Actually, sysops can query the server; they are limited to "read-only" queries, however. What I was suggesting was that some Wikipedians other than the Developers have the technical ability to: * grant "sysop rights" to users * block a signed-in vandal I don't think a sysop blocking a signed-in vandal should need to see their IP address. Even I as a developer never bothered to look up the IP of the half-dozen or so users I've been told to block. I just ran an UPDATE query in the database. Similarly, with promoting a contributor to sysop, I think Brion or Magnus could add a page called "Nominate user for sysop". After enough sysops nominated a user, they would automatically get sysop rights. The point is, I don't want to do Gatekeeper Functions any more. Not only is it time-consuming (up to 10 minutes per operation), but the task of determining whether a person is a foe or a friend should not be centralized on 4 or 5 people. And, yes, mav, I know I should put this on the main list, but I only subscribe to this one, so I hope anyone who responds will cross post back to wikien-l. And yes, Brion, I know you made a meta-page, but... lazily, but non-hierarchically, Ed Poor _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l