Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 12

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Who can vote?

Hi - Who exactly can vote on this page? Can anyone, or is it only existing Sysops? I've had opinions about some of the candidates before, but I was unsure of if I was eligible to support or oppose nominations? Can this information be posted on the article page? -- DropDeadGorgias 18:19, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Anyone can vote here, although anonymous users or users with near-zero contribution history (less than 10 edits, say) might well have votes removed as they would be presumed by many to be either sock puppets or trolls. I'll post this on your talk page too. Anyone have an idea for how to word this to be placed on the meta page itself? Jwrosenzweig 18:22, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I was definitely confused at first (mostly cause all of the votes were from SysOps, as far as I could tell). This information would be useful on the main page. - DropDeadGorgias 19:33, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Any information on less than ideal conduct in disagreements would be particularly welcome - it's the first thing I look for when trying to decide whether I think somoene should be an admin. Next is how they handle being wrong - how or if they accept it. Jamesday 05:34, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What's special about bureaucrats?

Ummm, another technical question. I notice on the Wikimedia page that the only distinction between an Administrator and a Bureaucrat is that a Bureaucrat can promote other Admins. Is there a pressing need for more of them? As far as I can tell, Adminship requests are not THAT frequent. Isn't this really more of a status issue than anything else? - DropDeadGorgias 20:53, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

Until recently, a developer (and there are only about 7 of them, and not all of them pay attention here) has to do it by hand. Now they have an automated way to do it, but you have to have beauracrat status which no one has as yet (except Eloquence, apparently).People are nominated/nominate themselves all the time - usually about 3-5 a week. That's a lot of work to do by hand, especially foe just 7 people. →Raul654 20:56, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks- I was a little confused by the lack of information on the process. I guess the reason I'm asking is that I don't see why every admin won't just request bureaucrat status right now. It seems like a dangerous movement; a hasty Admin can only do so much damage, but a hasty Bureaucrat could really create problems- just looking at how long the de-sysop process takes. - DropDeadGorgias 21:04, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

Thats why I am so horrified to see how many people were promoted behiond closed doors. While many of them might be good, I'm certainly not comfortable seeing arbitrary promotion in scorn of due process. Sam Spade 21:08, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sam, what are you talking about? To my knowledge, no one is a buearacrat besides Eloquence (who is a developer and could do it by hand, if he wanted). So what is this talk about people being promoted behind closed doors? -- User:Raul654 03:56, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

what's the big deal about being a bureaucrat? Why shouldn't all admins have the ability to create new sysops? What are the particular arguments against letting all admins have the bureaucrat power? Kingturtle 23:41, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Bureaucrats should be very trusted people, because if they get in a dispute with someone, they must be trusted not to abuse their powers and sysop the other per... No, wait a moment... Never mind, that wouldn't work... Κσυπ Cyp   23:47, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The reason no-one has been made a bureacrat except Erik is probably because Brion and myself are opposed to the idea (although Brion not as strongly as me). Brion and I think allowing any sysop to make sysops would be a quite acceptable model. This model was implemented for a short period, but Erik reverted it to the bureaucrat system, explaining on my talk page that Silsor didn't think it was a good idea, and that a quorum of three sysops should be required.

Although it may be safer to require the approval of three sysops, it is much more difficult to implement. I don't see much potential for abuse in the one-sysop system, after all, sysops who abuse their powers can and should be desysopped. -- Tim Starling 03:53, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

Although it's amusing that my opinion seems to carry weight now, the issue some were hashing out in the IRC channel was that a rogue admin could wreak havoc with the "make admin" function. I suggested a system where no one person could "make admin" but would require at least one other person to turn the key, so to speak, by performing the same action at some point, in a manner analogous to the separate keys required to launch nuclear missiles. This system would complement the abilities of sysops to handle regular site maintenance (that's the whole point of having sysops) while making abuse difficult and eliminating the need for a new class of users. silsor 05:26, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

It's not solely silsor. Improper unilateral actions have been and remain a problem. A multiple key system is a more effective way of limiting that than any highly trusted user setup and should be used for anything which is troublesome to undo. Jamesday 05:41, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This is what I was talking about (Wikipedia:Bureaucrats). There seem to be a good number of people on that list who wern't voted in. This is ominous. Why are we voting on ed, when these others have been given the power so readilly? Why the inconsistancy? If the wiki is ment to be anything other than an oligarchy, there is going to need to be a certain amount of transparancy, accountability, and perhaps even a bit of consensus ;) Sam Spade 06:04, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A little bit of wiki-digging reveals the source of those undemocratically selected bureaucrats: User talk:MyRedDice#Bureaucrat status, User_talk:TUF-KAT/Gospel_to_fair_use#Bureaucrat_status, User_talk:Angela/Archive8#Bureaucrat_status, User talk:Secretlondon#Bureaucrat status. - DropDeadGorgias 20:07, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

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Note that Ed Poor (hi! it's me!) is the first bureacrat to have been promoted through the community process -- rather than having been appointed. I hope this starts a trend away from unilateralism and toward making decisions by consensus. --Uncle Ed 19:08, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)