Guild Wars Wiki talk:Adminship/A5

Check users?

Since when did we have this usergroup? Is this the group that is allowed to check users' IPs? - J.P.Talk 02:36, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and a few months ago, iirc. calor (talk) 02:42, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

It's to check if two users share the same IP or IP with and account. –alistic 02:42, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

More like late-ish November. --RIDDLE 02:43, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Riddle's right... Just checked. Poke requested it November 3rd, bit of discussion, bit of waiting for Anet, so late November. calor (talk) 02:44, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been mostly away during late November and the whole December, so i'm a bit behind what's happening in here. But Balistic, i know what it does. People discussed about this before my inactivity :) - J.P.Talk 02:47, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

correction: Pling brought up the discussion and forced me to create the formal page for it. poke | talk 10:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Should we include something in the policy page, like "granted technical access to a few restricted features (including blocking users, checking users' IP and account usage, and deleting pages)"? I'm not sure if there's a better link out there, but that's the essence of it. -- pling 18:15, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Might be good to spell it out. But wouldn't it be better to point to here instead? --JonTheMon 18:21, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The tech request doesn't really explain what it does, it's just a, well, tech request for Anet. I know Wikimedia/Wikipedia has a page, but I think that's their policy rather than a manual or article. -- pling 18:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

My question is, should we have a CheckUser Policy for the sysops? I am thinking not, because we should trust them to not abuse it like any other power. -- riyen ♥ 05:00, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a log that is generated when CheckUser is used, I don't know if only the Sysops can see it though. So at a bare minimum the people who use it are able to see if anyone is abusing it (I know that may not work for people who fear that Sysops can't police themselves). Last time I looked, it was mostly just Sysops using it on themselves with a reason of "testing" (myself included). --Rainith 05:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think normal editors can see the CheckUser log. --RIDDLE 05:41, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

No, normal editors cannot see the CheckUser log. -- Lacky 07:19, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

It's a good thing normal editiors cannot see it. Also, happy to note that sysops can police themselves. Sounds like a goodie on there, too. It brings me to this question, Should there be a guideline for the sysops on it? It should be very simple, but a thought for the just in case senarios. -- riyen ♥ 16:07, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, the log tells you almost as much information as running a checkuser. When you see someone checkuser someone, then checkuser a list of IPs, then checkuser another user it looks very much like they found a sock, as well as giving you a list of someone's IPs without having to checkuser them yourself. Misery 16:28, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I have a question here: How can a sysop abuse checkuser?Pika Fan 16:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

By revealing information about accounts that have not breached policy, such as revealing to the world that Pling and I are either the same person or live at the same address, or by revealing IP addresses which people may not wish to become public, such as Karate Jesus' work IP address so that the trolls can tell his bosses how naughty he has been. Misery 16:28, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The only thing I can think of is publishing private information; but in that (unrealistic) case that abuse would be visible to everybody again and as such could be handled by the normal ways. poke | talk 16:29, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

A Resignation and an Apology

I'm going to keep this brief. Suffice it to say that recent, unforeseen changes in the conditions of my real life have effectively rendered my ability to contribute to GWW nonexistent. I cannot reasonably expect those conditions to change in the near (or even the foreseeable) future, and am thus forced to resign as a bureaucrat, much to my own chagrin. I realize that this will likely create some difficulties, particularly given that there is currently an open arbitration case, and I apologize in advance for any hardship that is produced as a result of my resignation, but given that I am likely to remain more or less completely unable to contribute for quite some time, I'm afraid that not resigning would create an even greater set of difficulties. — Defiant Elements +talk 10:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

What to do now?

Since DE resigned, we have to decide how to proceed. Excluding the possibility of leaving the seat open for the rest of the term, we could:

1. Promote the runner-up in the election when DE was elected
2. Promote the runner-up in the most recent election
3. Start a new election now
4. Hold a double election when Tanetris seat will become vacant in about a month

Given that we will start the election for Tanetris seat in about 2 weeks, my personal favorite is No 4. --Xeeron 13:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Same. The "winner" could take Tane's term and the runner-up could take the remainder of DE's. -Auron 13:37, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

My favourite option is number 4, too, but I would rather change DE's term so it would last one year beginning at the February's election. We would then always have two bureaucrats elections at the same time, reducing the time the community remains focused on them. Having the third election at a different time would allow users who aren't around by February to have a chance at the position. Erasculio 13:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Option 4 is the best road forward on this one. -- Salome 14:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with option 4, and with Auron's comment. -- Lacky 14:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Option 4, best choice. -- Cyan 14:08, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec)I'll note that, from policy, our actual options are 2 or 4 (actually I suppose there's nothing stopping us from option 3, but in this particular situation it seems silly), and technically Aii and I make that decision, though I for one am happy to listen to anyone who wants to weigh in. Given how soon the next election starts and how much of DE's term is left, I'm inclined toward waiting for the February election.

@Erasculio: After the February election the bcrat terms wil finally be fully staggered from our decision back in August to switch to 1-year terms, so there will only be an election every 4 months. Let's wait to see how that goes before we start screwing with the election schedule further. - Tanetris 14:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem I see is that when having two elections in February it will be confusing with the term length, because after all we want to achieve the following terms:

• March -> February (would replace Tanetris' term)
• July -> June (would replace Aiiane's term)
• November -> October (is/was DE's term)

So to keep that and our "one election every 4 months" idea, in the February election we would need to have one term March -> February and one term March -> October (an 8 months term).

Or we could make the 2nd place from the last election taking that remaining time. (Or make him have a now -> April term and an election for a 6 months term May - October) poke | talk 15:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Just let the runner up from the election in Feb serve the remainder of DE's time. -- Salome 15:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I kinda agree with the runner-up getting his term. Mostly since the next election then won't need to elect 2 candidates, something that would be off the norm. --JonTheMon 15:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Well that would mean Miz would be elected as he came second to Aiiane in the last election. Miz is a cool guy so don't really mind either way, however I just thought it might be fairer for those voting to know they were electing 2 people in feb and thus allowing people to vote accordingly then. -- Salome 15:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Option 4 please. --Silverleaf Don't assume, Know! 16:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Salome, our election policy always leaves such a possibility open. poke | talk 16:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Jon, we've had a similar situation when Tanaric resigned his bureaucracy - we decided to have two winners in the next election. However, that resignation was much closer to the election than this one is - waiting until the February election ends will leave us with only two bureaucrats for a month and five days. Will that be problematic? I'm not really sure, but I'm not really bothered either.

If we don't follow the vacated seats section of the election policy (i.e. option 2), I'd go for option 4. If necessary, the runner up from the last election can take the seat until the February election is resolved with two new bureaucrats, as Poke suggests above. That's a kind of mixture of option 2/policy and 4.

I don't think the bureaucrat we choose to replace DE should serve a whole year, since that would render the staggered terms thing useless. So yes, I'd prefer the new bureaucrat serves the remainder of DE's term. -- pling 17:25, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand that Poke, that their is always a possibility of this happening in according to our policies, it's just it happens very rarely and the one tie it happened before we went with option 4. However Pling covered all my points above, so basically in agreement with Pling. -- Salome 18:30, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I think 4 would be easiest, though I wouldn't mind 2 as well. Also, remainder of the term thingy. — Why 20:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

This section is pretty sad. We put in the effort to have a system everyone was OK with so that there wouldn't be any issues or delays in a live situation. Don't you think it would have been better to raise your issues with just about any other time? (And yes, I understand that you might not have been thinking about things until they became actual. There is still later.) Backsword 12:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

That is cold. If someone can't handle their duties, then they can't as real life happens. Take in the facts that life can change drastically without a moments notice. I respect that this person did this in the best way that he could. Kaisha 16:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Salome: "it's just it happens very rarely and the one tie it happened before we went with option 4" - The thing is, that we then made those policy changes so we would be ready if it happens again. Now it happened again, and basically we just ignore what we have decided back then and put into the policy. Don't understand me wrong, I don't have a problem with option 4, but we made that decision so that we have a correct way for such situations, so we shouldn't ask if it was "fair" for the voters or not. After all they should vote for all candidates they would support. poke | talk 17:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Kaisha, I think Backsword is referring to our discussion about how to go ahead with selecting a replacement, not DE's resignation itself - since we put something into policy detailing what we should do in a situation like this, we should follow that, according to Backsword. That's similar to option 2 on Xeeron's list. However, option 4 seems to be popular; it won't result in any delays to the next election, since we have almost two weeks until it starts. In this case, we have plenty of time to decide what to do if we're going against the policy without messing up the next election. (And if the consensus is against the policy, we go ahead with the consensus and update the policy if required).

I think it's up to the bureaucrats to decide if they want to use the results from the last election to decide DE's replacement. I'm ok with both options. -- pling 18:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm of somewhat the same mind as Tanetris in this particular case; I wouldn't really mind either option 2 or 4, but since the upcoming election is so close, it does seem like it might be convenient. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

What to do after

Seems that we should also add a policy amendment that would describe how to handle resignations. Something along the lines of:

• If the term ends within 5 weeks, wait for that election.
• If the term began within 5 weeks, offer the position to the runner up in the recent election
  • Possible modification: open an is anyone opposed vote for 7 days (in case an election didn't have runners-up with positives >> negatives).
• For any other situation, hold a new election.

I don't have a strong opinion about the details, as long as we have a clear policy to deal with the 1x/24 month event.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

IMO, it would be better to leave it to common sense; the decision is already made by bureaucrats, and I think that's how it should stay. Right now there's nothing requiring a bureaucrat in Defiant Element's place, but if we were within 4 weeks of the next election and filled with ArbComm requests, I would rather have a runner up taking the position than waiting for the beginning of next process. Erasculio 11:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

This case will (hopefully) be so rare that we can deal with it as it comes up. As the section above shows, we didn't have any problem getting to a consensus quickly. No need to start a policy change for it. --Xeeron 17:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Xeeron. These resignation situations are rare and circumstances surrounding them are often unique, so much so that a policy can't accurately document them, or can't deal with a future situation more adequately than a discussion at the time could. This may mean we choose to remove the vacated seats section from ELECT or we leave it there as an option to easily go back to if we want. -- pling 22:23, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

As a side note: Our policies are formalized consensus, but remember that consensus always beats policy (given it is clear, and has a large enough backing). --Xeeron 22:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Bureaucrats

So from what I can tell the "ArbComms" seem to not happen regularly at all, and potentially a lot of bureaucrat activity happens off the wiki responding to potential emails?.. I can see that in the case of Aiiane that she makes practically no wiki edits over the space of 5 months and mysteriously turns up for the current election. How can we tell if a bureaucrat is actually any good at what they do or being helpful at all if its all behind the scenes? --File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 22:21, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not really a bureaucrat's job to be helpful (though it would certainly be nice), but yes, there is a distinct lack of transparency among the upper echelon of GWW. In Aiiane's case, I would encourage you to examine the results of her last year as a bureaucrat and make a decision based off that. ([1] [2] [3] might help) elix Omni 22:30, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

The bureaucrat job is also one that tends to sparse - there will often be months without any bureaucrat activities required at all (in an ideally functioning wiki without conflict, the only thing bureaucrats would have to do is promote/demote new sysops and bureaucrats, which happens somewhat infrequently). The biggest reason you haven't seen a ton of bureaucrat activity is because there hasn't been much, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:45, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

To put it another way, the extremely active bureaucrats in the past were active despite being a bureaucrat, not because of it. It's pretty rare to actually need to put your bureaucrat hat on. Since wiki activity is lower now and there's not as much to actually do, it's not surprising that the more active editors have become somewhat dormant. —Tanaric 15:52, 16 June 2011 (UTC)