Wikivoyage talk:User rights nominations

2004

JZ, we're going to need your LRC account information as we do a lot of the admin discussions via LRC protocol. thanks. (WT-en) Majnoona

What's LRC protocol? Google shows "lazy release consistency", which doesn't sound relevant. -(WT-en) phma

"LRC protocol" is "living-room couch". Maj and I live together, and we talk about Wikivoyage here sometimes. Little joke. --(WT-en) Evan 11:15, 18 Jan 2004 (EST)

---

I think it should be made clear that "other" means "other than the nominator", rather than "other than the nominee", since the nominee isn't an admin, so by Grice if it meant that, the word "other" wouldn't be necessary. So if there are only two admins, it is useless for either to nominate someone, since there aren't two other admins to support him. -(WT-en) phma 17:21, 19 Jan 2004 (EST)

Policy Improvements

I think there may be some room for improvement in policy about nominations. Here are the items I'd like to raise for discussion:

1. Renomination protocol. When should a renomination occur? There are at least four cases of renomination I can think of: where the previous nomination was declined; where the admin bit lapsed due to inactivity or resignation; where the nomination has lapsed without the nominee acknowledging it; where the previous nomination was objected to. I kinda stepped in it when I nominated Huttite after his previous nomination was declined which maybe wasn't the best way to do it, so it'd be nice to have a bit more guidance in the rules.
2. Discussion cut short. Seven days might not be enough time to complete an active and ongoing discussion given the lags we have due to the spin of the planet. So I would suggest something like changing "After seven days of discussion" to something like "After 21 days of discussion or seven days without any additional comments/discussion being made (whichever comes first)". This way we don't accidently cut short an active discussion which hasn't really finished.
3. Unacknowledged nomination. The Nzpcmad nomination is just sitting there because we don't have a policy. Perhaps we should expire a nomination after some time since a renomination could always be done at a later time.
4. Encourage more discussion. It'd be nice if each admin could think of one or two boilerplate questions which they always ask (this is a common technique for employers doing job interviews to prevent accidental bias in interviewing.) The boilerplate questions could be attempts to find items which could do with further discussion. They would serve to ensure that each nominee is actually asked some questions. Basically, I'd like to encourage greater discussion with the nominee, and only asking some nominees some questions can feel more like an interogation (even though it's not meant to be). I'd rather it felt more like a group of folks getting to know one another at a pub.

So, I stretched the time period from 7 to 14 days, since that's the same as we do for deletions. I think that the unacked nomination for Ncpcmad expired after the regular time period, and we should renominate once we have some better idea of his/her availability.

As far as renominations: I'd suggest that we avoid nailing this down. Maybe just say, "Unlimited renominations possible immediately, preferably with outstanding issues resolved"? Maybe we can count on common sense on this one. --(WT-en) Evan 10:56, 29 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Voting rights

After I submitted my two cents, I noticed that the approval process requires assent by current admins. I am not an admin. I had not read the admin nomination page in a while and should have done so before chiming in. That said, (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill helped me recently when I got in over my head on a page move. He was quick to help, knowledgable, and good natured about my gaffe. Naturally, I looked up some of his contributions and was impressed with the amount and quality of his work. Sorry for blundering in. (WT-en) SHC 13:41, 4 May 2006 (EDT)

It is not entirely clear if voting is an open process. The agreement of at least 2 other admins is a minimum requirement but maybe everyone else can vote too. -- (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 13:45, 4 May 2006 (EDT)

I think the discussion should be open to the entire community. As (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) said it requires a minimum of 2 other admins to approve, but as I understand it anyone can nominate and discuss nominations. See Project:Administrators. - (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 14:03, 4 May 2006 (EDT)

Yes, that's the case. Everyone's welcome to add their voice to the discussion. Two admins for and none against is the minimal requirement, but I don't know what we'd do if there were, say, 15 non-admins for and nobody against, or two admins for and 35 non-admins against. Fortunately it hasn't come up, since we've had such great people already. --(WT-en) Evan 14:11, 4 May 2006 (EDT)

If admins unanimously ignore groundswells of non-admin opinion in that fashion, then we have more important problems than how admins are chosen. I'm happy to see non-admins contribute to the discussion and support. But I don't want Willy and 14 of his logins to vote an admin down -- and the only way I can foresee avoiding that is to keep the actually tallying to admins. -- (WT-en) Colin 18:49, 4 May 2006 (EDT)

I agree. If we come to a state where we need a policy for such situations, no policy can help us. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 00:58, 5 May 2006 (EDT)

Admin timeline

Of 3 recent nominations, 1 is out 16 days and another is out the minimum 14, but I don't see either (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill or (WT-en) Todd on the list of current admins. Hope I didn't miss the announcement. (WT-en) SHC 18:22, 20 May 2006 (EDT)

Nomination template

The instructions for how to nominate someone for Admin duty were recently replaced with a fairly complicated template to fill out, apparently copied and translated from the Swedish Wikivoyage. Do we really need to structure the process like this? The freeform approach (nomination followed by votes/comments) seemed to me to work pretty well. But if we're going to use this template, it needs more explanation, because I don't understand it. I've already removed the "Administrator or Bureaucrat" section because it's inapplicable, but I don't even know what the "Support/Neutral/Do not support" lines are there for... is that supposed to tell us what our voting options are, are we supposed to put our votes there, or what? - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 07:35, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

I don't see the point either, it's not like there's such an overwhelming flood of applicants that we need it... (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:11, 11 July 2006 (EDT)

Selecting a go-between for en:

Since we're moving the multilingual coordination pages from en: to shared:, it seems like an appropriate time to start doing go-between reports for en:. This would kind of suggest that we need a go-between. I'd like to start some nominations; the voting procedure for e.g. the French Wikivoyage Expedition seems to be fair and not too confrontational. Should we start this on e.g. Project:Go-between nominations? --(WT-en) Evan 11:50, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

This is a smart idea. The voting procedure looks fine to me... (WT-en) Maj 12:14, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

Choosing a liaison user for en: sounds quite good to me. What I don't like about the "French" system, though, is that you end up seeing people having to decline their nominations whereas others may feel like it's against the rules to self-nominate. I'd rather see some volunteers who would really like to undertake the job fighting among themselves for this prestigious international post. --(WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 14:59, 19 August 2006 (EDT)

Reflections

I am continuously amazed by the number of Wikivoyagers that become administrators. I think it's particularlly wonderful how almost all of our regular contributors have become admins or have at least been nominated for the position. While, the the sysop user rights is something that is kind of mistaken as meaning having absolute authority and righteous judgement, especially on Wikipedia, the idea of who is a Wikivoyage "admin" can be extended to those who aren't even "sysops". The administrator nomination process is more of a formality saying "Hey, this person is a great contributor." Take OldPine and WindHorse for example, while they turned down the extra buttons, both are still philisophical administrators - leaders within the community, who provide an excellent service to the project and travellers from around the world.

Sure we all make mistakes like my biting when I should have barked a little longer over the edit war on the US article or everyone who voted "keep" for Congress ( just joking :} ), but we have great people who help clear our heads and we all learn from our mistakes and make sure that what we learn promotes the project and helps new users.

Unfortunately, I am unable to conclude this in the elegant manner that I had intended, but I'll give it a shot. It's been a great pleasure to help organize the project and contribute, but the only reason it's been so great is because of the other "administrators" like Evan, Maj, Tom, Colin, Ryan, Todd, Jani, Bill, David (OldPine), the anonymous WindHorse, Ravi, Hypatia, Sandy, Tim (Tsandell) and the many others that I've forgotten to mention. -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 23:13, 23 October 2006 (EDT)

I think that qualifies as elegant and I'll bet I'm not the only one. I very much agree with the sentiments and appreciate the inclusion. There are times when I wish I had The Button or even the steenkeen badge, but I really do enjoy being "just a contributor". I do appreciate and admire the way you guys take care of business and just wanted to say so. Thanks for the opportunities... all of them... all of you. (WT-en) OldPine 07:11, 24 October 2006 (EDT)

I've got one of those left-wired brains that makes me not-so-good with words, but just wanted to leave a quick note saying that I appreciate being included in your list, and agree that it's pretty cool what such a diverse group has been able to do together. -- (WT-en) Ryan 23:03, 24 October 2006 (EDT)

I really feel bad about not including everyone who I should have included. I had to add a few names after checking the recent changes page and seeing another name and realized I forgot to add him/her! You made it really easy for me to list your name because of your advice on various topics and your edits. -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 23:24, 24 October 2006 (EDT)

Well said Sapphire! You do a great job as a community leader above-and-beyond the 'extra button' pushing! I'm glad we got a chance to hang out at Wikimania. I'm really looking forward to meeting more of our excellent admins, superusers, daily contributors, and newbies at the Get-together. (WT-en) Maj 13:41, 29 October 2006 (EST)

self-check checklist for a nominant

As I still remember evaluating myself for an admin nomination, I propose to add a self-check section for a nominant, with something like this:

If you were nominated, the following can help you to evaluate how well you fit an admin role:

• you are not expected to spend more time on Wikivoyage than before gaining admin role
• you are not expected to patrol all edits. If you only use WatchList, that's fine. If you don't read recent comments on a regular basis at all, it is also OK.
• understanding existing guidelines doesn't mean that you should never challenge or aim to improve them

OK to add a section like this just before the "Nominations" section? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 16:55, 27 January 2008 (EST)

Guidelines

Based on this morning's seeming confusion I added a sentence to hopefully discourage the use of admin nominations as rewards since the admin role is about understanding how Wikivoyage works rather than rewarding people for contributing. As always, if anyone feels that it's inappropriate to try to define who makes a good/bad admin nominee then please revert me - the hope was simply to avoid the awkward situation where anyone would have to oppose a nomination for a good (but inexperienced) contributor or have to endure having their nomination rejected. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 23:12, 3 December 2008 (EST)

3 months

Per policy, I contacted several admins about the requirement that they log in every three months and make an edit. A few don't have emails I could contact them at. And a few have not edited anythng in at least a year. Anyone have advice on how to go forward? Do I need to make an announcement on the nominations page? Or just execute a user rights change? How long shall I wait before changing an user's rights? -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 17:51, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Well it seems you tried to contact them as best you could, but their rights should be gone and they should resign from position. I think it's more of a safety thing, but if the person comes back and we can tell it is them, then they should regain their rights (so long as they say they will be staying for a bit). (WT-en) edmontonenthusiast [ee] ^.T.A.L.K. 17:58, 12 January 2009 (EST).

→ Wikivoyage_talk:Administrators#Terminating_administrator_privileges --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 18:20, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Where should the guidelines be

Half the becoming and administrator guidelines are here, and half are at Project:Administrators#Becoming an administrator. You have to read both documents. I propose moving the guidelines to the latter document, and reference them from here. In other words nominate here, and policy and process there. --(WT-en) inas 17:10, 2 February 2010 (EST)

Sounds sensible to me. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 17:49, 2 February 2010 (EST)

With just that little bit of support, I plunged forward to move the text. Hopefully less prone to confusion now, with all the stuff in one place. --(WT-en) inas 18:31, 2 February 2010 (EST)

I see you moved the nomination rules as well as the guidelines. I think the rules and instructions should remain on this page. (WT-en) LtPowers 18:44, 2 February 2010 (EST)

I don't mind which page they are on - but we can't have half our eggs in each basket. Surely, nominating is a direct precursor to becoming, and we want people to nominate once they meet the guidelines for becoming, not just when they know the format to type the name in. --(WT-en) inas 19:06, 2 February 2010 (EST)

I made a slight update - it leaves the bullet points about administrators on the Project:Administrators while still explaining how to make a nomination. Does that seem OK? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 20:04, 2 February 2010 (EST)

We want people to read the full set of guidelines before submitting a nom. Putting the instructions for adding nom here may lead people to think that they don't need to read the guideline, but rather just follow the instructions - especially when the instructions on how to add a nom cover part of the process. If we desperately want to separate the instructions for adding from the guideline itself, the instructions should reference the guideline further, like add the justification information required by the guideline --(WT-en) inas 21:38, 2 February 2010 (EST)

A page should still have its own instructions; if one of those instructions needs to be "read the guidelines" then so be it, but just having a virtually blank page here isn't very friendly. (WT-en) LtPowers 23:00, 2 February 2010 (EST)

Arguably, it should be the only instruction. If you really miss the instructions, then I would prefer that we just duplicate the entire set of instructions/guidelines here, rather than pick a subset of instructions just sufficient to make a bad nom. --(WT-en) inas 00:23, 3 February 2010 (EST)

More bureaucrats needed?

While Wikivoyage theoretically has four bureaucrats -- Evan, Sapphire, IB's KevinSours and myself -- none of us are around anymore quite as actively as we'd like and things like admin toggling have been pretty sluggish lately. Should we nominate a new one? (WT-en) Jpatokal 18:52, 19 April 2010 (EDT)

Just as an aside, can a bureaucrat change group membership from autoconfirmed? --(WT-en) inas 19:14, 19 April 2010 (EDT)

Unfortunately, no. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 20:59, 19 April 2010 (EDT)

Probably yes. Evan has not made a single Wiktiravel edit since I opened a user account and Sapphire barely a handful. I assume KevinSours still works for IB? So basically, it has all been you Jani. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 21:42, 19 April 2010 (EDT)

User:(WT-en) Wrh2 has now been granted the shiny red rubber stamp of bureaucracy. (WT-en) Jpatokal 19:03, 18 May 2010 (EDT)

pre-nomination

I didn't check thoroughly against our checklist, but subjectively User:(WT-en) Vidimian seems for me to be a good candidate for administrator: here for a while, contributes much, performs MoSing. Anyone willing to research whether the checklist items are formally met for Vidimian? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:34, 11 May 2010 (EDT)

User:(WT-en) Stormybot

According to Special:Listusers/bureaucrat this user has bureaucrat privileges - I assume that this was done long ago in error? Does anyone know why this was done, or can we remove the privileges? Do we have a process for nominating a user for privilege removal? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:28, 3 June 2010 (EDT)

→ wts:User talk:(WT-wts) Stormybot. I think it's fair to follow suit here and remove its privileges. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:03, 3 June 2010 (EDT)

afaik, stormybot is run by our "friends" at IB, just so you know. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 18:20, 3 June 2010 (EDT)

Reconfirmation of sysop stati

I just saw that Peter started the re-confirmation process of the sysop stati here. I think it's a good move. Shall we nominate all to get these in one big rush? Or should we built groups of three/four nominations at a time? Jc8136 (talk) 13:15, 14 September 2012 (CEST)

Neither me nor Peter Southwood have been WT-en admins. Others had the privileges on WT and do not have to go through the nomination procedure (I guess). Atsirlin (talk) 13:30, 14 September 2012 (CEST)

Call me stubborn but i would prefer reconfirmation for everyone. Wikivoyage en might be built around an old team but it is partly new, so i would like to see (at least for myself) reconfirmation. I think its a good starting point and let's see the opinions of the other mates. Jc8136 (talk) 14:47, 14 September 2012 (CEST)

I disagree, it seems like more work for little gain. Is there any chance of anyone renominated not being confirmed? Anyone who's been away from WT for a long period should probably be renominated but active admins, I see no reason to go through the motions. LtPowers (talk) 15:40, 14 September 2012 (CEST)

I would agree to Jc8136 and re-nominate even old WT sysops or bureaucrats. If accepted, and I suppose they will, they will have a stronger position in the community because then their status is beyond any doubt. I will put my name in the nomination list right now. However, it would not make sense to refuse Fussi or Roland the bureaucrat/sysop status as they need to be able to react immediately in case of any complaints about copyright violations or whatever. -- Hansm (talk) 15:41, 14 September 2012 (CEST)

I don't think re-nominations are a good idea, simply because they would confuse the records of when and why users have become admins, which is all logged in the archives. Requiring cross-identification before further switch flipping would be good, though, as would be making sure that all current admins as of the time I write this also get cross-identified. This won't be hard, since I personally have WT emails from all admins who have taken part in this process. --Peter ^Talk 16:25, 14 September 2012 (CEST)

How about a compromise where a list of all previous admins who have moved over are confirmed. Any previous admin who comes over to WV can be confirmed without further discussion after 1 week with cross identification and no dissent. However they can get the bit immediately. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:12, 18 September 2012 (CEST)

That sounds fine to me, since my main concern is confusing the archives. --Peter ^Talk 13:52, 18 September 2012 (CEST)

Sounds like consens for me. Shall i withdraw my reconfirmation or would this at this stage more confusing? Jc8136 (talk) 14:55, 18 September 2012 (CEST)

I think it would be best to remove your reconfirmation, to avoid confusion. --Peter ^Talk 05:35, 19 September 2012 (CEST)

Renomination is srchieved until we agree that we don't need renominations due to cross verification on general. Jc8136 (talk) 09:07, 19 September 2012 (CEST)

Whereabouts can we ask for the admin bit back, then? Now that we're open for business (though blessedly low-spam so far!), I'd like to regain mine. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 19:50, 24 September 2012 (CEST)

Done, and here, I suppose. Presumably asking me or LtPowers is quickest right now. --Peter ^Talk 20:48, 24 September 2012 (CEST)

Nurg, putting my hand up

I am putting my hand up for the admin tools, but I won't actually nominate myself, so that we don't waste anyone's time if my nomination would unlikely be approved. If an admin who would like to nominate me, please go ahead. If no-one nominates me, fine, we won't waste anyone's time. Please don't nominate me if you are not an admin. I believe the best people to judge a nom are active admins, as they know best what kind of editor is suitable to have the tools. My CV is:

1. Logged-in editor since Nov 2003. Edit count: 1,188 at WT; 393 at WV.
2. Contributor to policy since Dec 2003 when I created Time and date formats.
3. Main admin for a small non-WMF MediaWiki since 2007 in my professional life. It has little vandalism but a lot of spam so main activities are blocking spammers, deleting spam pages, and dealing with a little vandalism.
4. Rollbacker on WP since I can't remember when.
5. Over 17,000 edits on WP (including 500+ in projects, policies, templates), and smaller number on wiktionary, commons, meta.
6. I don't normally do much pure patrolling-type work here. I normally just write article stuff, and a bit of policy stuff, and otherwise do much more of the same at WP. Have been doing some checking of recent changes here after the public launch though.

Feel free to review my contribs here, at WT, WP or anywhere (except the non-WMF wiki, because I keep work identity separate). Cheers. Nurg (talk) 09:55, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Although he's got less than a thousand edits under his belt here, that's hardly his fault and his persistence and stamina at WV was impressive. Since we like to maintain the fiction that adminship just involves wielding a mop, we will certainly need more janitors when the spammers migrate from WV - as they surely will... -- Alice^✉ 02:15, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

New requirements to prevent newbie nominations

In the past week or so, we've had 2 nominations by users with hardly any experience or knowledge of site policies, nor understanding of what an administrator even does. While these are harmless, we have bigger fish to fry, so we could always create some new requirements before nominating for the role. I'd suggest:

• 1 month since first edit
• 100 edits or more

Of course, they are bare minimals, but will keep out unnecessary nominations. Any nominations that are made in violation of those requirements should be immediately closed by an admin. Discussion wouldn't be necessary. Does that sound fair? JamesA ^>talk 10:31, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Good starting point. I'd say at least 1 month since first edit and at least 100 non-frivolous edits in main or main plus policy discussion space. Non-participating edits of user and user talk pages don't count toward the minimum. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:35, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

We already have guidelines more onerous than this. As you say, these noms are frivolous, so they'll probably apply anyway. --Inas (talk) 10:42, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I heartily approve. Regarding Inas's comment, my reading of this indicates that it's not meant to deter newbies from self-nominating so much as it's meant to prevent us wasting time tallying votes when the outcome is already a foregone conclusion. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 10:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

There is w:WP:NOTNOW which can be used on Wikipedia if there is no chance that a nomination is going to be successful. How about simply copying that page here? --Stefan2 (talk) 11:04, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Another point to be considered is that it will prevent embarrassment to the candidate; it would be better for them to go away with only 4 opposes rather than 32 and thus be driven away from the site. --Rschen7754 11:05, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, Ikan. Inas, the guidelines are just that - guidelines, that can either be followed or ignored. These are clear rules, and as Andre said, if a user doesn't meet them, the nom is closed. I understand you may still get noms, but at least they could be closed easily. I think a better deterrent could be a large notice on the top of this nominations page. Currently, we link to the guidelines but don't actually say them here. Stefan, while I like that Wikipedia essay, wouldn't it mean we'd need at least a few opposes to get the general gist of things? With two rules, at least admins could close immediately, inform the user and save the embarrassment that would probably deter further edits. JamesA ^>talk 11:32, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The only changes I might make to the criteria would be adding two things:

• Overall, it needs an experienced, constructive contributor; it must be clear that all three words in that description apply
• Having experience or admin status on other wikis (WT or other WMF) can have a major influence on decisions here, but is not enough by itself to give admin status here

I do not see those as essential; the current list at Wikivoyage:Administrators#Becoming_an_administrator is fine. Pashley (talk) 13:01, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I think out current guidelines are adequate. Drawing attention to them more strongly may or may not help. There will always be frivolous self nominations, and if these become embarrasing to the nominee, that is a natural consequence of playing silly buggers and being called. I agree that it is not necessary to wait for dozens of opposes. Anyone can point out he absence of compliance with the recommendations, and suggest closure. I suggest that if there is no support for a self nomination and a notification of general non-compliance, any admin can close and archive the nomination without further ado.

Another possibility is that self nomination should be avoided. Volunteer by all means, either on this page or somewhere else, but let someone else make the nomination, that way the person is assured of at least one supporter, and we know that the nominee is willing to take on the job. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:46, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know that it's necessary to completely jettison the idea of avoiding embarrassing the frivolous self-nominee.

In the case of the most recent nominee, he disclosed that he was twelve years old and lived in Hong Kong. And, evidently, his command of the English language is tenuous. There is a degree of doubt as to whether someone of that age and where there is that much of a language barrier would have been able to understand the subtleties of what makes a good nominee per Wikivoyage precedent, how to judge when enthusiastic acclaim for a business crosses the line into touting, how and when to use the tools - or even, frankly, a lot of the comments made opposing his nomination. But the fact is that being young, or not speaking a particular language, is nothing that a person ought to feel embarrassed about.

It's quite valid to rebut by asking how valuable a 12-year-old's contributions could be to Wikivoyage even in the best-case scenario, but even taking that out of the equation, on a human level we should endeavor to avoid being hurtful to people when it's not strictly necessary. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:30, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

We've had good, productive contributions from very young contributors in the past, and from contributors with limited command of English (and actually, a lot of admin-related stuff requires only that one understands enough to follow and understand policies). I think, though, that it would be good to have a way to halt any "piling on" in these, and having a couple strict criteria like 1 month, 100 (possibly main space) edits, or something like that would help close a nomination with no chance of success quickly. --Peter ^Talk 19:50, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

To be clear, because I've mentioned some of these issues before, I'm trying to draw a clear distinction between editing and administrative duties. At a young age and with a limited command of English, one is much more difficult to do than the other. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:54, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I've added the main criteria from the policy page to this the top of this page. Hopefully this will have the desired effect. --Inas (talk) 23:28, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

It's nice to see the guidelines on the page, but honestly, I'm more in favor of the stricter and less negotiable regulations proposed by User:JamesA. As a fledgling project, I think it would behoove us to not forget the kind of destruction that can potentially be done with the admin tools (through good-faith errors as well as outright abuse). Admin privileges are not something that should be handed out like candy.

I'm of course pleased that we came to the right conclusion regarding the two frivolous self-noms that inspired this thread, but I'm more worried about candidates with questionable qualifications than those with an obvious lack of qualifications.

At the risk of sounding elitist, and at the risk of making fellow Wikivoyagers think that what I want is to shut the admin door behind me after I walked through it: I think that we ought to err toward opposing nominees who have not demonstrated their competence very thoroughly. Not only do I think that is desirable, but I think it is possible in a practical sense as well; we've had a glut of new nominees for administrators lately, the majority of whom were indeed highly qualified, and at last check traffic on Wikivoyage had died down to around pre-launch levels, which makes me suspect that for the time being, we have more than enough admins already. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:54, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Its good to see that self noms have encouraged such a discussion - as one myself, I would suggest that the process of self nom be discontinued, and that would even more deal with Andre's concerns - as not just the month, but someone seen to be actually understanding what they are doing would be obvious...

I disagree with more than enough already - another hand of wikivoyage is actually trying to increase linkages with wikimedia sister projects, there is every possibility that some extra traffic could be around the corner, I would suggest caution in such an assertion, and simply modifying admin nomination process is sufficient sats (talk) 00:02, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, the current process hasn't yet thrust a mop into the hand of someone not up to the task. Our only issue seems to be in countering a few frivolous noms, that are easily dealt with. I also disagree with more than enough. Once a user has earned the trust, and demonstrated the capability, and exhibits and willingness to help, I don't see why we wouldn't give them the tools to make the tasks easier. --Inas (talk) 00:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the above two comments: I absolutely do not think that we ought to deny the admin tools to obviously qualified candidates. I simply feel that in an environment like the current one, we can afford to be picky. It's always a question, with nominees who are in the gray area, how much we're willing to let slide. (And I say that while fully acknowledging that there were some minor issues expressed by fellow Wikivoyagers during my nomination for admin.)

On that note, I wonder whether Sats' suggestion of disallowing self-nominations is a step too far. I would be in favor of something like requiring self-nominations to be seconded by a current admin before being put to a vote on this page.

Also, on a completely different subject, I'd like to state to Sats that I regret having opposed your nomination at first. I would like it to be known that I have full faith in your abilities as an admin. :)

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk)

If you would like to self-nominate, please drop a quick note on the talk page of any active administrator. Preferably one who may be familiar with your contributions. They can then propose your nomination on this page, or let you know if your contribution history needs a little more work. --Inas (talk) 00:47, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Works for me. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

That's volunteering for nomination. The actual nomination is done by the person who puts it up on the nominations page, which is pretty much what I was suggesting earlier, just a different place to volunteer. Being nominated by an existing admin is a big vote of confidence, as most admins will do a bit of background check unless they are already familiar with the volunteer. (and there is at least one supporter)

I still don't think self-nomination should be forbidden, but then the onus is more solidly on the nominee to convince the rest of us cynical and suspicious types that they are actaully the right stuff. Maybe a warning that self-nomination is likely to meet with a more stringent level of scrutiny for users who have not been contributing for a long time. Something like: "If you nominate yourself, you will have to prove to us that you are the right stuff. This could be difficult if we don't know you."

Quality of track record is more important than length, but evidence of some staying power is desirable, as is some evidence of dealing with conflict in an acceptable way. Track record of work on other projects is good for this aspect, but not necessarily sufficient.

Age should be irrelevant. Quality of work done is the only fair measure we have. Ability to communicate adequately in English is necessary, perfection is not.

On a slightly different note, there might be some virtue in giving all new admins a trial period of 3 months to a year, after which the nomination is reviewed before making the appointment indefinite. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:55, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

While its great to look into alternatives, I think the best option is still what I originally proposed. We shouldn't ban self-noms, as the user knows most about themselves, and its not up to admins to think stuff up when requested. The problem with adding any of the current guidelines or other "discouraging" notices is that they are ambiguous. It's all well and good to say "Self nominations aren't looked upon favourably." But they aren't outright banned, so there's no stopping anyone. The two questionable self-noms we've had so far still most likely would've gone ahead one way or the other. If we had the two concrete editing requirements, it's a clear cut yes or no regarding whether you can apply, and admins can judge new nominations by that rule. JamesA ^>talk 07:07, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, What concrete requirements will actually do the job? 1 month since first edit proves very little. 100 edits slightly more, but what? Quality of edits is important, 100 welcome messages proves very little, 100 edits to own user page actually proves more if that is all there are, and it is negative. 100 edits would have to be really world class edits, and distributed amongst content, discussion, policy, patrolling and conflict resolution for such a small number to be convincing, and an active editor can easily do 100 edits in a day if they are trivial. To come up with a reliable objective criteria set you must first define the reqirements really well. So, what are the requirements for an admin? How does one assess a candidate against these requirements? At present we use rather vague and undefined criteria, such as do a significant number of users think the candidate is suitable based on personal experience, and are there any objections. This seems to work fairly well, but there are a large number of undefined factors involved. A good place to start would be to define the full scope of work of an admin, and then select a minimum subset or subsets of competence that would be acceptable. Anyone feel like giving it a go? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:52, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

The two concrete editing requirements are requirements to apply, not guidelines to be a good admin candidate. Someone who only just met those two requirements would probably be a poor candidate and receive many opposes. This is only to prevent newbie self-nominations, not to give an idea of what it takes to be an admin. Also, it should be 100 non-user edits. JamesA ^>talk 08:03, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I like Inas's modification regarding the self nom - to speak to an admin first. I have no problem if the self nom idea actually remains, in practice, for whatever reason, and Peters and James comments about requirements have made me think in one sense, that my self nom is a classic case of where it could have been declined straight off, because I was inadequately present in policy discussion, and hadnt really spoken to other admins about the issues of the Indonesian or Tasmanian material that I was a bit taken back when I first encountered it. (I think that Peters comment about 100 welcome message edits is spot on, mea culpa). As to the 'distribute edits through discussion, policy, patrolling and conflict resolution', I think that actual volume of edits is nothing in the end to understand another editor, some admins I have watched in action on recent changes, a mere 20 edits in a range of different actions in less than an hour give me an idea of their capacity and understanding of the place. I suppose the counter argument would be that at least 100 edits, if they are sufficiently various in task type, are potentially enough to see what the capacity of the editors skills, or lack, might show. I suppose another way to consider the 100 edit idea would be to say 'at least 100 edits that exhibit a range of tasks, including maintenance, conflict negotiation, and policy determination, regardless of the total number of edits' (ie maybe a set of 100's of edits of repetitive tasks being disallowed in the final count.... sats (talk) 09:45, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

@sats. Nothing wrong with 100 welcome messages, as long as that is not everything:)

The ability to judge a contributor on 20 edits depends not only on the contributor, but on the person assessing them. To get a reliable picture requires some pretty extensive experience by the assessor, which no doubt you have, but for the more general contributor to make an informed decision to support a nomination, it will generally take more than 20 edits worth of observation. On the other hand, the people who express opinions on the nominations page tend to be either experienced, as in long term editors or people with similar experience on other projects, or the same kind of newbies who will self nominate as soon as they find the page. Not much middle ground.

I made some changes to the disclaimerbox to hopefully clarify the requirements for a nomination. Please look and make changes if you think they are needed. I tried to leave a note here earlier but had a software hang and the edit appears to have been lost. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:24, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I like it, except that "janitorial work" could be explained in clearer terms or omitted. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:47, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I put in a link which might be sufficient. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:17, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. That's helpful. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:42, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Putting in a hard floor on number of contributions or time since account creation will only result in the unqualified candidates counting down the minutes or edits until they are eligible. I would support a suggestion to commenters to avoid piling on, but I don't think it's necessary to add more rules to the process, which has worked impeccably so far. LtPowers (talk) 18:48, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

LtPowers: to speak to your above comment ("the process... has worked impeccably so far"), I think it bears repeating that the reason these new rules were proposed was not that we feared that an obviously unqualified self-nominee might somehow pass through the vetting process undetected and actually become an administrator, but rather that we want to be able to close these nominations before the 14-day limit and avoid having to type out "oppose" votes and defend them with comments that reiterate the obvious. With all due respect, I don't understand what the objection is to merely streamlining this process.

Frivolous self-noms are going to happen in any scenario, but as I see it, the question here is how much time and effort are we going to force ourselves to waste on dealing with them? Your point about "unqualified candidates counting down the minutes or edits until they are eligible" is well taken, but I truly believe that weeding out only some of these self-nominees is still better than not weeding out any of them. And let's be honest—are the type of people who usually self-nominate frivolously, exemplified perfectly by the most recent two, going to actually take time to read the rules, think through their strategy, and count down their edits? I think in the vast majority of cases, they'll self-nominate immediately as they've always done, because frivolous nominations are usually the direct result of not bothering to read the guidelines.

I'm afraid that your alternate proposal—to encourage users not to "pile on" and to not otherwise alter the guidelines at all—would be counterproductive. You have to assume that under the current system, at least there'll be a certain number (however small) of frivolous self-nominees who will read a large number of sharply worded "oppose" votes, get the picture, and withdraw their nomination—not terribly graceful, but effective. But a side effect of the proposed new rules is that it's pretty hard to "pile on" an obviously unqualified nominee if his nomination is rejected, closed and archived more-or-less immediately.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:03, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, so what problem are we trying to solve here? Nominations that could never be successful don't waste anyone's time unless we pile on with "opposes". LtPowers (talk) 23:02, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

An admin (or any other user, really) can check the nomination against the appropriate criteria and recommend quick closure. Another admin can check and close. Could be over in an hour. Leave for a day in case there are objections and archive in 24 hours. Requires due diligence only by people who know the procedures. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 04:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Peter (Southwood) - regarding your above comment, would that be true under the proposals put forth in this thread, or is it already true under the current guidelines? If it's the latter, I've misconstrued this conversation and thus I share LtPowers' confusion: exactly what is the point of this proposal?

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:41, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

The relevant text reads:

If after 14 days of discussion:

• The nomination has been given the support of the community, including at least two other administrators,
• The user has indicated a willingness to take on the job of administration, and
• There are no outstanding objections.

a bureaucrat will grant them admin status.

If valid concerns with a nomination are raised by a member of the community that cause them to oppose a nomination, it is courteous to allow the nominee or nominator some time to respond to the concern or to withdraw their nomination. The decision is not a vote, and piling on oppose votes adds no weight to the issues raised, and can be embarrassing to the nominee.

None of this is a requirement to wait for any specified period if it is clear that there is no support, or if the nomination does not comply with the nomination procedures/recommendations/guidelines, therefore my interpretation is that the procedure would be valid under current policy. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:17, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

If a nomination is clearly unsuitable and unreasonable, then we as experienced editors should be able to say "Look, this is not a good idea; maybe you should withdraw the nomination." I don't see any advantage to setting up a hard threshold just to have an excuse to close the discussion early. And if we do decide we want to be able to close discussions early, we still don't need to set a hard threshold. LtPowers (talk) 16:28, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I completely agree. -- Alice^✉ 18:21, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm willing to concede at this point that maybe toward the beginning of this discussion, some of us, including me, were making a mountain out of a molehill with this issue. But the fact of the matter is that if we want a policy whereby we can close admin nominations early—and that's a question we've yet to come to an agreement on, I gather—then we have to have a set of rules governing which nominations can be closed early. If there are no rules, and it's left completely up to the discretion of the administrators, we'll inevitably run into the problem of an admin jumping the gun and prematurely closing the nomination of someone that others might think would make a fine administrator, and a dispute would arise. Personally, I'd much rather keep the status quo in place, imperfect as it is, than put in place a haphazard system like that. But personally, I'd also like to try to cut down on the effort we currently expend in dealing with frivolous self-nominations.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:22, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can see, we've spent far more time on this discussion than on dealing with frivolous self-noms. I can probably count the total number of such incidents on one hand. LtPowers (talk) 02:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You have indeed convinced me that we're spending an inordinate amount of time on an issue of middling importance. Unfortunately, other users such as JamesA and Ikan Kekek have concerns that have yet to be assuaged. Personally, if the consensus ends up being to change the regulations, I would be in full support of that, but given that no one other than me and you seem to be keeping this discussion alive, I'd also be just as happy to let the issue drop. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:00, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think I have any live concerns. I don't care that much whether we adopt the new proposal or just muddle through as usual. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I withdrew my concerns and stopped commenting when I realised how complicated this discussion was getting over 2 self-nominations. Most wikis have the basic requirements that I originally proposed, and I thought it would've been nudged through without complaint. However, if users do have some kind of issue with it, I'm willing to withdraw the proposal and let this be the end of it, as we have bigger fish to fry. JamesA ^>talk 08:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I have put in a short paragraph in the procedural description to clarify a procedure for dealing with these cases which does not change any existing policy. Please all interested parties take a look and see if there is any objection or recommended change. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:32, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:07, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Me too. -- Alice^✉ 21:04, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

To be quite honest, I would have thought that this would always have been the case. Who is going to object to archiving a nom that is obviously going to fail? If someone really wanted to frustrate the system, they could actually be more disruptive discussing whether the nom would fail than by actually letting it run its course. Still, I'm happy enough with the sentiment. I've removed the "anyone can", and "an admin can" from the policy wording. --Inas (talk) 21:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

That is exactly my point Inas, My interpretation of the existing policy is that this was always possible, however the discussion above suggests that not everyone was aware of this, hence a short description of what to do when it happens. Your edit is fine with me, but it might lead to someone in the future asking who can do it. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:35, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for not chiming in earlier, I was out of town for the day. I heartily approve of Peter (Southwood)'s tweak. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:03, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Ask the nominee before nominating

If it's never been required in the past, then it's way overdue that we start now; both as a courtesy to the victim of demotion and to avoid wasting our time on discussing the merits of demoting someone that ultimately might refuse the proffered mop! -- Alice^✉ 02:27, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Support; IMO it's simply a matter of common sense. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:07, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Support Why ever not? It was requested as a courtesy, not obligatory. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

It was worded as a prerequisite, not as an optional step. The traditional method has been to place the nomination, then inform the nominee of the discussion. LtPowers (talk) 01:20, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and we should be discussing this, not logging votes. LtPowers (talk) 01:20, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Since we don't vote here, we are discussing this, and indicating that we think it is a good idea.

The wording could be interpreted as a prerequisite, it was intended as a polite request. This is a semantic detail that can be changed.

Regardless of whether the local tradition was to nominate first, then find out if the nomination is acceptable to the nominee, it is a fairly wide ranging practice (outside of WV) to check with the nominee first to avoid wasting anyone's time, and to save the nominee the requirement for publicly turning it down. Nominating a person for a post they don't really want puts pressure on them to accept the nomination, which is regarded by some as discourteous, even verging on a mild form of coercion. YMMV, this may be a cultural thing. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I've always asked someone before nominating them, as have some others (see User talk:K7L#Admin?, for example). As Peter noted, this seems like a common courtesy, although I don't think it has ever been stated as such. -- Ryan • (talk) • 07:35, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

What I want to know is, what does it matter that "we've always done it this way" and "it's never posed a problem for us before"? I've heard that refrain in a number of policy discussions recently, not just this one. Wikivoyage is growing and changing rapidly - a year or two down the line it will probably be quite a different place than it is now - and what has worked for us in the past may not always work in the future. I'm with Alice on this. Let's keep ahead of the curve and anticipate problems before they happen. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 08:08, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Because, quite frankly, some of us are trying to prevent the wiki from descending into the morass of confusing and novel-length rules and regulations seen on wikis like the English Wikipedia. The more rules and regulations we add, the harder it is for new users to get into the swing of things. LtPowers (talk) 15:08, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to such a rule (as some have already stated, it's already common practice), but I honestly don't see what the advantage of enshrining it in policy is. The way I see it, the worse possible thing that could happen is that someone prematurely nominates someone, and that person declines it. ...And that's it. There's no repercussions for turning something down here on Wikivoyage, and there never has been — we're just not that kind of community.

Of course, I'm someone who believes in a reactive approach to policy, where we only spend the time it takes to come up with a rule if it has been shown that there's a need for one. That way we don't start constantly getting into these little policy discussions over really tiny, relatively arbitrary things. But if you guys feel like this really needs to be addressed, I have no problem with a friendly reminder on Wikivoyage:Administrators#Becoming an administrator to check if the person is willing to take on the job before nominating said person. PerryPlanet (talk) 16:44, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

LtPowers, I appreciate your preference to keep the rules to a minimum. This is a desirable goal. It would be ideal to have a very small set of coherent, logical, easily understood rules, all of which should be, where possible, self evident as the optimum way to further our very simple straightforward and flexible set of guiding principles, and all of which should be very easy to find and interpret correctly.

A large amount of guidance is not the same thing as a large amount of rules, as guidance can be ignored if one has a reasonable alternative, whereas a rule is expected to be followed, and generally should be, otherwise it should not exist. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:47, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I just plain don't like this one. I think its fine to judge that there is some support there before the person accepts a nom. Leaves the option open to them to reject the nom if there is an oppose they don't want to deal with. --Inas (talk) 01:48, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Inas, I may be misunderstanding your point. Are you saying that it is better to be nominated for something without knowing that it is happening so that you can wait until someone opposes the nomination before deciding whether to accept it or not? Or waiting to see if anyone else (or how many, or who) supports before accepting? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Some people may want to accept/decline straight away, and they can do so. Other people may want to judge the strength of support before deciding to accept. That's fine too. --Inas (talk) 10:24, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

This is not exactly a radically new or strange idea [1] and [2] and it's rather symptomatic of our deadlock on many issues of reform that we are even discussing it -- Alice^✉ 07:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Your first link shows a nomination that was clearly initiated before checking if the candidate was willing to stand. I'm not sure how that supports your point. LtPowers (talk) 15:43, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The first link shows a premature nomination that should have been avoided if the nominee had been asked in March 2004. The fruitless nomination discussion is thankfully short because the nominee declines the nomination just 19 hours later (the second link show the same nominee accepting the subsequent re-nomination a few months later, but not before one of the founders of this Wiki, Evan writes: "hold off on doing admin re-nominations until we've checked with the nominee that they're ready to take on the job"

My proximate "point" is that it would be a good idea for this edit to be reverted; that way, the polite suggestion that nominators check with their nominee first and before nominating them, if honoured, might avoid subsequent fruitless time spent discussing a doomed nomination.

To Inas's point(s) (if I've understood it/them): it might be suggested on the project page for this discussion that this prior consultation of the putative nominee be done privately by e-mail (where possible) so that the reluctant candidate can then pretend (if there is subsequently too much opposition/insufficient quality support) that they never wanted the mop in the first place and are absolutely astonished and surprised that they were ever proposed in the first place.

Now, on this wiki, there is obviously a continuing balancing act to be performed between plunging forward and not needlessly having an endless cycle of disruptive change that does not actually improve matters. Personally, I feel that the very fact we're spending such an inordinate amount of time debating such a common sense improvement to our "policies" (although, in this case, it was still only put forward as a polite request, rather than a mandated pre-requisite to nomination) says a great deal about the current state of affairs here. -- Alice^✉ 23:01, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm with LtPowers and Inas here, and it's hardly a current problem if the only available example involves Evan --Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 23:37, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Where to discuss and nominate withdrawals of admin tools

The question has been asked. The nominations page seemed like the obvious place to put the answer, but it appears that some disagree (or disagree with the answer provided), so where should it go and what should it be? The question is sure to be asked again. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

The discussion you may have in mind is at Wikivoyage talk:Bureaucrats#Local removal of adminship. It concerns the technical capability of removing adminship, which is why it was placed there (since bureaucrats have that capability). Discussion about the process of removing adminship should go here. While we haven't had any issues, there should be a policy in place, so as not to be on a vendetta against an admin should the time come (ie. not making policies describing that admin), instead able point to flagrant violations of WV policies spelled out in a policy on removing adminship. AHeneen (talk) 06:57, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking of a different query, but can't recall where it was. I don't think that matters though. I agree with your suggestions, particularly considereing the current protracted nomination discussion. A admin withdrawal nomination is much more likely to get personal and unpleasant, even if justifiable. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:23, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

All nominations for admins, bureaucrats, rights removal, etc. just get placed on this page. We have had several requests for removal of rights here. I don't think advertising methods for requesting that rogue admins have their buttons taken away is a great idea, since that would be a pretty open invitation to trolls.

A discussion about revoking admin status would be a huge deal, and only should be started by someone very familiar with the site (and hence this type of discussion), and really should only follow private consultation with other admins. The exception would be an immediate halt to flagrant abuse, like blocking other admins (which isn't effective, but whatever), going on a deletion rampage against the Main Page, inserting pornography into templates, a bureaucrat mass de-admining people, etc. We've only had one very singular example of that in our history, where I removed a bureaucrat's privileges and temp blocked him for the last example I listed... I doubt that will ever happen again ;) --Peter ^Talk 17:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I presume you mean the Administrator nominations page rather than this talk page? I remember the occasion, but many more recent users don't, and I think they will continue to ask, which is why a short sentence stating that those things are done on the nominations page would probably minimise future questions. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:23, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the point is that more recent users shouldn't be making such revocation nominations anyway. If they -- or anyone, really -- have a problem with an admin, we want them to have to ask around before slapping a revocation nomination down. LtPowers (talk) 01:18, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I am in full agreement that more recent users should generally not be making revocation nominations, and certainly not before trying to settle the problem by discussion. However, if they are stuck with no information on how to resolve a problem, I think they are more likely to try a frontal attack. Some advice on how to deal with a percieved problem by methods which we would prefer might encourage them to use those methods before resorting to a formal request for revocation of admin rights. It is one thing to say they should ask around first, but if there is no information visible on how to ask or where to ask, a person unfamiliar with our system may become frustrated and resort to a less appropriate approach. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:50, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm having trouble thinking of a less appropriate approach ;) --Peter ^Talk 08:16, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Depends what you are comparing I guess. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:37, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

To other members of the WMF community who are not familiar with our different culture, this intentional obscurity and "send-them-round-the-houses-first approach may not be a good look and should be urgently re-considered. --118.93nzp (talk) 02:06, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

November discussion

Hi 118.93nzp, I think these incidents are rare enough not to have a formal process. I feel you should let this go, unless there is a particular reason to concern the WMF community's views on this? Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflicts) I do so hope I'm wrong - only time will tell.

I do feel that if we had a proper place to discuss sub-optimal administrator performance, Saqib might have realised just how much support there was for a process of education rather than punishment and not rushed into what I regard as a much too hasty and UN-necessary resignation. For obvious reasons, it's not something I can do, but I would encourage everyone else to send him messages of support and appreciation for all the good edits he has made and encourage him to remain as a valued contributor.

We really do need to develop more collegiate tools for editor and admin education. --118.93nzp (talk) 02:29, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Since there appears to be an attempt at revisionist history here, and since I was the one who removed Saqib's admin rights, I'd like to make sure that it is clear to anyone reading this thread that the de-sysop action was done as a result of a single, specific incident [3] and at the user's own request [4]. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:42, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

If you mean to imply that I'm the one attempting to re-write history, Ryan, it might have been better if edits such as http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASaqib&diff=2472009&oldid=2472008 and http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASaqib&diff=2464750&oldid=2464745 had been deprecated by other admins at the time they were made. --118.93nzp (talk) 03:27, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Many Wikimedia sites have no formal "Desysop" process at all. But the stewards (or in this case, the bureaucrats, as crats can desysop here) will honor a request for desysop placed at the requests for adminship process. --Rschen7754 02:25, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Probably a more productive discussion: if we did have a desysop discussion, what would "consensus" be? Obviously 100% either way would be obvious, but what about the cases where it wasn't (which is very likely)? --Rschen7754 03:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Because of the nomination process that most new Sysops will have to endure, it might cause less dissension and bad feeling if there was a gentler, more pedagogic intermediate step. Only if gentle nudges were ignored, would more formal warnings be issued.

Because of the danger of hurt feelings leading to the loss, not just of a sysop, but also a good, productive editor too, a nomination here for de-sysopping should either be one of the very last steps or reserved for truly mischievous and crass abuse. That's why it would be better to spell out the stages aggrieved editors should try first, rather than bury our heads in the sand and try and pretend that all our admins will always act perfectly all the time.

(With the benefit of hindsight, it's often easier to see the warning signs of potential admin abuse that include partisan and pointy reverts without prior discussion and an unwillingness to engage in civil discussion on their own talk pages.) --118.93nzp (talk) 05:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

For minor offenses that might be appropriate, but not for a major offense like this one was. The problem with violating someone's privacy is that once it is done, the damage cannot be undone; you cannot make people forget the private information that they have learned. This is not like any of the admin tools, where if someone is wrongfully blocked, they can be unblocked, or if an article is deleted, it can be undeleted. --Rschen7754 06:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

What we have here is not actually an offense as an administrator, as it has nothing to do with admin tools. The problem is an alleged outing, which is not against Wikivoyage policies as far as I can make out, but against WMF policies. It is possible that I have missed something, as I did not follow this problem, and it is now a bit late to look at some of the evidence. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:07, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Largely correct, Peter.

{Although in Saqib's case, there was also what I regard as an abuse of the admin's toolbox by a futile (and possibly accidental?) attempt to re-write history on his own User talk page by using those exclusive tools to change the visibility of revisions} —The preceding comment was added by 118.93nzp (talk • contribs)

As far as I understand, there is no relevant WMF policy either, or at least this policy has never been referenced precisely. When I read any of the versions of the privacy policy, I don't see how it applies to the present case. Therefore, I am still interested to see clear explanations rather than pure emotions. --Alexander (talk) 10:55, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

But as common sense tells us, w:doxing is not something that an administrator of any Wikimedia site should be partaking in, as a form of harassment (which is most certainly against Wikivoyage policy). --Rschen7754 11:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

No. If you do some web search about me and come to acknowledge my work in solid-state physics, I will consider it a gratitude and certainly not a harassment. Moreover, the understanding of "privacy" largely depends on your country of origin and on your cultural background. In my opinion, what happens here now is just paranoia, but I appreciate that you and others have different feelings about privacy and its protection on this wiki. Anyway, if privacy is a serious issue, it is your task to introduce relevant policies instead of referring to common sense. Moreover, these policies should be in place before any threats of blocks are issued, let alone implemented. --Alexander (talk) 11:55, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

But I'm sure you wouldn't be saying the same thing if your home address, or your birth date, or who you donate your money to, or where you volunteer, or a link to your online Facebook profiles, wound up on this wiki. --Rschen7754 12:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

My birth date is 14/10/1985. It will take you a minute to find this information online. Therefore, I see no reason to hide it. No, everything you mentioned does not bother me at all. If I want to keep something secret, I will make sure it is secret. The rest is probably inappropriate on Wikivoyage, because it is simply irrelevant to this project, but I won't make a drama if someone tries to publish it and gets reverted (and perhaps oversighted).

Please, consider that people may have very different understanding of what is "privacy" and how it should be protected. It will make a lot more sense if you let everyone decide on an individual and case-by-case basis if certain private information is acceptable or not. The Signpost case was most certainly unacceptable, but Wikipedia policies were unable to address it. This is why I have no sympathy, let alone respect to these strange policies. --Alexander (talk) 12:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

That's great, but the majority of people would be uncomfortable with that being posted online. There have been multiple incidents of editors on Wikimedia projects having libelous attack sites posted on themselves, or having had employers contacted in an attempt to get them fired, or having had family contacted, etc. Can you at least accept that most people do not want to take these risks?

Whether an editor chooses to disclose any of these things should be their choice, and their choice alone. That's why we shoot first and ask questions later - because we'd rather get rid of the information after 15 minutes rather than find out 24 hours later that the person was not okay with the material being posted, after the entire site knows what was posted. --Rschen7754 19:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I accept that some people are heavily concerned about their privacy. As I wrote on a different page, suppressions and oversights are perfectly fine, but any threats or blocks arising from these actions need additional and substantial justification. --Alexander (talk) 19:40, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Being fair to Rschen, I think he was trying to be proactive and err on the side of clarity rather than diplomacy in trying to forestall further privacy breaches.

Personally, I really do think we now need to put in place a "play nicely" policy both to avoid driving away existing productive editors and to forestall any impression spreading (however erroneous and unfounded) that this is a bitey bearpit where anonymous editors enter at peril of being outed rather than the fun place we all want it to be.

Let's be a little bit more transparent about the standards we expect of our admins and editors, how to complain if those standards are perceived to be breached and the sort of (escalating rather than going nuclear all at once?) actions that may then be taken to educate and encourage compliance. Yes, it will be a hard job not to make things too bureaucratic and amenable to wikilawyering and monsters who have no real interest in writing a travel guide in the first place, but lets see if we can do a little bit better than the ad hoc bickering and personality politics that we've seen the last three or four years. --118.93nzp (talk) 22:38, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

No, they don't. This is a WMF practice, and if any admin posted the same sort of material on Meta, Commons, or Wikidata (all multilingual projects) they would likely be asked to resign as well. Oh, and Wikidata has no "policy" on harassment, or even civility, yet we still do civility blocks there. Oh, and we haven't even touched the issue of child protection yet... --Rschen7754 22:41, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, Rschen, but this is not serious. If there is a policy, we follow it. It there is no policy, you can't demand anyone to follow it. New editors are simply unable to familiarize themselves with something that does not exist. --Alexander (talk) 23:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I thought it was common sense, as well, that harassment is not allowed. If people are seriously under the impression that harassing one another is permitted/encouraged then I suppose one or two lines could be added, but I have doubts that anyone actually believes that and I don't think we could pin it down to anything too specific since each case must be discussed anyway.

I should add that I'm not opposed to adding some language against harassment, but if that's what we're trying to do with this discussion then how about some proposals so that we don't talk endlessly in abstraction?ChubbyWimbus (talk) 00:01, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

This discussion is bordering on the verge of nonsense and lacking of common sense, and it particularly bothers me to see that any administrator on any Wikimedia project is defending the practice of doxing another editor. Good luck editing, and let us hope that you never are asked to handle such a situation on any Wikimedia site. --Rschen7754 01:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Rschen7754, Are you making the assumption that "common sense" is "common" in the sense that it is widely shared, or in the sense that it is the same over cultures? My impression is that neither is true to the extent that it can be relied on to prevent problems, as can be illustrated by your differences with Alexander, as I would have credited you both with a high level of common sense, civility and good faith. I would hypothesize that most of the biggest disagreements we have on WMF are due to different versions of common sense, by people filled with good intentions, failing to accept the possibility that their version of common sense is not universal. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The vast majority of the administrators who have commented on the matter have agreed that the posting of the material was inappropriate (including those that saw the material before it was suppressed). Which is surprising, considering the number of times that I have disagreed with some of the supporters. So it is widely shared, and the same over cultures, as I have noted by its presence on the English Wikipedia (which consists of editors from all over the world, by the way), Commons, Meta, and Wikidata.

Whether Saqib should have lost his permissions for this particular incident is debatable (first offense, possibly a misjudgment), but he chose to resign them anyway. His use of revision deletion to hide my warning was definitely questionable, and there are some other recent issues that may have resulted in him losing his administrator permissions eventually, if it had not happened here (as someone else posted on his talk page).

Finally, "what the policies say" should not limit us from taking actions to protect our editors, if necessary. There are no policies regarding child protection here, but if someone wrote on their user page "I am a pedophile", I would immediately block the account and report it to WMF, on any wiki. "Oh, but some cultures don't have a problem with this..." The policies cannot account for every possible scenario that will happen on this site, and most of them were not written with 2013 Wikivoyage problems in mind. --Rschen7754 05:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I do entirely agree with User:Rschen7754's argument here. However, I think the paedophile reference is probably an exaggeration to highlight a point. I would add that this "outing" is very much a cultural thing, quite peculiar to WMF sites. I find it odd that a site that prides itself so much on credibility insists on hiding the identify of its authors. OSM, the other project which I'm involved in, is much more open with identities. Even twitter is more open than WP. On WT, typically, it has been the way that most people would have open identities. I edited there under my own name, and that wasn't the exception. So, my point here is that you can be so buried in a particular way of thinking, that it may seem like it is common sense not to mention someone's real name, but I don't actually know if that follows everywhere. So, while common sense may cover civility, etc, this particular obsession with people not knowing identifies I find unique to WP, so it may bear some mentioning. --Inas (talk) 06:02, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

(outdent) Actually, several pedophiles have been blocked off en.wikipedia by their ArbCom. Thankfully, the WMF has gotten involved at Commons, and regularly oversights child porn and globally locks the responsible accounts.

It's not necessarily "hiding" the identity of the authors, but giving them the choice of whether to publicly identify themselves. It's for similar reasons that we don't CU people and reveal people's IPs at random. --Rschen7754 06:15, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Were those users blocked because they said they were paedophiles (which could be a simple statement of fact) or because their on-wiki behaviour was unacceptable? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:25, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

To my knowledge, simply because they were pedophiles, and declared it; however, as the investigations, due to their nature, were conducted by ArbCom in private, I can't say for sure. (In that scenario there is no way of knowing whether they were using EmailUser to contact self-declared underage editors, for example). But that's not a catch-all; another case would be blocking a young editor because they repeatedly are posting too much information about themselves on the site, and there are concerns that their safety may be jeopardized. Or someone maliciously posting an editor's real name and vulgar comments about them and another editor on several wikis, using sockpuppets. Or someone making libelous accusations about another editor. All of these scenarios I've seen within the last year. The overarching point is that in such difficult scenarios, especially involving private information, we shouldn't react by saying "oh well we can't do this because, policy!" --Rschen7754 06:40, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I believe that Peter has made a very good point here. Common sense is not something shared by people of different cultures. You repeatedly demonstrate the US-based way of thinking that, unsurprisingly, prevails on English Wikipedia and in WMF in general. Even in Europe people will do certain things differently, while Indian or Chinese communities will be more different than similar in their understanding of privacy, civil behavior, etc. If you want them to accept or at least follow your regulations, make sure that the rules are explained properly. This is all I am trying to say. And yes, if there is a dubious block nomination similar to Saqib's case, I will put my strong oppose vote there, not because I try to advocate these actions, but because I want to see the rules before the game starts. --Alexander (talk) 07:56, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. So-called "common sense" really is largely culturally defined. We do need to clarify some things that many of would feel are captain obvious. And the difficulty is that it will be hard for those for whom they are common sense to know which things actually are not obvious to people from some different cultures. So Alexander, while you're here, can you think of other things that are not obvious? Would you like to suggest a definition of ill-temperament that can be used for the purpose of warning and eventually, if necessary, blocking users? Some of this may actually be impossible to define sufficiently, and I think that admins need to be able to use judgment about what constitutes disruption of the site (and let's face it: a lot of it is personal, because some of us have way thicker skin than others), without having to define everything imaginable and some things we can't even imagine, but that might happen some time in the future. However, you do make a good point, and I do agree that it's important to add a clear privacy policy on this site. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:18, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

It may be that the rules could be documented better, but this seems more like an issue that you have with Wikimedia sites in general, not related to the English Wikivoyage. I think the "cultures" bit is a red herring, considering that this is the English Wikivoyage, and that we are targeting the same demographics as the English Wikipedia. Also, FWIW, the steward granting oversight is from the Hebrew Wikipedia. I understand that there are cultural differences (for example, German Wikipedia refuses to CU people in almost all cases), but I'm not seeing it here. Agree with the second half of Ivan's statement. --Rschen7754 08:46, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

But on a more general note, I do think we need to reexamine all the policies to make sure that there aren't things missing like this. Another issue is revision deletion; from the comments I've seen, I'd presume that this was not a feature available on Wikitravel. There are no "policies" regarding it, though I assume that people would not be happy if we revision deleted everything in sight. --Rschen7754 09:08, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Rschen, I don't think cultural differences are entirely a red herring at all. Just because people are able to edit in English to a certain level does not mean that they are of the same culture. But to the more practical question of policies, I think it's important to establish that, absent a compelling reason that is specifically cited, talk pages, including user talk pages, should be subject to archiving but not deletion, and also that posts by another user or dialogue between two users shouldn't be moved from one user's talk page to the other user's talk page without the prior permission of the second user (was that clear enough language to be understood?). Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:25, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not saying that I disagree with this proposal, but as other projects do let you remove content from your talk page, it may lead to some confusion. (Personally, I don't agree with allowing people to remove any content, even on the English Wikipedia, but that's not the consensus there). But I'm specifically referring to [5], which was only reversed after 118.93 objected. --Rschen7754 09:30, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Earlier, several lines of dialogue were moved from User talk:Saqib to User talk:118.93.67.66 without 118's permission - twice - and finally deleted by 118 after Saqib wouldn't take them back. I don't like to pick on Saqib, but I didn't agree with that move and don't think users should be allow to do that kind of thing. In terms of the deletion policy, maybe at least we could have a policy that admins can archive content in their user talk pages but not delete it outright except with a compelling stated reason? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:42, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but I think we're talking about two different things; I'm referring to the use of revision deletion to hide revisions from admins that Saqib used on his talk page. --Rschen7754 09:52, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I saw at the link you gave me that he had hidden some revisions, yes. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:33, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

(re-indent) Ikan, I don't think I am the right person to discuss cultural differences, because I am not an expert at all. English Wikipedia has very detailed and carefully written policies, such as wikipedia:Wikipedia:Civility and wikipedia:Wikipedia:Harassment. Everyone should be able to understand them. One problem is that these policies are not followed. For example, the notorious Signpost article violates about half of the policy on civility, but I have not seen any action in response to this article. If you want to make the situation very clear, you can copy a bunch of Wikipedia policies to Wikivoyage, even though they are way too long and extensive for a small project. Moreover, I do not expect anyone here to follow these policies closely and precisely. Two months ago Peter and jan left exactly because they were harassed and because they saw other admins being obviously harassed by certain users. Wikihounding, user space harassment... several parts of the policy perfectly describe what happened (and happens) here. Did anything change? No, because several admins try to be very soft and calm and always extend the benefit of the doubt to disruptive users.

I would say that it is much easier to follow this strategy and make sure that all aspects covered by "common sense" (civility, harassment, privacy) are treated carefully, so that the benefit of the doubt is given to everyone. If you prefer to warn rather than block, do it this way, but be consistent. That's all I can suggest. --Alexander (talk) 10:50, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, more policies help, but even so there's stuff on en.wikipedia like w:Wikipedia:AC/N#Phil_Sandifer_desysopped_and_banned where the right answer isn't obvious. --Rschen7754 10:56, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

What was non-obvious about that case? I can't tell from the summary of the decision. I'll have a look at those Wikipedia policies when I have the chance. I edit Wikipedia a bit but haven't delved very deeply into Wikipedia policies. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:10, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, there were dissenting arbitrators at every stage of that decision, looking at the votes. The disagreements arose from what appeared to be unequal enforcement, as well as the posts being made completely off wiki, as well as whether the information that was disclosed at said site was already public. --Rschen7754 11:12, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for the summary. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Revocation

Just reverted the addition of a Wikivoyage:Administrator nominations#Revocations section again (it had already been reverted once by another editor). Shouldn't there be some attempt to seek some sort of consensus before creating this? For that matter, why do we need it? It seems more divisive than useful. K7L (talk) 18:55, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I've moved your redundant new section here because, if you look immediately above in the section that now contains it, it's better to continue discussing this topic in one section rather than in two different places. Again, we're trying to hunt that slippery creature, the greater or lesser spotted Consensus habilis. --118.93nzp (talk) 19:34, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Rollback

I was wondering why we don't allow rollback feature here? As Ikan Kekek stated here that spam volume recently started to rise, I think we should have rollback feature here in order to fight vandalism. --Saqib (talk) 10:03, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

We do. It should now appear for you at the end of each line on the recent changes list, and next to the "(talk|contribs|block)" part of a difference page. Is it not doing so? -- D. Guillaume (talk) 19:41, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

It is for admins only. On this wiki, only bureaucrats can give out the patroller right which includes rollback, but they have not so far... --Rschen7754 01:12, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Dguillaume, it's appearing for me. Actually, I was saying that we should have to give this right to users who've attention to fight vandalism. --Saqib (talk) 06:21, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, we should request for admins to have the ability to give out patroller... but that's just my opinion and it would need to go to the community. --Rschen7754 06:25, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I think the only reason we haven't started assigning that user category is that, for all the talk of spam volume increases, we don't have a problem of too few mops to clean house. We have infinitely less spam and vandalism than we had back in the day at WT, and we have more than double the number of active admins. (The one big patrolling problem we do have is coordination, which I don't think will be resolved until Bugzilla:43977 is resolved, which is seeming a little hopeless.) --Peter ^Talk 07:06, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Basically, anyone we trust enough to give rollback to, we probably also trust them enough to give them the rest of the tools as well. There may be a few exceptions, but for such a relatively minor convenience-feature, it's probably not worth the hassle of tracking. LtPowers (talk) 01:53, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's revisit this. It seems to me, spam has been increasing somewhat lately. I think we could use more admins. Do you all agree or disagree? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:56, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Most of what I've seen has been spambot pages... which would require the admin tools to handle, unfortunately. --Rschen7754 11:20, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. So my question is, could we use more admins at this time? I have one or two people in mind but would first like to see what the sentiment is in terms of the need or lack of need for more admins. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:25, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

In my mind, I think that adminship can/should be granted to anyone who is willing to use the tools to help out, and can be trusted. (I do not necessarily have the same view about crat/CU/OS, however). With that being said, other people do factor need into it. --Rschen7754 11:42, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

I didn't saw any increment of spambots here lately. Mick, I noticed you blocked some three spambots at once yesterday but it doesn't means they're increasing. --Saqib (talk) 12:23, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek, If there are people you want to nominate for admin go ahead and do so. I agree with Rschen's comment above. The tools should be available for people who will use them responsibly. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:04, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

In view of the current drama, I think I would want to wait until we've settled on any related changes in policy before sounding out prospective new admins. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:34, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I see your point. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Not Aware of Status

I came to the admin page from another discussion and was quite surprised to see my name appear on the list of admins. I reviewed the past nominations over and over again but I can find no place where I was ever actually nominated or approved. Hence, I was unaware that I even had such status (and still do not know who promoted me). All admins are supposed to go through the nomination process, so I should probably have the status revoked for that reason. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:08, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Your status need not be revoked. Are you willing to continue serving as an admin? If so, we can simply nominate you. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:16, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that Ryan wanted to give you auto-patroller rights but by mistake granted you admin rights instead. --Saqib (talk) 13:23, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Technically you should go through the nomination. There is precedent (I was appointed without going through the nomination process as an pragmatic solution during the pre-migration work, and went through the normal nomination afterwards). I think your chances of making it are good and should not be affected by the mistake. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:56, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

I also didn't found nomination of User:LilHelpa. --Saqib (talk) 14:00, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Saqib is right - apparently I made the embarrassing mistake of marking your account as admin instead of autopatroller, and I've now corrected that. You've been around for a long time and done great things, so if you're interested in an admin nom I'm sure there will be no shortage of people willing to support it. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:38, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

And thank you ChubbyWimbus for not using the tools even though when you could. --Saqib (talk) 17:47, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Chubby, would you accept a nomination? If so, we should go through the process. If not, admin status should be revoked. Pashley (talk) 14:04, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

At the moment, I don't think I will be able to do the patrolling and such that the job requires, but I appreciate the support! ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm impressed. Keep it up! --Saqib (talk) 13:30, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Opposition

Historically, we've used Not Yet rather than Oppose, as it's reflective of the opportunity we give community members to change and improve. But I notice that there's nothing in the instructions to help instruct contributors how to contribute to the discussion, which is the logical place to explain that preference. Should we add it? Powers ^(talk) 18:23, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a very good idea. JuliasTravels (talk) 18:28, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

So now saying "Oppose" is prohibited? --Rschen7754 19:55, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

No.

But if the usual practice is to hope for improvement, then a plain "Oppose" might be taken to mean that it's a hopeless case...

And yes, it should be added, together with the process(es) for removal/suspension. --118.93nzp (talk) 20:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of any prohibitions either, and I don't think Powers was. I do think most "oppose" votes have a much stronger negative impact than they are intended to carry. It's just the first contrary of "support" that comes to mind. Nothing wrong with just reminding contributors of that, and offering preferred alternative wording to use when appropriate. I know I would gladly take that advise. JuliasTravels (talk) 23:23, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I have no problem suggesting this, but telling people to vote "Not yet" and that this is the proper way to vote comes very close to instruction creep. --Rschen7754 06:22, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it hurts to include a reminder on this page that valid responses to a nomination include "Support", "Oppose", "Not yet", etc. I felt bad about adding an oppose vote when a good user was nominated, but given that there isn't a contribution history that meets the suggested criteria for admin there didn't seem to be another option. A reminder that "Not yet" is a valid response provides a way to indicate support for the user while also making it clear that a longer track record is needed for a demotion to admin. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:37, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

If a nomination gets a lot of Not Yet votes then is it showing poor judgement from the original nominator? -- WOSlinker (talk) 09:09, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd rather say it shows enthusiasm over the collaboration someone has had with the nominated editor ;-) Nonetheless, the explanations of such "not yet votes" will probably make a nominator and other who are thinking of nominating someone more aware of the requirements next time. JuliasTravels (talk) 11:03, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Cough - I'll shut the door behind me.... --Nick ^talk 11:09, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think you should be taking this personally ;) Danapit (talk) 18:48, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I only being silly - should have been a ':)' there really! :) --Nick ^talk 22:24, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem I have with practically mandating a "Not yet" approach is that there are some instances where we really need to say "Oppose", where we do not think the candidate would ever be suitable for adminship. For example, someone blocked on several other Wikimedia sites because of their trolling and who tries to run here. --Rschen7754 18:41, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

No one's mandating anything, but I don't see any reason to claim that outright opposition is in any way common. Edge cases don't need to be called out in the instructions. Powers ^(talk) 00:44, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

(Indent) I don't see an issue with someone who chooses to write "Oppose" in any case where you can write "Not Yet" if they wish. Either way, they need a reason for their opposition. One can write "Oppose" and still have an explanation that is friendly and encouraging. As long as the reasoning is reasonable, we should let people write what they want. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 03:51, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we're really confusing things. Yes, everyone is free to write what they want. If anything, we're proposing to explain that they do not have to use "support" and "oppose", but that less definitive wordings are perfectly valid too, if they want to use them. It's the same as current policy reminding people that it's not necessary to pile up opposing votes, as it will make no difference for the outcome and may be embarrassing for nominees. Nowhere it says you're not allowed to add another vote. Let's get to a proposed wording to add in policy, I'm guessing that will be a lot easier to support ;-) Powers, did you have something in mind? JuliasTravels (talk) 08:33, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see that it matters what words are used as long as the meaning is clear. "Support" is unambiguous, "Oppose" is unambiguous, and "Not yet" is unambiguous regarding the current position. All three are more useful if an explanation is added, though support implies agreement with the proposer's arguments, and is sufficient without further comment. Other wording is (or should be) entirely acceptable providing it is clear whether the person is in favour of the appointment or in opposition at that time. One's future opinions may change, so oppose and not yet have the same immediate effect, and in both cases should be backed up by a clear explanation. Failure to provide an explanation of why one opposes a nomination simply reduces its power to convince others, and if there is only one opposition it is unlikely to have much effect without an explanation. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:53, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I think the entire sentence should be tossed. --Rschen7754 09:45, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

How do we know if a nominee is adequately familiar with policy?

The recent nomination of User:Thundering Typhoons! has reminded me of something I occasionally wonder about: How do we know how well someone knows the policies, and as an extension, how well we know them ourselves? Is there a need for a primer, possibly with a multiple choice questionnaire, which helps a user to familiarise with the system? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:13, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for belated response Peter (Southwood). On every WMF project, admin candidates has been asked some questions but I always wonder why we don't have such a tradition here. I was desysopped due to my blunder and I was expecting plenty of questions when IK nominated me again for admin-ship but no one care to ask me questions except User:LtPowers. User:Rschen7754 has started the custom of asking questions to admin candidates for a while which was a good initiative in my opinion and I think asking questions should be started here from now on. This way, we can hopefully learn about the candidate ability to have administrative privileges. --Saqib (talk) 23:27, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Let's not become like the English WP, where adminship is such a big deal and the process is dreadful (at least it was last time I looked, and had been for years). Nurg (talk) 04:17, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, we can ask relevant questions, as opposed to en.wikipedia :P (FWIW, I stepped down as an admin here because of time constraints, but I still drop by occasionally). --Rschen7754 03:19, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Time for more admins?

There seems to be at least a slight uptick in spam lately. Is it a good time to nominate a couple more admins? I should add, I'm not sure I have anyone in particular in mind, but if we think we could use a couple more admins (and I think so), it might be good for all of us to think about good candidates, and then sound them out about their willingness to serve, if asked. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The right time to nominate an admin is when you have someone in mind who would be a good admin, qualifies, and is willing to take on the responsibilities.

Another time which is usually right is if the admin workload is higher than comfortable, and you have someone in mind who will probably fit. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:14, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Part of the reason I started this thread is that some other folks may have good candidates in mind. The one I'd most like to nominate has repeatedly stated that he doesn't want to be an admin, so... Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:24, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

User:Ypsilon. Are you ready? --Saqib (talk) 19:59, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Ypsi has been ready for a long time. That's not the issue. By all accounts, the issue is that he simply doesn't want to be an administrator. We should respect his wishes and not pester him about it. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:39, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

He was exactly the person I had in mind, but I agree with Andre. We need to think of other good candidates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes I know he's not interested but who knows when he change his mind. Anyways, what about this prolific guy? --Saqib (talk) 23:36, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

You're in a mischievous mood tonight. Punchy from too much work? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:48, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Right IK. I'm burnt-out and exhausted due to work-load on Wikimedia Commons. Cleaning up hundreds of copyvio from Wiki Loves Monuments Pakistan. Andre, now you can see plenty of nice shots of Karachi but many more still to come. Anyways. I've three names in my mind but we need to look which one is perfect for the role. User:K7L, User:PrinceGloria and User:Traveler100. --Saqib (talk) 00:09, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Good thoughts. We should sound them out about their willingness to take on the role. And get some rest. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:15, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I have responded to Ikan's sounding in my talk page, do read if you care, but the short story is that I would not consider myself "perfect for the role". I support the nomination of all three other names mentioned: Ypsilon, K7L and Traveller100. PrinceGloria (talk) 04:24, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

You do not need to be perfect for the role, just "good enough". I do not think you would abuse the tools, which is the primary criterion. ;-) • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:01, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

(unindent) There are surprisingly many users that are admins but half of the users on the list are in practice not active here at all. Should we consider some sort of "Lost voyagers" similar to w:WP:MISS? Joachim might've be interested but he isn't as active as he used to be. I'm seldom discussing policies, inventing things or doing systematic maintenance work, and don't plan on starting doing that. Also, I wouldn't say we're flooded with spam (check out Recent Changes at WT!) - the ten spam pages we see per day are deleted and their creators banned within an hour or two. I don't really know what I'd do with admin tools... ϒpsilon (talk) 15:46, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

YPSI, I think we need to de-admin our inactive admins. Current 2 years inactivity rule is not fair in my humble opinion. Commons police is "an "inactive admin" is one who has made fewer than 5 admin actions on Commons in the past 6 months." and should be de-sysop through a process. I hope this way we can get back many in-active admins back to work. --Saqib (talk) 18:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

ϒpsi, what you'd do with admin tools is to delete spam and block spammers instead of tagging spam pages for others to delete, and since you do that a lot, anyway, it would seem to me that admin tools would be useful to you. I agree that this site isn't being absolutely deluged with spam, but at least on a subjective level, I noticed a distinct uptick recently, such that it was becoming a bit of a pain, and what that means to me is that we could do well to distribute the work among more people.

As for de-sysopping people, we really haven't in practice been doing that at all, except when they ask to be de-sysopped. I'm not sure it's important to do so, but if others feel it's important, we should start by enforcing existing policies, and also by de-sysopping no longer active temporary admins who still have their admin flags. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:47, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Would be nice if someone mentioned above - anyone of them ;) - would put up their hand. ϒpsilon (talk) 21:08, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

All of these folks and a couple more have already been notified on their talk pages. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:17, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

OK raising my hand, will give it a go. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:11, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

De-adminship

IK suggested above that we need more admins who can help cleanup the mess here. I'm not against new admins but I want to made it clear that adminship should not be granted as a trophy or entitlement. It should only be granted to those who actually have willingness to perform administrative tasks such as deletions and sometimes blocks. Go through some recently appointed administrators and you will find many who actually never or very rarely used the shiny buttons. I wouldn't like to name of any particular editor though. If someone has willingness to use the extra tools, we should allowed access to them otherwise there's no good sense to make each and everyone an admin simply because they're longstanding contributor. At the end, we might have hundred of admins but only few who actually do administrative tasks. I also think that our policy of ending administrator privileges after 2 year is not fair enough. Well-established Wikipedia has 1 year inactivity rule whereas Commons has six month. I think its time to give a call to all our inactive and active editors who have admin privileges but haven't used the buttons lately. To clarify my comment, I've no strong opinion about all all though. --Saqib (talk) 23:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any actual problem that needs resolving here. Our number of admins is still comparatively low, and we've never had a renegade admin before, nor would I expect any of the currect ones, active or inactive, to suddenly turn on us. If people really really feel we need to take more action on this for some reason, I wouldn't mind shortening the rule to a year. Six months seems a little demanding for a site with such low traffic generally. Texugo (talk) 23:22, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

We are not Commons nor Wikipedia. Our limits should be longer. Powers ^(talk) 23:26, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, I expect admins to remain reasonably active if they hold sysop status. There's no issue if an admin is active but not doing administrative tasks but I suggest 1 year inactivity rule for those who actually haven't made an edit in 365 days in order to avoid the possibility of a dormant sysop account being compromised. When and if a desysopped come back later, they're most welcome to apply for admin-ship again. --Saqib (talk) 23:48, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

This was discussed earlier this year: Wikivoyage_talk:Administrator_nominations#Where_to_discuss_and_nominate_withdrawals_of_admin_tools --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:50, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

There needn't be any compulsion to use the tools. They are there for trusted users even if they only use them infrequently. Let's not become like the English WP, where adminship is such a big deal. Nurg (talk) 04:25, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I completely agree. If we decide that it's important to de-sysop inactive admins (and I agree with those who think it's not important), we should consider any type of edit as evidence of activity. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:40, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I think it is more of a case of helping people who want the assistance of an administrator. If Texugo and Nick (only ones listed as current administrators) are not on-line (I assume they go on holiday occasionally :-) ) then you have a list of over 50 users who may or may not be active to select from. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:40, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

What list of admins are you looking at? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:00, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

special:listadmins mentioned under Wikivoyage:Administrators#Current administrators.--Traveler100 (talk) 08:09, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

OK, I see your point. There are only 2 admins who've volunteered to answer "any questions you may have." I try my best to answer questions but don't know the answer to everything, and while I do hang out here way more than I probably should, there are times now and then when I'm offline for a few days. So my feeling is, the best thing for a confused user to do, if s/he has a question that's not specific to a particular user, is post to the Pub. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:24, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Many things don't actually require an admin. Reporting vandalism in progress or requesting page protection in a revert war requires finding an active admin, merely answering "any questions you may have" does not. K7L (talk) 01:44, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

The best way to report vandalism in progress is to post the relevant information to Wikivoyage:Vandalism in progress. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:37, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

The reason why the global policy (which is there by default unless a project chooses to override it) is that if someone has not made any edits or any logged action, it is very possible that they will not be returning to the site, ever. --Rschen7754 03:23, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I was asked to link it: m:AAR. --Rschen7754 02:07, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Key points from the link:

The maximum time period of inactivity without community review for holders of advanced administrative rights should be two years.

Inactivity for this case is defined as zero edits and zero administrative actions on the wiki where the rights are maintained.

I think this policy is fine. I'll note that very few of the WV admins have been inactive, by this definition, for 2 years. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:44, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

en:voy has existed for a little under two years (forked in autumn 2012), so that's not surprising. K7L (talk) 03:13, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

I just discovered this query tool which is interesting in that it reports the number of administrator actions each admin has been doing. Since the beginning of 2014 only 32 of the 60 admins have actually used their Admin functionality. This is not to say we should start stripping admin rights on the basis of this report. I just thought it would be useful data for discussing the expected level of admin participation. In summary we have:

• 5 high activity admins who have performed between 300 to 1,300 actions each this year
• 13 moderately active admins who have performed between 10 and 80 action each this year.
• 12 low active admins with less than 10 edits each this year
• 28 dormant admins

Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:11, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Very useful Andrew. And even if we see one year activity which make more sense to me, the admins without action rate is almost exactly the same. And amazing thing is 9 admins never used the admin tools since WV founded under WMF umbrella. ----Saqib (talk) 04:28, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

One caveat is that the current Admin count is 55, whereas the reports above include users who were Admins and subsequently removed. Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:32, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Lists of current administrators

User:Traveler100 pointed out the confusing and problematic way that admins are listed on this site. There is Wikivoyage:Administrators#Current administrators, which starts with this confusing language:

Below is a list of currently active administrators who have added their name here to help answer any questions you may have.

If there were a comma before "who," this would be a list of all current administrators, but even without the comma, it's a confusing sentence, and the fact that it is followed by a list of only two admins is problematic. I'm not sure why two admins are expected to answer any and all questions. Why not just direct users with questions that don't relate to a specific user to post to the Pub? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:07, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I've modified the text appropriately. --W. Frank^email_talk 10:37, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for helping, W. Frank. I tweaked your new wording a bit. I hope others find it acceptable. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:22, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

More than grammar, I can't help thinking the section is just not helping. Awesome that these (now three) admins are willing to answer questions, but as you say this helpfulness should be inherent to any admin on this site. Also as you say, the Pub is basically where everyone does ask their questions anyway.

I'd go as far to say that we should remove that section. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 12:06, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's ever been officially necessary to be either helpful (by answering questions) or active to retain the janitor's tools - if I'm wrong then there are admins that should either resign or be sacked... --W. Frank^email_talk 17:45, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd substitute a suggestion to post to the Pub. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:09, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Auto archiving

Per WV:Pub#Automatic archiving, this page was identified as a candidate for auto-archiving using User:ArchiverBot, so I've set this up to automatically archive threads that have been inactive for four weeks. Please revert me if there are objections.-- Ryan • (talk) • 01:12, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Would you like to change the section level of nominations? For the bot to work as intended, each section must be ==section==, not ===section===. Whym (talk) 03:35, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I updated the heading level on WV:User ban nominations, and WV:Script nominations was already using second-level headings. For now I've reverted the archive tag on WV:Administrator nominations because I didn't want to change the heading level on all of the existing archives at WV:Administrator nominations/Archives. -- Ryan • (talk) • 05:30, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Administrator nominations is a natural for automatic archiving. Just to clarify, Wikivoyage talk:Administrator nominations is not and shouldn't be auto-archived. What do you mean about the heading level, though, Ryan? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

All of the admin nominations are third-level headings, i.e. ===[[User:AdminNominee]]===. Per Whym the archive bot can only auto-archive second-level headings, i.e. ==[[User:AdminNominee]]==. As a result, we would either need to update the heading levels used on the nomination page or else we can continue to manually archive nominations. For now, rather than change the nomination page and the existing nomination archives to second-level headings I've just removed the auto archive tag -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:21, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for the explanation. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:11, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Appetite for nominations?

A quick look at the Admin stats for the past year reveal that of our 28 Admins, only 13 have made 10 or more Admin actions, and only a top three seem to be doing most of the grunt work with more than 300 actions each.

Is it time to look at new admin nominations? I thought I was test the waters first before giving any nomination since we are not currently drowning in spam. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:23, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Related question: is it time to pull the sysop tools from admins who've been inactive for ≥2 years, as Wikivoyage:Administrators prescribes? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:49, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Would tend to agree with the removing rights from inactive users. WHat is however missing from the stats is how many rollbacks have been done. --Traveler100 (talk) 00:36, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

talk, the report does indeed not list completely inactive users. Going back 2 years I see that there are in fact 40 admins and going back 4 years I see 64. I would agree to remove rights from anyone who hasn't used the Admin tools for more than 2 years (That does not preclude them from applying again if they want to get involved). --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:26, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

The criteria is "administrators who don't use their user accounts for two years". I take this to mean administrators who haven't done any edits or admin actions for two years. If admins have been editing, but just haven't done admin actions, that is fine. But if they haven't edited for 2 years, then they have effectively ceased involvement and should not longer have a mop. I think the tools should be taken back from these (unless any of them are a special case):

• Special:Contributions/Bill-on-the-Hill
• Special:Contributions/Cacahuate technically has done one edit (to their user Talk)
• Special:Contributions/Cardboardbird
• Special:Contributions/Cjensen~enwikivoyage technically has done 3 edits (to user Talk), but has effectively ceased editing
• Special:Contributions/Dguillaume
• Special:Contributions/Hansm
• Special:Contributions/Thehelpfulone
• Special:Contributions/Xltel

Nurg (talk) 09:32, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree that edits should count. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:06, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Agree with that. As for new admins; I'd say it makes more sense to just ask people whenever they stand out because they already take an active role in maintenance etc, rather than searching for candidates who might meet the basic criteria. Frankly, I don't think providing people with tools makes them jump on recent changes control, if they've not been doing that before. It's definitely true that a few highly active admins do most of the admin work, but frankly... that's also because they do it so fast :-) I can't log in that often, but if I do, I do check new articles and recent changes etc. It only rarely happens that I encounter unwanted edits or users that have not already been reverted and blocked. Now that we're talking about this... I would like to encourage everyone who doesn't yet, to mark changes as patrolled. I'm sure I'm not the only one who regularly checks a whole bunch of edits that then turn out to be already reverted. JuliasTravels (talk) 14:00, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Sure, if the 'top 3' admins were to be less efficient (and obviously we wouldn't want that :) ) then the other admins' action count would surely rise to compensate. I'll also make more effort to 'patrol' going forward.

I also support the selection of admins that Nurg has compiled. Could we leave a notice on their talk pages to notify them as a courtesy in the first instance? Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:22, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I've thought about this, and I think I agree with all of you: It makes no sense to list people as admins who are not acting as such and haven't for over 2 years. We might wish for admins to come back, but until they do, it is more accurate to remove their admin tools and take their usernames off the list of admins. I think that most if not all of them would have their admin status and tools restored pretty much right away if they came back and wanted to resume their status, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:35, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much all the above. That said, if any of the admins who have their tools revoked decide to return to the wiki and make edits, they should be able to request and receive their tools back from a bureaucrat without another nomination. My adminship was recently removed on another wiki where I'm inactive, so I know the feeling! James A ▪ talk 11:00, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

"It makes no sense to list people as admins who are not acting as such and haven't for over 2 years." As pointed out, mere disuse of the tools shouldn't be sufficient (and isn't by policy); it has to be actual site inactivity. But yes, a courtesy notice is in order. Powers ^(talk) 17:28, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Powers, I already stated clearly that any edits should count. As a matter of fact, I don't think there's anyone on the other side of the argument you're making, other than a straw man. :-) But I guess if it needs to be made doubly clear, no harm done. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:46, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I know, which is why I was confused. You seemed to be reversing course. Powers ^(talk) 18:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I guess you were confused because you apparently think of "acting as an admin" as involving something other than editing, but it wasn't because of anything I think or, really, anything I posted, just your interpretation of what it meant. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:17, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

There appears to be agreement with the current guidelines which are to remove admin rights after a period of general edit inactivity of 2 years in order to keep the site secure. Per Nurg's comment above, the following administrators fit that criteria:

• Special:Contributions/Bill-on-the-Hill
• Special:Contributions/Cacahuate technically has done one edit (to their user Talk)
• Special:Contributions/Cardboardbird
• Special:Contributions/Cjensen~enwikivoyage technically has done 3 edits (to user Talk), but has effectively ceased editing
• Special:Contributions/Dguillaume
• Special:Contributions/Hansm
• Special:Contributions/Thehelpfulone
• Special:Contributions/Xltel

I also have one more addition, although understand if this one is left out considering it wasn't mentioned above:

• Special:Contributions/NJR_ZA technically has done one edit (in userspace)

Yes, it will be the right thing to do to remove my admin rights. I have not had the time to spend on wikimedia as I did in the past. If things change in the future it will be right and proper for me to do some real work and prove myself again before being considered for admin rights. --NJR ZA (talk) 17:47, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Would a bureaucrat (User:Wrh2, User:LtPowers, ?) be able to follow through with the removal of these rights? Thanks, James A ▪ talk 11:40, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Two comments: 1) my reading of the above discussion is that users that have an edit in the past two years should not have their admin tools removed, so User:Cacahuate, User:Cjensen~enwikivoyage and User:NJR ZA should not be on this list, and 2) none of these users have been given the suggested courtesy notice; until that is done I'm not comfortable being the one to remove their admin rights. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:06, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Especially since this is a new procedure (if not technically a new policy), we owe them the chance to reiterate that they wish to keep their status. I would suggest two weeks from notification. If no one else gets to it first, I'll do the notifications today or tomorrow (but not now, as I don't have the time). Powers ^(talk) 16:55, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. My interpretation was that the users will be notified by email that their rights have been revoked, but there's no harm done by contacting them before as a courtesy. Thanks for following it up, and I'll leave it to you two. James A ▪ talk 00:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

As an admin who disappeared for almost a year (health and other issues), I am wondering if it would be of benefit to others if there was a template wikibreak, or on hold (we have them on wp en for anyone) (for whatever reason) where editors self identify for absences longer than 6 months say, where there is the option for admins to identify an absence legitimately, and thereby reducing the inactivity issue considerably (on wp en 1 year absence is more or less considered over and out) - if admins have that as a proviso of being able to identify quiet/non editing times, surely that would be better than waiting 2 years? JarrahTree (talk) 00:29, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure I understand your intention, but if it is to bring the 2 year inactivity policy back to 1 year, I don't really see the need. I also don't see how a template will make any difference (edit history's tell all we need to know). We seem a lot more lenient about all this, and I kind of like that. I find a year pretty short, especially since some users have been involved for almost a decade. I think anyone is free to post messages on their talk page to indicate longer periods of absence - many users already do that. No objections to a "template", but I don't think it's needed either. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:16, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Actually thinking about it after I had posted it - and reading your comments, I understand, the very good thing sbout wikivoyage is the leniency, and the fluidity of things - my response is unnecessary, I can see where you are coming from, and why it is better to be more open, and more laid back about things JarrahTree (talk) 15:28, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I've e-mailed all of the users who have not edited in over two years, except for User:Dguillaume, who does not have e-mail enabled in his preferences. I've also left a note on each user's talk page. Powers ^(talk) 19:29, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I object to the exclusion of User:Cacahuate, User:Cjensen~enwikivoyage, and User:NJR ZA from the cull of inactive admins. Even if policy specifies that the two-year inactivity threshold applies to editing in general rather than just use of the sysop tools, I think that placing minor tweaks to one's own userpage on a level playing field with substantive mainspace contributions clearly goes against the spirit of the policy. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:48, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Agree with AndreCarrotflower . The inclusion of these practically inactive admins is hardly draconian. Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:08, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Since the only concern we have with inactive administrator accounts is security, a single edit of (nearly) any character is sufficient to demonstrate that it's still under proper control. Powers ^(talk) 00:55, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Powers - I don't know that I agree with that. Certainly security is a reason for the two-year inactivity rule, as evidenced by the first two sentences of Wikivoyage:Administrators#Ending administrator privileges, but the third sentence strongly implies that the privilege of being a sysop is predicated on those folks taking responsibility for a share of the administrative duties of the site. If "[a]dministrators who know they don't have the time or interest to continue as admins" are expected to "request to have their privileges revoked voluntarily" yet don't do so, isn't two years enough of a threshold before we do it for them? It's not as if logging in to Wikivoyage and making a few token copyedits or whatnot is a terribly difficult task; it would take five minutes. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:03, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the reticence to remove Admin privileges is really about. It is not like you lose any ability to work on the site at all, just that the administrative functions (that they are anyway not using) are removed.

To put it another way, if you were to remove my Admin status right now then it wouldn't impact any of the contributions I am working on, just reduce my ability to deal with vandalism and other admin issues. It isn't the same as being demoted as a site contributor. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:37, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I don't really see any compelling need to remove admin tools. If we trusted someone enough to give them a few extra buttons, that trust isn't going to disappear because they were on hiatus for a while. I don't think the security argument is particularly compelling, especially when weighed against the fact that we already handle vandals and spambots that can make a mess of things using existing tools. If people want to start removing admin rights after two years of inactivity then I'll flip the bits, but if the issue hadn't been raised I wouldn't have had any problem with leaving things be. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:57, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

The timeframe has been set to two years since 2009; we're just enforcing a rule that hadn't really been enforced to this point. But if we wish to change the rule to require that edits be to the main namespace and not just to user pages, then that needs to be specified in the policy. Powers ^(talk) 18:35, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

I have removed User:Cardboardbird, User:Dguillaume, User:Hansm, User:Xltel, and User:NJR ZA from the Administrator group. User:Bill-on-the-Hill and User:Thehelpfulone expressed desire to maintain their admin status. Could someone remind me if there are any pages that need to be edited to reflect this change in status? Powers ^(talk) 02:46, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Drive for Admins?

The stats for last year show that the number of Admin actions is decreasing, with only 6 having performed more than 100 actions in that time period. This also includes Ryan's actions, and it is possible that his hiatus is permanent. On the other hand we still have 20 admins who performed at least one action in the past year.

I wouldn't say this is a big problem today, with most vandalism and abuse being effectively handled. That said a pipeline of new Admins would be a healthy thing to encourage. I get the impression some people regard being an Admin as a privilege and having more say in the site's direction. In reality it is really about keeping things in order so that people are more encouraged to contribute to a stable site.

Any ideas how we can get longer standing people involved? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 21:56, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, as I see it this issue comes down to a lack of active users rather than a lack of active admins. Most of the reasonably active users on this site already have access to the sysop tools, with the notable exceptions of Ypsilon and Hobbitschuster who have repeatedly said they don't want them. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:30, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

De-adminship revisited

The last time we did a mass cull of inactive administrators was two years ago, and I think it's high time we looked at doing another one. As a reminder, per policy the time limit is two years of inactivity before an admin is supposed to lose the sysop tools as a matter of course. As Saqib and I said on the last go-round, adminship is supposed to be for users who actually intend to help with site issues such as page deletion, user bans, etc. rather than as a trophy or entitlement, and there are also security issues regarding inactive accounts with special privileges.

Here is a list of admins who have been inactive for two or more years.

• User:Cjensen~enwikivoyage - account was supposed to be desysopped last time; not sure why it wasn't
• User:Sertmann
• User:Jc8136 - it pains me to include his name here
• User:Tsandell
• User:Thehelpfulone - last edit, datestamped 29 November 2015, was the one in which s/he "expressed desire to maintain admin status" during the last cull
• User:Felix505
• User:EvanProdromou
• User:Bill-on-the-Hill - 2 years inactive as of 18 January 2018; also expressed desire to retain admin status last time
• User:Sapphire

It would be great if someone could notify these users of their pending de-adminship (and, in cases where it's warranted, confirm actual intent to resume editing), and subsequent to that, if a bureaucrat (Ikan and Powers that I know of; are there others?) could see to removing the sysop tools from the rest.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:01, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I founded this project and I would prefer to remain an admin. --EvanProdromou (talk) 19:45, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

You know what, I blindly copied and pasted your name and it didn't even register in my mind. Sorry about that. Going to clean the egg off my face now. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:55, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Where to publicize admin noms

Is it permissible to publicize an admin nom in the pub? I'm concerned that only 5 people have expressed any opinion on a nom that's been up for 9 days. If I remember correctly, precedent is that at least 7 support votes are required for a promotion to admin. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:15, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Try publicising at Wikivoyage:Requests for comment first. If then still not enough response, I think it's fine to bring it up in the pub. Nurg (talk) 23:55, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to take a step back and lean on all of you more

Hi, everyone. You know I do a lot of patrolling. You probably also know I do this for fun and don't get paid - because it's the same for you. And the problem is that when you enforce rules and guidelines, you inevitably piss some people off who take it personally and attack you, which makes it no longer fun. For example, User talk:RaffiKojian#Collages got these replies: User talk:Ikan Kekek#Collages. And I also made these edits today, which could easily result in an angry nationalistic rant on my user talk page.

So what I don't know is, if I ignore types of edits that are most likely to piss off other users, will the rest of you pick up the slack, and are you inured to the joy-killing results of personal attacks that sometimes come in response to this, or will the quality and consistency of the site suffer? Ibaman in particular seems to have a very thick skin and does a lot of great patrolling work, but I have to say, I really don't think it's worth it to me to revert a collage if I get this much shit from it, though it is something someone should do if we indeed want to keep the policy against collages intact. The other thing I really want to do is ignore the Telstra user. I don't want the whole site to ignore him, but I want a personal break from the annoying drudgery of deleting a single edit by one sockpuppet, another single edit by another ad infinitum, blocking each single sock and putting that stupid message on the sock's user talk page. There really has to be a better way, like blocking all Telstra users with no registered email address, but I'm sick of doing this stupid work that is just wasting my time and producing some small amount of repetitive stress on my hands.

So I'm not announcing my resignation as an admin, but I am announcing a step back, and either you all pick up some of the slack or you don't, but I don't like being the bogeyman of thin-skinned people who just hate having stuff reverted or edited per policy.

Thanks for indulging me in this rant. I love and respect all of you, except any trolls, vandals or jerks who might happen upon this page. :-)

All the best,

Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:34, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Ikan Kekek, you absolutely have the right to take a step back, take a break or bail out. I hope that you won't, but I don't blame you if you do. I think your handling of User:RaffiKojian was entirely appropriate. Nobody likes policies when they say they shouldn't do things they want to do. But if RaffiKojian likes collages and I dont, who decides whether his/her edit stays or not? Do s/he and I just edit war over it until the end of time? Having policies cuts out the wasted time and effort of edit wars, and reduce the frustration caused by them, even if it increases the frustration of some editors, like RaffiKojian. It's a trade-off. I don't agree with all of our policies, but either I accept them, or try to change them as you encouraged him/her to do several times.

We definitely need more editors, and we shouldn't ignore objections like Raffi's, but ignoring policies to accommodate people like Raffi would probably do a lot more harm to the project than good. Raffi has made some contributions over the last two years, but not that much. If s/he isn't comfortable working within the community standards in this project, them maybe it isn't the right place for her or him. You shouldn't sweat that. Ground Zero (talk) 09:34, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Hey, you've been doing this for a long time, so have every right to say "enough is enough". If you do take a (hopefully temporary) break from editing, it may well provide you the breathing space to reflect on your future within the project. It can be hard to get that same perspective if you just continue on as you are.

I just hope you know that despite the flak you get, every regular contributor respects the hell out of you as one of our most dedicated, patient and level-headed editors. :-) Your work is most definitely worthwhile, and it would be a sad day indeed if you decided to pack it in.

Despite my sporadic presence these past few weeks, I generally spend a lot of time on recent changes patrol too, though perhaps my timezone means things are a bit quieter and the problem edits less frequent than your regular slot. Nonetheless, I'll try to keep in mind your stepping back and step things up a bit on my part, keeping a closer eye on recent changes for the duration of my edit time. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:26, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

• TT said all I could possibly think to say above. I really hope you breathe deep, reconsider, and don't leave, Ikan. I second that: your handling of User:RaffiKojian was entirely appropriate. And also that: despite the flak you get, every regular contributor respects the hell out of you as one of our most dedicated, patient and level-headed editors (if not THE most). Ibaman (talk) 13:41, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I think no one doubts your value as editor, Ikan Kekek, and making enemies is unfortunately a side effect of trying to do the "right" thing at times. If there is one thing we learned from playing computer games: "if you keep encountering enemies along your path, you know you're going the right way". Just let the community know which trouble makers you'd like to get off your back, and we'll take over where necessary. ArticCynda (talk) 14:53, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I thank you all for the support, but I'm not going to stop editing or patrolling; I'm just going to be more selective in the actions I take, avoiding stuff that either I'm finding per se annoying to do or that I think is most likely to provoke an angry response from someone who dislikes enforcement. I don't plan to stop blocking vandals who are actively damaging the site by disfiguring or deleting articles, nor blocking spammers or reverting obvious touting. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

That's good to hear, and a relief! Make sure to let one of us know if there's something that needs sorting where you don't want the aggro. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:44, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

In most cases, it will be more than sufficient for people to find the stuff I'll pass by in the course of their patrolling. If it's serious enough to require quick action, I'll be unlikely to pass it by. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:27, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Patroller nom needed?

What do you all think? Patroller gives a user the power to do 1-click rollbacks of a series of edits. I'm not sure there are any other tools a Patroller has that a regular user doesn't have. Should Patroller noms on this page be needed, or should this simply be done without discussion here? I also don't know why Admins don't have the power to make a user a Patroller. I see that there was discussion of this above a few years ago, but nothing seems to have changed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:40, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't think nominations should be needed for patrollers or were necessary in the past. I agree that administrators should be able to assign this, though. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:58, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

It seems all patrollers were set by active bureaucrats. So, User:Ikan Kekek, it seems you can decide: do you think you had your bureaucrat hat on, or your sysop hat, when you set SC to be a patroller? I think, if you so decide, there's enough precedent to say that setting the patroller bit is based on the personal whim of a bureaucrat. Plus, there's some logic to it, by analogy with the sysop bit. ARR8 (talk) 00:02, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I guess I did. Well, if the nomination is superfluous, I'll just go ahead and make the change. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:27, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Separate page for bureaucrat nominations

Swept in from the pub

While they're not particularly common, so far bureaucrat nominations have always taken place on the WV:Administrator nominations page, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense really. Should a new Wikivoyage:Bureaucrat nominations page be created just for bureaucrats? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:32, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't see the point, but also don't have any specific arguments against. It seems like a waste of time to both do it and discuss it.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 23:45, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Totally a waste of time, IMO. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:27, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

What TT and IK said. Ground Zero (talk) 04:10, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

If all requests for user rights are made on that page (I couldn't find any others), then we could always rename the page to "Requests for user rights" or something similarly generic. But mostly I think that the page title shouldn't be a big deal. If you don't already know where to make your request for buro rights, then you probably shouldn't be making the request anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

ARR8 is being nominated for administrator

Swept in from the pub

Just wanted to give everyone out there a heads-up in case they didn't already know: I have recently nominated one of the best WV users, ARR8, for administrator. If you know the user's trustworthy edit history, please go to the administrator nominations page and show your support.

Thanks!

--Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:27, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Proposed policy change for admin nominations

There have been several instances recently where editors have been nominated for admin status without their knowledge or consultation. I looked through our policy and could not find any requirement that the possibility of a nomination be discussed with a prospective administrator before being unveiled on this page. Should we add that clause to our policy? To me it seems like common sense that that should be a necessary part of the process. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:22, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I think that anyone who's being proposed for a nomination should first be notified, either by the nominator or someone else, on their user talk page and agree to serve if chosen. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:28, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. A reasonable requirement. Ground Zero (talk) 19:00, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Seems the polite thing to do. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:52, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. That's how it was done for me, and I think it should be done with others, too. It's quite a shock for some user to suddenly find himself/herself under the spotlight without volunteering. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:13, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Sound sensible and is common practice for votes with nomination process. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:59, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Agreed with consensus. Someone who is nominated without being asked may feel under peer pressure to accept, when they don't really want the adminship in the first place.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:06, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't feel like a nom should be invalid through not meeting this requirement, but I do think it's a good idea. Perhaps just mention on the policy page that this is courteous and appropriate is sufficient? --Inas (talk) 23:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Page move proposal

It was proposed in the pub by AndreCarrotflower that this page should be moved to Wikivoyage:User rights nominations to accommodate bureaucrat nominations, etc. This page has been used to nominate users for positions other than administrator and therefore I agree with him that the page should be moved accordingly. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:53, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

• Support Ground Zero (talk) 17:33, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support move, with redirect.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:05, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support --DannyS712 (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support, obviously. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
• Done --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:27, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

PP this page

@ThunderingTyphoons!, Ikan Kekek: - Can you PP this page. It's frequently being vandalised by the Projects guy. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 10:06, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Done --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:13, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Merci beaucoup :) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 10:22, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Add patroller/template editor/IPBE status as well

I don't know if it's just me or not, but I feel like we're too broad here with the "ask any admin" for these rights. Some users are quite nervous to ask, and may be thinking they'll be judged for asking (although it shouldn't be). So I was wondering whether we should broaden this page and requests for patroller, template editor and IPBE could be asked here, but it can be given with no nomination needed. Something probably like this, but without the overcomplications. I would however, suggest leaving autopatroller out. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:29, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

If we do this, the page should also be moved to Wikivoyage:Request for rights similar to Commons, since the current title no longer makes sense. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:30, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

It seems reasonable as long as the nomination can still be done on user talk pages as well. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:18, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not planning to get rid of that, it's just that some users feel shy to ask. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:35, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I feel like this proposal never went ahead, with only two support votes and zero oppose votes. Any last minute objections before I go ahead? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Patrollers have never needed to go through the nomination process. Why is it essential to make them go through it now? Does this solve any known problem? Or are you saying they should be able to request patroller status here? That seems confusing to me. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:31, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood, probably because I never wrote my proposal clearly enough. I'm just saying that we add a "patroller" section and then any admin will just give it to them upon request, similar to c:COM:RFR as some might be too shy to ask an admin. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

If they're too shy to communicate with an admin, are we sure they should get such a status? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:34, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Some people who are on cross wiki vandal patrol and don't have global rollback should have some sort of efficient way of asking for the patroller right. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

OK, if this can be phrased clearly. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:53, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Bureaucrats must close all user rights nom threads? Why?

If you look at Wikivoyage:User rights nominations/Archives, you'll see many examples of user rights nom threads being closed by admins who were not bureaucrats. Yes, a bureaucrat is required to actually give someone the status of admin or bureaucrat, but there aren't that many bureaucrats, we can be busy, and I can't see any good reason why admins wouldn't be trusted to close any discussion that's run its course according to the rules on the amount of time allotted and clearly has produced or lacks a consensus. Yet at some point, the following instructions were added: "After 14 days, a bureaucrat will close the discussion and, if there is a consensus that the nominee would make a good administrator, grant the administrator flag using Special:UserRights." Any objection to "After 14 days, a bureaucrat or admin will close the discussion, and, if there is a consensus that the nominee would make a good administrator, a bureaucrat will grant the relevant flag using Special:UserRights"? I would also propose to flip the order of the last two paragraphs in the text box. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:37, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Oppose per m:Bureaucrats and w:Wikipedia:Requests for adminship#Discussion, decision, and closing procedures. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:08, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't think we should care what they do on Meta, still less on Wikipedia, which is a huge site with loads of users of all types. Give an argument. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:18, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

The meta page I linked is not meta policy (notice how it's in namespace 0, not 4), but a general guideline that applies throughout Wikimedia. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:59, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

The Meta page says bureaucrats the technical ability to give or remove admin flags. Did I miss the part where it says admins cannot close threads of successful, still less unsuccessful admin nominations? If so, show me where it is. And then explain how it was a problem that numerous threads were closed by admins who were not bureaucrats. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:01, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that admins that are not bureaucrats have not been entrusted by the general community to close admin noms, regardless if the outcome was successful or not, unless it's an obvious case of w:WP:SNOW, where any user that's good-standing may close the nomination. If a wiki has no bureaucrats, then it's up to stewards to decide, not other admins (but we do, so doesn't really matter too much for us). Why do you think we should be the only wiki to stray away from standard practice that's done throughout the Wikimedia world? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:12, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Because it didn't cause any problems before and therefore is a solution in search of a problem and just creates unnecessary work for bureaucrats instead of distributing it to whomever finds it most convenient to do at the right time. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:51, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

It's partly because I think the current language hinders timeliness and efficiency. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:04, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

There's no harm if an RfA goes over by a day or two. You might want to read the third paragraph for w:Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard – this happens on the encyclopedia all the time. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:58, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

If we want more efficiency, the simplest solution is to refresh our 'crat list (by that I mean, nominating admins who are fit for the job and are reasonably active). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:03, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

I've found the edit that made explicit that bureaucrats close the discussion (LtPowers, Jan 2014) - the edit summary implies that was already the unwritten practice. Any thoughts on this, Powers?

"The snowball clause is one way that editors are encouraged to exercise common sense and avoid pointy, bureaucratic behavior." - That applies pretty well to the nomination that kickstarted this discussion. The nominated user didn't respond to the thread to confirm his acceptance, making it impossible for the nomination to be successful. Any admin could have closed it on that basis. If we want to make Wikivoyage less bureaucratic (and various users have stated this desire in the recent past), then this is one way to do it.

That said, the bureaucrat list does need refreshing. Of the eight current ones, only one of them actually does any bureaucrat work, and most are marginally active at best in other areas of Wikivoyage. Since we're supposed to keep the number of 'crats to an "absolute minimum", we should consider removing those that are no longer available to do the job (via the Stewards), and also appoint at least one new one to assist Ikan Kekek. I'd be happy to put myself forward as someone who checks in at least once every couple of days and is capable of pushing a few buttons.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:58, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

I've always thought w:WP:SNOW applied to cases like Wikivoyage:User rights nominations/Archives#User:Illinoisboy18, not a case like this but that's for another discussion. Regarding our need for more 'crats, I'm happy to nominate you tomorrow aftternoon and possibly make a nomination to remove the 'crat rights from all those who haven't been using their admin and/or bureaucrat tools. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:14, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, @ThunderingTyphoons!:. I believe when I made that edit I was reporting what I understood general Wikimedia policy to be. As a general matter, it seems odd to me to allow admins to close adminship discussions as it poses a risk of cliques of admins promoting their own. As a practical matter, though, that doesn't seem to be a realistic risk here on Wikivoyage. Powers ^(talk) 23:59, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

> admins that are not bureaucrats have not been entrusted by the general community to close admin noms

The point of this discussion is to decide whether to entrust admins with this task. That line of argument amounts to "We can't do this in the future because we didn't do it in the past, and nothing is allowed to change." WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:41, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Yabbut we cannot change a general Wikimedia guideline – we can stray away from it, but why though, when every other wiki does it this way? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:33, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

We can change any policy that isn't enforced in software, required by the Terms of Use, or demanded by the WMF's Board. We could ban the use of the letter j in the mainspace if we wanted to, or require that all admins rename their accounts. We can certainly decide for ourselves who's going to make a decision about whether we want someone to be an admin here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:22, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek, I wonder if you could explain what you think "close" means. This isn't a trick question, so let me seed your thoughts by saying that these are the typical meanings:

• stop people from commenting further
• decide what the result of a discussion is
• write down the result of a discussion

You might have a different idea in mind, and that's okay, too. Some of these are things that other admins could do, but I'm not sure it would actually save the buros any significant amount of time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

To me, "close" means "archive with a summary of the result" (so, for example "Not promoted to admin per consensus"). Keep in mind that there is supposed to be a time limit, so there isn't really supposed to be a decision about whether to "stop people from commenting further"; only the passage of time should be responsible for that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:46, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Thundering, I'd be happy to support a bureaucrat nom for you. One question should be how long we should allow a bureaucrat to be inactive before removing their bureaucrat flags. For admins, the term is 2 years. For bureaucrats, maybe it should be 1 year. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:50, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I know I said I'll make Thundering's nom today, but I'm going to put that on hold for another two weeks until we get the inactive bureaucrats sorted out (which I'll do soon). Regarding Ikan Kekek's question, I personally would say 6 months, maybe 9. 1 year is fine for me but not 2 – a compromised bureaucrat account could mean serious damage to the wiki.

If anything, I would follow what Wikimedia Commons does and require that all bureaucrats need to make 5 admin actions within 6 months (that's Commons' inactive admins policy; I propose we adopt that for inactive 'crats, not admins), though we could reduce that to maybe 2 admin actions within 6 months. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:31, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I think a year is fine. You might be on travel for several months and there might not be pending admin jobs to pick up if you don't have the time to monitor the wiki actively, so 6 months could mean we have to remove and renominate people who have happened to be busy. Being away longer than that, one should perhaps ask for removal of the flag until one comes back. –LPfi (talk) 09:39, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

There's now a thread at Wikivoyage_talk:Bureaucrats#Inactivity_policy. If it's alright with LPfi, I'm going to copy your comment over to there.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:32, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Just to LtPowers's reply, the risk of a clique of unscrupulous admins promoting one of their own is even lower than you say; for as long as the actual ability to promote users rests with the bureaucrats, any clique couldn't enact such a wrongful promotion. As I understand the proposal, a nomination would generally only need to be closed by an admin if there were no consensus to support the nom or if it obviously couldn't succeed such as for when the nominee didn't respond (which is what happened in my first admin nomination - I got cold feet!) --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:11, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

They could close the thread otherwise but would need to get a bureaucrat to flip the switch, yes. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:04, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with an admin writing a summary of these discussions or archiving the older threads. Promoting someone, in practice, will still require the active agreement of a buro.

I might suggest that a policy change would specify that in case of disputes, etc., the final decision lies with the buros and not with admins or others. (This is a natural consequence of everyone being volunteers: if a buro personally doesn't want to push the buttons, then we literally can't make them do it.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Request for participation in discussion of user rights nomination process

Swept in from the pub

This thread: Wikivoyage talk:User rights nominations#Bureaucrats must close all user rights nom threads? Why? Many such threads have been closed by non-bureaucrat admins, but at least one admin thinks that's wrong, and current language at Wikivoyage:User rights nominations states that all such threads have to be closed by bureaucrats. I'm not sure when that language was added and propose to change it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:05, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Nominating [User:Danyl Schiff] Couldn't post on page, so posted it here.

User:Ikan Kekek and I both recently saw an image posted by a user named PedoCaryJaySmith on the Phoenix, AZ page that contained (possibly, not entirely sure) illegal content containing a minor. Legal or not, it is totally inappropriate. If this is gonna be a problem on here, then I want to be promoted to admin in order to increase my ability to detect and remove this bull----. I am willing to limit my admin activities ONLY to eliminating pedos and CP if it improves my chances of getting accepted as admin. Dat Boy Danyl Schiff (talk) 05:57, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

@Danyl Schiff: I don't know what was preventing you from posting it on WV:URN (it wasn't the abuse filter), but I've added your nomination for you. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:09, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

How long was the image visible before I deleted it? Do we need more admins or patrollers? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:14, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, the page was vandalised at 00:59 UTC; you later blocked the user at 01:29 but only revdeled the revision at 04:29. I don't think we need more admins or patrollers solely for antivandalism work, especially when it's always possible for global sysops to use their tools. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

@SHB2000: For me, when I start to edit the page, there is a big box saying "This page has been locked so that only registered users can edit it." I assume that's not entirely true, the protection log says "only autoconfirmed users". Apparently Danyl Schiff isn't autoconfirmed yet – and somebody who isn't shouldn't be doing admin nominations. As told on the nomination page (by you and IK), more experience is needed. I think a speedy close would be appropriate. –LPfi (talk) 07:38, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

@LPfi: isn't the requirement for being an autoconfirmed user on this wiki 4 days and 0 edits? Danyl Schiff has had the account registered on 2022-12-02, so I presume you're referring to them not being autopatrolled (which shouldn't affect their ability to edit this page)? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:41, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I didn't check the criteria (and I don't remember where to check them), it just seemed an obvious possible reason. Odd. –LPfi (talk) 08:11, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Sysops, abuse filter 38, please.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:47, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

@ThunderingTyphoons!, LPfi, Ikan Kekek: indeffed – Special:Redirect/logid/3770437. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:46, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

That sucks! I wonder what made you suspect, but best not to say. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:55, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Locks requested. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:14, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

and now the user has been globally locked. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:17, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

• yeah, a new user, right out of the blue, asking for anti-vandalism adminship... didn't smell right. I'm glad it was so quickly sorted out. Ibaman (talk) 20:24, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Archives Discussion

There is a discussion on Wikivoyage talk:User rights nominations/Archives#Splitting up this archive, but only template editors and administrators can write to that page. The link from Wikivoyage:User rights nominations to the archives isn't where I would expect to see it, but I don't see much point in fixing it at the moment if they are about to move. AlasdairW (talk) 12:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, we don't want other folks to edit the archive, but there's no reason autoconfirmed users shouldn't be able to post to that talk page, so I've enabled them to do so. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:31, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Removal process

Am I correct that @SHB2000 is the only person to have ever nominated an admin for involuntary de-sysopping? I didn't spot any others in the archives, but I could have missed anything that didn't use the couple of keywords I searched for. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't remember any other example, not counting de-sysopping for extended inactivity. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, you are right indeed. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:18, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

@SHB2000, both of these involved you claiming that a fellow admin "misused" the Rollback button to revert edits that you'd have no problem with them reverting if they had instead clicked the Undo button, right?

Looking at Wikivoyage:Administrators' handbook#Rollbacks does not actually contain any rules prohibiting admins from using rollback whenever they want. Your proposal at Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub/2022#Formalised rollback policy to make such a prohibition failed.

Would you feel more comfortable (i.e., less like admins were misusing the Rollback tool) if we adopted a rule that says "Unlike at the English Wikipedia, here in this community, anyone with access to the Rollback button is welcome to use the Rollback button whenever they believe that an edit should be reverted"?

I'm looking for something that would make it crystal-clear to all contributors, and especially to you, that if an edit can be reverted with Undo, under our policies, it is never "misuse" to revert it with Rollback. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:58, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Or maybe something like this:

• "The English Wikivoyage never considers overuse of the Rollback tool to be a problem worthy of de-sysopping an admin."
• "Misuse of rollback only happens when an editor reverts more than 100 edits that definitely should not be reverted and explicitly refuses to help clean up the mess."
• "Any admin who tries to have another admin de-sysopped for misuse of the rollback tool will be de-sysopped himself."

I'm not looking for ideas that you will approve of. I'm looking for a rule that will stop you from trying to de-sysop other admins for using the rollback button during disputes with you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

This creates a grave concern for abuse and misuse of the tool which I would oppose tooth and nail. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

We don't have a definition of either "abuse" or "misuse" that encompasses this tool, so right now, it's already not possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:30, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Much to my surprise, I find myself inclined to spring to SHB2000's defense here.

I was the target of their previous attempt to de-sysop someone, and I feel strongly that both attempts were nonsensical & malicious, grounds for censure. However, unlike in the current case, I did feel that they brought up some good points against me. One was that I was overusing rollback.

I can accept WhatamIdoing's first point above:

"The English Wikivoyage never considers overuse of the Rollback tool to be a problem worthy of de-sysopping an admin."

It seems to me that should be so obvious as not to need stating, but apparently it does.

The other points strike me as unnecessary overreaction. Pashley (talk) 03:14, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I believe that clarifying the rules, so that people do not assume that this community works like the English Wikipedia, can prevent a lot of hurt feelings. People might differ about the desirability of any given action (e.g., clicking this button vs that button), but I do not want to have any more "Please de-sysop him because he was rude to me and then used rollback in a way that violates a completely different community's rules" discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

My basis for bringing rollback in the past two nominations is that a while back, a patroller was removed of their tools a while back for similar tool misuses – why should it be different for sysops? Note that there have been no policy changes since then. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:24, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Clarifying is fine, possibly unnecessary but OK. However "Any admin who ... will be de-sysopped himself." is not clarification but a policy change that I see as completely over-the-top. Granted, I see these nominations as thoroughly annoying abuse of policy for which the perpetrator should be (& has been) told off. Still, w:Wikipedia:Assume good faith applies. Pashley (talk) 04:58, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

In Pashley's case, there have been zero rollbacks on good-faith edits ever since and in many cases, what I would say how all desysop nominations should proceed – argue for the extreme, then work your way out of it. I do agree with Pashley that I think that was over-the-top now that I think about it, but we reached an agreement and have never had a problem since.

Asretired's case of rollbacks are only a small part of the larger issue. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:44, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

None of them violated any actual, written rule here. The reason you made that proposal last time is because we determined that the complaint you made against Pashley was based on rules that do not exist at this wiki. Even though you knew that the rule doesn't exist here, now you've tried again to get another admin de-sysopped over the non-existent rule. What I'm hoping to do is to put a rule in place that will help you remember that the non-existent rule doesn't exist here. I'm open to any language whatsoever that will achieve that goal. Maybe a big, bold-faced note at the top of this page that says "Remember, this community does not share the English Wikipedia's rules about using the rollback button. Be very suspicious of any complaints based on misuse of that tool"?

I believe that there are potential misuses of that tool (e.g., rolling back every edit ever made by one person, especially if it's not just a one-time mistake), but none of the edits you've tried to have people de-sysopped over are misuse of the rollback tool according to the rules here.

SHB, I don't think you should try to get anyone de-sysopped ever again. You've already had two utterly failed attempts, and that's plenty; a third strike might need to mean that you are out. However, I'd rather see a nom that says "He hurt my feelings" than one that says "He hurt my feelings plus he used a tool in a way that violates some other wikis' rules but not ours". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I am not happy about us having to write policy on a thing that is generally understood and should not cause issues. That's not the Wikivoyage way. SHB is aware of this discussion and I sincerely hope they can take it to their heart without hours spent on trying to find a good wording and arguing about the merits of the addition. –LPfi (talk) 19:41, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with LPfi and would appreciate if my comments weren't satirised by WhatamIdoing. Your [WhatamIdoing] sole attempt with this discussion seems to be directed at me, and this is not the first time you've tried to draft policies based on actions of mine you've disagreed with. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:28, 17 March 2024 (UTC)