Wikipedia talk:Moderators/Proposal/2013

Implementation

Despite reading the page, I'm still confused about the technical aspects of this. Let's say your proposal succeeds: will developers have to create a new usergroup? Or will bureaucrats simply grant each right individually to a new moderator? Nyttend (talk) 16:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

My apologies for being unclear.

Awhile back, the devs added the functionality to more easily create new user-right groups. This would just be one of those. I can see if I can find the link, if you like. - jc37 16:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I had no clue that anyone else could create new userright groups. Thanks for the clarification! Nyttend (talk) 17:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

See mw:Manual:User_rights for more info : ) - jc37 18:23, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Only for admins?

So, is this only for admins? That is, is there an alternative to RfA (even if it's just specifying within an RfA that one's only applying for mod rights) in this proposal? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

No. Not in this proposal. This proposal is specifically limited to editors who have already successfully gone through RfA. - jc37 16:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay. Still sounds like a good idea, but if it passes, it'd be interesting to expand it to be a requestable level of rights. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:58, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Something like "Requests for Moderatorship" ("RfM")? Or simply a request at Requests for permissions? The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 17:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe the Foundation has said that anyone with access to viewdeleted must have undergone scrutiny equivalent to an RfA, as viewdeleted is potentially quite damaging (and it is), so RfPerm is right out. I'd imagine it would have to be just an RfA where you say "I'm only going for mod access", but that's a discussion for another day, I suppose. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:17, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec) - I'd be for Requests for Moderatorship on the RFA page, like RFB shares that page. But I am doubting that that would gain consensus at this time. - jc37 17:19, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't see the value in this proposal, but I do see the value in "Requests for Moderatorship". Regarding viewdeleted, one possible workaround is that a moderator can delete stuff, but not see what they've deleted, so if they make a mistake (eg: as reported in WP:DRV or WP:REFUND), that has to be handled by an administrator. My thoughts on RfA match Carrite's below - I just don't have the enthusiasm for locking and blocking, as I tend to work with improving unloved pages which don't invite contention, but it would be nice to occasionally do the "delete" equivalent of a non-admin close when I'm certain about consensus. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:41, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm still not seeing the need for this. If someone has passed RFA and has their tools in good standing, and they don't want to use some of their tools, then they don't use the tools. Admins are volunteers too, and no one forces them to use their tools. I am thoroughly confused why this is needed... --Jayron32 21:12, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Speaking for myself

I have no inclination to ever submit myself to the RfA process because I have no interest whatsoever in obtaining or ever using blocking buttons, nor a desire to complete a 20 question open book exam on things that don't matter to me, and I have a hunch the nomination would likely be highly contentious. Not much point in all that for a bunch of unused buttons... There are, however, a few things in the administrative toolkit that would periodically be of use. The ability to execute article name changes when the software stops regular users is one thing — I still have no clue why those efforts crash every now and then... The ability to read deleted material is another, periodically bumping into recreation situations where it would be good to know what was deleted the last time around. That's just me and I don't know whether either of these things would be included in the Admin Lite package.

Speaking in terms of the general rather than the specific, I think blocking buttons should be granted to a small subset of administrators who deal with vandal-fighting as their main task, since these are the source of much fury and grief at WP. I have a hunch — and this is the main thing — that the approval process of Semi-Administrators or whatever you want to call them would be looser than the epic wars fought over new Administrators and that the so-called "Administrator shortage" would thus be solved in one fell swoop. Carrite (talk) 17:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

The user-rights included in this user-group are listed here. Block and protect are specifically not included.

Ages ago, I tried to gain a consensus on a "blocker" user-group, but it had strong opposition at that time. Particularly because I had not then addressed the interdependency of protect and block. I can see if I can find that old discussion if you like. It was on a VP, several years ago. - jc37 17:28, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this proposal is a bit wrongheaded in considering block/unblock to be a "user-assessment" tool, like block/unblock. It isn't; it's a consensus-assessment tool and vandalism risk-asssessment. Editors do not get [un]protected, articles and sometimes their talk pages (and other pages, like templates) do, if there's a notable level of editwarring on the page in question. They may also be [un]protected based on vandalism patterns or potential (in cases of widely-transcluded templates) wide-fallout vandalism. None that has anything to do with assessing the behavior of individual editors (unless someone raises a WP:3RR issue, but the editwarring noticeboard requires the reporter of the issue to provide all that information. Anyway, I cannot see this proposal, were it to be successful, actually helping "gnome admins" very much if it auto-excluded page protection (or perhaps more to the point, unprotection). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 15:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Interaction with de/resysopping and cloudiness

So, how does this work? The situation I'm wondering about is this: an admin partially resigns their tools and becomes a mod under what would clearly be considered a "cloud", but no further sanctions ensue. After a few months of normal activity, they go inactive and, after the normal year of inactivity, their mod bit is removed. They come back two years after they left (a year after they were demodded) and request their tools back. What do the crats do here? The original admin tools were clearly resigned under a cloud, but the mod tools clearly weren't. Do they decline the request altogether, per "This package may be requested by any former admin who is eligible for restoration of adminship"? Do they allow the user to get only the mod tools back, per "And so, just like adminship, as long as removal of moderator was not "under a cloud", it may be restored by any bureaucrat per the normal rules."? (emphasis mine, in both cases) I think there's some tension there; the bolded words should be the same, as otherwise, there's ambiguity. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

There was a typo in the bolding in the proposal - I fixed it : )

That aside, my understanding is, in general, if the removal of any user-right group is deemed to be "under a cloud", then afaik, the editor in question must go through the requisite process again to regain.

So in your example, the admin clearly knows that they are switching to moderator "under a cloud". So they know they will be unable to merely re-request the admin user group at WP:BN, but need to go through WP:RFA. In your scenario, the moderator user group was not removed "under a cloud", so the editor should be able to re-request the moderator user group at WP:BN. - jc37 17:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Conflicting flags and lesser rights

Should this user right not include flags like 'autopatrol' and 'tboverride'? I would think both would be useful. If not, it would be necessary for 'moderators' to additionally hold (autopatrolled), (rollback) and possibly the entire (reviewer) package. Pol430 talk to me 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I intentionally did not add rollback, etc., as I note in the proposal. If wanted, it's easy enough to request those.

And hmm about tboverride. It doesn't seem to be listed at mw:Manual:User_rights, but it is at Special:ListGroupRights, under sysop. I'm not entirely clear on what it's used for in practice. - jc37 22:08, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

The tboverride userright allows the overriding of the title and username blacklists, i.e. for a user that wants a username normally blocked by a stray blacklist entry. Administrators and Account Creators are the lowest groups that have this right, and I see a reason a 'moderator' might want this. However, discussions involving the tboverride userright have been really contentious in the past.. gwickwire^talk_edits 13:46, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

They are going to need tboverride it if they want to be able to move all pages. I've used my account creator bit to move pages before. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 00:19, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

What's this exactly?

1. why is this protected?
2. why does the page not have a protected icon?
3. there's so much technical jargon. explaing this as if I were a 5-year old
4. in the sentence:

But which does not include all the user-rights in the sysop group.

You should add: "such as so-and-so".

I'm still not sure what exactly are you guys trying to do here. So explain it like this:

Group A has these privileges. We want to create Group B as a subset of A with only the following privileges (1), (2), and (3), which would mean they lack (4), (5) and (6).

ie: WP:LEAD =P

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 23:08, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I unprotected it. Ruslik_Zero 18:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you - Nabla (talk) 23:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

What's the point?

It seems that the proposal is basically a way to partially resign from adminship. If someone wants to keep some of their tools, why can't they just not resign? Are people allergic to being able to block users? If they don't want to exercise their right to block/protect, just don't. I don't see the point of creating a whole new usergroup for this. -- YPNYPN ✡ 14:56, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I have to say, I don't really see the point either. If someone has been given the admin toolset, they're under no obligation to use any part of it they don't want to - I, for example, gained the ability to mess around with the MediaWiki interface as part of my admin package, but I don't feel comfortable doing so, so I don't. Admins "are never required to use their tools"; if you want to be an admin who doesn't hand out blocks, surely you can just avoid handing out blocks? Why have a whole new usergroup? Yunshui 雲‍水 15:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, as I sort of implied above, it would be useful for me to be an admin who doesn't hand out blocks. But since you can't get the bit without absolutely everything, all bells and whistles included, you have to review a candidate based on that, rather than just assuming they won't be tempted by stuff they said they won't use. If I went for RfA, I'd expect tough questions on resolving difficult disputes, vandalism or troublesome editors, that I can't answer because I just don't get involved in any of that. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:11, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, for starters dispute resolution is not an administrative task. And the reason we expect admins to have the judgement needed to know when to use them is because different circumstances call for different tools, or sometimes a combination of them. for example, if a libelous BLP is being repeatedly recreated by socks, deletion, blocking, and protection are all going to be needed. one "real admin" can handle the situation in a matter of minutes. Or two or three partial admins could do what they could do then ask a real admin to help them with the rest or worse, think that they had done enough and leave the job unfinished. That is why judgement is part of the admin's job. They need of be able to choose between the available tools and decide which is appropriate in any given situation. protection, deletion, and blocking all require about the same level of judgement. if a user can't demonstrate that they have the requisite level of judgement for any one of them they should not have any of them. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea. With the new 1+2 rule going live, activity concerns have largely been addressed. Admins are never expected to make an edit, ever... And since this package is only for eligible Admins who have for all intents and purposes resigned editing, creating a whole sub level of admin risks running up against Law of the Tool with few pragmatic benefits. T.I.M^(Contact) 19:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, sometimes resolving a task requires any or all of blocking, deleting, checkuser or oversight, but I can't imagine it happens in the majority of cases. I certainly don't encounter any libelous BLPs in the areas of WP I edit. The situation where I can imagine me using something above the standard editor tools is more along the lines of a comment from an inexperienced editor on WP:AFCHD that says "I don't want to work on this article anymore - can I delete it?" and even then it's not a particularly onerous task for an admin to deal with. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Ritchie, my understanding of the proposal was that the "Moderator" role was only applicable to admins who had the full toolset but wanted to step down from the non-content side of it. If RFA is to be modified to allow for applicants who are only running for the content tools, then that's basically Requests for Moderatorship by the back door, and would make this a new userright available to non-admin users who went through a modified RFA. I'm not saying that necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't seem to be what this proposal is advocating. Yunshui 雲‍水 19:52, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's my understanding too. Sorry, I've gone a bit off-topic. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

My view

At present, I wouldn't want to run for an RfA (nor would I stand a chance of being accepted), so this wouldn't affect me. (the only bit that really interests me, at present, is the ability to see deleted pages) I'm wondering if this could also be used as a stepping stone to full admin rights, granted by a partially successful RfA, or even as a temporary post of, say, a month, where you could use the limited toolset and your behaviour during this time could be used for or against your RfA. I suppose that, within this, you could assign a volunteer admin (with a decent experience level) as an adminstrative tutor as well. Just my two pennies worth :) Lukeno94 (talk) 17:52, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe this proposal was presented this way specifically to prevent that exact scenario. This was intended as a way for an admin to partially step down, not a way to bypass a "real" RFA. And no, if you just want to be an admin so you can peek at deleted pages you would not pass an RFA. You need to be interested in, you know, doing admin work. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not interested in running for admin, hence the first part of my comment. :) I'm not proposing it being a bypassing of an RfA, merely stating that I could see this being a temporary assessment/training post as well as a post for semi-retired admins. It's only my thoughts, I wouldn't expect this to actually happen. Lukeno94 (talk) 18:26, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Clarification

The last time I proposed this package, I proposed it as a separate RfX process, so someone could indeed go for it, and not need to be an admin first. But there was opposition to that, but at the same time, there were those who would support it as a test. So I thought this would meet both situations as a compromise. So instead, now many are opposing because in this proposal one needs to be an admin first lol. c'est la vie, I suppose : )

I'd be happy to propose a version of this where one is not required to be an admin first, but as an additional option would instead need to go through RfX (RfM in this case). But for now, I'll wait until the 30 days on this has finished. - jc37 21:37, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

• I can't remember on which side I was on last time, on the fence now. If we did this, I would envision it to be essentially RfM (like we have RfA and RfB) and it being an "admin lite" position for some users who have the judgement for technical stuff, although maybe not as battle tested for dealing with socks and other blocking tasks. On the up side, we would probably see a strong uptick in users with some of the tools, as a lot of people who have failed RfA by a slim margin would likely pass RfM and more people would be interested in running for RfM, both because they aren't interested in blocking people, and because the threshold would be obviously lower. This would be good and reduce the load on Admin. On the down side, it might create classes of the different bits. Would it create an environment where two years from now, we expect someone to first be a Mod before becoming an Admin? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I will say that this is a realistic side effect of creating the Mod bit, just as we now expect someone to be an Admin for a while before seeking the Crat bit. Would that end up with us having fewer active admin because many won't want to become a Mod first, then wait 6 months (or more likely, a year) before seeking the Admin bit? That would make the road to Adminship a longer one and might be discouraging. Again, I don't know the answers here, but this does raise some questions and present some potentially problematic outcomes, as well as some excellent opportunities. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 21:38, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Selecting of Moderators

Should this proposal come into fruition, I would like to see Moderators appointed by Administrators, as opposed to being selected by the Bureaucrats (though they would, quite obviously, retain the ability to do so). This may seem unnecessary and indeed a little far fetched, but if the concept of the proposal is to take some weight off of Administrators; allowing the Administrators to appoint Moderators just seems to make more sense. We trust our Administrators with their tools and with their choices - should they be given the power to select Moderators, I believe that they would make the choice based on the benefit of the Community, not their own personal gains. Granted, being that we would have to work with them - it couldn't be somebody who the Community doesn't trust or get along with. This would require a vote similar to the RfA or RfB.

On the opposing side of the argument, we really don't need another group to manage the Wiki. Being that ANYBODY can edit Wikipedia, there is always an underlying risk that vandalism and the likes can appear. There is a large amount of trust given to our users to attempt to fix it where possible, and the trust goes further up the chain to our Administrators who have the tools and authority to do even more with the article. Being that we have enough Administrators and they are selected by the Community, it may be seen as a waste of time to create a new group. I'm sure we're all well aware of what tools that Administrators possess by now, and the Administrators that have these tools know when and how to use them. This brings forth a new set of problems - what tools would the Moderator get? They couldn't get all of them because that would defeat the point of having an Administrator - but if they don't get any tools they're a user with an interesting title. Maintaining balance would be a complicated matter - and in theory, catering to the needs of Moderators and other users could put more pressure on the Bureaucrats and Administrators.

An interesting proposal, though. Very well done. Regards, --ColePearson — Preceding unsigned comment added by ColePearson (talk • contribs) 00:36, 10 March 2016 (UTC)