Meta talk:Administrators/Removal (inactivity)/Archives/2023

Square pegs and round holes; presenting something sustainable for the future

This is becoming totally problematic. With the expansion to global abuse filters now being almost universal, we now have the situation that those interested in working on global AF have to be administrators and then meet the activity criteria when their sole interest is a particular and discreet part of this wiki. The site is a real hotchpotch of functionality that is local and uniquely global and we try to manage it with a set of criteria that considers it more typically a normal content wiki.

One of the people who undertakes the diligence in this space is saying that there is a problem with the process and people are essentially saying "maintain the status quo as it has worked for years". Are people listening? Are people setting us up for the future, or grabbing onto a piece of the past?  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:03, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

@Billinghurst I have a feeling that such people "interested in working on global AF" aren't really interested in that at all - they may be interested in how specific filters impact single projects -- and perhaps they should just use a normal request process. Perhaps we need to improve that request/report process? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:41, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: How about I turn that around. If you were designing a system today to manage global filters, would you tie that into the administrative function of metawiki? Would you also tie that into an activity requirement? I have sat through each phase of the introduction of the AF, and the extension to global. Every time it has been a case of reverse engineering to fit the metawiki right, not what is best for the AF management. The activity requirement and the model for administration here reflects an early-mid 2010s view of metawiki, not something for the future metawiki. We need to modernise the approach.  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:28, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Billinghurst I would probably diverge all the global things (GAFs, user/global.*s editing, SBL, TBL) from local sysop - perhaps with some sort of access group short of stewardship that can deal with them. If we had a discreet group for just GAF editing requiring some sort of vote, I'd be hesitant to support someone who's only interest was adjusting filters for their homewiki (I do think there should be some sort of local GAF whitelist though). However for this specific point I don't think our admin activity requirements are very onerous here at 10edits/6 months, and that those working to support components for all global projects should generally be able to meet that. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:17, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

My main concern with the current policy as written can be found here: I find it weird that it weights edits more than use of the tools, and as such fellow administrators making actual use of the tools but failing to make 10 edits automatically lose their access without notice. Looking at the discussion that led to this new removal policy it is not clear to me that was really the desired outcome, since the proposal mentioned a combination of edits and logged actions. So perhaps we should be removing without notice only people making no edits and no logged actions in the past 6 months instead?

About AbuseFilter, I'm divided about this. On one hand, we could create an abusefilter local group so trusted users can help in that area without requiring full administrator acccess, but that would mean another user group to policy and maintain. The panorama is already confusing enough, with other global groups (abusefilter helpers and managers) for similar purposes. On the other hand, we can convert these to limited-in-scope-adminships and require them to sign once a year sort of "yes, I'm still around" (see e.g. Meta:Requests for adminship/lustiger seth4). —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:50, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@MarcoAurelio I'd be OK moving criteria one to Users who have made fewer than ten edits or logged administrative actions in the six months... - is this meaningful, not sure? How many admins don't make 10edits a month, but do make that many logged actions? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:51, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I'd find that an improvement over the current situation, in which we're removing admins without any warning for failing to make 10 edits in 6 months. I admit there have been not many cases, but when we had them these were controversial. See e.g. Meta talk:Administrators/Removal (inactivity)/October 2018 for the latest I can remember. I'd reserve automatic removal without warnings for those totally inactive though. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:28, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I  Oppose restrict "administrative actions" to be "logged only", there are some remote Toolforge tools designed only for sysops' works, such actions by tools are unlikely to be logged, so such restrictions maybe unfair for sysops active on Toolforge but not elsewhere. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 05:34, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

How do you want to count administrative actions that are not logged and no edits (which are being counted anyway)? And which toolforge tools are there that neither produce log entries nor edits but are still somehow relevant metawiki admin activities? Johannnes89 (talk) 08:58, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

As this would be changing from edits to (edits+actions) I'm not concerned about it NOT counting something niche in addition, specifically an action in Special:Log, that is the result of an on-wiki action only available to administrators. That it "doesn't count" something like "viewing a deleted page" is of no concern. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:08, 1 November 2023 (UTC)