[Wikipedia-l] Developers should mind their own business

Tue Mar 9 09:32:15 UTC 2004

Great idea Tim! I don't care much for the name - "developer" has been used for
a long time to refer to those blessed and wonderful code junkies that hang out
on WikiTech-l and play with MediaWiki. Replacing their title with
site-administrator will add more confusion as well. Why not just add all those
abilities to bureaucrat accounts? 

Or better yet, couldn't we even get rid of the bureaucrat account type by
requiring at least 3 admins to approve bureaucrat+-type actions? Kinda like
requiring two keys turned by two people at once and having to enter the correct
codes in order to launch a nuke. 

The idea of adding yet another level of hierarchy to our community doesn't rub
me the right way... 

Tim Starling wrote:
>I'll also take this opportunity to drop a few subtle hints.

>Maveric149
>
>Wikipedia's most active contributor, 

Not in the article space lately. I think over half my edits are to non-article
pages now (lot's of organizational and meta-type work) I'm also not currently
the most active (just historically and *only* based on number of edits - most
of which are small edits I do while I'm checking anon and other edits on
Recentchanges). To see who is most active currently, look for names off the
'last 30 days' column at 
http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#wikipedians

>Maveric149 has done a tremendous amount of work 
>for Wikipedia over the last two years. 

Thanks for the compliment. :-) 

>Mav is always cool and rational when dealing with 
>a dispute, and works hard to find a compromise 
>amenable to all parties. 

I try to be that way - but I've been more or less told by some people that I am
sometimes borderline cold in my coolness. Some of those same people seem to
think I take my rational tendencies a bit too far (I've been accused of not
giving emotional context enough consideration - only looking at the bare 
facts). While I don't agree with those criticisms, I cannot say that I really
disagree. 

>Respect for him in the community is universal.

If true, which I don't think it is, then I would be very uncomfortable with
that - I don't want my words to have disproportionately more force than their
actual content and inherent merit. 

There is also at least one former Wikipedian that would probably disagree with
your statement. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:168...

I'm sure there are others but none have yet stated that fact on my RfC page. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Mav

>Angela
>
>Angela has been extremely active in the Wikipedia 
>and Wikipedia talk namespaces over the last 6 
>>months, organising the formation of many policies. 
>In her enthusiasm for weeding and quality control, 
>she has edited almost every functioning Wikimedia 
>wiki. 

I completely agree with all that. 

>She also lives in a different time zone to Mav,  
>so she'll be able to deal with situations arising 
>when Mav is unavailable. 

IIRC Bryan Derksen lives in British Columbia and is thus in the same timezone
as I am. There are certainly many other highly-respected and very active
Wikipedians in time zones near mine. 

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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