Sysop management
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i would ask you to protect only against bad things that actually have happened. this would start with keeping track of bad things that happen and analyzing the trends. if you protect against everything that might happen, you will wind up with no wiki at all.
on the front page you could have a 'up for deletion' queue, where people massively vote to delete or not delete things.
if it really is 'a small number of people who make trouble', then dont fight them with a small number of people, the admins, rather, use a large number of people: the wiki users.
The thing that makes wikis so darn great is the self-help factor: instead of sending a whiny email to an author telling them they have to fix a typo or factual error, you can just _do_ it immediately. Granting extra privileges to some users creates bottlenecks as not everyone can perform certain actions (deleting junk pages, blocking vandals for 24 hours to stop a "FLKSDJLFKJSD" spree), so ordinary users have to ask the smaller number of privileged users to do it -- and wait until someone does.
And if there aren't enough -- or any -- sysops on that wiki? They have to ask the developers to assign some sysops, and wait until someone does, and _then_ wait until one of them deletes that "FLKSJLFKSDD" page that was created two years ago.
That adds stress on all sides and harms morale. People feel powerless and frustrated, and that's the opposite of how they should feel on a wiki.
I'm not going to argue deletion politics in general, however I strongly advocate a "wiki-style deletion" system by which ordinary users can mark pages for deletion such that they will be automatically deleted after several days if the deletion is not contested. (It's not necessary to also remove the ability for special sysop users to delete and undelete pages immediately: sometimes it is useful or necessary to be able to make an immediate deletion.) I believe this alone would significantly reduce the bottleneck factor, since junk pages could be removed by ordinary users in the course of their regular wikiing. There would be less cause to resort to sysops, and thus less reason to deal with getting some assigned.
- I support this :-) But, there is need for a sort of list of articles noted as "to delete" for further checking of unknow identities or vandal identities noting articles to delete.
I like to think this wouldn't be controversial at all.
If there is still great need to have sysops set up, then we need a better way for each wiki's users to manage their own affairs and assign privileges amongst themselves without having to beg someone who doesn't know them and can't read their language to take a look, try to evaluate the legitimacy of the claim, and alter the database.
I'm not sure what's best here, but am open to suggestions. --Brion VIBBER 11:06, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I have thought about this exact system before, for wholly other reason - that deletion has somehow became such a time consuming work for admins at Japanese wikipedia (because we are very serious about deletion, and try our best not to unreasonably curtail others freedom of speech), and that there are so much risk associated with the deletion privilage.
Two reasons to keep sysop:
- A vandal may use the strategy of constantly removing a page with copyvio or porn from the deletion list. As long as there is a system that "a page should remain listed for the period of x days in order to be auto-deleted," this kind of vandal strategy may work quite well. It would be better to have some means for humans to intervene, I suppose.
- Certain information really needs to be deleted immediately. A message inciting violence or harrassment to a person, with the person's contact address and other pieces of privacy, for example, would fall into that category.
Tomos 10:47, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)