[Foundation-l] Stewards acting locally

Sun Aug 8 13:04:00 UTC 2010

It is irritating to continually see stewards making local blocks at the
English language Wikibooks with the comment "crosswiki abuse <! --globally
locked[1]; about bot[2]-- >".  This has been occurring since March.  In
every case I've checked the user in question has a unified account and in
nearly all cases they have not made any edits locally, much less done
anything for a local block.  If there are cross-wiki issues, their account
should be locked as is already the case, but the making of these local
blocks on top of that is counter to what I've come to expect.  English
Wikibooks has a dozen admins, with about half active.  Stewards will not
rename users there because there are local bureaucrats and they will not CU
users there because there are local CheckUsers.  Why are they making local
blocks when there are administrators?  These weren't local emergencies
because, as stated above, in nearly every case there were no edits.  I don't
expect that they are aware of local policies and with the exception of one
steward, none of them have been made local admins.  English Wikibooks opted
in to global sysops, but in none of these cases were the people blocking
members of such a group; even if they were, the block would have to be for
local disruption.  Local blocking by stewards for accounts that have already
been globally locked is not only redundant, but undermines local project
autonomy.  Please stop.

--User:Adrignola

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SH#lock

[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:StewardBot