consensus to do so. Such a consensus cannot be demonstrated overnight. It would take a widely advertised discussion open for several weeks before that could be demonstrated. Clearly there isn't time for that. I suggest the implementation be delayed until a consensus can be found - no doubt tweaks (such as the renaming of the admin right to organiser) - will continue to be made. Perhaps the program can be hosted elsewhere in the meantime and launched next academic term/year here if support is established. Otherwise, of course WMF has the ability to put this program into effect without our participation and without this wiki's demonstrated support. I think that sets a poor precedent and will probably make establishing consensus for the namespace/rights difficult, but I guess it's an option. WJBscribe (talk) 19:40, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. That lines up with my current view of the situation. I'll be talking with the WMF team to figure out which next step we'll take. Trying to run the extension from a different wiki would negate much of the benefit when it comes to making it easier for the community to see what's going on in these classes and intervene when necessary. My guess is that also would require some serious recoding since it focused on students making edits to the same wiki.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I will add my voice to the chorus that our primary charge, as bureaucrats, are charged with implementing community consensus, and doing our best to uncover what it is, if it exists, in cases of difficulty. Name changes and bot rights, similarly, are implementation of long-standing project membership approved processes. In this case, the status quo aligns with the clear consensus of members, admins, bureaucrats, and members of Arbcom alike that the creation of the above namespaces is not something that should be implemented without community backing. As such, acting as a bureaucrat to implement this would be a violation of the trust given to us. Of course, this entire project is subject to Foundation fiat, and if they were to threaten to "revoke EnWiki's charter" as it were without acquiescence and offer this project the choice "create the namespaces, or we pull the plug on y'all," there is not much we could do as a community, other than vote with our feet (or fingertips). However, that we have even reached this state saddens me as it indicates that there exists such a gap between the foundation and the membership and governance (Arbcom) of its largest project that this decision was made without consultation and buy-in. If the Foundation is changing the flavor of the Wikimedia project to turn it into "Wikiversity plus," I am afraid that would be a big mistake. I understand that working on a fork or different project is not as ideal; then again, so is alienating the highly-invested users who donate enormous amounts of their precious time to ensure that this project continues as smoothly as it can (which isn't that smooth, I grant, but it could be much worse). -- Avi (talk) 00:05, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

community backing

Thanks, everyone who's given input here. Just to reassure people before anyone gets too depressed over the state of community-foundation relations: we're not going to turn this extension on without the approval of the community. I'll be talking things over to figure out how exactly to go forward, but it looks provisionally like we'll push back the timeline, start a more structured and on-topic RfC to figure out whether the community wants this extension and how to configure the rights for it, and then (hopefully) deploy it with plenty of time to play with it, give feedback, and make improvements that the community wants before using it systematically at the start of the following (January 2013) term. That's kind of shooting from the hip, but I think that's the general shape of things.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 00:27, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Sage, thank you for telling us this. At the same time, you've persuaded me (at least) that there is a benefit to everyone (including the English Wikipedia community) in improving the administrative processes for the Education Program. Just as a suggestion: the program should give serious consideration to installing this extension on the Outlook wiki for the coming term, with the understanding that it is installed there as a trial and opportunity to debug, while also showcasing its features — kind of a proof of concept. The community tends to be much more easily persuaded of the value of change when they can visualize what the change is likely to be. Even though I recognize it is not a perfect solution for *anyone, it would be a useful first step. Right now the community can't even see what the extension looks like or what it does, and setting it up on a WMFLABS wiki isn't particularly easy for testing due to that project's design and non-standard privacy management. Risker (talk) 02:36, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Request resysop

Resolved

I have been inactive for some time, but plan to resume editing and such admin functions as NPP on at least an occasional basis. My admin bit was unset for inactivity, not for any other prolem. Please restore same. DES ^(talk) 19:45, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Howard Cosell and his performance–enhancing rug. Clearly not a bureaucrat.

• Granted, welcome back. WilliamH (talk) 19:48, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
  • (e/c) Hello DES, can you point me to where you were de-sysopped for inactivity? Your user rights log (as far as I can see) only contains a +sysop back in 2005. Not wishing to be difficult but I'd like to run with due diligence if you don't mind before I re-sysop your account. Many thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:50, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Oops, too late. Perhaps, even in retrospect of your re-sysop, you can honour my request DES? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:54, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Please see the global rights log, it's all good, and I'm not on any performance enhancing rugs, honest guv. WilliamH (talk) 19:56, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

(unindent) in this edit I was notified of rights removal and pointed to this page to ask that they be restored. I didn't actually try to check the log to determine if the notification was accurate. DES ^(talk) 20:05, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

To you both, all good, all good. My apologies for my caution. Keep calm, carry on, no rugs to see here. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:08, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I've added a link to the global rights log on MediaWiki:Userrights-groups-help so it's easier to chase up the papertrail for admins who were desysopped due to inactivity before such actions were done locally. :) WilliamH (talk) 20:33, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Well you get an A+ for that, new boy! Cheers dude. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:43, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

There may be a better way to show the rights logs, but the wikitext {{userrights|Example}} will expand into a set of links to all the logs. For instance, Example (current rights · rights management · rights log (local) · rights log (global/meta) · block log). EdJohnston (talk) 21:17, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Great idea. I've updated Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard accordingly. WilliamH (talk) 21:47, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Vetting of CHU requests

I've started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Changing username. Please join in. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:25, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Br'er Rabbit

Br'er Rabbit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I would appreciate it if a bureaucrat could take a look at Diff of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Kumioko 2 (currently, support #7) and determine whether action needs to be taken with regards to the user's signature. NW (Talk) 04:19, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Seek drama, much? First Risker, now here? And you didn't even reply to me on your talk... Br'er Rabbit (talk) 04:24, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I edited your signature in the interest of improving readability, and the ability of others to follow the discussion. It really does distract from reading your, and others', !votes. Pakaran 04:34, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

For what its worth I didn't mind and found it rather funny actually. Personally there are a lot more negative things in my RFA than that signature. Just my opinion. Kumioko (talk) 05:27, 9 August 2012 (UTC)