Guild Wars Wiki talk:Adminship/Draft 2007-11-14

Proposal discussion

This is just my own thoughts and interpretation of what was argued in several talk pages around the wiki that tends to stir up hot feelings for some reason. Anyway, this is an attempt to put to words exactly what is being suggested by the proponents of giving a bit more discretion to sysops. Feel free to disagree and discuss.

And to preempt all the comments about certain vague terms used like "offensive", "disruptive", "should", "reasonable", etc., well, the whole point of giving discretionary powers to sysops is to allow them the discretion of interpreting these based on convention or norm and not trying to define every single thing that's mostly impossible to define. Like the blocking policy, vandalism, and profanity arguments, it is simply impossible to define or scope them. Oh, you can put in some general guidelines and general meanings or interpretations, but in the end, these are still just rough interpretations, nothing more. So rather than having a sysop wait for consensus while things spiral out of hand, we can have sysops react and then react/revert as necessary depending on consensus. The idea behind this should be "for the good of the wiki", not "for the good of the feelings of a small number of users". And by that I mean most wiki users won't know what happens in talk pages, contributors in good standing will understand, contributors who don't understand and can't accept it are likely part of what's causing the problem in the first place.

The above is not wholly my idea, I was also incorporating some of the arguments made here, but I support it. Naturally, if there's any change to this policy, I'll accept reconfirmation; not trying to pursue my own agenda. -- ab.er.rant 06:51, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I just want "are expected to adhere rigorously to policies and respect consensus" that word out. It's unnecessary and might create misleading (as in, too narrow) interepretation of this policy, further hindering sysops discretion (wich is not what we are going for here). There's no real difference between "are expected to adhere rigorously to policies" and "are expected to adhere to policies", since policies are by definition rigorous. Let's not forget Sysops are users too, and as all users they are to follow policies. As sysops they should be better at it, but having this policy stating that is a bit too much already. So, the R word is just exageration.reanor 14:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I originally wanted to remove that word too... but I put it back. So... I'll remove it for now, unless someone has a good replacement for it. -- ab.er.rant 02:13, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Reconfirmations

I'll stand back from commenting on the proposal right now, but apart from the other changes, it should include a mention of the reconfirmation process. --Xeeron 15:32, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure how the reconfirmation is expected to work so I won't be adding it. -- ab.er.rant 02:13, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

It's just a mention. Not a new proposal for reconofirmation. I'll give it a try.reanor 03:55, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Done. Feedback, please.reanor 04:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I linked this at proposed policy changes, more people should notice this now. --Xeeron 13:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Bumpity bump

Bump for comments. -- ab.er.rant 03:42, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

No objection here. -- Gordon Ecker 04:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Made some wording changes, mostly removing diffuse parts. Also moved it to proposal. Backsword 10:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the change is nice. I also don't think it's going to solve the problem at all (yes, warning, huge comment incoming). What is the problem, exactly? We have seen different definitions of what the problem is, but so far, the best defined ones I have seen are:

1) Sysops are afraid to act. The policies leave room for a lot of interpretation (despite how often it's assumed otherwise by common users), and at the same time sysops are some times attacked for applying their own interpretation when doing something. The result is that, in order to avoid being attacked, sysops choose not to act at all.

2) The current system is slow. Between how long it takes for a policy to be made (see this one as an example, this page screams "apathy!"), how long many discussions here are, and how sysops are afraid to act (see the point above), disruptive behavior is allowed to run unopposed for too long.

Is the proposed change by itself going to fix any of the above? I doubt it - as far as I can see, they reflect a mentality, not a matter of policies. First, there's the problem that we (me, Ereanor, and others) are speaking about other people - none of us are sysops, and we don't really know how the sysops feel about the problems above. Sure, one or two sysops have stated their opinion, but we are still in the dark about what all the sysops think - do they see this as a problem for everyone? Do they think this policy change would help? Do they want this kind of change to be made? And so on.

Second, I doubt we will ever reach a state in which sysops are never questioned. IMO, we will always have users acting out of spite after they have been punished (example), users who act in extremely vindictive ways after a sysop rulling against them (example, after this), users who disagree with sysops action they simply don't like (example), and so on.

In some ways, sysops having to answer to the community is a good thing, IMO; I like that accountability, and I like the fact that any user may at any given time discuss a rulling with a sysop. But IMO, we have reached an extreme - we have users talking as if they were sysops and demanding admins to do as they want to be done (a direct example here, and an indirect one here). I don't see that as giving discretion or power to sysops - IMO it's just telling sysops how to act, despite what those sysops think or want. That is what should not happen, IMO; that's the kind of thing that the condition of being a sysop should prevent, as it's implied that the community has chosen the sysops, and not whoever is making the calls, to make such decisions. Unfortunately I don't think a policy could possibly prevent such behavior, as it requires a change of mentality.

Third, problem number 2 is a matter of opinion, and we don't know whose opinion that is. Do the sysops themselves think they are acting too slow? Or is this community simply more lenient than some users wished it to be? Are users just asking for perma bans without thinking of the consequences? Or are users asking to give too many chances to people, without thinking of the consequences? I don't think there's a consensus on how to act - and in the absence of a consensus, I believe we should allow the sysops (and the bureaucrats) decide how fast, and how slow, they want to act. But there again, do the admins think they are being forced to act more slowly than they wanted do? I don't know, and I would be happy if the sysops could tell us the answer to that question.

So, making it short: I agree with the proposed policy change here. But I don't think it's going to have such an impact; and I don't think it could possibly have an impact if this discussion is driven by a few common users (or, like the Adminship discussion, a few very vocal users), with little to no input by the ones we're talking about, the sysops. Erasculio 11:42, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem is that the personal attacks policy assumes that the target of an attack will try to resolve the conflict or go to the admin noticeboard. In practice, the target is more likely to ignore the personal attack or respond with another attack, allowing users to stay under the radar until their personal attacks get really bad. I think the only solution would be a welcome message specifically pointing out the admin noticeboard and the personal attack policy. -- Gordon Ecker 03:52, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Yea, a side effect of letting a community manage themselves is that the community usually don't bother contacting an admin until things have gotten out of hand. So by the time an admin gets in and appraises the situation, tempers have already been flaring. I'm trying to change the wording the policy to make it sound more authoritative, to cut down on the previous emphasis on "cleaning up". As for the noticeboard, how about putting it on the menu above the "Report a wiki bug"? -- ab.er.rant 04:53, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

One way to change that (without any change to the policy itself) would be to ask the sysops to "patrol" - instead of relying on the Admin noticeboard together with the attacks that happen to be in front of the sysop, ask the admins to constantly look at the more controversial pages seeking the NPA breaches that eventually happen there. However, I'm not sure that would improve the wiki (not to mention how it would be boring for the sysops, IMO) - one way to see it is to think that users stay under the radar until their attacks are really bad, an another is to think that the users are confortable with dealing with most attacks themselves, only resorting to the sysops when said attacks become really bad. Erasculio 14:52, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Recall how this began, Eras. Some (me and others) saw the "policy proliferation" as a sign of "something's wrong here" and after the "long discussion" we found out that the way this community treats sysops is an important root of the "problem". Finally, the "longer discussion" at GWW:ADMIN turned into this proposal. Now we have to remember that this is just the first step of a long walk towards change. You're right, this is not enough, but it is official and it's the right place to crystalize all the process we went through. Yes, we are not sysops, we are users. We don't know how they feel and we don't do their job, but we know how we feel and pushing onward with our ideas is our job. The community has problems, we are the community and we have to solve them. I think this is a good start, as long as we keep in mind that there's still a lot of work to do.reanor 05:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you - I just think it's important to reinforce how this is just one step, not the solution. IMO this isn't even the most important thing that has to be done. Erasculio 12:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Some concerns

Here are a few concerns (some minor, some major):

1. Naming stuff like "carrying out actions in line with those policies" as additional responsibilities seems to mean/imply that non-sysops have no such responsibilities. But lots of stuff is best dealt with as a community effort. For example: reverting unusable copyrighted text.
2. If preventing blatantly disruptive, offensive, or inflammatory behavior is their responsibility, doesn't that mean that sysops would be failing their responsibility whenever someone behaves blatantly disruptively, offensively, etc? (Probably just needs some sort of wording change?)
3. Does blatantly inflammatory behavior generally include strong criticisms/complaints about the system? If not, what does it generally include?
4. I worry that the extra subjectivity would tend to create more critical disagreements between sysops. That and the extra subjectivity itself may make users more reluctant to have as many sysops. So I'd want to see a replacement system for making sure that we can adapt our coverage to easily handle any future varying levels of vandalism we have. For example, some new "Vandal Blocker" role that is only empowered to block vandals/spammers, where we don't have to worry so much about our faith in their subjective decisions and so it wouldn't be a big deal to toss around the title to plenty of users and have pretty solid 24-hour vandalism coverage.

--Rezyk 22:55, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

1 - I would say yes, but I think I get your point. I just wanted a sentence to kinda nicely summarize the responsibilities of a sysop. To replace the line which says sysops just do clean up and block people.

2 - I replaced "preventing" with "dealing with". Better? Or do you have a better sentence in mind?

3 - Strong criticisms/complaints about the game or how this wiki functions is tolerable if the discussion remains reasonable despite being aggressive. Strong criticisms/complaints about something that is outside the scope of this wiki or when it has nothing to do with this wiki is unnecessary and should be stopped or calmed down.

4 - I find it difficult to come up with an "adaptive" admin policy without introducing subjectivity. The whole idea of being adaptive is to be more flexible and less strict. While an additional role is an idea that's been brought up from time to time in several different locations, absolutely nothing has come out of it.

Just my thoughts on your questions. I find it somewhat frustrating to even bother with this. Every time something happens, we have users and trolls going into the red regarding sysops and their role. But when it comes to actually trying to come up with resolutions, everything suddenly becomes very quiet. Oh well. -- ab.er.rant 15:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

So.... no response despite my response? Can I just bulldoze this through? -- ab.er.rant 05:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Do it. We can revert it if hell breaks loose afterwards.reanor 05:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll bump Rezyk's talk first. -- ab.er.rant 05:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a little observation. If he says "go ahead" we'll consider it "community consensus" lol.reanor 05:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but a talk page with only 5 people commenting on it is not community consensus about a change to such an important policy. I don't know why not more people commented, but this is not enough. --Xeeron 10:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't personally see anything objectionable in this policy. - HeWhoIsPale 13:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I support this change to policy as currently detailed. That having been said I have brought this change to the attention of a number of other editors for their thoughts, so it may be too early to sign off on it yet. --Indecision 16:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I support this change, I just have minor wording issues. See wording section below. - anja 17:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, still catching up.

1. Yeah.
2. "dealing with" is the first thing that comes to my mind too, but then it goes back to issue #1.
3. It's just that I see the meaning of "inflammatory" as covering much more than that, including reasonable discourse. To me, your description sounds closer to enforcing civility.
4. Yeah, except that it is untrue that "absolutely nothing has come out of it".

I'm not sure what else I should say about #1 and #4.. I believe you have good reasons, but it doesn't make my concerns any less of a concern, and I don't see them as being mutually incompatible with your reasons. Should I try rewriting this draft to address them all? -- separated roles, sysops with open-ended adaptive power, outlined responsibilities, etc? I'm somewhat reluctant to do so because I strongly suspect that even if I do that and we get it installed, it won't help with the complaints at all.

--Rezyk 19:42, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I've reworded the first paragraph and it now no longer has the phrase "additional responsibilities". Just a "enforcement of policies" should be fine? As for the sentence with "inflammatory" in it, I kinda have it as a catchall explanation for sysops to resolve issues where users are unnecessarily disruptive, in short, trolling. The "blatantly" makes it apply only to excessive behavior. I would like to think that a separate role should not need to be discussed here, as any additional less authoritative roles would most likely hold a subset of a sysop's responsibilities. If you're concerned that a change in role should entail a change in the sysop selection process, perhaps require a reconfirmation of all sysops upon implementation? I don't see a problem with disagreements between sysops. We can extend the noticeboard to add a place where sysops can ask for a review for their actions. As for adaptive power, I think I probably have the wrong idea of what you mean, so it would be good if you could draft it out. -- ab.er.rant 04:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

• Sorry, but I dislike "enforcement of policies", because I would actually like to try and change the general notion of strictly equating "what is and isn't policy" to "what a special class of users can and cannot block you for". I consider this notion to be one of the root problems of frustrations with policy discussions.
• For "inflammatory"..I still find your explanation much more palatable than the original wording. =) The scope of "blatantly inflammatory" can be interpreted as more by some -- such as including civil incitement towards change in the system. The scope of "blatantly offensive" can be interpreted as more by some -- such as including simple profanity. What I mean is...look, you even describe it as being for a type of disruption; can't you cover all of what you're targeting with just something like "excessively disruptive"? That would lessen the concern about this evolving into unforeseen censorship.
• My concern/request for a separated role is not about who currently has some special role and then maybe shouldn't; it's about who currently doesn't have a special role and maybe should. Reconfirmation couldn't help this. Case in point: Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for adminship/Auron. There is some serious opposition to adminship there -- but on the flipside, this is a user who (I believe) is completely capable and trustworthy in helping to block vandals and spammers, which tends to be the main thing driving the need for more administrators. Is there a good reason that we may restrict ourselves from this resource? It is more like because the only role we have for this has a power/flexibility level set too high, if anything, forcing individual users of the community closer to having to make all-or-nothing decisions. Putting in more subjectivity into the role will only exacerbate this problem (not to mention exacerbate the issue of complaints toward the sysops as people), so I think it's a fair concern to seek a separated, "powered-down" role to alleviate it.

I'll try modifying the draft to show what I mean with these, and what I mean by adaptive power. --Rezyk 21:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, modified. A sysop role with much more discretionary banning power, and a developed separate role for the common/benign blocking cases. I don't want to be forcefully usurping this draft though; let me know if you prefer me to move it into a separate proposal page. In any case, please carefully consider why this idea would or would not satisfy all general concerns better. --Rezyk 22:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Wording

The first section in the sysop part states additional "billions" of times without really referring to what the basic stuff is. It kind of implies that everyone knows what the basic sysop tasks is and this stated is the things that's unique to GWW. It kind of confuses me, I'm not even sure myself what those basic tasks would be. If there was a special meaning with the word "additional", I think it would be benefitial to make it more clear. If there was not, I think it should be removed, at least from the first line. - anja 17:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

As I understood it, additional to those of normal users. Backsword 01:03, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Thinking about it, for the benefit of new users we should probably begin by explaining what a SysOp technically is, ie' move the last sentence of the first paragraph to the beginning. And then give an overview of what those powers may be use for. Backsword 01:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I've reworded the first paragraph. I believe the reason why it seemed upside-down was because I was trying to avoid having so many paragraphs that start with "Sysops are..." :D -- ab.er.rant 04:12, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Alot better, thanks! - anja 08:23, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Mmm ya

I didn't know where to put this under the other headings, but I've read through the policy and checked the diff, and this change looks fine to me. If there are any further refinements on wording etc, I'll comment here again. - BeX 03:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Why the change of names?

I see no reason to switch from "sysop" and "bureaucrat" to an oddball term like "xunlai agent" - especially since the wiki special pages will still refer to what this policy calls "xunlai agents" as "sysops" - even the policy has this (with the reference to the list of sysops). Changing the terms accomplishes very little and only leads to confusion. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:57, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Fuckin' fail. — Skuld 22:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Now there would be no such reference, including in the special pages. --Rezyk 23:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

No, you still don't get my point, Rezyk. What purpose does this change of names serve? (And the URL still lists 'sysop'.) There is no pressing reason why the names of positions need to be changed around; change for change's sake is pointless and confusing. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:13, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with Aiine. Standardization (i.e. Sysop referring to the MediaWiki Sysop role on every Wiki) serves a purpose, it prevents confusion both because users, new and old, are expecting the lower level administrators to be referred to as Sysops, and, because the term Sysop is used, as Aiine points out to describe the server generated lists. Unless there's some compelling reason to change the name, why add needless complications? File:Defiant Elements Sig Image.JPG *Defiant Elements* +talk 23:18, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Huh? at this name change without discussion. I honestly thought someone had created another "joke policy" page when I read it at first. Unless someone can come up with a very, very good reason why we should change names, I do not support that. --Xeeron 23:34, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I have the feeling that Rezyk's point is to change the wiki in much more than just the name - based on his comments above about creating a new position so there's a distinction between "sysops who only follow policies to the letter" and "sysops who do more stuff", I think he decided to give a new name to the former, instead of giving a new name to the later (like in one of the proposed policies Rezyk made). "Xunlai agents" would then be our current sysops, while the sysops with enough power to ban people because they don't like t-er, with power to ban people on their own discretion and nothing else would be called "sysops". They would have more power than bureaucrats and not be limited to 3 (of course, I don't agree with any of it, but that's what I think he means). Erasculio 23:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The new policy removes all mention of bureaucrats and replaces them with what it calls sysops. There are still only 2 levels of administration. Please read it before commenting. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:50, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Cut down on the pointless agressivity, please. Like I said, the new sysops would be different from bureaucrats based on having more power and on not being as limited in number. Bureaucrats themselves would then be pointless, as all their attributions (and more) would be part of the new sysops. I would guess that's why Rezyk decided to just remove them. Erasculio 23:53, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It was not meant to be taken as aggressive, your statements simply seemed in direct conflict with what is actually written in the proposal. Furthermore, if sysops effectively do what bureaucrats do, but with more powers, why not simply give more powers to bureaucrats and make bureaucrats less limited in number? There's still no reason at all to change the names. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:55, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

No idea. I don't even agree with it - that's just what I think Rezyk meant. I would guess he wanted to keep the idea that sysops are the ones "policing" the wiki and in charge of directly banning people. Or maybe since creating a new name for the more powerful sysops didn't work (last time something like that was tried), he decided to create a new name for the current sysops? He's probably going to clarify it himself - I just felt like pointing that the proposed change Rezyk made was about the role of admins, and changing the names was just a part of that. Erasculio 00:04, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't like it because it would create ambiguity between a game term and a wiki term, and the name doesn't really suit the role. -- Gordon Ecker 02:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Although I believe I understand Rezyk's motivation behind the change in name to some extent, I have to agree that it is unnecessary, confusing and not likely to change people's perspectives about the sysop role. --Indecision 02:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I would support this policy wholeheartedly if it did not include the name change. As it is, I cannot support a name change that's not only confusing and corny but probably a breach of copyright. —Tanaric 03:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Nearly as many comments in a day than the entire life of this draft! - BeX 03:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I appear to be the only one who actually found the new "Xunlai agent" name to be rather fitting and it made me smile :D But unfortunately, it would appear the term "sysop" is too deeply ingrained for it to change. Also, I think some of you guys are missing the entire point. It could be that Rezyk is simply using the term "Xunlai agent" as a placeholder, and when he links it to the sysop list, he is likely only wanting to point out that the current sysops are now all "Xunlai agents" (hmm... Xunlai monitors? :p ). And finally, could you guys actually discuss the new role rather than only commenting on the terms used? -- ab.er.rant 03:44, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

For starters, I'm also wondering why we should remove the bureaucrat role? Or was that unintentionally left out? (as in, the original section in GWW:ADMIN is still retained?) -- ab.er.rant 03:46, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I mentioned it in passing, but I'll be more clear: I wholeheartedly support the new powers given to bureaucrats (err, "sysops" in the draft). After trying this method of adminship for a while, I now firmly believe that the GuildWiki did it better. This draft is a step in the right direction and provides the accountability and the community-driven process that the GuildWiki's appointment mechanism lacked. —Tanaric 03:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

When Rezyk mentioned that he was thinking of a new role, I was actually thinking that he meant a three-tiered adminship, rather than simply dumbing down the responsibilities of the current sysops and pushing them onto the current bureaucrats. This does in effect the number of bureaucrats we need. (i'm referring to things without the name changes) -- ab.er.rant 03:50, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with giving bureaucrats blocking and unblocking user rights or allowing them to block users in accordance with policy. -- Gordon Ecker 08:24, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

But is the proposal here to allow bureaucrats to block users in accordance to policy, or to allow them to block users whenever they want? The former is just giving them a tool currently sysops already have; the later is allowing them to go over policies to do what they think is best. Erasculio 10:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Why would they need the latter option? Allowing them to block in accordance with policy would allow them to enforce their own injunctions, and injunctions are enough to deal with situations outside of policy until they are resolved through arbitration. -- Gordon Ecker 11:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The ability to view deleted pages would also be useful. -- Gordon Ecker 11:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you, but between all the recent discussions about allowing admins to do anything, I would like to see something written on the proposal to reinforce how the bureaucrats would be expected to apply policy (not their discretion) in those cases that fall inside policies, but are free to do anything on those cases outside policies. Basically a "do anything unless there's a policy saying otherwise" approach. Erasculio 11:36, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

(RI) I have done some changes to the draft:

• Reverted names back to "sysops" and "bureaucrats". Sysops would continue to be what they are today, while bureaucrats would be given more power. I'm still wary of doing this without knowing what the current bureaucrats think, though.
• Changed wording to make clear that bureaucrats are given power beyond the existing policies, but at the same time are constrained by what already exists when dealing with subjects under policies. To give one example, when banning someone for a NPA breach (wooot, NPA : D), they would be as limited by the Blocking policy as any common sysop; but they would be free to block users for any time period they consider necessary based on "disruptive behavior" and anything else not within the current policies. IMO, long lasting changes (like an one year ban) should still be the purview of the ArbComm, but I didn't know how to word that.
• Changed slightly the wording to make clear that bureaucrats are held on a higher standard than sysops not only about listing an e-mail address, but also about their general behavior on the wiki.

Thoughts? Erasculio 13:36, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it was meant that sysops continue doing what they do. I think it's to redefine the role to handle only the maintenance of the wiki. User-related issues or subjective would be relegated to bureaucrats, hence his proposed name change. In effect, this means that we don't need to change the way the RfA and the election works, we only need to change the max number of bureaucrats, and perhaps change how the rotation is handled. -- ab.er.rant 14:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

But the description Rezyk used in his definition of "xunlai agents" was exactly of what sysops do today - all he changed was the name from "sysop" to "xunlai agent", but (as least on the way he wrote it and the way I understood it) the other attributions would be the same. Compare what we wrote with the current policy, and you'll notice how the only difference was in name.

Besides, my idea with the changes I did on the policy was to keep RfAs as they are today (since they would be electing people for the same position as they have always had) and to keep elections as they are today (since they already are more complex than the RfAs). The only change to those aspects would be to change the max number of bureaucrats, like you said. Erasculio 15:03, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Instead of doing 2 pages of second guessing what Rezyk might have meant, we could simply ask him (though my personal favorite is that is was an elaborate plot to spark interest in this talk page). --Xeeron 15:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, despite what were his original intentions, what do you think of how the policy is now? : D Erasculio 15:22, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

There are three major changes in the policy. One I fully agree with, one I don't care about and one I fully disagree with:

• Making the wording on sysops actions less strict.

This is a good step. A lot of the "GWW sysops fail, blah, blah" type of comments stem from our sysops having been overly careful at the beginning. The new wording makes clear that, yes obviously, they are required to follow policies and consensus, but they are also selected with a good bit of trust from the community and thus can use their common sense.

• Enabling bureaucrats to use the normal sysop actions (block, delete, etc)

I don't really care about this. While the present policy is rather nice from a separation of power's perspective, I don't see much harm in allowing bureaucrats to delete spam pages.

• Giving bureaucrats a carte blanche "to ban users based on what they perceive as being excessively uncivil or disruptive"

This is unneeded (the system without this works just fine) and outright wrong. We have a great system with sysops (who should be a bit more assertive than they used to be at the start), with bureaucrats to watch the sysops and with arbcom to deal with cases not covered by policy. No need to bypass all that with a "bureaucrats > all" clause. --Xeeron 15:44, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that, for bureaucrats in their current role, "do anything unless there's a policy saying otherwise" is already covered by the "respecting policy" line in the arbitration policy's guiding principles section. As for user rights, I don't think the current bureaucrat role actually requires any user rights other than promotion, demotion and deleted page viewing. If we are going to expand the role of bureaucrats, I think the simpest option would be to remove the paragraph about sysop and bureaucrat status being mutually exclusive. -- Gordon Ecker 03:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I think "do anything unless there's a policy (or common sense) saying otherwise" would be a good guideline for everybody, not just sysops/bcrats. —Tanaric 08:07, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Let's slow down a bit, please. The changes intended to solve the "GWW Sysops fail, blah blah" discussions are the whole point of this proposal. The topic has been discussed for weeks and gladly we came to this proposal. Changes to Bcrats are another subject (too new) and I'd prefer if it was covered by a different proposal and discussed appart from this (it's not even a problem, what are we supposed to fix with that?).reanor 08:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Ereanor, consider this version which is designed to have a discretionary sysop role that can make banning decisions on general stuff outside of policy. It is very much a direct attempt to iron out or figure out the common complaints about the sysop role in a more concrete form (which I thought was the main purpose here), while also satisfying some concerns of my own which I thought were reasonable. Specifically: does that version not have exactly what several users have asked for regarding powerful sysops, covering loopholes, etc? Perhaps it still won't satisfy those concerns as worded, but then I am extremely curious as to why. Hopefully someone can make this clear.

It is a bit confusing because what I termed "sysop" there was renamed to "bureaucrat" later.. =P I really don't have any problem with opting to use corny names like "bureaucrat" instead as long as everyone keeps in mind that these terms are being chosen based on a following a standard reflecting a couple of bits in the database rather than say, directly reflecting their appropriate or intended role in the community. In other words, a label like "sysop" and its connotations elsewhere, if chosen this way, should then end up having no strong bearing on how we design the role; it cannot really be reflecting a standardized community role across wikis anyways because the commonly accepted "sysop role" already varies/changes a lot among MediaWiki wiki communities. Whenever we look at what is appropriate for a role, we really have to look at it in the context of the whole system and think about which role (or even if a new role) would be best for handling a particular need, whether it is "subjective executive decision making for the unforeseen or hard-to-precisely-define stuff when necessary" or "pretty much just a regular user and hopefully not to be a big deal over whether someone has this workhorse status or not because it shouldn't matter in determining the important decisions on the wiki just like how guidelines are supposed to fill a workhorse role that is much more open and not so restrictive because it is set up to not be used as an authoritative must-respect source that we would feel inclined to carefully scrutinize, second-guess, and end up bickering over stuff a lot".

--Rezyk 21:18, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Is the scope of the change a little too great for fast resolution? If so, as Rezyk mentioned in the previous section, do we want to consider the change in wording (Xeeron's first reason) to be considered separately from the other 2 major changes? If so, I point back to the rewording proposal. -- ab.er.rant 09:31, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, we could go back to the rewording. I think it's not enough to change what I think is more a problem of mentality, but I am fonder of slower changes anyway. One thing from the new draft I would like to keep, though, is making bureaucrats to have sysop powers - in the current election someone mentioned how it's bad to have to lose a good sysop in order to get a good bureaucrat, and I agree with that point of view. Erasculio 11:14, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Now that's a problem we can solve. I agree with giving sysop powers to bcrats to avoid such dilemmas, but the split of roles should be kept.reanor 17:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Rezyk: I'm not sure if you really know about the sysops affair. The "more powerful sysops, please" complaint was just one of many visions, and it is very far from what we could call the consensus reached on the subject. In the end, the only real issue we could back up with evidence was that sysops were being mistreated by some ppl. It's about what ppl expect from the role and the respect ppl gives to the role. Some argue that having more powerful sysops is the solution. I think that might work, and fast, but that's not the only way and it's not what the community seems to be going for here. This wiki is known for taking its time before making decisions and writing things in paper. "Think before making a move" is the key here. So, I'm with Erasculio here, the proposal change won't actually change anything, but it's a start. Sysops seem to understand their role as "all I can do is enforce policies". I'm against having too many policies as I'm against having too many roles and names for admins. Instead of writing down "patches" we should solve the problem in its root. We need to change the way the whole community, including admins, sees their role. Now, when admins ask themselves "what's my role?" they will usually start by taking a look at GWW:ADMIN, then they will probably consider user feedback. So, we're starting were they'd start and continuing were they would. This is the first step we are aiming for: a new GWW:ADMIN telling them to enforce policies (and follow them as any user should), but also telling them to allow themselves to cover loopholes and borderline cases by using discretion, common sense and (if necessary) consensus, instead of waiting for a new policy to tell them what to do. The next and biggest step would be pushing for a change in the community, aiming for new expectations according to the new policy and the respect admins (as any other user) deserve. We don't need new names or roles, that's not what we asked for.reanor 05:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, my suggestion version was basically driven by trying to take the approach I saw here (an admin role which is independently and open-endedly empowered to deal with corner cases of disruption, etc) and adapt it to show how it can be made to also address some of the concerns I brought up. If you're saying we should not be making such a change to the roles yet...that's fine with me (I don't support it myself), but I do think it's strongly worth considering just in terms of trying to understand what the vocal dissenters actually want. I'll take out that "extra power" clause for now and leave in my other rewording attempts and bureaucrats-are-now-sysops-too stuff that seem to be generally well-received. Some other differences seem to relate to where I would disagree with your opinions on what steps we should drive, and how. For example, for concern over lack of respect for admins, I think we should try and drive more towards understanding where it really impedes stuff from being done well, and why there is little concrete stuff showing up in existing feedback mechanisms (arbitration requests, sysop reconfirmation, complaints about arbitration, voting against admins for being assertive, etc). --Rezyk 23:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Moving forward

This proposal seems to have stalled, probably due to Wintersday and the Guild Wars 2 wiki. So what does everyone think about the current version? I don't think it's necessary, but I am okay with it. -- Gordon Ecker 05:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I am ok with the current version as well. --Xeeron 10:50, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

What's the whole point of the draft now? — ク Eloc 貢 01:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Rephrasing and making bureaucrats a subset of sysops, both of which I am neutral towards. The current version would also make it much harder to remove bureaucrats, which I strongly oppose. -- Gordon Ecker 02:04, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm I completely missed the change from bureaucrats to sysops while reading it. Can Rezyk please elaborate why he put that one in? --Xeeron 13:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It was changed as part of a reaction to the version with 2 separated administrator groups with huge discretional power. I thought that separation reflected an unnecessary amount of distrust/bureaucracy, so I abolished the bureaucrat role and added its powers to the sysop role (effectively creating sysops that are more powerful than anyone dared asked for). Makes sense, right? Half the bureaucracy and also avoids effectively halving our resources in terms of filling super-discretionary roles with super-trusted users! Anyways, at the time there was no longer any role named "bureaucrat" and the sentence simply read "Sitting sysops can only be removed by unanimous votes of the other sysops". After that, there was a general negative reaction to the naming, and someone else "upshifted" the names by a level to compensate...but apparently accidentally skipped one of the terms in that sentence. I doubt that the current sentence effect was ever intended by anyone, and am changing it. --Rezyk 20:14, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

(reset indent) I like things the way they are now. MiraLantis 08:31, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

It is easy to say that, but care to explain why the draft would be worse than the current policy? Maybe I misunderstood are you refering to the current situation on gww or to the draft?-- Coran Ironclaw 16:32, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Meaning, if we don't need this policy, why be redundant? MiraLantis 22:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the change is needed, but I stoped to support this draft, I made this other Guild Wars Wiki:Adminship/Draft 2008-Jan-12 -- Coran Ironclaw 02:50, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I support the current version, including the referenced blocking policy. I think it would be a good step forwards. --Rezyk 19:35, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with it too, except that I'd be more happy with it if the first line is not saying that sysops are to do clean up. Use some other responsibility as the first line if we're actually interested in trying to get rid of the "glorified janitor" misconception. -- ab.er.rant 13:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Sysop discretion wording

I think it should be more clear, my suggestion: Replace the sentence
Sysops are granted reasonable discretion, but (like all users) they are expected to respect policy and consensus.
with
Sysops are expected to enforce the "spirit of the policy" which is the reason why the policy exists rather than what the policy explicity says, therefore they are granted reasonable discretion, they are allowed to take actions beyond the policy permits them to do, but they are not allowed to take actions the policy prevents them to do and are expected to respect consensus.
-- Coran Ironclaw 20:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Unless the "spirit of the policy" visits me this night and tells me that noone will ever disagree about what exactly he is, I prefer to stay with the original wording. Or put differently: Discretion is the more precise wording, without the mumbo-jumbo about spirits, it should stay that way. --Xeeron 21:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Had to laugh at that ;). But I agree, the "spirit" of the policy assumes that all users follow this "spirit", not the literal meaning of it, whereas your intention here is for sysops to judge their choices on this "spirit". Discretion applies to actual decisions on actions based on a policy, not applications of a policy -- Brains12 • Talk • 21:33, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Policy Binding Ritual. You summon a level 0...6...8 Spirit of the Policy at your location. All foes in range can't edit pages. This spirit dies after 1...4...5 revisions. (edit conflict)- HeWhoIsPale 21:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

ok, I got it ¬¬, just remove that part, so it would be:

Sysops are expected to enforce policy, but policy does not always cover all possible issues or is specific in every issue, therefore sysops are granted reasonable discretion, they are allowed to take actions beyond the policy permits them to do, but they are not allowed to take actions the policy prevents them to do and are expected to respect consensus. -- Coran Ironclaw 21:59, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

To be honest with you, Coran, in my opinion, there doesn't need to be reason for sysop discretion. "Sysops are expected to enforce policy. They are allowed reasonable discretion to apply their tools to matters outside of policy, but are bound by policy restrictions." - they can do things outside of policy, but where policy restricts them, they can't. -- Brains12 • Talk • 22:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe not "really needed". But I think it will be more good than harm to keep that little explanation. "Sysop Discretion" is a key element that generates tons of discussions and the reason why many think gww fails at policies. Also, some people do not easily understand why that discretion needs to exist, they assume policies can be followed to the letter always and that is enough to keep running the wiki. -- Coran Ironclaw 22:56, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the last sentence, I am not completely convinced with my wording but I don't like yours either =p -- Coran Ironclaw 22:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Removing bcrats

"Sitting bureaucrats can only be removed by unanimous votes of the other sysops..." That is a major change also, expecting unanimous votes from bcrats is one thing but expecting unanimous votes from all sysops is other and very different. I don't think that is a good change. -- Coran Ironclaw 23:22, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I didn't notice that. -- Gordon Ecker 00:02, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm having a hard time with this proposal.

The fact that there are bits nobody noticed troubles me. A simple diff at the top of the draft is insufficient to communicate what this change proposes. Could somebody explain exactly what this draft proposes at this point? —Tanaric 01:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't help you there. Honestly, I think this got way out of hand.reanor 01:37, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

The original idea what this. Designed to reword the explanation of sysop duties to reflect expectations (as well to correct misinterpretations and misconceptions) regarding the sysop role. Rezyk's change pushed the more discretionary admin powers up to the bureaucrats, making it require more bureaucrats. And then some rewordings happened and I don't know anymore. Some feel that a rewording is not necessary, but my original idea was just to reword it so that it more clearly show the primary and secondary roles sysops play. -- ab.er.rant 02:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

The last time I summerized the changes I saw at [1] a few sections up. Additional to the three points there, there seems to have been Rezyks "Xunlai Agent" idea (which I guess is more or less buried now) and the change in the passage needed for bureaucrat removal from "other bureaucrats" to "other sysops" which has not been discussed yet. Also, since my summary there, the wording has been changed to not give the bureaucrats huge discretional power. --Xeeron 13:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be more clear to instead say "not give the bureaucrats huge discretional power outside of arbitration". --Rezyk 20:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It should also be noted that the past few versions reference Guild Wars Wiki:Blocking policy. Was this overlooked, or accepted? --Rezyk 22:59, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Probably should have split this off into a separate draft, huh? --Rezyk 00:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. As you suggested yourself after the Xunlai edit, all that should've been a different proposal, so the original idea could have been accepted once and for all. On the other hand, as Erasculio pointed out a while ago, this change in the policy won't actually solve what is indeed a problem of mentality in the community, but it's a start. I'm surprised to find that even that slight improvement is hard to achieve.reanor 17:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)