Guild Wars Wiki talk:Adminship/Inactive Clean-up

That's a pretty sad list. I thought Alex was doing a good job? I don't have the wiki know-how to be on it nor have I demonstrated the ability to work well with others. You can remove my name unless we are that super starved on a relatively fleshed out wiki. I don't know if I am supposed to edit the main page or the talk page to remove my name. Justice (talk) 01:25, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to edit the main article for your thoughts, I've gone ahead and removed your name. Also, I'm not saying alex is doing a bad job. I *am* saying the # of sysops we have who have been inactive for far longer than they were ever active is untenable. If we were to remove all of them, we'd be left with ~3-5 admin staff. That seems low to me. horrible | contribs 01:33, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Any particular reason you haven't included yourself on the list Horrible? -Chieftain Alex 09:49, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm just not a good candidate. Essentially, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQDTj1UllA&t=215 horrible | contribs 12:06, 24 May 2020 (UTC)7

← moved to Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Admin_noticeboard#moderation discussion

Also I would like to point you to the terms and guidance governing reconfirmation of admins on this wiki;

"While a user is a sysop, anyone may add their support for the reconfirmation process to the "Request for reconfirmation" section of that sysop's latest successful RFA. Short explanations are encouraged, but avoid personal attacks; consider simply giving links to evidence if necessary. This generally has no immediate effect and does not trigger the reconfirmation process until there is enough accumulated support for reconfirmation. The level of required support starts at the amount of support given for sysophood during the latest RFA (direct opposition to either is not counted), and this requirement gradually descends over time to a minimum of one user supporting after one year. Whenever this threshold is reached (as judged by a bureaucrat, not simple tallies), a bureaucrat will give notice to the sysop that they must be successfully reconfirmed within two weeks or lose their sysop status."

With the utmost of respect Alex, from what I can see, you are not a bureaucrat and do not have the ability to trigger reconfirmation votes of this nature. If you want to do this, you should be doing it right and not overstepping the bounds of this process. Yes the number of tallies decreases over time and can decrease to one, but that is to be determined by the beuarocrat team to help weed out reconfirmations being triggered based on misinterpretation of wiki guidelines etc. As it stands I believe you've somewhat overstepped here.

This is a beauro issue to work through now, once reconfirmation has been requested, to discern if it can be triggered. You should really be checking with them and if they can not be reached you should be focusing on making and establishing a new active beauro team before taking this forward; however I know for a fact that Tane is indeed active (as he responded on this very page). -- -- Salome 20:59, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm actually pleased to see an animated response Salome.

As far as playing the bureaucrat with the creation of the reconfirmations, I didn't actually initiate this discussion (as to becoming a b'crat, it's probably not my cup of tea). I did however choose to inform you all on your talk pages.

I've chosen to facilitate it and prompt at least some discussion by somewhat using a process we already had, namely reconfirmation. It is after all, up to poke/tanetris to choose whether or not to act upon it. -Chieftain Alex 21:21, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Anyway Alex, its really good to see you about mate. It's been a while. Hope life is treating you well. :)

As for the current project, it just feels like a misreading of the guidance we have in place imho. -- Salome 21:28, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

So as Greener recently alluded to, discretion can and should be used by all users (bcrats, sysops, and regular editors) to follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Yes, Horrible skipped a step in making reconfirmations for everyone without doing the proper RfR process, but I think we can let that slide and go along with it in the name of not getting caught up in minutiae. All Alex did was clean up what Horrible was attempting to do, by fixing up some things and giving the involved admins notice, which I appreciate him doing.

But for the record and posterity, I bless these reconfirmations with my official bureaucratic go-ahead. While I don't agree with hard activity requirements, at this point in the wiki's life, it wouldn't hurt to consider trimming some of the unreachable-and-never-coming-back crew. Of course each reconfirmation will be reviewed and decided individually by the bcrats when resolution time comes. - Tanetris (talk) 21:35, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Indeed tane, it was never an attack on alex, just a clarification of process. I hope Alex continues to be aware of the high oppinion I've held him in, even despite the years since we've spoke. As for me, if people think that getting rid of the older admins, will in some way help the wiki... I am happy to resign; my only issue currently is the addition of an activity requirement, which has never been a requirement before this point. I especially have reservations with inacting this policy in the midst of a global pandemic, which may affect some peoples ability to come back and contribute to this debate, who may wish to. -- Salome 21:46, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

While I agree with Salome that this doesn’t follow the mechanism in place for reconfirmations (and here on GWW we actually always were very strict about our policies being policies and not just guidelines), I actually would accept this as a large-scale reconfirmation round for the current (inactive) administration team. Because of how the policy is meant, to favor existing sysops against individual reconfirmation requests, Tanetris and I will probably be looking a bit more closely on how the votes will develop. I would also say that the whole outcome depends a bit on the participation of the community. In the past, our RfAs weren’t of much interest (not surprisingly giving the wiki’s state and age), so that will be taken into account too.

That being said, in the past I was always very opposed of removing inactive administrators from the list just because they were inactive. While I still stand by that general idea, I can see that having a list of 29 people of which 24 are marked as inactive (and have been for a long while) can be discouraging. So I certainly understand if it’s the active community’s desire to remedy this. poke | talk 21:39, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

How does "and here on GWW we actually always were very strict about our policies being policies and not just guidelines" get along with what Greener and Tanetris said about the spirit and the letter of teh law?

Thanks, Steve1 (talk) 08:59, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Déjà vu

This type of large scale reorganisation of the sysop list (bureaucrats seem fine to me) was also done on GW2W around GW2 launch time, as the inevitable result of grandparenting inactive or disinterested admins. It can be effective in a case like that, but from what I have seen there is no desperate need for more or new active sysops on GWW. In general any potentially dangerous levels of spam or bot edits are undone and removed within 24 hours and I do not feel there has been a pressing need for sysop intervention that our small community could not resolve without. While I do notice some tensions here and there, my levelheadedness that saw me once promoted on GW2W would hardly require the tools of a sysop position to operate more effectively here. I functioned acceptably as an interim sysop on our sister wiki in a time of high demand. I do not foresee such a need here; not just myself, but any considerable addition to the current team. Should consensus later decide otherwise, I will reconsider and put forward support for users I consider fit for a sysop position. Though I do understand that a sense of irrelevance may overtake those looking at the current list, so I would argue we can remove all administrators that have shown a very clear sense of disconnection. Signs of life prior to 2017 may be a decent cut-off as such. - Infinite - talk 22:23, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Hey, great points. IMO this should be on the main page, but I'll leave that up to you. A few things I want to clarify:

• "...we can remove all administrators that have shown a very clear sense of disconnection." This is the primary reason I initiated this - if we remove everyone who's inarguably inactive, we're down to 2 bcrats, and 3 sysops; (all of whom other than Rainith have to split their focus with the much larger gw2w) which I feel to be too small a number - adding 2-3 more people on top of that would be a huge benefit, and limit the individual burden on any specific administrator.
• "...there has [not] been a pressing need for sysop intervention..." For the most part, I agree. However, there's a distinct lack of communication and community interaction from the majority of current [non-bot] administrators. My understanding is that these administrative discussions have been happening in private channels, rather than on the wiki or wiki-adjacent public auxiliary channels (irc/discord). While there are definitely times that require discretion, I feel that, in general, discussions regarding the wiki should have at least a modicum of transparency.
• "...would hardly require the tools of a sysop position..." in this case, the concern is two-fold:
  • Primarily, I'm more concerned about opening up meta-discussions regarding the wiki rather than just the act of moderation itself. I personally do not have any problems with the current administration, but there is (or appears to be) a distinct homogeny of opinion regarding decisions. (this may be a result of the above-mentioned closed door discussions, but the end result is the same)
  • The second concern is that - as mentioned above - we depend too heavily on the limited sysops we have now. The vast majority of [non-automated] tasks are handled by just two people, with no fail-over system in place.

horrible | contribs 23:22, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

The vast majority of tasks are actually handled by AbuseFilter, which needs no rest nor break. - Tanetris (talk) 02:51, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to assume you're serious, rather than this being a tone-deaf joke. I am in no way suggesting we remove an automated filter bot. I would also like to point out that I consider the bots User:AWB Alex and User:Wikichu to be extensions of their respective controllers (Alex and Poke), and likewise exclude them from the discussion. For the sake of clarity, I have adjusted the above to specify this. horrible | contribs 04:54, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

“we're down to 2 bcrats, and 3 sysops” – I personally don’t think that’s a bad number for a wiki with this activity.

“all of whom […] have to split their focus with the much larger gw2w” – I don’t think that splitting focus is anyone’s concern really. This wiki hasn’t required much activity from sysops in years.

“The vast majority of [non-automated] tasks are handled by just two people, with no fail-over system in place” – What kind of fail-over system do you think is necessary? We have policies in place that offer ways to open discussions when a community member believes that a sysop acted incorrectly. In the past years, none of this has been brought up. So either issues like these were discussed and resolved privately, or they didn’t occur. poke | talk 21:45, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Apologies; I do not feel a fail-over system to replace sysops is needed. I was trying to get across my opinion that having inactive sysops is not a preventative measure when there's no guarantee that they would even be useful in the event that they were needed. horrible | contribs 22:34, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Maybe a better (/nicer?) solution then would have been to contact those inactive members on their talk page and/or per email if they would still feel that they are available when needed, and to let them decide on whether they want to hold on to sysop-hood for that purpose. As we have already seen since those RfRs were created and members were contacted, some of them were quick to respond and may even have strong opinions on this that suggests that they care enough to be available when needed. poke | talk 23:13, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I think that's fair, and hind-sight being 20/20 I would even somewhat agree. However, I do still feel that activity, even a small amount (see Auron for example) is required to show you're not only alive, but that you still are willing to perform the duties of a sysop. Perhaps it would have been better to suggest a new policy; everyone knows I'm far from perfect. I felt that by creating this I'd be improving the wiki a small bit, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. horrible | contribs 23:21, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

For what it’s worth, I think that your actions show your good intentions and I believe that we can make the best out of this situation now. I for one am curious to see how these discussions develop over the next days. poke | talk 23:25, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

My activity in the last 8 years or so has been to check on all the edits made on the policy pages I still have watchlisted. Lo and behold, not a single vandal edit showed up on my beloved policy pages (just boring housekeeping), so I never needed to intervene. No strong opinions here, although I don't think there is any urgent need to act. --Xeeron (talk) 01:07, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

That is factually incorrect. I had an issue with a sysop and used the email links on the Admin Noticeboard to contact you, Tanetris and the sysop. Neither you nor Tanetris ever bothered to reply. Steve1 (talk) 09:02, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

"My activity in the last 8 years or so has been to check on all the edits made on the policy pages I still have watchlisted. Lo and behold, not a single vandal edit showed up on my beloved policy page [...]" this is exactly why we need the clean up. Admins/bcrats only patrolling their watchlisted pages? That sounds wrong. I agree with some that frequent editing shouldn't be necessary for an admin position, however, being inactive with minimum to zero edits and ZERO public visibility for 4-12 (!!) years seems very odd for someone to retain their rights. Sime (talk) 22:59, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion

Might it be less offensive if the "inactive" label is replaced by a "standby" label [in the list of sysops], other than checking in with users to see if they have any intention of retaining their tools? We have seen several reconfirmations being declined, yet there are also sysops like Salome who will turn up when they are notified on their talk page. I still believe we need to update the existing list according to response and community input, but at the same time there can (and should) be existing sysops available from a distance in times of emergency or temporary absence of our active ones. This has the added connotation of "these sysops may not appear to be active contributors, but we know they are but a single message removed." - Infinite - talk 12:22, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

User:Infinite/Sandbox to visualise the above. - Infinite - talk 12:31, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot. horrible | contribs 13:12, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I'll be honest and say I think this idea has alot of merit. -- Salome 13:45, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I personally think this is the best solution to this and I wish I had thought of it.  :) --Rainith (talk) 16:02, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Pretty nifty idea. The only problem I see now: The sysops who actually are only a short message away ... mostly agreed to have their sysop rights stripped.

And the rest actually might have left for good w/o an easy way to contact them. Thoughts? Steve1 (talk) 17:08, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

A good idea nicely phrased. — snograt 17:20, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Since we are still in a process and this is a new idea, we can always approach the ones who have declined to see if they would prefer to be on actual standby or are fine with remaining a regular user (for any reason they see fit). Since there is at least one sysop so far who has been vocal about jumping into action if necessary (and prompted), there is already a purpose. Furthermore currently active sysops can set themselves to standby if necessary, which is considerably less of a bridge to cross than switching between active, semi-active, and inactive every time a short absence is taken. - Infinite - talk 17:48, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Late to the party, but this feels like a much more practical solution. -- Traveler (talk) 00:54, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

As one of the sysops in question, I think it should be understood that "standby" sysops are actually reachable (via their talk page or email). --Xeeron (talk) 15:10, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Went ahead a threw together a basic draft of such a proposal here. Please contribute any changes or feedback you may have. horrible | contribs 18:10, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

I made a counter-proposal draft update for GWW:ADMIN at Guild Wars Wiki:Adminship/draft for standby admins, which focuses on a responsiveness requirement rather than an activity requirement, which I think will be easier on everyone while making sure the admin list is people who are willing and able to use the admin tools. Of course I propose it in my regular-user role, not in my adminly role, so feel free to tell me it's not what's wanted. Also I put both proposals up on GWW:POLICY to ping more watchlists - Tanetris (talk) 23:34, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Partial resolution

So given that it's been two weeks now since these reconfirmations have been started and the involved admins were contacted on their assorted talk pages, Poke and I went through all the ones where the admins have shown no signs of life and closed them as 'Presumed retired', removed their sysop rights, and removed them from the list of administrators. While the bureucrat team remains largely unconvinced by an activity requirement per se for maintaining sysop rights particularly at this stage of the wiki's life, a responsiveness requirement does have merit, and the community consensus seems to be pretty largely against sysop rights on accounts that are solely collecting dust.

That said, the remaining reconfirmations for Aiiane, Auron, Indochine, Salome, and Xeeron remain open for the moment. Given the #Suggestion section above and the support for it from both sides of the argument, and the fact that all 5 responded within a day or few of their talk pages being pinged, we believe that these reconfirmations should be left open until a policy on 'standby sysops' is decided, for the sake of both the sysops to decide if they are willing to do that and the sake of the community to determine if these sysops fit the redefined criteria. - Tanetris (talk) 15:27, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Finishing up

It's been two months since I initiated this, and it's been a month since anyone showed any interest in contributing. Is the sysop team ready to finalize the remaining RFAs? None have had further developments for just as long, which is plenty of time for someone to give input. horrible | contribs 12:34, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Think Alex noped out of this wiki. He seemed the main one who was willing to put in the effort indulging this thing so idk who else is going to want to jump to the task. Justice (talk) 13:43, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Poke and Tan have both interacted somewhat, and there are other [semi] active sysops still listed at this point. And taking RFAs seriously isn't indulging this thing, it's literally the role description of bcrats. horrible | contribs 15:19, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

It seems to be that we've "cleared up" the sysops who were either fully gone or who were no longer interested, so we're now left with the sysops who are still kicking about. Like i do think you're right, these things probably need resolved now, as after this amount of time, it's probably time to get some closure on stuff. I dont think Tan or poke are ignoring this debate, we have proposed policy suggestions... but as said, GW1 isnt super active generally, so concensus and debate all takes longer than it once did. -- Salome 15:44, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I think Horrible has a point, this has been dragging on for a while without any progress now. Looking at the RFA's, there are three that are clearly opposed: Aiiane's, Indochine's and mine. Auron's is clearly supported, while Salome's is the only one a bit up in the air. With the exception of the latter, they should be resolved soon. --Xeeron (talk) 15:58, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

"we believe that these reconfirmations should be left open until a policy on 'standby sysops' is decided, for the sake of both the sysops to decide if they are willing to do that and the sake of the community to determine if these sysops fit the redefined criteria" - me, a month ago. I guess I was hoping for a little more community input on on the policy proposal(s), but I know that's a big ask.

As for Xeeron's interpretation of the open reconfirmations, I will remind that RFAs are, by policy, explicitly not simple tallies and up to bcrat discretion to interpret. More bluntly: any oppose vote on the still-open reconfirmations that is solely based on inactivity (which are all of them except 1 on Aii's), I see as rendered moot by the combination of those sysops' responsiveness when contacted and the general agreement of the community for standy sysops. - Tanetris (talk) 19:32, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I see the opposing votes (with your one exception) as those editors being against standby sysops. None of them seem to have a problem with the sysops personally, just their inactivity. If they had changed their mind on this, they could have gone back and changed their votes. --Xeeron (talk) 12:12, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Again: "we believe that these reconfirmations should be left open until a policy on 'standby sysops' is decided, for the sake of both the sysops to decide if they are willing to do that and the sake of the community to determine if these sysops fit the redefined criteria" - Tanetris (talk) 18:44, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Stop delaying. If one of the standby provisions passes, and one of the sysops who gets removed wants to stay on in a standby capacity, then they can initiate a new RFA for themselves. Seems simple enough to me. horrible | contribs 01:02, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

User:Tanetris, & User:Poke - are you both in agreement on this? That you feel it's a good idea to just ignore RFAs on the basis of a potential policy change? The policy change itself will not matter. The fundamental question is this: If a user who loses their sysop rights as a result of these RFA wishes to remain on in a standby capacity, what prevents them from initiating a new RFA to regain their sysop rights? If there is nothing that prevents them from doing so, why is a tenuously related policy change a valid reason to delay these RFAs? horrible | contribs 21:26, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

← moved to User_talk:Horrible

User:Tanetris, & User:Poke. Ping. horrible | contribs 04:10, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

If an active policy proposal is going to change the expectations of being admin, your statement, "The policy change itself will not matter." is false. The bureaucrats are well within their discretionary authority to delay the resolution of RFAs. There's no point to deciding one way and then immediately reversing some or all of the decisions when the new policy is passed (or not). There's no benefit to the wiki to making extra RFAs later and dragging this out even further. In the meantime, the remaining admins who are under this review have responded and thus their accounts are not security or bad decision risks beyond what all admin accounts are. I don't see any downside to the 5 of them keeping their tools in the interim and clearly Tanetris and Poke don't either. I think they could just confirm all of them as sysops at this point since the remaining proposal (which literally just codifies and adds some hard restrictions to how inactive/standby status has always worked) looks like it would allow all of them to pass, and the bcrats could already pass them all under current policy (given there isn't actually an activity requirement right now). It's possible though, even if unlikely at this point, that the new policy could be reshaped into something that would disqualify them. It doesn't look to me like the bcrats are stalling just to keep them admins, they could comfirm them right now if the goal was to keep them. Their actual goal is to make sure their decision is formed around the policy going forward, not an outdated one.

TL;DR: if you want this resolved, push for resolution of the standby policy first, the bcrats have already said that's necessary for their decision on the RFAs. They want to be sure the community comes to an agreement on admins' activity expectations, since the community's expectations of admins is what they need to enforce. Toraen - talk 02:44, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I like how you completely ignored the question I asked them, and answered something else. These two issues, while connected by theme, are not connected what-so-ever when it comes to existing policy guidelines. Bcrats DO NOT have the authority to ignore rfas, and both Tanetris and Poke are currently violating GWW:RFA. In addition, they are in violation of the adminship policy by not nominating a successor to JonTheMon. I couldn't give less of a shit regarding their reasoning at this point, given how absolutely uncooperative they have been. I have half a mind to ask Stephane to step in if this goes on much longer, but honestly I feel bad bugging him about something as monumentally stupid as this.

Also, I should note that neither my policy proposal nor tanetris's amendment have reached anything close to consensus. I marked mine as failed because I do not see a way for consensus to be reached, and per GWW:POLICY, any proposed change that does not reach consensus must be rejected. Tanetris's also will not reach consensus unless it addresses the impetus behind this clean-up, which I do not see occurring. horrible | contribs 03:18, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

No one is ignoring the RFAs. ...Well, okay, a lot of people are ignoring the RFAs, but the bcrats aren't. If you want me to quote my statement again, I'll quote my statement again: "we believe that these reconfirmations should be left open until a policy on 'standby sysops' is decided, for the sake of both the sysops to decide if they are willing to do that and the sake of the community to determine if these sysops fit the redefined criteria". (though honestly at this point it's a little unfair to still be lumping Salome's and Auron's in with the others, since Salome's moved pretty solidly into semi-active territory and Auron already had pretty overwhelming support and is no longer attempting to resign)

Your assorted and various interpretations of policy ignore both the written words of the policies and over a decade of precedent supported by community consensus. - Tanetris (talk) 11:25, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

So you ignore the question just to repeat the same excuse, and then follow it up by an outright fabrication about community consensus (hint: there hasn't been a community for a decade. There was one from 2007 to maybe 2014, but hasn't been one since). Good show, you're definitely a model bcrat. Fucking brilliant.

P.S. - I will not agree to your proposed amendment while it ignores the cause of this very page. So you may as well mark it as rejected and move on with the RFAs. horrible | contribs 13:44, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't think you understand how consensus works. Filibustering to block a policy you yourself acknowledge is codifying the community's decision (which is ultimately what policy is) in an attempt to demand something you yourself acknowledge does not have community support is not a valid objection. - Tanetris (talk) 14:48, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

With all due respect (none), you seem to be the one who doesn't understand consensus, just as you don't seem to understand the statement you're referencing. Refusing to agree to a policy amendment that I feel is not a good addition to the wiki is a valid stance to take, whether you like it or not.There was community support for my proposal, you disagreeing with it doesn't eliminate that. All you have to read the talk page for it, or even just read up on this talk page if you're too lazy to do that.

"Support" and "Universal Support" are not the same thing. you're smart enough to know that Tan, which makes me wonder why you seem to be confusing the two. horrible | contribs 16:02, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Are we talking about the same proposal? I remember mostly negative attention given to the surface-level activity gatekeeping policy, which added work for the wiki for no tangible benefit. And try to keep the arguments on topic, constantly insulting Tanetris does you no good.

Also it's hilarious to infer that they're ignoring RFAs while waiting on policy changes that will directly affect RFAs. Those people have been sysops for years and years - a wait of a couple months while policy is sorted won't break anything. Stop being melodramatic. -Auron 20:34, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Haven't seen you mention any proposal. I'm talking about this, to which the feedback can be summed up as follows:

1. Alex replying that it's too lax

1a. Salome getting confused and missing sections, then going back and removing 90% of his comment

2. Aiiane mentioning that it might add a significant maintenance requirement, and me responding that yes it'll add maintenance, but I disagree on the burden of it.

3. You, Poke & Tanetris basically repeating Aiiane's exact message, but doing so without actually participating in the discussion, seemingly ignoring the fact that Aiiane already brought that up and I replied to it.

So that's 5 people, other than myself, on the talk page. Of those 5, one (1) feels my proposal is too lax. four(4) feel it is too much work for little (or no) benefit. and one (1) is there just to say alex's feedback doesn't support the initial discussion formed on this very talk page.

So if you want to call that a "majority" then by all means, do so. But it's not nearly as overwhelming as you make it out to be - unless you're going by word count.

Also, "Stop being melodramatic" - no u. horrible | contribs 23:10, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I don’t believe it’s a good idea to spread out the discussion of a single policy changes to yet another discussion page; but you complained there that there wasn’t enough engagement before and now you are complaining that the majority of feedback is repetitive after asking for exactly that? I also disagree that there was no participation in the “discussion” (which often was just you disagreeing with the points being made). And as for only five people participating at all: You can assume that everyone else either agrees with something that was already said, stopped looking at the proposal after you marked it as rejected, or simply doesn’t care in the first place. And anything of that is fine since we are not looking for a head count for policy discussions. poke | talk 22:51, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

To reply to the question that you are so persistent to get a reply to: “If a user who loses their sysop rights as a result of these RFA wishes to remain on in a standby capacity, what prevents them from initiating a new RFA to regain their sysop rights? If there is nothing that prevents them from doing so, why is a tenuously related policy change a valid reason to delay these RFAs?”

Technically nothing, except that we are talking about reconfirmations here and reconfirmations are usually in favor of the status quo. That’s why per the policy there already has to be enough support to even start a reconfirmation. Since you effectively short-circuited this requirement, even if there was support for this action by others, I am willing to delay any decision on these RFAs until we’ve agreed to a change of the adminship policy that affects this in one or another direction. I personally don’t see a problem with keeping the sysops in questions around until then, especially after they proved that they are still in posession of their accounts and haven’t made any changes that would suggest any malicious intent.

Since you outright announced that you will stand in the way of the policy change unless it’s matching your intention, you are effectively delaying these RFAs too btw. (or their follow-up RFAs for the standby role). poke | talk 22:51, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

"Since you effectively short-circuited this requirement" is bullshit. The requirement to initiate a RFR after one year is one person. The only steps I skipped were:

1. Adding a signature to each previous RFA.
2. Waiting for a Bcrat to recognize 1 = 1

Whether or not there was community support for such an action (which there was) is moot.

"you outright announced that you will stand in the way of the policy change unless it’s matching your intention" - hard disagree. I would say that pointing out that I do not want a policy amendment to pass unless it actually takes steps to solve the issue that prompted it is speeding things up. If there's no effort to actually solve the problem, then the amendment is purely masturbatory - and should not pass. horrible | contribs 00:42, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

You appear to have skimmed past "as judged by a bureaucrat, not simple tallies" (emphasis added). - Tanetris (talk) 13:34, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

And you seem to be ignoring "this requirement gradually descends over time to a minimum of one user supporting after one year". Your role is to judge when the requirement is met, not what the requirement is. horrible | contribs 15:17, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

If it were simple tallies, then I would not have skipped step 2 I outlined above - since that step wouldn't have been required. horrible | contribs 15:19, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Horrible. I was there when it was written.

Look, at this point it's largely trivia, since it already happened and I gave it an official stamp to proceed as it was. Granted I would've been less-inclined to do that if I'd known you were going to be this stubborn over it later, but que sera sera, spilled milk, etc. The reason there are these extra steps you're so blithe about are both so bcrats can weed out pure trolling and so the sysop in question has a chance to 'defend themself' so to speak before the voting starts. As we were being casual about the way things started for the sake of ease for the community, we're also being casual about the way things will resolve for a small handful of reconfirmations also for the sake of ease for the community. That you are taking the former as a cloak of righteousness for your crusade yet taking the latter as something to scream about corrupt and lazy bcrats destroying the fabric of the wiki, maybe take a deep breath and get some perspective. - Tanetris (talk) 13:45, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Snippy meme references and tangents aside - either my interpretation is correct, or my interpretation is wrong. I'd love to see some sort of reasoning if you think it's wrong. You're just explaining why bcrats have any say at all. That isn't what the disagreement here is.

We've already gone over my failure to start the RFAs correctly, and I'm not the one who keeps bringing it back up, I'm just defending what I did against what I see as unfair and incorrect accusations. horrible | contribs 14:56, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

And lets be clear on the main issue - neither you nor any other sysop has made any attempt to deal with the cause of this. You have put up a half-assed policy proposal to cover the standby section mentioned up at the top of this page, but done literally nothing to deal with the primary reason for this clean-up. You can see for yourself by the responses to the RFAs that there are other people who consider wholesale inactivity to be unacceptable - why do you continue to ignore that? My proposal was intended as a jumping off point for a compromise. Yours, on the other hand, continues to ignore the entirety of this clean-up as if it were some aberrant fluke. Update your proposal to do something to account for the community support of this proposal. Your continued unwillingness to compromise in the slightest bit makes it clear none of you have any interest in what the community wants. horrible | contribs 15:07, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

The general community consensus, as I read it, is that

1. Admins who have completely disappeared from the wiki never to be seen again should have their admin flags removed and be removed from the sysop list (this was done for the obvious current cases and the proposal offered codifies and streamlines this process for the future)

   You personally want a step further without the 'completely' or 'never to be seen again' caveats.

2. The admin list should differentiate between admins who are on-duty and around vs admins who are on-call and reachable (this is a simple edit that can be made to Guild Wars Wiki:List of administrators once it's decided. Or honestly could just do it now. No particular policy wankery needed)
3. It would be good to have active admins (yup, would be nice. No clue what you want me to do about this one though. I don't have the authority to chain anyone to their computer and make sure they don't tab away from the wiki. Threatening to take away the sysop rights of those who don't get more active is an ineffective threat because none of them see sysop rights as a reward (because it isn't), and I don't have a budget to pay them, so I've got neither stick nor carrot. Instead what we've done is set up a robust AbuseFilter to require fairly little day-to-day manual intervention, with avenues for raising the alarm in a situation where an actual human admin is needed. If you can find additional people who are both willing and capable, by all means RFA them. I don't know any offhand. If I did I would've already nominated them.)
4. A little more tangental, but Steve1's also raised objections to the whole bcrats-for-life-and-name-their-own-successors thing, and no one's really disagreed beyond it was the best idea we had at the time (and yeah, it's not ideal, though I also don't know if there's a better one that'll work for the state of the current wiki userbase. At some point when you aren't sucking up mostly all the time and energy I have for wiki policy stuff I've been meaning to bring up a broader conversation on it on the relevant policy page, but it keeps getting pushed to backburner)

What exactly do you feel I'm missing? The only thing I'm 'unwilling to compromise' on is that I don't believe that firing the part-timers and substitutes will magically make more full-timers appear, because there is no compromise available. And even then, if there was any sort of community consensus that it would, I don't mind going along. In policy matters, I'm just another user and get no more say than anyone else. My policy proposal has nothing to do with me being an admin and everything to do with me being a member of the wiki and the only other proposal put forward was, to my view, flawed to its core. - Tanetris (talk) 18:40, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

What do I feel you're missing? your proposal still placed the burden on the community to check whether or not sysops are alive - something that has been left undone in the past, and will clearly remain undone in the future. It also does nothing new to deal with sysops who've left - having to RFR inactive sysops serves only as a waste of time, which apparently you're short on already if I'm using it all up. We don't require a RFR if a sysop resigns, so why is one required when they don't respond to direct solicitation? horrible | contribs 02:18, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

"why is one required when they don't respond to direct solicitation?" ...It isn't. - Tanetris (talk) 02:59, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Really? your proposal allows for the removal of sysops who've left without an RFR? that's not how I read it. horrible | contribs 03:09, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

"Admins who do not respond to their talk page in a timely manner will be presumed to have retired from their adminship and their admin rights removed as a site security measure." If someone doesn't respond in two weeks, bcrat desysops them, no muss, no fuss. - Tanetris (talk) 03:23, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Yup, looks like I misread that section - sorry. I still prefer the comparable section from my proposal, which allows sysops to regain their position without an RFA if they have a good reason for the absence. But, as it stands, I guess it's fine. horrible | contribs 03:47, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Got that too. "Should an admin return after presumed retirement and wish to resume admin duties, Bureaucrats will use their discretion whether the rights should be immediately restored or a new RFA is needed" (idea being that if someone's desysopped and comes back next day, bcrats can just give them straight back, but if they come back 3 years later bcrats are free to say 'Nah, go get a new RFA') - Tanetris (talk) 04:02, 15 September 2020 (UTC)