Talk:Global sysops/2010

Global sysops/Vote

Voting is now open. Could someone please publish the CentralNotice messages? NW (Talk) 00:02, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Speaking to people on IRC it appears we may have to wait a week before all of the CentralNotices can go up because of the end of the fundraiser, I don't think that's a huge deal since the vote is open for 3 weeks but the sooner the better. James (T|C) 00:09, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Should we put up a watchlist notice here? Tiptoety ^talk 09:16, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

CentralNotice is activated but it will show up when the Fundraiser one gets dissabled. Fundraising is believed to end on 15-jan-2009. — Dferg ^(disputatio) 12:45, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

A watchlist notice on here shouldn't interfere with anything I believe that may be nice. James (T|C) 01:14, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just thinking about putting up a watchlist notice until the fundraising one has ended. Tiptoety ^talk 02:34, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

• Extending the vote until the 31st may be wise, since the fundraising notice is interfering. I'll think on it some more. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 02:40, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

If the fund raising banners indeed stay up until the 14th/15th then yes I think we may want to extend it. I have also had a couple people say that they may be down on the 8th, if that is the case and we put them up then I don't think it needs to be extended. 2 weeks with the notices up should be enough, one of the reasons we saw a flood of voters at the start was because we actually had it go into rotation accidentally for 15 minutes or so.. :/ :) However, watchlist notice I think would be good here and now. James (T|C) 03:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I've pushed the update through anyway. Even if it ends on the 8th, that's still 8 days the vote hasn't been exposed to the global community. An extension is wise regardless. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:04, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Where do we post our votes? Tyciol 00:05, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

CANNOT VOTE FROM GERMANY

--78.54.232.67 21:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

What is Global sysops?

Can someone please explain what Global sysops is all about? --Peroxwhy2gen 04:01, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Peroxwhy, the easiest way is to point you to read a quick bit on Global sysops but I'll try to explain it quickly as well :). Generally global sysops would be people (who are elected here on meta) who have the ability to help out small wikis and other wikis that decide to allow them. Their job would be to help clean up and prevent vandalism, spam and other abuse. They have a lot of tools (you can see the list on the page I liked above) that are very similar to what a normal admin would and also have the ability (like stewards). These tools would allow them to delete pages as well as block users and ips. James (T|C) 04:15, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I can't see the real reason behind this except introducing a new level in the hierarchy. As such I oppose the change. Jeblad 13:40, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

The real reason, Jeblad, is that there are not enough stewards to handle all of the crosswiki vandalism that goes on each day. As Mike lifeguard (a steward), said above, "Sadly, many stewards are not active enough to help the small wikis as they need. An additional group of users who can take some limited steward-like actions seems reasonable to me." NW (Talk) 18:11, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Democracy issues

There are many people on wikis who are active, and really care about their wikis, but are not doing operations for one reason or another, one of which might be that democracy as it is implemented everywhere is usually grossly flawed. (My experience over the years in the WP is that it has its roots in unrepentant fascism!) With this in mind, I will support this super-user idea if the super-user is required to seek out and interact with affected users, and only in emergency situations. Think of my suggestion as native self-determination.--John Bessa 16:49, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Without commenting on the bulk of this... "only in emergency situations" is in the proposal, along with noncontroversial maintenance, like deleting spam pages. Please do review it so you can make in informed decision.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:15, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I did read the material, this response is serious, and I would actually like to read your opinions on what I wrote as I write about the wiki phenomena. If systems people (and I use the word "people" in the broadest sense possible) are not available to carry out maintenance or deal with the damage done by online predators, then the global administrator, as proposed here, should attempt to contact the top editors for guidance. If you need an analogy separate from the wp, then consider real life--if you can. When the police or rescue types show up on a scene, generally the first thing they do is ask what happened. The wp as an entity is without doubt capable of exceeding bias, with administrators being among the most biased, and the possibility of administrators removing material simply because they do not like it is likewise exceedingly high, just a police often act based on their own values and with intolerance seeing themselves as protectors of morality, though they often don't themselves necessarily have the necessary functioning neural constructs to act morally. If the rights necessary to construct valid knowledge cannot be assured, then, as you may even guess despite your obviously sarcastic response, my vote will be no. Congratulations on winning another friend!--John Bessa 21:01, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

You began by calling Wikipedia unrepentantly fascist, then went on to assert that police do not have a functioning brain capable of moral judgment. As if that wasn't bad enough, that was supposedly analagous to administrators. In line with AGF, I have to assume this is a joke.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 15:38, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand only much but not all of what John writes because some bits are syntactically unclear to me. I share some of the concern in one way or another. Real world examples show that you often cannot move "moral" to other places and cultures, such as male Americans searching female-only parts of Iraqi homes, or Turkish police prohibiting students from wearing hats or hoods on a campus in the USA, or Danish newspaper illustrators hung in China for caricaturing Muhammed.

Global Sysops like Stewards currently do fall short meeting local traits and habits at times. Being an admin in a smaller wiki, I "suffered" from "helpful hands" every now and then, who were deleting 100+ low quality pages having an appropriate template (but were not ready for deletion because their open discussion time to live or improve was not yet over), or instantly deleting new pages having a valid title and nearly no content or obviously invalid content (but we customarily turn those pages into stubs so as to guide newbies and playkids to making something real) - and so on. It might be making sense having a "gloabl sysop guidance page" in English (and possibly few major languages) in each wiki whith hints - but turning a nonsense page into a stub requires language skills, deciding wether or not a page title is valid does, too, like many other things, so there would not be much more to hint than saying "If a new nonsense page has (a) link(s) going to it, rather keep it?" I am hesitant. How many wikis are likely to opt out? --93.131.46.223 12:04, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I know of one wiki which wanted to opt-out, however they were never included in the first place.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:07, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Poorly explained

For ordinary people like me, it would be nice if the problem that GSs is intended to fix were explained at the top. GSs are framed as already existing ... My head is spinning. Tony1 08:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll do that very shortly.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Who and Where?

Could you please give some examples of:

• Users (presumably already admins(?)) who you're thinking about promoting to global sysop and
• A select list of one or two individual projects (not the "many small wikis" link in the lead) who you definitely think would benefit from global sysop protection and why. For example, such-and-such project had x-number-of-cases of obvious vandalism and y-number-of-cases of obvious spam in December 2009. Only x-prime and y-prime cases were resolved in z days because the project has only 2 local sysops and they were both on vacation. Or some such.

Also, I'm not a steward :) The link Special:GlobalBlock (in the Permissions section) causes us peons a permission error. I take it that Global blocking is the correct description of that facility for us. --RoyGoldsmith 20:16, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

There's a giant first-draft list of which wikis are included. I'm not sure I'm prepared to run a detailed analysis, but I could pick one or two that are good examples if you like. Xania also wants some sort of proof that there is a problem, but I don't know precisely what they want as evidence.

I'll fix the link shortly.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:27, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

"Users (presumably already admins(?)) who you're thinking about promoting to global sysop" – This part, at least, I can answer. The answer is no one. There are a couple of SWMT users that I am definitely going to encourage to run if this passes, but no one will automatically be promoted without community discussion. NW (Talk) 00:06, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Has anyone left a notice on the village pump of those wikis? John Vandenberg 13:44, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Not to my knowledge. There is a sitenotice instead, with as many translations as we could muster.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 15:34, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. The site notice should be sufficient. No wonder there are so many voters turning up. John Vandenberg 23:08, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

The site notice doesn't currently display. Does the steward election site notice override the global sysops one? John Vandenberg 03:40, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that what I was driving at with my "where" question was that the first statement of the proposal says "Because of a shortage of stewards and the continued abuse [italics mine] of our wikis..." but it doesn't give any statistics about which wikis and what abuse. What leads you to believe that this abuse is happening in sufficient quantities that we need a new category of bureaucracy?

For example, how many cases of abuse does the Small Wiki Monitoring Team revert in a typical month and how are you doing this now, without global sysops? If you don't have formal statistics then how about hallway conversations or anecdotes? You guys must of had some reason for requesting all of this. What is it and who's complaining? I think that you may be assuming that everyone knows all about the problem. We don't. Could you please explain your reasons to us peons? Right now I'm concerned that we may be solving a problem that either doesn't exist, exists only temporarily in certain places or is better solved some other way.

Also, I asked my "who" question because I'm worried about what if we create the mechanism for global sysops and no one volunteers? If we can't get enough single-project bureaucrats involved, what make you think that introducing global sysops will get us any more? In my opinion, this is not a case of "If you build it, they will come". I think we need a list of (say) 5 or 10 administators who are willing to devote significant time to combating these cross-wiki abuses. Otherwise, what's the use? --RoyGoldsmith 03:03, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I would think your definition of "cases of abuse" is very vague. These users who watch #cvn-sw^connect (which you are welcome to join) and look for standard vandalism – the same type that the large projects receive. I went through my own global contributions and pulled out a few examples: [1][2][3] I would say that there is a new vandal every minute or two, averaging out the times where the vandalism picks up and when the vandalism slows down. That doesn't seem like a lot, but if there are not a lot of stewards (current situation), calling upon them every two minutes (over IRC, as there is no place to easily report them on meta or something) is a bit of a hassle though. There have been times where no steward has been online while a vandal has been allowed to go on a spree for over two hours. Occasionally, we get a vandal from Greece who decides to run a vandalism script that makes a vandal edit every second, and other assorted long term abusers who just vandalize random projects at a rapid rate. I hope that succinctly explains the current situation; if not, I will be happy to explain further.

This is exactly what I was asking for. But do you mean that there are over 500 examples of fragrant vandalism on the small wikis every day that, right now, only a steward (and not the local sysops) can handle? If so, I think that this fact should be included on the proposal page. --RoyGoldsmith 15:52, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

As for who new global sysops would be; I would assume they would be people from Special:GlobalUsers/Global rollback. Off the top of my head, Wutsje, Dferg, J.delanoy, and a number of others on that list would be excellent global sysops, but of course we would have to see what the community has to say. NW (Talk) 03:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

How should we define a spree? more than 10 edits in less than 10 minutes? I'd be quite interested to see how often it happens. Stats would be good.

We have had vandal sprees on English and Multilingual Wikisource which have lasted for hours. We had trouble finding a steward. As an interesting aside, I would not have ever become an admin if it wasnt because I watched my work being destroyed like this. So we have a "vandal spree" to thank for my countless hours of administration.

I would welcome having global admins who are given the ability to do local blocks when they notice a spree happening on any wiki which opt-ins in, or has a demonstrated vandal problem which isnt being adequately addressed by locals. I think English Wikisource would opt in, despite having more than 10 sysops; we have gaps.

However I do not want global sysops blocking vandals unless the vandal is already on a rampage; the SWVT can already revert/blank any vandalism if they think is a problem (e.g. obvious BLP issues). The occasional vandalism on small wikis can sit for a week until the local admins log on. This is what happens on Latin Wikisource, and I see no reason why global sysops should intervene.

John Vandenberg 05:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with you John, there is no reason for blocks to be made by a global sysop unless there is a rampage IN PROGRESS, even if there WAS one its not worth a block. A large amount of vandalism is just 1 offs which can get reverted but that is basically all that is required, it's the spree's that can become a problem. One of my first day's watching the -sw feed I got hit by a vandal on simple-wiktionary which ended up with me sitting there for 20 minutes undoing (since I didn't have rollback at the time) while we waited for a steward to block the vandal bot (I personally did about 120 undo's with a couple others joining in the end). Those are the biggest benefits of a position like that. James (T|C) 06:43, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

NW. You have listed four users (Wutsje, Dferg, J.delanoy and I assume yourself) who might make good global sysops. Have you asked them if they would be interested in serving? Let's assume that the global sysops proposal is accepted. About how many users, say, in the first month will volunteer? In my opinion, there should be a sign-up sheet on the proposal page so voters can see that this plan has some meat behind it. --RoyGoldsmith 15:52, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Myself? Well, I'm not too sure. I have done global countervandalism in the past, and still occasionally do it, but I think I would hold off on asking for the tools until I am sure I would be more active. As for the idea you are suggesting, to me that seems to be putting the cart in front of the horse. I believe I have talked it over with these three at some point or another. I'm not too sure how many people will volunteer, but honestly, even three would make an enormous impact on vandalism sprees. NW (Talk) 16:43, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Why would a Newbie want to vote on the Global sysops proposal?

I am among the contributors who were automatically invited to consider this proposal on the basis of my past activity on wikis. However, I had not been active in past admin discussions. Based on my experience on multiple wikis, I would like to give an answer to the above question, mostly for the benefit of others who, like me, wish to make a positive contribution.

It's clear that wikis are self-organizing communitites. The “admin activists” (my term of convenience) now discussing the proposal represent a small fraction of those who make contributions to wikis. And contributors to wikis represent a small fraction of those who visit wikis. And those who visit wikis represent a small fraction of users of the Internet. These demographics are natural (see Clay Shirky's book “Here comes everybody”).

Therefore, I support the process that these admin activists are carrying out by framing and discussing the proposal: it represents the self organization of the community. And though I may not understand the proposal in all its details and in all its implications, I understand the process, and wish to support it.

I am going to cast a supportive “vote” on the global sysops proposal, because this community is going to thrive or die as may be, but it needs to undergo this self-organizing process no matter what. And I am also going to continue deepening my understanding of and participation in the wiki community, because this activity is the future of human community itself.

In short, keep at it, folks! --ArthurOgawa 17:42, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Pandora box

Giving someone sysop rights on every single wiki is like opening a pandora box. Great opportunities for small sysop abuses (significant minority actually means a lot of people). SkyBon^{Talk\Contributions} 21:10, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not "every single wiki", it's the few hundred that don't have enough admins to deal with vandalism or routine maintenance. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:34, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

There are some very active administrators in the German wikipedia, for example. The danger is, that the practice of delition as I find it to be extreme in the German wikipedia will take over smaller wikis, unopposed... Administrators from foreign wikis should abstain from delitions or deciding about delitions on any grounds that range beyond vandalism. --219.110.66.138 03:51, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I do have doubts as well! But I am not sure because I partly do not understand the article. Why doubts? The first reaction I got on my start-up as an active user in Germany was the deletion of my personal site. It was hard to find out, what the reason was and I thought this to be vage. So whenever you give one single person more power this is dangerous! I would prefer the following:

1. Never give one person alone such a high-level authorisation, split it between two!

2. Open a place for an explanatory statement, that is where the activities of "Global sysops" must be documented so that everyone can read them. Let me tell it a "Log book" with substantiations.

(By the way: Why can't I use my account to login here? Therefor I cannot sign this!) --85.183.88.8 15:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Global sysops, local policies??

My vote on this suggestion was oppose. While I have not read all of the discussion here, I skim read it and found little to no discussion of the effect of this proposal on policy making in local wikis. What little I read made me extremly wary (e.g. "I would much rather that local policies restricting what global sysops may do are not allowed, or specifically and strongly discouraged. We're talking about hundreds of wikis - if people need to know specific policies and which wiki the policy is for, we'll have effectively defeated the purpose here." Mike.lifeguard above).

Global sysops can only be effective if standard sets of policy, like defining what "vandalism" is, are made to conform with each other across wikis. Otherwise, global sysops would face the choice of acting without knowledge of policies, or having to read up on policies each time (essentially making them local sysops). This will create a strong pressure among small wikis to "comply" with the policies as set by the big wikis. While it is up for discussion whether such conformity is good or bad, it should not be introduced via the back door and without proper discussion, by something that looks like an unrelated technical change, but is not. --Xeeron 01:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Ty to all you pople for voted for me and i would like to become a working even tho im 13 so really if i have so much people on my back i have to right to aready join and work but i said first i need toe cabily to work and that is school but i would need a challenging school to give me this and i am not asking for 10 thousand or more / surpise me to work for you, and so i really think your wasting my time but saying i sould vote so really i dont want to here any thing else but yes or no ...!!!!By Bao quach the little boy u exspecting me to vote? when i aready know people got my back and i thank you people i am not a stupd person so i will fight for my rights cause anyone can do anything if they put there mine to it am i i wrong so this is my vote letter!!!!

Multi lingual

I see no requirement for Global sysops to be multi-lingual while I recognise that it would be impossible for them conversant in every language that they may take action in I think its necessary for them be able to converse in more than one language, preferably a language other than en, de, fr, es. I personally couldnt support this initiative without some level of linguistic ability being a precondition on anyone who had such tools. Gnangarra 13:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Blatant vandalism of the type global sysops would be most effective in combating has no language barriers. BD2412 T 19:42, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Blatant vandalism can be bot fixed they dont need to be sysops to revert, the expectation is that they will do more. The issue I raise is that of facilitating communication these sysops will need to answer questions, respond to requests and justify actions we can not and should not presume that everybody will be able to communicate in english. By requiring multilingual sysops we are not only ensuring a greater opportunity for communication but also selecting editors who are familiar with the barriers and issues of communication in a non-native language. Gnangarra 14:23, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

signpost story

If anyone who has been following this wants to help write a Signpost story about the vote, please help out here. Thanks! Personally, I'm a little confused about how this new class differs from the current stewards; if there's a shortage of stewards, why not just put out a call and elect more? -- phoebe 19:06, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I provided some copypasta to start you off.

Why not elect more stewards? We hope to do that too. There are several reasons that wouldn't be sufficient:

• Not all users doing this work can be stewards. Some may not wish to identify themselves to the Foundation. Some may not want to do the parts of steward work that don't overlap with the global sysop role. Some may not garner sufficient community support, perhaps because they are not multilingual. For steward elections, that's an accepted criteria, but it may not be for global sysops.
• We have a lack of steward manpower which can be resolved without increasing the number of stewards, which may be a concern for some Wikimedians voting in steward elections. For these users, keeping the number of stewards low is a priority, but it may result in a continued shortage of manpower.
• Only a subset of the steward permissions are required for the tasks this proposed user group would perform. Since that's the case, there's no need for additional tools.
• Global sysop elections could be held at any time. Steward elections are typically semi-fixed in time and require lots of planning. It simply isn't feasible to hold steward elections every time we need to add some capacity - but we could hold a global sysop election.

 — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:05, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Questions

I am a frequent user & sometimes contributor who does not fully understand the issues regarding the "Global Sysops". But in checking today on a couple of posted articles was surprised that crude observations were being added to informative biographical articles. I don't know who or how the oversight process takes place but I do find it startling that otherwise helpful articles can be distorted by those who seem to subscribe to conspiracy theories. One or two out of place negatively charged statements can shift an otherwise informative article into one to be avoided. Hugh

• Actually, I don't think this will be an issue addressed by global sysops, unless they happen to speak the language in which the article is written, and have some knowledge of the falsity or other inappropriateness of these edits. My understanding is that global sysops will address cross-wiki vandalism, and blatant vandalism on smaller wikis. BD2412 T 19:40, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

According to NW "Sadly, many stewards are not active enough to help the small wikis as they need." What will happen when the new sysops stop actively participating ? Will we just create another supervisory position ? Right now I can't in good conscience vote Yes.Jcmiller1215 03:14, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Global sysops who are no longer actively using those tools will have them revoked, as described by the policy. New global sysop elections would be held on an as-needed basis.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:06, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

...Hence the name

I was wondering... why is this group called the Global sysops when this people only have this 'specialized rights' on small wikis (for example, not here or in the englis nor the spanish wikipedia), making this not a global status, but a focus aim in small projects. Global sounds more like an admin in ALL wikis (specially the big ones). - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 07:44, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

You're right, the name implies something that isn't true. However, we couldn't come up with a better name. Can you?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 17:23, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

How about Enforcer sysops? Sounds very good and apropriate to me. Can it be given that name instead? - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 18:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I prefer "SWMT admins" but others didn't like it. I wish it were my decision alone, but either of us would have to convince others to adopt a new name :). It's not terribly important in any case, IMO.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:13, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I see your point, but wouldn't Small Wiki Admins be clearer? 82.132.139.83 22:27, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

But then it wouldn't cover larger wikis choosing to opt-in... (I know I want to suggest allowing global sysops on nowiki, after global sysops has worked a while, and we can see that it (hopefully) works, because we sometimes have a problem with problem users at night, when all our admins are asleep). Laaknor 22:46, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Opt-out

How does a wikipedia opt out? The current inclusion criteria is also confusing. For example, Bengali wikipedia has 8 sysops, and at least 4 of them are fully active. Due to the geographic distribution of the admins, at least one of them is always active at any given time. However, the Global sysops proposal page says that if any wiki satisfies any of the conditions, it will be included in the list of global sysop-enabled wikipedias. The first condition listed there is (<10), so by that rule, Bengali wikipedia will be included. But it's neither a small wikipedia (21k articles) nor a project with no active admins. I understand that there are wikis with no active userbase or a few active admins. But in cases like the Bengali wikipedia, global sysops is completely unnecessary at least for now. Yet the way the proposal is worded (the "any" qualifier), it will put it in the list. Until this is cleared, and an opt-in is instituted rather than an opt-out, I believe this proposal will be flawed, and will infringe upon the local user consensus. --Ragib 08:37, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

They opt-out by agreeing on their village pump, that it does not wish global sysops to be enabled, and reporting it on a steward request-page. The reason for these criteria is that a lot of small wikis are not capable to make a decision on their village pump. Laaknor 10:56, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The metrics used are quite crude, you are right. And so the edge cases that fell on the wrong side of the line should take it upon themselves to fix that. If you're not on the list and want to be, then opt in - we will add you to the wiki set and ensure that we can monitor your wiki as best we can. If you are on the list but don't want to be, then opt out - we'll gladly remove you from the wiki set, and take that as a positive sign - your wiki has grown enough to handle these things without help. That's a great milestone, and we hope that as time goes on the wiki set only gets smaller as more and more projects are able to opt-out when appropriate.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 17:23, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I am an admin in one of the wikis near the current divide. We have 8 admin accounts (one of which is a bot run by an admin and should not be counted, btw.), half of whom are inactive since more than a year and a half. We did not have considerable SPAM or vandalism for a very long time now, and current SWMT activities by far do suffice catching occasional x-wiki-incidents. We likely would not really need global sysop activity in our wiki. Thus we may choose to opt out so as to save global sysops labour, and we may choose to opt in which gives us the benefits of an additional safety net e.g. for maybe a week in two years when several admins are on vacation at the same time. --Purodha Blissenbach 13:55, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Half-hearted

I've not contributed to any earlier discussions, so this ground has probably been covered before. If admins are trusted on their "home" wiki, and presumably trusted on the miniwikis, why not all wikis? As an example, I think I could do a useful job on Commons (which claims to be short of admins), but I'm not prepared to start from scratch to build up credibility there for an RFA when there is so much to do on en-wikipedia. ADmins on wikis protect their own patches (see above) as a first priority, with trust a long way behind. I know longer contribute to en-wiki RFA because of the instruction creep and elitism that makes clearly trustworthy applicants jump through a ridiculous number of hoops (I guess this amounts to an oppose Jimfbleak 08:59, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

We don't want this on all wikis, just because we don't need a new supergroup of sysops; we need someone that can take care of small wikis, where articles marked for deletion can be laying around for months (I cleared out a category for speedy delete yesterday, where the oldest article was marked for speedy delete 4 months ago...). small wikis work a lot diffrent than the larger wikis like enwiki and commons, and have diffrent needs. Laaknor 11:07, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Few concerns

I can see where you are going with this idea, but do have a few concerns, and am undecided as yet. It feels a little 'undercooked' to me.

• Opt-in/opt-out. Believe me, I've sent enough emails out in my time with "...if there are no objections by noon on Friday, I will be...." because sometimes that's the only way you get anything done around wherever here happens to be. I've also had that strategy bite me on the arse, six months down the line, and sometimes I've been extremely grateful to more cautious heads who adviced forcing an acknowledgement from other parties that they had at least seen my comments. In the case of this proposal, while I understand the concern that asking tiny wikis to opt in may be onerous, I'm not seeing anything that's checking up on them being aware that this is going ahead.

• What does the badge mean. Hot pursuit combat of vandals on sprees crashing their way thru multiple wikis sounds good. At the same time, here I see debates about whether or not mini wikis need standardised definitions of vandalism, whether the global sysop needs to talk to the local law enforcement, whether even the global sysop will have the power to block these global vandals (seems a bit pointless to me if not - being able to stop them for 24 hrs from accessing any project on the Foundation's servers after they've replaced a decent article with an ode to Britney's panties on the third wiki sounds like a way to ensure everyone gets some sleep. Better to sort this out before asking everyone to vote on it.

• Communications strategy. I noticed above someone saying that one problem was that stewards could only be contacted via IRC - there isn't a meta-noticeboard. Well, that's one problem that doesn't need this proposal or an election to fix. I'd say that in terms of comms, a meta-noticeboard where the global sysops can log their action on each miniwiki, and alert each other to the problem is essential. This could then also be a communication tool with the big wikis when issues like Bambifan getting people on the Portuguese wiki to sock for him on en.wikipedia come along(don't laugh, something similar has happened twice now). It would also be very useful to communicate with the miniwikis, so steps should be taken to advertise the meta-noticeboard on all miniwikis as an avenue to communicate with the global sysops. It might also be useful to maintain a list of a handful of active members for each miniwiki (some I know appear to have only 10 contributors), not for emergency contact which would seem to be impossible, but so that a global sysop can alert the miniwiki as to what they have done.

• Scope creep. This started out as a cross wiki anti-vandalism initiative, but I've already seen some referring to 'noncontroversial housekeeping' and then someone else noting a situation where CSD requests had been sitting around for the biblical 40 days and 40 nights. I think it would be as well to be very clear as to what the scope of this project is, when the global sysop can act while the miniwiki 'is asleep in bed' and indeed when the global sysop can act at the request of the miniwiki users. Certainly on en.wikipedia, we regularly see folks including admins from smaller wikis (eg the Farsi wiki) asking our administrators for advice and intervention. When they do that to the global sysops (as they will), said global sysops need a clear brief on what they can and can't do.

Convince me that all this has been thought of and the answers can be pointed to and I'll back it. To be honest, I'm not particularly picky as to what the answers are, just that they've already been thought through. Elen of the Roads 12:34, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Regarding awareness on the part of our small wikis. We've had an extraordinary turnout here, I think that shows that people are aware of that something is going on, even if they're not fully aware what it is. I hope voters are taking sufficient time and energy to ensure they've educated themselves or asked for help before placing a vote.

Actually, there is Stewards' noticeboard -- however for getting help quickly, realtime communication is better. A few stewards may sometimes be on Skype, but it is far easier to find us in #wikimedia-stewards. The request pages also exist, or you could leave a message on a steward's talk page, or email them. But I think it makes sense to suggest the best method of contacting someone - and that is IRC.

As to scope creep -- there actually isn't any. It may seem that way because people who weren't involved in crafting the proposal asked about one then the other. But in fact, the scope has been quite stable for about a year now. In that time, the major changes have been about other things.

Did I answer all the questions? (Some of the above is comment rather than question)  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 17:32, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. I can see you've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and have also taken considerable trouble to ensure that everyone is aware of it. If I've got this straight, the global sysops will have all the usual permissions plus global blocking, and will be able to use any of them on miniwikis which haven't opted out, or small wikis which have opted in. You are presuming the main reasons for them to act would be vandalism and housekeeping tasks (not defined) but there is no actual specification or restriction on what they can or cannot do.

That deals with the answers to the first three, but not with the concern behind my last point. en.wikipedia admin noticeboard repeatedly gets editors (and admins) from other wikis trying to get en.admins to give them opinions that in some cases are desired to be used against admins on the other wiki. This proposal does seem to risk putting the global sysop in a similar position, where he may receive requests to use tools that have unforseen consequences. How would an admin necessarily know whether an action on another wiki was housekeeping or controversial - yes, it might be labelled for speedying as spam, but how can he be sure. And what if there's been some kind of debate about the article that the admin can't follow. There's a risk that a member of some really small project asks a global sysop to delete what they say is unambiguous advertising, and then two other members say it's a really important article, and the first guy is a plant from the government. How does he find out who is telling the truth, what does he do, can he block anyone etc etc. Elen of the Roads 10:55, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

In that case they should ideally not be involved. There shouldn't be any ambiguity when global sysops perform anything - like in this example - a bot (presumably) was actively spamming crosswiki a product, in English. This proposal tackles crosswiki issues, not potentially spammy articles in one-off wikis... in those cases they're just tagged. -- Mentifisto 11:08, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

But if you look at the proposal we are being asked to vote on, there's nothing about cross-wiki vandalism. There's nothing about restricting to a subset of steward tools. They will have the whole shooting match, and so will get asked to use any of the tools on the list, and there are no criteria by which they can say yes or no. Also Laaknor in his note above is talking about these guys having a specific role carrying out housekeeping on mini wikis, specifically such as deleting articles scheduled for deletion. That's not a crosswiki issue. I'm not arguing that global sysopping someone will turn them into The Evil Overlord, but I am concerned that people are saying 'oh this is only about crosswiki issues' or 'this is only for vandalism' when actually that is not stated anywhere in the proposal. Elen of the Roads 12:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, here's another example. A global sysop gets contacted by someone from a miniwiki who has noted that a new contributor has been bounced off one or more of the big wikis because there's pretty good evidence they are say a paedophile. So they want this guy out of their miniwiki. What's the global sysop's response? Actually, I'm not so bothered what the response is. What I want to establish is what's governing the behaviour of the global sysop at this point. They could do it. Do they just use their common sense? Are there rules? Do they ask other people? What?Elen of the Roads 13:25, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

The tools are ment for SWMT-members, and SWMT doesn't involve themselves in content-disputes, just the same as stewards doesn't involve themselves; we can't read the language, and it's hard to have an opinion. For those kinds of problems, we have RFC that might be used. Remember that most disputes comes from content (how and what is written in an article), and meta/stewards/SWMT/global rollbackers/global sysops can't have an opinion about the articles in small wikis (since we don't read the language); we are however pretty good at finding crosswiki vandals (users trying to write an english article on 200 wikis at once, hoping that a few of them survive), and finding articles in a speedy-delete-category that hasn't been deleted after two months. Laaknor 13:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Someone (with I am absolutely sure the best of intentions) is rewriting this proposal as we are discussing it. How can I vote on something when it is a moving target? Tell me when you've stopped, and I'll vote. In the meantime, I do honestly think you guys are (in the nicest possible way) deluding yourself if you think your global sysops are going to remain at crosswiki vandalism. I do think that you mean the very best for the project though, so I'd like to see this work. From what you've said, the global sysop would have the power to block our alleged paedophile (or could be Bambifan101 them very selves editing away somewhere). Would they do it, and what grounds would they use to block/not block? What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that what is likely to happen is that the global sysop finds themselves in a situation where they have the tools to do something, common sense tells them it should be done (might be two months before a local admin spots Bambifan), but neither this proposal nor the miniwiki have enough rules to cover it. The tendency then must be to act as if rules from the big wiki that the global sysop is used to working on applied in this instance. Is that OK? Might give a patchy result (en.wikipedia is very hard on both paedophiles and Bambifan socks; de.wikipedia is pretty meh about socking and Bambifan). These aren't straight up content disputes, so the disclaimer about content really has very little relevance. Elen of the Roads 14:24, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

The substance of the proposal hasn't changed - it is not a moving target.

We're certainly not deluding ourselves about the possibility of these users overstepping their mandate; that's why we made it so straightforward to revoke the tools when needed.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 17:36, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I can understand the concern you, and others, have about global sysops overstepping their mandate. I will be totally honest when I say I am SURE at some point in the future it will happen to someone, I don't think it will be common and I hope it won't be a bad one but I am sure it will happen, be caught, and be dealt with. Without naming names for privacy issues I do want to give examples though. We have a system right now where our normal xwiki patrollers (generally global rollbackers but not always) are able to ask on the permissions request page for temporary admin access to clean up vandalism or to delete tagged articles that have been sitting around on small wiki for a long time. If the wiki doesn't have any admins (or doesn't have any active admins) and the user is trusted by the steward then they are given the rights. Usually those rights are taken away whenever the user says they are done (usually with 15-20 minutes almost never more then an hour) but they are always watched. I can think of at least 3 occasions where a user went beyond what they were saying they were going to do (they went to delete some vandalism and then started blocking some proxies they had seen for example). The steward instantly revoked the rights and they were done, and had lost the trust to get other temp rights. I honestly think that if abuse occurs that it will be dealt with responsibly and that it will be very rare. The bar to get the rights is MUCH higher then say the bar to get temporary rights or global rollback rights, which already is fairly high. James (T|C) 18:39, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you have pretty good steps in to handle the permissions side of it. My concern is that there isn't enough clarity in the proposal for the poor soul who has taken on the responsibility, and he or she is likely to get into trouble without intending to. It's not actually the most obvious thing that a global sysop would be (say) powerless to block that paeodphile/Bambifan101 - and in fact, I still haven't worked out whether they are or not. If a mini wiki has no specified procedure for restoring content that has been deleted, someone is going to ask the global sysop to do it, and it's not at all clear whether they can or not. I think overstepping is inevitable, not because global sysops will instantly turn into The.Evil.Overlord(TM), but because despite tweaks (and apologies, I didn't mean to imply anyone was doing anything mendacious in tweaking) there has not been enough thinking through of their actual brief. Elen of the Roads 12:37, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The bar to be a U.S. Senator is pretty high ($$$$) but it's still a ship of fools that would have send us into Iraq on false pretense because 9/11 happened or something like that were there not "checks and balances". Wait, that happened anyways... 173.89.30.143 14:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Point is I'm not willing to let wikipedia be ruled by blind faith. Power should be met with proportional checks. And "high bars" aren't checks. Checks are what happen when someone's in office, not before. 173.89.30.143 14:20, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

????? By all means join the conversation, but could you be a little more...communicative? Elen of the Roads 16:12, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Is this a kind of godmode???

no further text

Questions about deities and divine powers are beyond our scope. Please consult your local priest. Thank you Seb az86556 21:33, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

should be like rent-a-cops

where individual projects can "rent" and "un-rent" individual stewards of their choice at their individual discretion.

but they would still need global consent to be "certified".

In which case I suppose they would be more like "certifed stewards"

Then I would consider approving. As it stands they are not checked enough for the amount of power they are given. Kevin Baas^talk 15:54, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Stewards are volunteers, not paid employees, and as such cannot simply be bought, sold, or rented like software. In addition, there simply are not enough of them. Do you know where I could buy a steward? 72.93.78.209 17:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Send me an email, and I'll give you my bankaccount#. No guaranties are given to the outcome of any case given to me by you, but you'll make me a happier man (and that's of course the most important thing... for me... ;) Laaknor 17:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

granted the analogy fails there. my point was that projects should be able to opt-out of individual stewards at their discretion. 173.89.30.143 01:42, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Uses of software, such as Hubble

Will these admins usually use such software, or will new software be rendered to fit these specific needs???

--216.186.51.2 23:25, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

The telescope? Doubtful... –Juliancolton | ^Talk 14:19, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I guess the IP means huggle, not Hubble. But I think most global sysops will just use the cvn-sw channel on irc. --Barras ^talk 14:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone intends to use telescopes for anti vandal work. Huggle is not enabled on many wikis anyway and it is mainly for reverting, rather than blocking/deleting. Pmlineditor ∞ 15:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

No telescopes? Awwww. -- Avi 15:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Telescopes? Yeah, let's zero in on the vandal's houses and shoot a laser cannon. ;) The Thing That Should Not Be 18:44, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

<-- I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am very against huggle or similar programs being used for xwiki work, to many mistakes when it is in your own language let alone when you have to worry about another language. I always prefer people do it manually, the cvn channel is usually best or just watchng the specific wikis you focus on. James (T|C) 18:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Huggle is very useful when used carefully... I have over 100,000 edits back on enwiki, with the vast majority of them being Huggle edits, and I make very few, if any mistakes. The Thing That Should Not Be 02:07, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Remarks for consideration.

I was requested to comment which I am happy to do.

As I understand the proposal it is specific to these smaller wiki sets http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops/wiki_set An example would be http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page Because these are a subset of Wikipedia proper, they have less overview, but have still a high chance of outside abuse. Because of this, a known set of strong contributors, will have upgraded administrator-LIKE functions.

1. I think the function is needed, and the proposal solves most of the stated objectives.

2. I do not like the opt in and out part of the proposal, its a added layer of complexity which is not needed. The only case for an opt-out would be an abuse situation, by the sysop. Since that type of abuse has other and better avenues for resolving the problem, there is no need to create this opt-out option, and its inclusion would create other potential problems, that do not need to be discovered.

3. I would like there to be a way of having global sysops working on pages unrelated to content they have edited or worked within the discussion pages....but since these are smaller subsets, that requirement would not be beneficial. In fact having that type of requirement or expectation could reduce the pool of well qualified users that would sign up for the extra duties...because of wanting to be a contributor that is not then questioned on their contributions based on their global sysop status.

4. There is a potential for WP:OWN issues but because of these smaller subsets OWN issues will likely not be controversial or necessarily bad, if done with true good faith.

5. The appeals process and what to do if you disagree with a global sysop needs better definition and process flow. There should be a clear vehicle to post a concern or appeal the actions of a sysop. I would suggest that the review be simplified. I would suggest that only one uninterested sysop should review it, and then propose disposition of the matter....then for the that resolution to be enacted, that one other sysop review the disposition to either enable it, or comment on what should be done. IE. Submit issue, read and reviewed by one outside sysop, third sysop installs recommendation. I would advise against multiple sysops coming to consensus for the review, for reasons of long term maintainability.

The proposal as written is not very controversial IMO, it is putting in some added protection from abuse in lesser viewed areas. As these areas certainly have some interested and good faithed users, giving them the ability to manage an under managed area, is appropriate. --Tombaker321 23:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

to Mike.lifeguard

This sounds like a good idea provided that it all works as planned and the GS would be held accountable and wouldn't be able to rewrite their own list powers like Hugo Chavez, but seeing as how y'all've already taken into account checks and balances and as long as the GS wouldn't be able to morph into tyrannical power holders over the course of a few hundred years then I strongly support the creation of GS. You've done a good job of explaining it all and I think that it sounds good. To put some people's fears to rest, though, maybe it's not a bad idea to say "let's try it for 6 months and then we could all vote again to see if you think it's satisfactory or not." Keep up the good work, Mike! Invmog 03:22, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

If you're thinking about Wikimedia over the next hundred years, we need you at strategywiki :)  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Issues

I set this up as an issues - page, since many of these have seemingly been ignored. Yotwen 10:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Language

I'm happy to assume, GS' do read and speak English. Well - do they? Yotwen 10:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

We don't know, since nobody has been nominated to get the tools. I'd guess that'd be the case, however it is in no way a requirement.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Policies

How will I learn, what Global Policies have been decided. What is the rule/law or whatever they will presumably be acting on? Yotwen 10:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

The same policies that guide stewards would also guide the global sysops, insofar as they're relevant. Other than the proposal itself, there is no plan for additional policies which govern this group.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Global sysops (stewards) must be APOLITICAL!

It is my belief that Wiki's global sysops must be apolitical and cannot engage, whether maliciously, intentionally, or inappropriately, in activities that are political-biased, scientific-biased, cultural-biased, and/or history-biased. These activities can upset, confuse and/or anger other peoples and would generate very heated discussions in needless waste of time, bandwidth, and resources. Absolutely NO political, cultural or elitist favoritism within the global sysops group and toward other peoples and contributors please! The purpose of Wikipedia is to promote and preserve ALL sums of knowledge, whether right or wrong, for the future. Let the future time-traveling scholars of the 31st century Earth study the Wikipedia archives for themselves. Thank you!

That goes for all editors, not jut sysops. -- Avi 17:40, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Abstaining

As someone who does not use any wikis besides the big ones, I feel out of my depth in making any kind of vote on this. I am only writing this because I didn't see anyone making a similar comment. If you have no experience with wikis other than the major ones, and therefore have no connection to smaller ones, you may not want to vote on their future. Khin2718 01:29, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. As long as you're an established Wikimedia contributor, you should be able to voice your opinion on any project-wide proposals. Also, how do you define "big" in this context? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:35, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree, concealing oneself in one wiki (wikipedia in a certain language) is something I wouldn´t support, since the whole wikimedia project is multilingual, I consider all language wikipedias as part of the same and the same wikipedia. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 23:29, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Mise en place éventuelle de "Comités de relecture" pour certaines notices

Ces propositions sont tout à fait cohérentes pour la « gestion globale du site ». Dans le même ordre d’idée ne pourrait-on envisager des « Comités de relecture, à géométrie variable » par thème (archéologie, histoire, géologie,…), de manière à assurer une certaine cohérence de qualité scientifique, au cas par cas, de certaines notices.

Ils pourraient être appelés à arbitrer les difficultés de rédaction ? --86.216.224.143 17:02, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Pardonnez mon écriture française. Ce serait 'instruction creep'. La personne qui a commencé cette proposition a écrit que son but est de lutter contre le 'cross-wiki-vandalism', pour ne pas devenir impliquée dans le 'content dispute'. En soi, le contenu sur aucun Wiki affecté ne s'appliquerait pas. Joe Hepperle 19:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Je suis d'accord avec Joe. La proposition vise à aider les petits actes de vandalisme wikis lutte, et je ne suis pas sur qu'il serait avantageux d'encourager les utilisateurs d'une autre culture pour venir et essayer de changer la facon dont un autre wiki s'exécute. Désolé pour mon mauvais français :) James (T|C) 21:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary privileges

• Edit other users' CSS and JS files (editusercssjs)
• Edit the user interface (editinterface)

Is there really any valid reason a global sysop needs to be able to edit the site userinterface or a user's own CSS and JS files? Interface changes seem orthogonal to the basis for having global sysops in the first place.

I for one want to opt out of having any user CSS/JS files of mine being editable by a sysop.

The implications of editing JS files or the UI are severe. If a global sysop's Wiki account were compromised, a script kiddie could use the sysop's privileges to infect wiki users with malware, popup windows to the same, or trick users' browsers into making Wiki edits/actions they didn't opt for or approve of... -Mysidia 04:02, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Global sysops need the first right in order to be able to disable malicious scripts, which may be used by some editors. The second right is necessary to fix errors in configuration files, if they are found. As to opt out, your files can already be edited by any local sysop. Ruslik 12:26, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the message

They want a vote on whether or not Wikipedia should have more admins, and that these admins would, for some reason, "only have access to articles of smaller size", and yet can ban users which has nothing to so with specific articles?? I don't see any major problems of SPAMbots and the like that are "obvious bans".RayvnEQ 04:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

If you don't see problems with spambots or blatant vandalism, then you simply aren't looking. Check my global contribs for example. Or check those of other SWMT members. There is a real problem, and this proposal aims to ameliorate it.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 16:48, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

We need more sysops

bottom line We need more sysops Why I think its ok to give them seemingly unnecessary power: -We can trust them (come on now) -There may be a situation where an sysops needs to use that power, unlikely or not. -If we can find hard working people to help us run wiki smoothly then lets give them that opportunity! :)

Why I think we need more sysops: - very few people work for wiki like 35 people -I see lots of things I want to change but can't b/c im not a sysops -if someone is given the oner of being a sysops they will try harder! -We need more planing! I see to many sites, though long and great, need to be started from the ground up for various reasons .

Permissions etc.

Not voting, but just a couple random but real comments:

1. It's not a bad proposal, in fact one of the better ones I've read. I realize there is an issue with Stewards and such but really just for the sake of simplicity ideally I'd like to keep it to just stewards with this, as there are already several layers of admins on projects and electing more Stewards or getting rid of the inactive ones seems more ideal to me.
2. I also don't see how normal editors could understand the wording on the granted powers here - these are short, extremely technical explanations that I can't see anyone outside of administrator circles understanding. This is a serious proposal with far-reaching consequences, I can't help but think people are voting support just because they like the idea but won't bother to read the granted powers.

Former meta and en administrator, self-demoted long ago due to inactivity. RN 14:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Term Limits

I think that there should be a time limit as to how long someone can be a Sysop for any given length of time before they are replaced by someone else. This is particularly important in my opinion because it could avoid an aggregation of power in the hands of a few. Manticore55 19:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC) 19:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I concur. There should be time limits EVERYWHERE, for EVERY STATUS. JJ Georges 16:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Support

I don't see a problem with this. It seems like a very reputable proposal. 71.238.28.109 20:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC) - JacobS

Limited term

Assuming that this is not a solution in search of problem (and I'm not sure) I would like to see a limited term for such a "super-sysop". This means a vote of continued confidence of the community must be sought every, say, year or two - simple majority vote. This system would mimic procedures and mechanisms in everyday civil life, at least in the countries where I prefer to stay. Power.corrupts 13:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Template needs updating

{{Global sysops-status}} needs updating. Global sysops/Vote says voting is closed.--Rockfang 09:54, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikiset configuration

Why is the set itself opt-in? I suggest to change it to opt-out, since this: a) will reduce the size of the set; b) will automatically include newly created wikis. vvv^t 14:07, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Probably because someone created a list of affected wikis. But I agree with you that it should be changed to opt-out. Laaknor 14:24, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I made a list of opt-outed wikis. vvv^t 16:27, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Makes the list much easier to maintain... Done & thanks, vvv  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:11, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

foundationwiki didn't want to be in that list apparently. all.dblist says that's correct, but the wiki told me "The following wiki does not exist: foundationwiki." O_o Help?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:21, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know, all fishbowl (= with limited registration) wikis are removed from SUL. I guess that's the reason. vvv^t 18:26, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that'd be it. A rather unhelpful error message though. Thanks  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Should not need any globals' on foundation wiki, tis a restricted userbase. NonvocalScream 13:20, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Undelete

For some reason, global sysops cannot undelete pages. Is there a reason why? It's very important in case someone accidentally deletes a page. -- Prince Kassad 14:54, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Confirm. I guess this is because deletedtext right is missing. May anyone add it, please? vvv^t 14:58, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

ooo yes, that needs to be fixed. James (T C) 15:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Done — Dferg (talk) 15:04, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Kind of confused

I'm kind of confused as to where global sysops are allowed to use their tools. For example, should we delete old, stagnant test pages on projects with a couple semi-active local sysops? I think this policy needs to explain these things more clearly. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:47, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

As a semi-active sysop of an listed wiki, I will be happy if someone see it and remove it, if it is a tiny or nonsense. --WizardOfOz ^talk 20:57, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, are pages on wikis with no sysops directly deleted (instead of tagged)? And, when there's an active vandal how much should one wait before blocking them, to see if a local sysop intervenes? -- Mentifisto 19:43, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the policy indeed doesn't explain it, so I'll just give you my view. Usually I just delete pages on projects with < 3 sysops and all of them inactive in the last month, < 5 sysops and all inactive in the last 3 months or no active sysops in the last year regardless of the number of sysops. In case of an active vandal I usually just wait and see for his first few edits, but if he keeps going for more than say 5 edits I just block him. --Erwin 20:47, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Blacklists

Does global admins have access to Meta? As far as I can see, not all of them have admin bit here, and access to blacklists may be required to fight vandalism efficiently. vvv^t 18:17, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Technically, Meta-Wiki would have to opt-in to global sysops for us to add it to the list. It would certainly be a good idea though. Perhaps you could open a discussion on Wikimedia Forum? NW (Talk) 18:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree, in general it is probably a good idea but I would probably say Meta:Babel (just since it's meta related. James (T C) 19:06, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I'd endorse opting in locally. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:07, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

• Discussion opened. NW (Talk) 20:12, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

How to get in contact with sysops

How do I get in contact with a sysop in case I need assistance? Do you use an irc-channel to coordinate your work or do you recommend that I just contact a sysop on his or her talk page? Diupwijk 16:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

If you use IRC, the channels #wikimedia-stewards^connect or possibly #cvn-sw^connect are good bets. If not, Steward requests/Global is probably the way to go. Individual sysops, of course, can be contacted on their talk pages. NW (Talk) 19:13, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Hm. What about SWMT noticeboard? vvv^t 19:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I dunno, I think that would overlap with SRG too much. Global sysops are essentially stewards without CentralAuth/CU/OS/rights_change abilities. But most people would not know the difference. I would try to centralize it if possible. NW (Talk) 19:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Should there be a minimum level of support together with consensus to become a global sysop?

Based on the discussion at Steward requests/Global permissions#Global sysop for Luckas Blade, should a numerical support floor be instituted for global sysops in addition to consensus? -- Avi 14:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I think 15–20 is a good limit. Global sysop directly affects the majority of WMF wikis, so broad support is needed. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 14:59, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

If a limit is imposed, I'm thinking it should be more like 10. These pages don't get a lot of attention, and the majority of affected wikis won't know when a user is being voted on. The experience and support of the most active SWMT members should be a testament to their suitability. Making it too high will diminish the success of the process, I think. PeterSymonds 15:04, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

True, but quite a few of the initial requests achieved over 30 votes, so I don't think 15 or 20 is that difficult. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 15:07, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the initial votes for global rollback were similar. Now, not so much. The first groups of users to run for a new group are likely to generate attention, but I think people's interest in voting won't last. PeterSymonds 15:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

A min of 10 votes and two weeks sounds good to me. Then the steward should be able to determine consensus. --Daniel Mayer (mav) 18:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

15 or 20 sound more reasonable to me , as the position is global there should more attention --Mardetanha ^talk 20:12, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

If we're talking about a hard limit I'd say 10 votes should do, but even then I'd probably try to get 15-20 votes by just keeping the request open a bit longer. --Erwin 21:04, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

How about make a range of minimum values part of the policy? Stewards would then need to determine how thoroughly considered the votes are. --Daniel Mayer (mav) 00:16, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it's not necessary to fix any minimum numbers (it's not a vote anyway). The question is not whether people support the candidate, but whether and why they oppose. So if no oppose is given, the number of supports does not matter at all, since there are no objections then. --თოგო ^(D) 12:51, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that lack of even 10 supports usually indicate that a lot of community members are unsure about certain candidacy. vvv^t 13:47, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of hard numbers so would agree with Thogo but equally if someone isn't "known" to 10 folk who think they are ok it would be a little worrying. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Questions

Are global sysops supposed to perform routine actions on small wikis, such as deleting obvious speedies, on wikis that clearly have active admins? If stewards aren't allowed to do that ("Stewards generally do not perform actions on wikis where local users are available to perform them, except in emergency cases", see here), why would global sysops be? Wutsje 20:52, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems a bit bureaucratic to leave very obvious vandalism pages up (especially ones in English), so I see no reason not to delete those. Barring that though, I would think that tagging with {{delete}} is still probably the way to go. NW (Talk) 21:10, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

While I agree that may be a bit bureaucratic, that does not leave the fact that, at least as far as I can recall, global sysops were never meant to perform tasks stewards are not allowed to perform. Wutsje 21:36, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I believe that it is nothing wrong with stewards or GS deleting test or vandalism pages, or blocking vandals or spamers on local projects with active admins; it looks like the tradition of stewards hesistating to delete them on small wikis is a legacy of the time when that required sysoping-desysoping themselves on local projects. I personally see no potential issues with performing such tasks (which seem by no doubt uncontroversial maintenance to me). I don't think that anyone will produce drama if any GS or steward will delete another "hi guys you suck" or "dsehgtrhdtrhygfd" page; or if they block someone inserting random nonsense or spam links. The worst that may happen is someone from local community gets disgraced by the fact of their intervention; then we can point them to the opt-out procedure. Furthermore, as an admin of at least one small wiki I may say that I am extremely happy with GSes/stewards helping to clean up ruwikibooks. vvv^t 21:59, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

My point is not that such maintenance work is not useful, but that any serious policy change should be discussed and agreed upon before implementation. Wutsje 22:10, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I guess the fact that GSes would be able to delete such pages is directly stated in policy. It looks like that for me:

1. Stewards were not allowed to do non-controversial maintenance on small wikis with active admins;
2. GSs are intended to do non-controversial maintenance on the wikis where they are granted their permissions, therefore they are allowed to do so;
3. GS policy is a result of pretty recent and pretty established consensus;
4. Stewards are subset of GSs (all stewards are global sysops);
5. Therefore, if statements 2 — 4 are true, we have consensus that all stewards and global sysops are allowed to do non-controversial maintenance. vvv^t 22:23, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

That would mean the sentence I quoted when I started this topic is not correct anymore and it should be changed. Wutsje 00:50, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Wutsje is right. Seb az86556 01:25, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

add deleterevision?

Now that local sysops all have access to 'deleterevision' I think it may be a good thing to roll into the global sysop group. This would allow the transparency that RevDel offers (showing where and when a revisions was delete and allowing for partial deletion of just username or edit comment). Thoughts? James (T C) 07:22, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, don't we have it already? For example, I can see an option "(দেখাও/আড়াল করো)" in Bengali Wiktionary which allows revdel. Cheers, Pmlineditor ∞ 07:36, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm you're right... /me checks to see when we got it.. I know last time I checked I didn't think I saw it. James (T C) 07:41, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahh ok yup Leinad added it last week. Nvm ignore me :) its what I get for looking at a week old checklist of "stuff to do" ;) James (T C) 07:43, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Scope

In light of another recent "no concensus"-result for a request (permalink), I'd like to start some general discussion regarding the scope of this tool.

• There are/were those who believe that declaring (implicitly or explicitly) a "limited-range" disqualifies one from acquiring this tool.
• Others believe that setting limits to oneself from the get-go isn't an obstacle.

I believe that in the interest of fairness this needs to be clarified. Seb az86556 14:04, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

What would you like to propose? Don't the cases you point to show there is a certain amount of agreement among the community members who are involved with this that there are certain expectations for the role? I don't see the problem - but of course, you're on the other side of the line, so I imagine you view this as a problem  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  03:25, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

??? You might want to read my comments at the permalink, Mike, and then strike what comes close to an attack. thanks. Seb az86556 10:19, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I read them already. Why should I be striking anything out? I don't understand what you're trying to get at  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  23:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

"The other side" -- what "other side" would I be on? I have the impression you're trying to imply an opinion I don't hold... Seb az86556 00:52, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't refer to an opinion at all. I was making reference to your request. I'm sorry you were confused.

The point remains: you've failed to explain what change you seek.  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  02:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Referring to something that happened in March would imply that I do not understand "consensus" and am unwilling or incapable of accepting it. In any case, I'm seeking a clarification or some sort of general note, either on the this page or on top of the request page, so that any future discussions can be cut short. Juliancolton and others commented that the rationales for rejection were "frustrating" and Aphaia suggested there was a need to start a thread on this talkpage. Thus, I have started it. The reason for this is that when this needs to be discussed in light of a specific request, it is always easy to conclude that the rejection was against the person rather than based on principle. Does that make sense?Seb az86556 12:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

My reading of the status quo is that global sysop is not for people limiting themselves to just a few wikis. On very small wikis, you can request temp sysop. Elsewhere, you may run an RFA. I don't see the problem with this - if you do, perhaps you could explain it.  — mikelifeguard@meta:~$  18:46, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually, this thread was started to give those who do (see a problem) a chance to talk about. Apparently, there is no interest in this. We should archive it in, say, a week, and if similar concerns come up in the future, we can point to this thread and say "you've had your chance, you missed it." :) Seb az86556 19:11, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

<-- Personally I think there are times were "limiting" would not be bad. In general if it is just a few wikis then (as Mike said above) local sysop or some other option is probably better given that the bit does extend quite a few tools to an enormous amount of wikis. That said there are options where I think that it wouldn't be bad. For example I don't personally think it would be a problem for a trusted Commons admin to have access to see deleted images and help to clean up issues with delinker (on a protected page for example). In fact Global deleted image review was approved by over 80% (160-37) years ago but never implemented (because you couldn't separate just deletion review from all deleted edits review, the devs never ended up setting that up, not sure if it was forgotten about or what). Obviously given the other rights I don't think we should do that to every Commons admin but a few trusted ones? Especially if they have xwiki experience, sure. Other cases where someone had to do maintenance that would take him on a wide spectrum of wikis? Sure, I think those would be appropriate cases to look at.

I will say that I know that some people were not... excited about this position at all and so I am hesitant to do anything that would be seen as "giving it more power" etc. I said however, I do think there are areas where limiting yourself wouldn't be that bad (and actually this could be an interesting way to get some of the global deletion review we actually approved so long ago out there. James (T C) 19:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

For such maintenance, we have in the past created a custom global group on an ad hoc basis. The other cases, I'm not sure I agree that global sysop is the right way to go about enabling such things. Where there is a real need, we should discuss other solutions rather than shoehorning it in here.  — mike@meta:~$  01:01, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Global Rollback

Recently Fr33kman (talk · contribs · page moves · block user · block log) was granted global sysop. Prior to his appointment, he had not been granted global rollback, meaning that he now must go through another week of watching people pile on support for his global rollback request. While global sysop comes with rollback, it is not enabled on all projects, just those which have oped-in to the global sysop program. As such, I recommend that all users who successfully pass a request for global sysop also get global rollback enabled. Tiptoety ^talk 06:11, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Sensible idea is sensible. {{Sonia|talk|simple}} 08:06, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

 Support--Aphaia 09:35, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the people who opt out of global sysop will particularly like this... Seb az86556 23:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, call me biased, and I admit I don't know their intention but what do you think a possibility they just assumed all global sysop applicants might have global rollback already? For local sysopship rollback is a part of adminship, and what is a good reason to alter this composition for global role? --Aphaia 20:28, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess every global rollbacker using the rollback option inappropriately will lose it immediately, and there should be no worries of abuse.--Yaroslav Blanter 21:42, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

@Aphaia - The issue here is: there are projects that have opted out of having global sysops-powers applied to their projects. These projects which have opted out will now have rollbackers they never approved. That's the issue. Just saying. Seb az86556 04:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Technically global rollback will not be a part of the global sysop tools. It's just that we assume that someone who is a global sysop is also eligible to global revert. Then he is member of two distinct groups, with two distincts rules.

Wiki that opt-out global sysop set didn't opt-out global revert set. So I think there is no - real - issue.

Regards --Hercule 13:31, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

That's right. I was at least partially playing devil's advocate (or maybe angel's...) Seb az86556 17:49, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm tempted to simply suggest that someone run for both, at the same time if need be. "Hi, I want to do antivandal work, but would prefer to finish things quickly when not on the global sysop projects..." etc, run for both, not exactly a huge powergrab over simply asking for global sysop by itself. Kylu 23:57, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Well call me biased but, .... support fr33kman ^{t - c} 03:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

yes--Yaroslav Blanter 16:06, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

No brainer - of course --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:46, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Lees bureaucratic therefore a good idea. Support -Barras 19:17, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Support too --by Màñü飆¹5 ^talk 05:19, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Support too --Hercule 09:51, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

 Support πr² (talk · contributions) 11:30, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Support so we don't have to add extra local right on dewiki. Merlissimo 18:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

strong support —DerHexer (Talk) 18:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree too. Users who fall into this category should mention it when making their request and/or to the steward who closes it.  – mike@meta:~$  16:41, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Support +1 -- Avi 22:06, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

'Routine maintenance'

I've been pondering over the potential implications 'routine maintenance' may convey; wasn't GS originally proposed solely for clear-cut vandalism removal? Including 'routine maintenance' as a phrase gives the impression that we may handle the typical sysop work done by local users (as an example, on Commons 'routine maintenance' would be the tackling of copyvios, presumably) - and I don't think we could go anywhere near that. -- Mentifisto 14:36, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

• Yepp, and there's already the first (reported) case of crossing-the-line from am.wiki [4]. Seb az86556 20:10, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
• I think that it must depend on the wiki and whether or not a) they have admins or b) they have active admins. I've come across a quite a few wikis where no one was doing routine maintenance at all. If a user on a wiki with no admins on it asks for a bunch of deletions and it's clear that they make sense, then I see no issues with a global sysop or steward deleting them. Just like a global user might fix a typo as well as tag an atricle as vandalism, so too I think global sysops should be able to update a MediaWiki page or delete an article if requested. I agree that where there is an active admin community (perhaps 3-6 active admins) then routine maintenance should not be done by a global sysop. fr33kman ^{t - c} 21:34, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
• I have to admit that I first interpreted the "routine maintenance" part to mean any noncontroversial maintenance tasks. The GS page is not very specific about the scope in this regard, and should probably be updated to say that it's only okay to use the GS tools in 1) cases of clear vandalism/spam and 2) cases where there's no local sysop available to perform the task, such as wikis with no sysops or when the local sysops have been inactive for a long time. When possible, things should be left to local admins. Jafeluv 08:44, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
• My suggestion is to play safe: if the project has active local administrators and it is not an emergency, leave to the local admins the job. If the wiki has no administrators at all then feel free to remove obvious vandalism/spam, etc. --dferg ^{☎ talk} 08:55, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Slacking

Maybe people don't like Wikibooks in general. Maybe it's embarrassing to think that an English language project would need assistance. However, English Wikibooks has dropped to ten administrators (and less than half of that are active), and so there is not enough in-house monitoring of recent changes but I've yet to see any consistent presence by global sysops. So now we have vandalism to a page for children on a page with flagged revisions enabled and showing a bright yellow tag in recent changes going unnoticed for over nine hours [5]. English Wikibooks opted in to global sysops, but you sure wouldn't know it. Adrignola 12:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

While I don't disagree that we don't see much of the Global Sysops, the failure to spot vandalism to a WJ book is a failure of the WB community as a whole (as reverting vandalism doesn't require a sysop bit) not just sysops, local or global. QU ^TalkQu 13:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

One further comment on this. Sysops don't have access to all the functions that Reviewers do. Although they can review pages, they can't see Wikibooks:Special:UnreviewedPages and possibly can't see or use some of the other quality oversight pages and functions. I'm not sure if this was deliberate as I don't follow all the nuances of the configuration change that was requested. QU ^TalkQu 14:18, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Checking out b:Special:ListGroupRights, I see that it's only the "unreviewedpages" right that has not been assigned to sysops. All the other rights provided to the reviewer group are also explicitly assigned to the sysops group as well. The "review" right that is explicitly assigned should be sufficient to allow global sysops to review pending changes. Adrignola 14:28, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I had just assumed enwb had opted-out and didn't bother to ever check (bad of me, I know). I'll be actively patrolling now that I know it's in GS. fr33kman 21:28, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Adrignola: Please note that "global sysop" does not simply equate to the user having the same permissions as administrators on the local project. To see the rights that a global sysop has on global sysop-subscribing projects, you want b:Special:GlobalGroupPermissions/Global_sysops instead. (While normally the Meta link would be sufficient, you'll note that GGP doesn't show the review-related functions at all, as Meta does not have that functionality.) - Global sysops, in a nutshell, do not have reviewer-related rights at all. Your community would have to grand GS's such rights locally, as many projects are hesitant to share such rights. I do hope that clarifies things for you? Kylu 21:51, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

That is helpful. The list of global sysops has been gone through at this point and any of them with user pages at en.wikibooks now have reviewer rights assigned. Adrignola 13:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. You may want to consider also stewards who perform such actions locally also and watch SRGP for new global sysops. Have a nice day. :) Kylu 16:17, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed! Stewards are automatic global sysops after all, and more besides. fr33kman 02:00, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Automatic opt-out when projects grow

Currently, we have applied global sysops to any project with either fewer than ten administrators exist or fewer than three administrators have made a logged action within the past two months. If a project grows so that it has both more than 10 admins and more than 3 "active" admins as described above, should it be automatically removed from the "opt-in" and have to discuss to opt-in, or does it need to discuss to opt-out? -- Avi 20:08, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest we leave it opted in until they discuss otherwise: Projects with fewer contributors are usually cognizant about their capabilities and the likelihood that they'll always have someone on-duty to perform antivandalism work. If they feel confident that they can handle the load without the use of GS's, they're welcome to back out.

Another possibility is that the local community could determine a schedule (and communicate it with us, of course) as to when they expect that the local admins will be active, and on the off-time, when they would appreciate more assistance from the GS's. A central noticeboard on Meta (aside from this talkpage) would be nice to allow the GS's to know where and when their efforts would be most appreciated, also. I don't currently know of one. Kylu 21:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree fr33kman 02:57, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

If I could predict the future... The project will require the services of the global sysops less and less as it grows, and at some point you'll find it has opted out "by default" because there's never any work for a global sysop to do. Then, someone will decide to request a formal opt-out. I think a pre-determined set of criteria wouldn't make sense. It was okay for the original set-up but for new projects dropping in and out of scope I think it is better on an informed case-by-case basis. There are times on Meta with loads of sysops that nobody does anything about vandalism for hours (for example) - the number of contributors, admins, etc., doesn't really show whether there is or isn't a need it just provides an indication. So the final decision should be a formal request to opt-out, not pre-determined. Long answer... Should have just said "I agree". QU ^TalkQu 09:57, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Global Sysops and IRC

Do Global Sysops use the IRC CVN channels for monitoring the in-scope projects? Would it be easier if there were less channels to monitor? The reason I ask is I spend time in #cvn-wb-en and I'm usually the only person there and often the bot is also not running. A quick run through other channels for the smaller en wikis (Wikiversity, Wikisource, Wiktionary) showed the same thing. Two of the channels had only one person active in them, the other was unoccupied. I think there's a case for merging some of these channels together, in the same way simple WP and simple WT are in the same channel. It will obviously take a broader discussion to agree what, if any, channels should be merged. However, it occurred to me while I was asking in #countervandalism if they could be merged that such a merger might make it easier for Global Sysops to monitor the quieter wikis. I welcome your views please. Thanks QU ^TalkQu 23:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

It's probably because most (incorrectly) assume that English-language projects are well-patrolled, and (also incorrectly) assume that all non-English wikis are under constant attack and nobody cares. It would be more effective to get some numbers on where the actual attacks occur. Seb az86556 23:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I usually watch the English-language projects, but not on the freenode channels- I prefer the Wikimedia ones. I would support this idea though. sonia 08:10, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a looong time since I was active with crosswiki-patrolling, but I thought #cvn-sw^connect covered the "quieter wikis" who are in scope for Global sysops? Finn Rindahl 10:08, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes it does cover the smaller ones but there are other projects (like en wb) that are in scope for Global Sysops but aren't part of that channel - probably because as Seb az86556 says there is an assumption that English language projects are well patrolled... Adding en Wikisource, en Wikibooks, en Wiktionary, etc., to cvn-sw might be the answer... QU ^TalkQu 13:10, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Note

This is to inform you all that since yesterday the Spanish Wikibooks has been added to the list of wikis where you all have access. We have a small army of 15 administrators and 11 bureaucrats including me, but on a dayly basis we have 3/4 active admins and that is not enough to stop the large vandalism that happens on the project. I think that some schools use the project as a sandbox for their experiments, which generates a lot of junk in new pages and in the already existing pages so if somebody wants to help there, it will be appreciated.

If you're going to help there please remember to create an userpage with contact details and to deal with clear vandalism/spam/tests only.

For your info our village pump is located at b:es:Wikilibros:Café and our admin noticeboard here.

Thank you, --dferg ^{☎ talk} 07:14, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of which, somebody might want to have a look at today's b:es:Special:Contributions/R.89a. 85.94.184.115 16:00, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Taking care of, as local sysop :) --dferg ^{☎ talk} 16:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)