[WikiEN-l] Streamline the sysop recruiting process

Tue Apr 8 22:22:48 UTC 2003

Hello Ed,

I'm posting your message (see below) here on the main list as well, since
you said it should be there...

But I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with the idea that someone should
become a sysop just from having the right number of supporters. I can
easily imagine that a large enough group of sysops could support one
person who is not trusted by the rest of the sysops. Would there be an
"Oppose user for sysop" button as well? Both buttons could update counts
without displaying the names of the people who have voted, so people would
feel free to express their lack of trust in a nominee without anyone
(apart from the developers) finding out and subsequently holding a grudge
against them...

Ah, I'm being very evil today, aren't I? ;)

Oliver

On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> 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 at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> 

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+