[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests for CheckUserinformation?

Sat Apr 15 02:41:05 UTC 2006

Patrick, Brad wrote:

>My personal two cents on WS:User:Birgitte Arco is that she is a
>responsible and valuable member of the community generally, and in large
>measure the soul of Wikisource (tortured, fragmented or otherwise).  I
>was disturbed to hear about questioning of her ulterior motives, and
>having been involved with Checkuser issues for Wikisource myself, in my
>experience she acted positively and appropriately.
>
>>From my perspective, I would hate to see damage done to the projects
>"for want of a nail."  The kingdom should not be lost; we should find a
>way to either grant status on an interim basis or otherwise adjust the
>guidelines.  The vandals have tools, so should we.  We must act to
>defend ourselves - even Wikisource - and not let the primary goal of
>promoting the projects fall flat in the face of rather arcane
>administrative details (not that Checkuser isn't important - to the
>contrary - but it shouldn't be more important than the project itself).
>
I haven't had any contact with Birgitte, but I'm happy to hear that she 
is doing as you say.  Questioning motives foes hand-in-hand with 
people's attitudes towards leadership.  Even for myself I can easily say 
that I am the senior active editor on Wiktionary because I can justify 
that as a function of time.  I am also the senior of two bureaucrats, 
but I prefer not to draw any conclusion about how that translates into 
leadership.  I am hesitant to draw any unwarranted conclusion from the 
fact that a person is a bureaucrat or administrator.  I see Robert cast 
in a similar role at Wikibooks.

Maybe it's the role of the bureaucrat that should be reviewed.  A 
bureaucrat needs to have the broad support of his community, but he also 
needs the authority to act when the situation requires even when those 
actions conflict with the views of other important community members.  
Naturally if a bureaucrat becomes excessive in taking such measures he 
will lose broad support.

Bureaucrats should know their own communities enough to recognize the 
abilities and personalities of their own projects' members.  Perhaps all 
bureaucrats who have built up a certain level of trust and experience 
should have Checkuser access.  I don't particularly want it for myself.  
I trust that I have enough social skills and legal understanding to use 
the tool responsibly, but I shudder at the prospect of having to cope 
with yet another technical skill. 

Perhaps the tools available to bureaucrats should be expanded, to cover 
a wider range of project-specific appointments that are not appropriate 
for even a steward who does not have experience with a particular 
project.  I would recommend that bureaucrats have the authority to grant 
the checkuser tool to any project member (not necessarily just sysops); 
these could easily be for the limited amount of time required to deal 
with specific problem users.  A non-sysop who is granted this tool would 
be able to investigate and report (confidentially if need be), but leave 
it to others to take measured disciplinary action.

I also think that bureaucrats should have the right to de-sysop.  I 
think that I would be less hesitant to appoint some people if I felt 
that could be reversed if my suspicions proved true.  It would also make 
it easier to remove, without prejudice, any sysop that we just haven't 
seen for a long time.

Ec