Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard/Archive 11

Username Changes
I was just wondering how oftern bureaucrat's patrol WP:CHU. I need a username change, which is requested. SimpsonsFan08  talk Sign Here Please and get Award 14:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Due to the recent influx of requests because of SUL being implemented, relatively frequently. However, most of the time renames are not done for a few days, and it can be a week or so during quiet periods. Don't fret, you will be renamed eventually! RichardΩ612  Ɣ ɸ 14:54, May 28, 2008 (UTC)
 * (ec) They get around to it about once a day. If you look at the vast number of notdone and done responses, most are within a small time frame. It all depends on the busy-ness of each bureaucrat in real life. Rudget   (Help?) 14:55, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

It does mention in the WP:CHU instructions "Please be patient. It may take a few days for your request to be completed." - however, WP:CHU is frequented daily. Just be patient :) Kingturtle (talk) 14:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

SUL Usurp process
If a user want's to usurp for SUL, technically the safest option is to verify that they have confirmed the account making the usurp request is indeed the person that deserves the account, ie. by making edits on both accounts confirming the identity. But we don't really do that from what I have seen, so do we really need to ask people to create an account here to make a request at Changing username/Usurpations if they don't already have one? Or should we go the other way and make everyone that is making SUL requests confirm their accounts and create them if need be? - Taxman Talk 20:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think we need people to make accounts just to get usurpations. You can do that as an anon, like I did in my talk page for a ja.wp usurpation. Moreover, requiring users to create accounts here creates more work for everyone due to Bug 13507: stewards have to delete the global account, bureaucrats have to rename two users instead of one, and users requesting the rename are given the runaround.
 * Not only that, if users have to follow a complex series of instructions, there will be cases in which they will run into difficulty because they're not familiar with the English language, which creates more work for translators. The instructions for usurpation here are rather complex, and then essentially mandating the addition of the burden of Steward requests/SUL requests doesn't seem like a good idea in my opinion, as we're talking about users who have a non-negligible chance of not speaking English. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 08:31, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * As I see it:
 * Creating an account. No this isn't necessary - the usurpation system does rather assume people have existing edits they want transfered, or that it a third party could recreate the target account if it was just moved out of the way (which isn't possible if a global account exists). On the other hand it doesn't cause much harm if they do - if they have no edits and have already unified, I just don't perform the second part of the rename. They will be able to log in with their global name and the extra account (along the lines of user:Foo de or User:Foo SUL causes no problems.
 * Confirmation links. I haven't been asking for crosslinks, though I know these are required by bureaucrats on other projects. My logic is that we have had no abuse so far and that if there was it could be simply fixed - we'd just rename the account again at the request of the owner who showed up later.
 * A request from an IP could be processed quite straightforwardly - confirm the existence of a global account, then rename the current user out of the way. Only the owner of the global account can recreate the account. WjBscribe 09:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ahh, yeah I had read that after I posted, that account names are "protected" for you if you have a global account. That does mean we can just direct people to make a request for usurping as an ip or whatever. To your point though, we should adjust the instructions so that it explains this and no longer assumes people have prior edits. - Taxman Talk 13:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Though I thought it would be unnecessary at first, on reflection I think it might be wise to create a separate page for SUL requests with its own set of instructions, as clear and straightforward as possible. &mdash; Dan | talk 20:19, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

SUL; where we stand
I have created Changing username/SUL to handle all SUL-related requests, including traditional renames, usurpations, and 'partial usurpations'. I have marked it as temporary, though I am not sure whether the developers still plan to implement some sort of automated resolution of name conflicts. In the mean-time, we are equipped to deal with these kinds of requests:
 * Traditional renames, when someone has an en.wiki account in a name other than his global name, and wishes to rename it to match his global name, where the target is not already taken. This will probably include plenty of non-Latin target usernames. These are no problem, except when complicated the bugs mentioned below.
 * Usurpations, cases where the target name is already taken. These are a bit more complicated. In cases where the target name would traditionally qualify for usurpation (no edits, or no GFDL-significant edits, etc.), these can be granted immediately, with no waiting period. In cases where the target name has some, or many, valid edits, it will be necessary (A) to establish that the person asking to take over the account actually has the right to that global account; and (B) to contact the present owner of the en.wiki account, let him know what's going on, and ask him what new name he'd like. These should probably not be carried out immediately, since it will take some time to get in touch with the present owner of the account. However, unlike with traditional usurpations, the owner of the target account does not have the right simply to refuse to be usurped: the rightful owner of the global account always takes precedence. SUL usurpations come in two varieties:
 * Full usurpations, when someone has an en.wiki account in a name other than his global name, wishes to claim his global name on en.wiki, but finds that it is already taken. We can handle these in the usual way, except when they are complicated by the bugs mentioned below.
 * 'Partial usurpations', when someone does not yet have an en.wiki account, but finds his global username taken on en.wiki, and wishes to claim it. He doesn't need to create an account in order to do this: he can place a request without logging in. We should be able to re-name the en.wiki account out of the way, and then the owner of the global account should alone be able to create a new en.wiki account in its place. I haven't tried to do one of these yet, so I'm not altogether sure that it works that way. I call these 'partial' because they require us to re-name only one account, not two.

Unfortunately there are two significant bugs in the process at the moment:
 * 13507, which prevents renaming an account to a name for which a global account already exists. This means that for the moment the global account must be deleted in order to fulfill most requests of the first two kinds mentioned above (traditional renames and full usurpations). Feel free to direct users for whom this is the case to Steward_requests/SUL requests, or simply to me.
 * 14330, which in turn prevents the deletion of a global account if its owner has already created accounts on wikis he had never visited before SUL: so-called 'guest accounts'. The deletion of a global account that has 'guest accounts' results in those accounts' becoming inaccessible, even if the global account is later re-created, which requires a lot of clean-up. This second bug is really the crippling one at the moment. Until this one is resolved, a lot of requests will have to be put on hold.

These seem to be our most pressing considerations at the moment. Please let me know if I've missed anything. &mdash; Dan | talk 20:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just a quick comment about the 'partical usurpation' procedure. I think this it open to gaming and it would probably be a good idea for the bureaucrats to require a diff from the user who wishes to taken a registered account from their home wiki proving they are who they say they are. I just think it's too open to abuse if you don't require that. They're just my thoughts anyway.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  20:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it's actually the least open to gaming. Once an account has been unified, only the global account holder can create an account with that name. So yes, the person asking may not be the person entitled to the global name, but that doesn't mean they can take the name - it's reserved by the software for the correct person. If I'm missing something, do point it out but I'm not seeing where abuse would happen. WjBscribe 20:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The bureaucrats have not been requesting confirmation links thus far, primarily (I assume) because of the extra, added workload it would add to editors filing a usurpation request: already not the most straightforward processes to get one's head around.


 * Whilst I can see the logic in having editors cross-confirm their usurpation requests, the current lack of exploitation of the process (that is, there have not yet been any malicious requests insofar as I am aware), coupled with: 1/ the relative lack of difficulty with which a vandal request can be "reverted"; 2/ the added work it would require for a bureaucrat (having to check each cross-diff before executing the request); 3/ the added work it burdens on the filing editor; makes me hesitant at throwing my support at having cross-diff's made compulsory. Anthøny 20:53, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was thinking more of people who haven't actually created their global account yet, but want to claim their en.wiki name before they do. Anyone could claim they are someone else, have the account usurped, create the new account and then globalise the account, making it difficult for the real user to claim the account, or at least creating more work for stewards.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  20:53, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * "Partial usurpations" should only be done where the global account has already been created - if that isn't clear it needs to be. Also, bear in mind that to be able to unify a global account, you have to control the username on the "home wiki" (i.e. that with the account with the most edits or highest access level). If someone has just created an account, it is highly unlikely to be the "home wiki" one for the global account. WjBscribe 20:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Will is correct, and I will advice the crats to use this tool when searching for the user across wikimedia, yesterday I asked the creator to add Blocks to the tools so that it will be easier for the crats to know if that person is blocked on another wiki or not, probably for vandalism etc, for example WJBscribe and since it has time/date of creation as well, it will be easier to determine the homewiki. I added this tool to the Interwiki map but since it hasn't been updated for nearly 4 months, it cannot be easily accessible yet..-- Cometstyles 23:43, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Just a note about removal of comments...
Thought this may be of general interest, and enlightining if a vrat might comment there. I've addressed questioned the removal of comments on the DHMO 5 RFA here. Best, NonvocalScream (talk) 01:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Question about single-user login

 * I copy this from User talk:EVula. He hasn't responded, so I'll ask the current bureaucrats.

Dear EVula (as if you have nothing else to worry about...):

I'm considering signing up for single-user login, but my situation is a little complicated. I seek advice from someone who has done it before and understands how it works, and whom I trust. That's you. :)

The username "Shalom" is shared by three or four users across Wikimedia, myself included. I have more edits than the others, but I am not the oldest, and I don't want to ask other people to rename their accounts for me. That leaves two choices: (1) Forget it, who needs SUL anyway? It's a cool feature, but I survived this long without it. The main reason I'd like to have it is so that interwiki links could be attributed to me without my having to bother registering an account everywhere like you did. (2) Rename my username to something other than "Shalom."

That presents a couple of problems. First, I remember when Warlordjohncarter was renamed to User:John Carter it shut down the server for a few minutes because he had about 70,000 edits. I have about 22,000 edits plus another couple of thousand deleted edits, so I imagine renaming my account, and doing page-moves on my dozens of subpages, would cause a major headache for the servers and the bureucrat. Second, I have different accounts with different names all over the place. On Hebrew Wikisource I am still YechielMan (my old username here); on Hebrew Wikipedia I am שלום יחיאל; on Wikimedia Commons I am Shalom Yechiel; and on meta I am Shalom Hello. I'd need help from a steward who could go to all these wikis and do a pile of renames, if that's even possible. Asking local bureaucrats to do renames is more trouble than it's worth. (I could just abandon those accounts and let my SUL global account supersede them.)

Finally, I would have to choose whether to continue using a pseudonym - probably Shalom Yechiel - or to go with my real name, which is [redacted]. As I get more involved here, I like the idea of using my real name, and I have no reason to fear harmful consequences given the fact that my name and photo is already on my userpage for many months. But I'm not sure, and here too, friendly advice would be helpful.

I know this sounds really arcane, but I hope to stay here for awhile longer, and SUL could help me do it more effectively. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 22:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll respond to this later tonight. Just wanted to make sure you didn't think I was blowing you off. :) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 22:27, 27 May 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, to try and work through the points you raise:
 * Who has the best claim to Shalom globally. Looking at the list of accounts with this name, it confirms that you have the best claim to this name globally (the "home wiki" is enwiki). Where users with this name have made edits, you may be able to usurp the accounts (depending on the policies at their wikis) or can try and negotiate with them for the name.
 * Ignoring SUL. You cannot avoid SUL for ever, eventually global accounts are going to be the way Wikimedia Projects work. At some point it would seem the developers will need to move all non unified accounts out of the way of global accounts. Probably better to get sorted sooner rather than later.
 * Server load. The developers have changed the way renames are handled by the servers, meaning that it should be possible to rename users with far more edits than John without causing any lag or database locks. So this isn't an issue.
 * Local renames. The stewards are not permitted to rename users on projects that have bureaucrats, you will need to make local requests.
 * Hope that helps you decide what to do. WjBscribe 04:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, WJB. I'll think about it. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 13:37, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I checked the SUL page to which you linked. Shalom at Polish Wikipedia, who is the same person as Shalom at Commons, began editing in 2005 before I did, and is an active editor there today.  All the other Shalom usernames are mine except for the one at Hebrew Wikipedia, which has 13 edits, all in 2006.  I'll see if I can get in touch with Shalom at Polish Wikipedia and Commons.  Either I'll claim the Shalom account globally or I'll offer it to him and take a different name.  One way or the other, we can resolve this. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 13:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * So, to finally respond (and I completely forgot about it; early on in my RfB, a lot of stuff was falling to the wayside), I'd recommend a name change, based solely on the fact that usernames based on real words are inevitably going to confuse someone; "WjBscribe" and "EVula" are fairly unique, and you're unlikely to run into another person with those names (I'm the owner of evula.com, .net, .org...). And I'm sure I would have given a good breakdown like WjBscribe did above were I not an absent-minded professor at times. ;) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 15:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I have been renamed from Shalom to Shalom Yechiel, and will take that account globally as soon as other wikis do their renames. Thanks for the advice. Yechiel (Shalom) 23:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Username vandalism
I just looked up an administrators name in the Users list and got a rather sad result. There seems to be some people creating sentences beginning with the username of someone they don't like (as you might guess, not particularly nice sentences). My first instinct was to report them to usernames for administrator attention, and they got blocked very quickly. The problem is they are still visible when you look up the username in the userlist. Not always being an optimist I checked another administrators username, and sure enough, it was even uglier. This is really sad I think, and I don't know what to do about it. It occurred to me that admins can't change usernames so reporting them to UAA seems pointless. That's why I bring it up here (and I think it's unnecessary to bring it to everyones attention, i.e. put it 'on display'). If you want an example you can search for Jimbo Wales. I don't know how many bureaucrats there are, or if this can be dealt with (i.e. removed) by someone else? Should I report such names somewhere else?  —Apis (talk ) 03:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC) —Apis (talk ) 13:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)''
 * In cases where private information is concerned (ie. "Daniel's address is 123 Fake Street"), I believe the developers have deleted the relevant logs from places. However, in mere attack situations (like the ones you describe above), they naturally don't wish to fiddle with logs as they do with personal information.
 * Bureaucrats may be willing to rename these people to "Attack Username 0001" etc., but that's about all that could happen. No idea if any of/all the bureaucrats would agree, though. Daniel (talk) 03:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It is not general practice to rename these accounts - doing so just moves the offensive comment from the user list to the rename log after all. It has been done a few times where use of a particular account to make an edit is in itself problematic - e.g. an article about an IRA member created by an account called "Semtex set Ireland free" where the article was not a candidate for deletion. If privacy is the concern, it is probably better to ask the developers to remove the entry (as this will create no permanent public log entry) though I would be willing to rename it if someone wants. I will also consider renaming if a user is particularly distressed by such a name - everyone is a volunteer here and I see no reason not to accommodate requests where their enjoyment of contributing is significantly affected by something like this. WjBscribe 06:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's not much better for those names to show up in the rename log, but at least there would be less probability of seeing it by chance when looking up a users name? It appears as most of those accounts have been created for the single purpose of showing up as an attack in the userlist when you search for a certain user. On the other hand, there doesn't appear to be that many bureaucrats/oversighters around so perhaps it's not worth the effort to rename all of them. =( I hope the targeted users don't care about such nonsense, but it's sad to see that kind of stuff lying around. ''

Emailuser
I was playing around today and figured out that 3 bureaucrats do not have Emailuser enabled:, , and. Given that crats deal with delicate situations, such as RTV renames, canvassing reports at RFAs, and the like, I think all crats should be asked to have Emailuser enabled.  MBisanz  talk 06:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You may of course ask these users to enable their emails (I personally think all admins should have this option enabled) but I would point out that Cprompt has never performed any bureaucrat actions and barely edits, TUF-KAT has not performed any since March 2004 and Infrogmation since March 2007 (with the previous action before that being in August 2004) so I'm not sure their bureaucrat status is particularly significant. WjBscribe 06:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ using DEA's new template :)  MBisanz  talk 06:22, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I've got Emailuser enabled. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 15:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We should consider having a crat-listserve. Kingturtle (talk) 13:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * As an outsider looking in, I think that would be a good idea for discussing sensitive renames, implementations of policy, etc. You all do know you have a private crat-only IRC chat room at #wikipedia-en-crats ?  MBisanz  talk 15:42, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * All important bureaucrat dialog should take place within the confines of en.wikipedia-proper. The use of a listserve would be to circulate announcements or issues quickly, alerting bureaucrats of burning issues, and pointing bureaucrats to discussions. I am not on IRC all that much, but I check my email all the time. Kingturtle (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I had no idea there was a crat IRC channel. I just tried it and I don't have access (nor do I have the ability to check who does have access). This bothers me as I've publicly stated there is no crat IRC channel in the past (there certainly is none in use). I really don't think an IRC channel is a good idea - bureaucrat actions need transparency and as much as possible should happen onwiki. One of the best things about bureaucrat discussions about RfA /RfB outcomes to my eyes are that they happen in public and our arguments are open to scrutiny. I think I will ask James Forrester to close that channel - I worry that it's very existence is a source of drama.

I personally would also rather not have an email list for similar reasons of transparency. Whilst there are occasions when it would be useful to notify all bureaucrats in one go, it isn't essential. There are few pages that require crat attention and they can be easily watchlisted. Where crat involvement in a specific discussion is needed, I don't think it that much of a problem to send talkpage notifications to every crat. Whilst sensitive matters can arise - usually renames - these don't usually require discussion, just a crat to be contacted discretely. All in all, I'd rather forgo the possible advantages of an IRC channel/ email list in favour of maintaining transparent discourse. WjBscribe 16:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that all bureaucrat dialogs should be transparent. The suggestion of a listserve was to create a way to summon bureaucrats. But certainly that can be done with talk pages. Kingturtle (talk) 16:10, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't see the need for a 'crat-only IRC channel. Aside from the need for transparency like you said, there's already an admin-only channel; all bureaucrats are also administrators, and there aren't enough of us to warrant a separate channel (last night was the first time I'd heard about it as well). An email list I'd be more or less okay with, since I trust us to not treat it like a cabal (though I'm just a day into being a bureaucrat, so perhaps I haven't been properly inducted), and I wouldn't imagine that it would be particularly active (for the reasons that WjBscribe listed as reasons not to have one in the first place). EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 16:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm personally in agreement with WJB's suggestion to close the bureaucrats' IRC channel, primarily because of the fundamental necessity to maximise bureaucrat transparency: short of a few possible exceptions (eg., renames for privacy purposes), there is no requirement for a closed-access forum for discussion for the bureaucrats, as there are no 'crat tasks requiring any degree of privacy.


 * On the topic of bureaucrats having email enabled, I would expect it as a matter of course, and I think that all the active bureaucrats would have it enabled anyway; the three crats who do not have it enabled are, as Will points out, not active to any degree with 'crat tasks, so it's not a huge deal; perhaps a note on their talk page (not sure if that's been done, I think that's what MBisanz was pointing towards) would ping them into enabling it, but it's not something we need fret about; if an active crat de-enabled email, then I'd say we should probably treat that with a little bit more urgency. Anthøny 16:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, #wikipedia-en-crats is not in use. I tried to join it and was immediately thrown out. I was not able to view its access list, but I had never heard of it until a few days ago, so I suspect it was created and set as invite-only to prevent its being used. &mdash; Dan | talk 17:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll note I discovered it in jest last night when chatting on IRC about how few crats we have. Was rather surprised it kicked me instead of ending up in an unregistered channel.  MBisanz  talk 19:15, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like nobody actually uses it, but I'd still like to see it shut down (or maybe park a bot in there to ensure that nobody takes it over). I can easily see someone trying to fan the IRC flames (an admittedly easy task) by ranting and raving about a top-secret 'crat channel. No good can come from it. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 19:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Like Anthony says, there's no need for it. What location does it exist at? Rudget   (Help?) 19:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Its at #wikipedia-en-crats on the freenode network, so it can definitely be taken over by our GCs and shut down.  MBisanz  talk 19:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The channel is available, but has been flagged as a private registration, available data is:

=ChanServ= Information on #wikipedia-en-crats: =ChanServ= Registered : Aug 14 21:01:15 2007 (42 weeks, 0 days, 03:55:55 ago) =ChanServ= Mode lock : +nst =ChanServ= Flags     : PRIVATE =ChanServ= *** End of Info ***
 * — xaosflux  Talk  00:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I was able to jump in there last night; looks like it's been successfully blanked out. There were just a couple of people there, none 'crats (just admins that were there for the same reason I was: to see what there was to see). EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 22:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Requesting a more active bureaucrat role in high profile RFAs
Having discussed a recently withdrawn RFA with several editors on both sides of the fence, there's been one point of agreement: a more proactive bureaucrat involvement in keeping the proceeding orderly would have been better all around. Without pointing any fingers or rehashing the particulars, the community didn't have its best moment there. Something isn't right when a discussion about whether to entrust a dedicated contributor with additional ops ends with the prospect of losing people from the project. For want of a better word, the discussion needed clerking--or at least closer management. Respectfully requesting a closer eye and a swifter response when future discussions begin to go off track. Durova Charge! 22:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Still, I'd be fine giving a little nudge here and there when things are getting out of line; a gentle hand at the onset of an "episode" (for lack of a better term) could potentially nip a lot of things in the bud, meaning it wouldn't be quite as draconian as I'm fearing it could be. :) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 22:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've taken a fairly strong hand to spats that have risen up around Kurt's opposes, but that was as an admin. It's a little outside the "permissions-based abilities" line drawn around bureaucrat 'powers', and I would rather that the community police itself (otherwise the bureaucrats become too much of an authority group, which in my estimation they shouldn't be).


 * Bad cases make bad law. It is not at all unusual for a failed RfA to result in the loss of an editor, so in that respect the recent high-profile RfA was no different from many others. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Is that an argument for the current status quo or an argument to implement changes? Durova Charge! 23:00, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It is a comment that, although I firmly believe that the RfA needs to be changed, this particular proposal does not address any of the problems that I perceive it to have, and appears instead to be a knee-jerk reaction to a rather unusual event. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 23:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Elonka's second RFA last summer had similar characteristics, and I contemplated starting a thread along the lines of this one back then. Since that time there have been others.  As a percentage of RFAs where the nominee has 15,000+ edits this is a nontrivial dynamic.  This instance is more extreme than most, but by no means unique.  Durova Charge! 23:43, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Anyone who's been around long enough to make 15,000+ (manual) edits has obviously been around long enough to make a few enemies who may be inclined to view the RfA as an opportunity for a bit of revenge. I really can't see how the involvement of even a whole squadron of bureaucrats, assuming a squadron could indeed be mustered, would be likely to change that. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 00:13, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is really necessary. I realize the dhmo RfA was a bit nuts, but I don't see necessarily how deeper crat involvement could have prevented that or limited the damage. They were involved to the extent necessary in determining the extent of canvassing and taking steps, and involved in the decision to indent votes from seeming SPAs. What else, specifically, could they have done in that case or in any other difficult prior RfA that might have limited the bloodshed? AvruchT * ER 23:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Addressing the profanity sooner would have helped. That festered for about 30 hours and led to an ANI thread plus a minor edit war.  Durova Charge! 23:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know what we would be able to do. I'm inclined to say that we should not do anything 'as bureaucrats': we are not the referees or directors of RFA, but only a few people whom the community thinks are good at figuring out what it wants. We were not chosen to be in charge: only to pick through the bickering after it is all done.
 * It might be objected that some of the bureaucrats could referee an argument effectively because they enjoy a certain amount of respect from the community. I am not sure that this translates to the ability to speak in such a way that people will listen, but even if it does, there are lots of respected users other than bureaucrats, and plenty of people who are just as adept (or much more: remember that we were not chosen for this purpose at all) at refereeing arguments in progress. This means that if a bureaucrat were to take on such a task he would not be doing so 'as a bureaucrat', but merely as a user. &mdash; Dan | talk 00:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds right to me, but don't forget that our effectiveness "as users" might get a little bonus, and a little more respect, due to our related roles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and could help diffuse unpleasant situations (though should not be taken lightly). In the case of DHMO, however, I don't really see anything we could have done, or any way having a bureaucrat's added prestige would have helped. Andre (talk) 00:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * There were two main types of problems in that RFA. One was an unacceptably bad faith accusation followed by a rude word in response; which side of the Giggy-fence you come down on probably determines which one you think was worse, but I think most people realize in hindsight that both should not have been allowed to "fester", as Durova says, for so long.  That generated the most heat, and a gigantic ANI thread, but I don't think it was the worst thing about the discussion.
 * The second, and worse type of problem was the continuous, small, incremental, almost impreceptible escalation of every single response to another's response:
 * ''I oppose."
 * Why?
 * Because the other side pesters the opposers, that's why
 * Oh, come on, that's not a reason to oppose the nominee
 * Because I don't trust their maturity
 * That's not assuming good faith
 * Don't tell me about assuming good faith, you never do
 * Oh God, here comes your traditional whine-fest
 * If you're going to badger me like this, I strongly oppose.
 * Dramaqueen
 * Git
 * Fuckwit
 * Where should an uninvolved person (admin, crat, or everyman) step in? Which one of those edits first crossed the line?  You can't step in as some kind of policeman at the very first sign of preceived minor incivility; it's schoolmarmish, it looks and feels like you're making a mountain out of a molehill.  And I guarantee that the first person to be asked to back off would reply "what about what they said right before me?  How is that different?"
 * This is insidious, and occurs at almost every RFA. When an RFA is as contentious as this one, it reaches a critical mass.  But in a less-contentious RFA like Tanthalus's last night, it happens too, and I watched it escalate and did nothing because it's always so incremental; it's always hard to say "OK, that's it, that's the straw that broke the camel's back, I'm moving everyone's comments to the talk page whether they like it or not".  Thankfully, Tanthalus himself stepped in on that one, and it certainly wasn't as spectacular as what happened at DHMO's, but it was the same basic thing.  Constant, unnecessary escalation by both parties, both sort of itching for a fight, but so incremental that, like the frog in boiling water, you don't know when to jump.
 * The solution, IMHO, (besides everyone chilling a little) is to jump in early and try to quietly (on their user talk page, not publically directly below their comment) dampen escalation made by people you agree with. That makes it so much easier to back down, when a friend is suggesting you do it, rather than an "enemy", or a "bureaucrat" telling you to.  No power-tripping "knock it off or I'll block you", but "dude, things will go better in the long run for our case if you strike that last bit, whether you think it's true or not."  No cries of "zOMG involved admin!" or "playing the AGF/CIVIL card", or "tinpot dictators with shiny badges".  And best of all, no new policy.  Just recommitting to trying to get your side of the argument across with class.  It won't solve all of the problems that occured, but it will solve some of them.  Maybe. --barneca (talk) 00:26, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above that this isn't what bcrats are here for and there also isn't always anything that can be done. Where it can be, Barneca has made an excellent point, it's best if editors police themselves. - Taxman Talk 02:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I personally see it as additional evidence of a good candidate when they suppress the desire to reply to every oppose on the nom page and even better evidence of a goody when they stop others from doing the same thing. --Dweller (talk) 11:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It is a bad idea to expect specifically the bureaucrats to be the caretakers of RfA/Bs when the onus should be on all editors: crats, admins and non-admins. We are a community. We should all take a leadership role in RfA/B proceedings.

Moreover, it may sometimes be in the community's interest for bureaucrats to stay out of the fray to avoid any possible interpretations of taking sides during a contentious post-closing decision process. Bureaucrats specific role in RfA/Bs is to interpret whether the result is a success. I followed Dihydrogen Monoxide's 3rd RfA closely, but I intentionally stayed out. Participation, even with the best intentions, might have compromised my neutrality or made some editors think I had taken sides. Kingturtle (talk) 14:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with Kingturtle here, if we are expecting the 'crats to close the debates with neutrality, how could we possibly expect them to police the debates beforehand? Way too easy to cause further disruption based on the perception of interference (note, I don't personally believe it would be interference, just the perception of it).  I also strongly agree with Malleus' point above.  Lots of things about DHMO's latest RFA were awful.  On both sides.  Using a bad example to make new rules leads to bad rules.  Keeper   |  76   |   Disclaimer  14:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Because we have a high proportion of editors who tend to react to disagreement emotionally rather than rationally, this problem is not very solvable. We could try to encourage people who are friends or enemies of the candidate to not participate, but what are the chances anyone would listen? People want to participate more when they have strong feelings on the candidate. Maybe the best we can do is encourage a culture where editors do not go out of their way to becomes friends or enemies of other editors, but I doubt this would be effective. Friday (talk) 14:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Your diagnosis is clear, but I think it misses the mark slightly. It is a private theory of mine that, while there may appear to be rational discourse, there is no rational assent: I mean that the rational defense of a conclusion can only be a mask for the irrational, or emotional, way by which the arguer came to believe in the conclusion. My theory is supported here by the fact that the ability of any human being to 'get on in life' depends on a series of logical errors, of matters of faith if you like: the existence of cause and effect; the existence of other minds aside from our own (there are no true solipsists); the possibility of free will -- we can give no purely rational justification for any of these.
 * For this reason I think we cannot blame Wikipedians for reacting emotionally rather than rationally. They (and you, and I) cannot really do otherwise: they can only pretend. What they lack, or at least are not exercising, is not the capacity for cold reason but something like the emotional capacity for empathy, or for imagination: the ability to imagine yourself as the other party in the argument. It is never enough show rationally that the other guy is wrong. You must then explain, to yourself or to everyone, how it is possible that he came to believe in his own argument. In order to do that you must imagine yourself as him, and see how the world feels from his position. If you cannot understand this then you are liable to conclude that he is a moron (for only a moron could believe something so entirely implausible!) and there is where you are tempted into incivility. The antidote to disasters at RFA is not reason but imagination.
 * Perhaps you do not believe my theory -- then the rest will do nothing for you. It's worth a shot, anyway. &mdash; Dan | talk 16:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment I think the Rfa process worked very well in the DHMO case. Better, in fact, than many other Rfas. I supported the Rfa, and will probably support another one if he comes back, but it was the Rfa process that brought out the reality that DHMO was not yet admin material. We all saw how he handled himself in a difficult situation (very well) and what he thought was appropriate behavior during an rfa (totally inappropriate). Adminship is not a reward for wikiwork but is the process of selecting users who will intervene minimally in the project and will do so in a way that has the support of most editors. With an early bureaucrat intervention, the Rfa would probably have been successful, possibly to the detriment of the project.--Regents Park (roll amongst the roses) 14:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If that were all it did I would not have started this thread. Instead it led to a lengthy noticeboard thread, profane insults, and his apparent departure.  This isn't analogous to the new editor who runs RFA prematurely and leaves in a huff when it fails: DHMO is a bureaucrat on another WMF project.  When everyone is responsible, no one is.  Two other examples where a high profile RFA went south:
 * Elonka's second RFA: a single editor with a very strong personal dislike toward the nominee tried to derail the proceeding. He was later blocked for a month for continued problems of the same nature, but no one intervened at RFA.
 * Kelly Martin's most recent RFA: after it went down in flames some editors proposed a story about it at the Wikipedia Signpost tipline. Although I probably would have opposed if I had seen it in time to vote, this was such bad sportsmanship that I stood up for her at that venue.  We really shouldn't be rubbing people's noses in their mistakes publicly when the community decides a longstanding editor isn't right for the tools.
 * Now DHMO, an RFA which devolved into accusations of white supremecy and canvassing--mostly tangential to the nominee. Fortunately, the parties most directly involved appear to have stepped back from the brink.
 * This is not a good pattern. It doesn't happen often, but it's significant as a proportion of senior/prolific editors who run RFA.  If the 'crats don't want to do this then maybe RFA needs clerks.  The problem when "everyone" is responsible for keeping things orderly is that most of the people who read an RFA are its nominee, nominators, and voters--exactly the people who would be accused of partisanship if intervention becomes necessary.  A neutral broker, respected by all, would be ideal.  Durova Charge! 23:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think any of us has said we do not want to do this job. We seem to have agreed, to the contrary, that regardless whether any of us individually wants to do it, we as a group shouldn't. This is quite different. In fact, I would be glad to attempt the task of refereeing once in a while, but I would insist at all times that I was not acting in my office as a bureaucrat. I also oppose the creation of any new office for refereeing. For this position to have any meaning at all it would have to be given some authority (e.g. 'I am authorized to block you if you do not quit using profanity'). This would give individual users the sort of authority that at present only belongs to the arbitration committee: the authority to make binding judgments about users' conduct. In short, if the position were to be any use at all, it would have to be tyrannical (or, to use a nicer word, unilateral).
 * You might say: let's simply not give referees any definite authority. In that case, why have a designated position at all? I would prefer that if you, or anyone else, see an RFA headed for disaster you ask a user you believe would be effective (trusted, disinterested, etc.) to step in informally and try to get a handle on the discourse without taking a position in it. This depends on actual trust and talent, not on institutionally decreed authority, and so will always be more effective. (Contingency remark: If ever such an office is created it should by all means not be called "clerk" -- that would be entirely misleading.) &mdash; Dan | talk 02:49, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Regarding Dan's insightful comment on imagination three posts above : Escalation often starts with expressed lack of assuming good faith which is a policy, and assuming high intelligence which doesn't seem to be a policy. A portion of WP:CIVIL complaints are located there, and have nothing to do with civility per se. To assume good faith takes deliberation (sometimes we are forced to hide our gut feelings and true thoughts), but it also takes imagination! (Sometimes it's not that hard to assume good faith, once you take a step out of your world, and imagine yourself in someone else's shoes). I would love to see this included in the WP:AGF page. Of course trolls abuse our good-faith policy, but the nastiness Durova is referring to is not trollery, it happens between editors who all strive to build and improve an encyclopedia. This is forgotten so often. Disinterested bureaucrats are more than welcome to throw in a little koan or thoughtful statement like Dan's above. I think barneca makes a very good point too; intervention by people who agree with a hothead's position but disagree with his methods will be far less antagonizing and generally more successful. If embarassment is an issue, use e-mail; it's a good enough reason for off-wiki correspondence. Talking might be more helpful than public threats and sanctions. Assume good faith and high intelligence when you see disruption too. Most editors are willing to listen, if you hit the right tone and don't make them look like a fool. ---Sluzzelin talk  10:11, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it would be dangerous to expand the role of a bureaucrat based on this incident. For one thing, the idea of a disinterested bureaucrat is an oxymoron. A bureaucrat has in intrinsic interest in an Rfa, especially a contentious one, and brings his or her own biases and interpretations of policies to the table. Giving a formal role to bureaucrats will only cause more problems because many editors will, rightly or wrongly, feel that the process is no longer fair. Far better to live with the risk of the occasional departure of a valuable editor than to live with a breakdown in faith in the fairness of the process. With bureaucrats, as with administrators, less is always more. --Regents Park (roll amongst the roses) 17:24, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

BAG Nom close
Could I get a 'crat to pop over by Wikipedia_talk:BAG, and close it please? It's a few weeks past it's expiration date. SQL Query me! 07:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well there wasn't an expiration date and we've been waiting for more participation to make the consensus clearer. It appears that's not going to happen, so I closed it. - Taxman Talk 16:29, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for a bureaucrat bot
Before anyone gets too excited, I'm not thinking of one to close RfAs but one to handle some of the SUL renames. The bot would do the following:
 * Rename all accounts on enwiki that have no edits and the same name as a global account

Effectively this will mean doing what bureaucrats are doing at the moment, just faster and without the requests (which are a bit of nightmare given the language barriers etc.). If the account is attached to a global account - i.e. actually belongs to the owner of a unified account - the bot will not be able to rename it. If it is not attached to a global account, then moving it out of the way will remove the conflict for the holder of the global account and allow them to sign in here with their global username. Human bureaucrats will only be needed where someone has already been editing under a different account name and wants to keep those contribs.

Although the bot will need to have crat rights, the task is pretty simple and requires no thought. What do people think? Have I missed any potential problems here. WjBscribe 17:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * What will happen to the bot when SUL requests die down to the point that they are rare or almost no longer existent? -- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 17:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Will you submit it to an RfB (similar to RedirectCleanupBot)? Are there any other examples (here, on meta, commons perhaps) of a bot with 'crat user rights? <strong style="color:#000">AvruchT * ER 17:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, is renam<script type="text/javascript" src="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Omegatron/monobook.js/addlink.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"> ing one of the divisible user rights that stewards can now assign individually (and not as a group, as they are assigned with a flag like +bureaucrat or +admin)? <strong style="color:#000">AvruchT * ER 17:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Avruch, I think you'll find that if it isn't, the user rights are very unpackable and that it would only take a short request on bugzilla to have the devs create a new user class for this function. Whether such is necessary is another matter, probably that should be determined by the community at an appropriate venue. -- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 17:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * OMG A CRAT BOT!1!! To Avruch: not that I know of, and yes they can. This seems like a very sensible idea.  Al Tally  talk  17:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Anyone written this code? From a spec standpoint it doesn't seem bad - people might freak at the privBot aspect though -- Tawker (talk) 17:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds sensible at a glance. I assume this would be explicitly no edits whatsoever? Or tinkered to say only no edits or user talk page edits made to the same username possibly? And would there be a time limit - e.g. if the account was created <1 week ago (or whatever) then the bot won't rename? Pedro : Chat  17:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If the account has no edits and conflicts with a global account, does it matter that it was created only a week previously? WjBscribe 17:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No probably not on reflection. As noted this wouldn't take long, and the odds of someone creating an account with the same name as one being usurped for SUL at the same time would be negligible, so a timelimit is academic. Pedro : Chat  17:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * (e/c * 3) Wouldn't it make more sense to ask the devs to allow Special:MergeAccount to remove the conflicting never-been-used accounts when establishing global accounts. (I could have sworn that doing so was actually part of the design at one point.) Dragons flight (talk) 17:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a bit of hack. If the devs could do that, the bot would be redundant. WjBscribe 17:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I created 14416 to suggest this. Dragons flight (talk) 17:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've left a note on Tim Starling's talkpage pointing him to this discussion so hopefully he can give us an indication of how likely it is that this will be implemented at the software level. WjBscribe 18:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * One advantage of a software hack is that it won't clog a brief period in the rename log. I'm not sure how many users we're talking about, or whether anyone even trawls that log manually...--chaser - t 18:53, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is unprecedented. However it is the most obvious idea in the world: how convenient to resolve hundreds of potential SUL requests, before they even happen. It has one task to do, which would take one afternoon; it would be stripped of its rights once that was done. If it needed to be put into service again, we would talk about it again. I am entirely in favor (unless someone can convince the developers to help out). &mdash; Dan | talk 17:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it's quite a one afternoon job - that supposes that all global accounts have already been unified. I suspect accounts will continue to be unified in a manner that creates conflicts for some time, so the bot would have a slightly longer life than that - though with much less to do after the initial run. WjBscribe 17:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, you're right, of course. In any case, it would have a single limited task, and would be given temporary rather than permanent rights. &mdash; Dan | talk 17:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Since its technically possible to carve the rename right out, and assign that to the account specifically, I think that would be preferable to actually giving the 'crat flag to the bot. Not that it would ultimately make much of a difference, but it would definitely help with community acceptance and that sort of thing. <strong style="color:#000">AvruchT * ER 17:55, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the main decision here is the type of access we want to give this automaton; a simple request would be all that's needed at bugzilla to get the bot a special "renamer" class, but whether that is necessary is another matter. It may serve to solve the qualms of some potential worriers at that idea of a cratbot, as Avruch notes. -- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 17:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We should actually educate those people that their worries are unfounded, not go out of our way to accommodate them (and hassling people at bugzilla with a special case is out of the way compared to a couple of clicks at Special:UserRights). Doing so just perpetuates the myths surrounding bots with privileges. – Steel 22:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That is a great idea in theory, but I believe we've tried before. There is always a substantial group of people not too cofortable with a bot with higher access. But we haven't really seen much of that here, so we'll see. -- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 22:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * This seems to beg the question, that if a bot can have +renamer, why not all admins? — xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  23:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That's true, why not all admins? Andre (talk) 23:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That is a strange way of thinking. The bot is not taking over the management of WP:CHU or anything like that. It's just doing a single mechanical task that a recent change to the software has necessitated. This is not a spectrum, like: {bot, user, admin, bureaucrat}. Every bot needs a human operator, who will in this case be a bureaucrat -- so this bot is effectively a tool used by a bureaucrat, and not a user class of its own. Renames sometimes require tricky decision-making -- so bureaucrats handle them. The present case is exceptional: a bunch of renames need done that require no decision-making. Once those are taken care of, there will no longer be any need for a user-renaming bot. There is no reason for concluding on the basis of this bot proposal that all admins should be able to rename users. &mdash; Dan | talk 02:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think Xaos is saying that an alternative solution to dealing with burden of having too many rename requests who be to allow a larger group of people deal with renames (such as all admins). That an entirely different approach (and arguably indepedent) to the issue.  That 'crats handle renames is in many ways an historical accident.  Long, long ago, 'crats were created to handle a function that had previously been delegated to developers (i.e. account flagging).  When it became time for developers to pass off another function (i.e. renaming), this was "naturally" assigned to bureaucrats as well.  As far as I know there has never really been a discussion of whether it needs to be a bureaucrat right, per se, or whether the larger admin community could be trusted with it.  Dragons flight (talk) 02:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That's more along where I was going...we could still have a policy requiring a 'crat to determine consensus for non-trivial renames (the tricky decision making), but make this tool available to any admin who wants to do the job. If we really want more controls crats could grant and revoke a +renamer using the same type of discretion admins currently do with +rbk or +ibe.  Any admin abusing it could easily have it removed. —  xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  03:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That seems like a very reasonable idea, and I'd be in favor of it being a separate user right like +rollback, +checkuser, +oversight, +accountcreator, etc. It doesn't have to be part of the basic admin package. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 03:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If we were swamped with username change requests, this solution would seem reasonable enough. However, even in the past week of increased load, we've kept more or less perfectly up to date. The bot is proposed only to avoid an inconvenience. No need for a solution to a non-problem, especially when it involves complicating the user rights system. &mdash; Dan | talk 03:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure whether giving admins the rename capability could really be considered a direct alternative to this bot; part of the advantage of using an automaton in this situation is the speed and efficiency that a script can offer in this case. -- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 09:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, the idea is to save human time - I don't think using up admin time instead of bureaucrat time is as good an option as just getting a bot to do it. That said, Tim Starling's view is that this is better implemented at the software level than with a bot so lets see what the outcome of bug 14416 is. WjBscribe 09:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm here way late in the discussion, I know, but, here's some stats: There are 392 accounts presently that meet these criteria. (See: User:SQL/SULToMove) for a list of them. Thanks, to Cobi for writing the query :) SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  11:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey, set that list up with some "rename" links and we can fly through it in a day. Andre (talk) 11:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Is there a preferred template? SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  11:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, some of those have deleted contribs, if that matters, so, even fewer really. SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  11:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC) Worked around that.  SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  11:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We should probably make a new template, similar to the CHU template. Andre (talk) 11:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've created a template: switch them to SUL please instead of user. There are fewer than I was expecting so we can just do them by hand. WjBscribe 11:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * So we did about 500 renames. Andre (talk) 13:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, those renames having been done, we don't need a crat bot anymore ;) ... WjBscribe 13:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Would still be nice to see the software feature implemented though, as it would keep it from recurring here and address the same issue across all the other wikis. Dragons flight (talk) 14:08, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

SUL offensive username problem
On the basis that crats and others watching this page might know more about SUL than average, can I direct attention to this ANI thread? BencherliteTalk 23:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Requests for adminship/Arienh4 improper close
Could someone else reclose that? I should not have closed as I participated. Cheers, <font color="#009500"> Dloh <font color="#950095">cierekim'''  20:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * See here. No worries. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

BAG request close
Could a 'crat please close my BAG request here: BAG request: Bjweeks (BJ)? Thanks. BJ Talk 02:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No. We will not close this request. The outcome is obvious -- do it yourself. Andre (talk) 03:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * how about you follow policy and close this discussion instead of being a dick about it? the community request that these discussions should be closed by a crat so it will be closed by a crat. βcommand 04:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Betacommand, I think Andrevan was making a joke. <font color="orange" face="comic sans ms">Captain <font color="red" face="Papyrus">panda  04:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I do hope so. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 16:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I wasn't making a joke. What is the point of having a bureaucrat close a request with 100% support? BAG is not a flagged position, so the bureaucrat has no necessary role. This request can clearly be closed by anyone. Andre (talk) 21:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Beta, please calm down; I agree with Andre that there's no reason why a bureaucrat specifically needs to close it. Bot Approvals Group says "an uninvolved bureaucrat or an uninvolved current BAG member will close the discussion" (emphasis mine). Why does it need to be a bureaucrat when it's a unanimous decision? Even an involved BAG member could close it without much of a flap. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 22:11, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * LOL drama. It's just BAG... take a chill pill :)  Al Tally  talk  22:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * (ec) People have had opposition to BAG selecting itself so it was decided that the requests would be closed by 'crats. On a side note, most of the active BAG was involved in the request and nobody wants to touch it after the all the drama surrounding the BAG selection process. So I'd kindly ask that a 'crat closes it when they get a chance. BJ Talk 22:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That explanation of why a bureaucrat is needed was much more convincing than the initial request or having insults lobbed. If Dan hadn't already done it, I would have. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 13:24, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've done it. Calling in the bureaucrats is an artificial solution to your problem. If BAG is 'incestuous', it should be advertised more widely. If it is advertised widely and still nobody from the wider community participates, then the wider community has no excuse to complain about its being incestuous. &mdash; Dan | talk 22:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you. BJ Talk 22:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Controversial rename
I was wondering if any crats could comment on the status of this rename reversal. At the time, the crat consensus seemed to be to undo the rename (see Bureaucrats%27_noticeboard/Archive_10), but it appears that it was never undone? Is this a one-off thing or a practical change to the usurp policy? And should such one-off actions be incorporated into the Global Users policy?  MBisanz  talk 07:59, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Help me with SUL?
What would be involved in usurping User:Thatcher on mediawiki, nl and sv and then merging them to me? Thatcher 14:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You'll have to contact a bureaucrat on all three wikis. If your global account is currently merged, you'll have to have it deleted, by requesting here before any renames can be done. Once they are done, you can remerge your accounts into a global account.  Al Tally  talk  14:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, so how do I do that without exposing my IP? Register a new temp account? Thatcher 15:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * On the three wikis? Rudget   (Help?) 15:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I suggest you either create a temp account (Thatcher131 or whatever), or see if any bcrat is on IRC or whatever - Mediawiki bureaucrats are on IRC frequently.  Al Tally  talk  15:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

When I needed to do this on BgWP, I registered a User:MetaGiggy and used that. A temp account is probably the best solution. giggy (O) 01:28, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot matter
Could a crat look at Wikipedia_talk:Bot_Approvals_Group and decide if a deflag of is appropriate?  MBisanz  talk 20:38, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Handled, thanks guys! :) SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  05:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Changing_username
Just so you know, there is a discussion (which may turn into a poll) for a new renameuser right at Wikipedia_talk:Changing_username. <em style="font-family:Comic Sans MS;color:DarkBlue">StewieGriffin!  &bull; Talk Sign 16:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * This poll is now closed. Rudget   ( logs ) 09:01, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * And, just for the record, the proposal failed in its current form. -- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 09:36, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Backlog at WP:CHU/SUL
There's a bit of a backlog at Changing username/SUL, although there's only a 7 requests it does go back a couple of days --<font style="color:Red;">Chris  12:48, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Never mind, Andre has it under controll. However the are some bots that need to be flagged --<font style="color:Red;">Chris  08:32, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Snowed RFAs
I don't know if you guys are busy with WP:CHU or just not around, but there are two or three RFAs listed at the moment which are looking very snowy in the oppose direction. (Maybe they're in the southern hemisphere.) Should they be early-closed? (Or was there a decision that I didn't notice taken somewhere to stop snow-closing RFAs?) Stifle (talk) 08:58, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I dunno. Considering you've opposed with what looks like a near copy-paste reason for the majority of RfAs open, I'd say it should be up to the candidate whether to carry on or not.  Al Tally  talk  12:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Although the RfAs you mention are not likely to pass, they do seem to have a significant amount of support to prevent them from being closed early. Acalamari 15:38, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * They should just be closed at "failed" at the end of seven days. A snow close would be inappropriate, in my opinion. Useight (talk) 15:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Useight. We've established in the past that RfAs with a decent amount of supports should not be SNOW-closed against the candidate's will. All of those candidates want the RfAs to run to the end and don't wish to withdraw. So be it.  Enigma  message 15:52, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Masterpiece 2000's RfA
Could a crat close Masterpiece 2000's RfA? (He made a request on my talk page.) PhilKnight (talk) 14:34, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If it's a NOTNOW close/withdrawal, does it really need a 'crat? Or has something changed, I may not be up-to-date with RfA procedure. <small style="font:bold 12px Trebuchet MS;display:inline;"><font color="#630">RichardΩ612  Ɣ ɸ 14:43, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've gone ahead and closed it, as well as left messages on PhilKnight's and Masterpiece2000's talk pages. No issues here. Acalamari 16:30, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Edits from old account
Hello. I had my user name renamed about 1 day ago but not all of the edits (over 14,000 edits) from the old account (User:RyRy5) were moved to the my new account (User:RyRy) if you look at my edit count. How long wil it take for it to move to my new account name? Thanks, <font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">RyRy (<font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">talk ) 02:06, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It can take a few days for all the edits to move over. I've still got one edit that hasn't moved across, and I changed my name (albeit a very small name change) a year ago. If the problem persists (which I doubt it will), I'll ask a dev to move your edits over for you manually but hopefully it should sort itself out over the coming days.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  02:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay. Thanks, <font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">RyRy (<font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">talk ) 02:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Withdraw Candidacy for Administrator
Realistically my canadicy does not even stand a snowballs chance of passing. I would like to withdraw my candidacy. Thanks. ShoesssS Talk 10:31, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ —Giggy 10:38, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Account creator
I was just accepted on the English Wikipedia account creation interface, and I would like to have account creator rights here. Can someone please grant them to me? Thank you. - Diligent Terrier  (and friends) 21:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ - Thanks for helping out!  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  21:55, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you! - Diligent  Terrier  (and friends) 22:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

CHU backlog
There's a pretty sizeable backlog at WP:CHU, if any bureaucrats see this message. Useight (talk) 20:27, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * . [[Image:Face-wink.svg|20px]]  Maxim (talk)  20:44, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've tried...Requests for bureaucratship/Useight. Useight (talk) 21:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That was much more recent than I thought...  Maxim (talk)  21:19, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ Not by me, but pointing out that the backlog was taken care of. Now nothing for the clerks to do :P Wizardman  00:22, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well there is now some more work to do... Ack the life of a clerk :) Rudget   ( logs ) 16:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not really necessary to tell us every time there's a backlog. I don't mean to be snippy, but I think most of us have the CHU page on our watchlist and get to it as time permits. Andre (talk) 05:00, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not only that, but it was after the Fourth of July holiday. Sorry, but if I've got a long weekend off from work, there are more enjoyable things to do than performing renames. ;) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 23:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I didn't mean to get on your guys' back. If it's any consolation, I had to work on the 4th. Useight (talk) 00:08, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The CHU page does say "Please be patient. It may take a few days for your request to be completed" and we're rarely taking more than 24 hours to fulfill requests. A backlog I think would involve many requests left hanging for 36 or 48 hours. Kingturtle (talk) 05:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There was a time when a backlog meant requests going unanswered for more than a week, though there were fewer requests then. This time last year I would have thought a backlog was about 100 outstanding requests. I think we should be proud that a vast number of requests are being processed so rapidly that the concept of what constitutes a "backlog" has reduced despite that increase in the volume of requests. We may be victims of our own efficiency... WjBscribe 22:10, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Bug 13507 fixed
Those bureaucrats active at processing rename requests will be please to know that Bug #13507 is now fixed. It is now possible to rename accounts to a name reserved to a global account or rename accounts attached to a global account. The rename function will warn you if you will be doing either of those things, and a further checkbox must be ticked to confirm this is what you want to do. WjBscribe 22:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Three cheers! &mdash; Dan | talk 23:01, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Unmigrated edits
I too have unmigrated edits from a rename. Actually from two renames. I have one unmigrated edit from and quite a few from. Any help would be appreciated. -Nard 19:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The edit from exists because when you were renamed on that occasion, the rename function was not yet able to move deleted edits. The page to which the edit was made was deleted at the time but has been restored and moved since you were renamed . As to the edits from, they are probably just waiting for the job queue to catch up with them and will ultimately be transfered. Its probably worth giving it a few more days. It looks like someone who asked a similar question above now no longer has any edits under their old name. Unfortunately there is no way to help you merge contributions and a request for a developer to do this would be necessary if the problem doesn't fix itself. WjBscribe 20:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Voidable RFA
Requests for adminship/Shoemaker's Holiday. See my oppose, he's not to apply for six mos and only to arbcom. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't brand it "illegal", but it's more or less voidable. <font color="#660000">Wisdom89  ( <font color="#17001E">T |undefined /  <font color="#17001E">C ) 01:12, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Good point, changed to voidable. If arbcom wanted to enable RFA for him, they'd have said so. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:16, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Technically, anything that is not explicitly banned is allowed. Of course, the RfA goes against what the sanction was intended to do, but given the way the RfA is going now, there's no urgency in closing the RfA without the input of Shoemaker's Holiday. — Kurykh  01:18, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily so. When they want to enable RFA in a desyssop, they'll say so, usually with "normal means". Granted they should have said "no rfa", but we'll see. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

He withdrew, moot point now. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:33, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As much as I disagreed with arbcom's ruling there, their meaning is obvious - they explicitly rejected a proposal that would have allowed an RFA at Requests_for_arbitration/Matthew_Hoffman/Proposed_decision. After six months, he is allowed to apply to arbcom ... no RFA is possible, unfortunately. --B (talk) 01:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)


 * To be honest, their ruling is silent as to whether an RfA is possible. Where they intend to rule it out, they usually say so explicitly, e.g. Alkivar's desysopping. On the other hand they also tend to explicitly specify if the usual means are to be available, e.g. Tango's desysopping. It is true there was another provision in the proposed decision that expressly permitted RfA, but it was opposed only by those who opposed desysopping at all and no objection to RfA is made or explained. And proposed remedy 1.1 was an alternative to 1, which also did not pass. Proposed remedy 4 was written 2 months later and is unfortunately unclear as to this point and FT2's supplementary notes do not help. I would have some difficulty in these circumstances deciding whether the ArbCom decision precludes RfA as a means to regaining adminship. Nonetheless, the fact that a significant number of community members believe that it does presents a huge obstacle to Shoemaker's Holiday being successful at RfA. I would therefore recommend that he ask for clarification on this point from the Committee if he intends to run again, or simply appeal to them for restoration of his access. WjBscribe 01:58, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think we can all agree they need to cover all possibilities of resysop on a desysop. But in this case, their intent seems clear to me, at least. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 02:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Account creator
Hi, I was accepted on the account creation interface by Ryan posthlewaite, and I'd like the accountcreator flag please. Shapiros10  <sup style="color:chocolate;">contact me <sub style="color:#3D2B1F;">My work 12:47, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The account creator flag can be granted by admins, but it is typically only granted if you are regularly hitting the account creation throttle. –<font face="Verdana"> xeno <font color="#DCDCDC">cidic ( talk ) 12:48, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I was just approved last night, but I still want the flag. Shapiros10  <sup style="color:chocolate;">contact me <sub style="color:#3D2B1F;">My work  12:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but the flag is granted on need, not want. According to your account creation details, you have never hit the account creation throttle. Participate in the WP:ACC process for a while and once you are hitting the throttle, you can request the flag. –<font face="Verdana"> xeno <font color="#DCDCDC">cidic ( talk ) 12:53, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If there is a doubt about giving the userright, I'd err on the side of caution due to some technical details with how the right operates (it does changes other settings besides account creation throttles), since User:SQL is the dev who handles the account creator interface, he might be a good guy to ping when there are issues like this.  MBisanz  talk 16:10, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I just help maintain the software these days... I'm not even an administrator of the tool anymore. IMO, it's not a huge deal, and, if they're likely to hit the limit some point in the near future, why not? SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  18:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well I must admit that MB has piqued my interest about "other settings besides account creator throttles". –<font face="Verdana"> xeno <font color="#DCDCDC">cidic ( talk ) 18:17, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Its some undocumented aspects of the tool, feel free to email me or SQL.  MBisanz  talk 21:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

This permission is not required in order to create accounts, it is only needed if one is creating accounts at such a rate that the throttle on non-admin account creations is becoming an issue. I would expect someone requesting this right to have some history of helping with account creations that shows they would benefit from being able to create accounts at a greater rate. WjBscribe 19:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That's pretty much what I figured and how I have been determining whether or not to assign it - thanks for clearing that up. –<font face="Verdana"> xeno <font color="#DCDCDC">cidic ( talk ) 19:21, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds sane. I usually only give it to people I'm familiar with, that I'd expect would use it. SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  04:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Effect of SUL on certain rename requests
I have been pondering the effect of SUL going live on requests we are getting and there are two specific issues I would like to draw attention to. I think it would be useful if bureaucrats were all on the same page with these issues so I have brought them here for discussion. In my view: Do these seem like sensible propositions? WjBscribe 04:04, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Requests to be renamed to a name that exists on another wiki. It seems counterproductive to create new SUL conflicts. It is also bad for cross-wiki relations to allow users from here with high edit counts to maneuver themselves into a position where they can have a better claim to a global account than a user who has been editing other projects by that name for some time. Unless the name has zero edits (or zero non-trivial edits) across all projects, I do not think we should consider it available to users here.
 * 2) Requests for usurpation of an account to be a doppleganger. I was never very keen on these requests - it seems to me that giving away a popular name to someone who does not plan to edit with it is a waste. With the advent of SUL, I think it important that the default position be to reject such requests. They now have the potential of locking out editors across all wikis from using a popular name. In my opinion unless the name is very similar and there is a strong possibility of confusion, these requests should not be performed.
 * Seems fine to me. --Deskana (talk) 04:15, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * agreed. Kingturtle (talk) 04:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes. Andre (talk) 05:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 1 Seems fine to me, but as for #2 I have some reservations on a blanket denial. When we talk about doppleganger accounts, what criteria are we going to use to evaluate that the doppleganger account is not going to be used at all? For example, a person with administrative privileges might want a doppelganger account to log in at public areas. (take Taxman's account for instance) =Nichalp   «Talk»=  07:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not familiar with Taxman's alt account so I'm not sure if it's a "true" doppleganger, but the policy indicates that that actual doppleganger accounts are not supposed to be used for editing. –<font face="Verdana"> xeno <font color="#DCDCDC">cidic  ( talk ) 12:30, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Ummn, the distinction between a true and not-so-true account has to be determined objectively. See User:Taxman in exile. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  13:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I wasn't familiar with his alternate account. I would say (imo) that's not a "true" doppleganger. Doppleganger would be say..."Taxmen" or maybe "Taxmän" or something like that. –<font face="Verdana"> xeno <font color="#DCDCDC">cidic ( talk ) 13:07, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * But as far as your original comment, I think scribe was mainly talking about those doppleganger-type accounts that the main isn't planning on using at all. –<font face="Verdana"> xeno <font color="#DCDCDC">cidic ( talk ) 13:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess I'll wait for WJBscribe to clarify scenario #2. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  13:36, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * This thread may help to explain further: USURP. –<font face="Verdana"> xeno <font color="#DCDCDC">cidic ( talk ) 13:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Well, in that case I totally agree with WJBScribe's assessment. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  13:57, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking about doppleganger accounts meaning accounts that aren't going to edit at all. Where they are second accounts to be editing from public computers I think there's more room for discretion. However, I personally think it's best if such accounts include the name of the person who's account they are. User:Taxman in exile or User:Secretlondon's sockpuppet are not going to be desirable names on other project, and someone editing with those names would cause confusion anyway. I am not convinced by the need to have a name that would be desirable to others (e.g. a common first name) for such an account. I personally would also prefer a request to be made for a rename of an existing second account that already has a history of contributing, rather than for a speculative second account that may be needed in the future. But I was really thinking of doppleganger, I think the position on second accounts is different. I wasn't intending my suggestions to be hard and fast rules, but wanted to check we were all approaching this from roughly the same angle. WjBscribe 16:11, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Doppleganger accounts aren't supposed to edit at all. I have Useight's Public Sock for public computers and Us8 as a doppelganger. I agree with WJB's assessment that with the advent of SUL, it's not the best to make doppelgangers across all Wikimedia projects as it possibly prevents others from getting a username they would want to use on a completely unrelated project in which the two accounts would never get confused. The frustration of trying to find an available account name may drive good contributors away and/or result in usernames (possibly such as User:Nousernamesleft or User:My Account) that were perhaps created after several failed attempts to use their preferred username. Useight (talk) 16:26, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure everyone would benefit from the knowledge that it is spelled "doppelganger," with the e before the l. Andre (talk) 07:45, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. :) And there's an umlaut on the a in the spelling doppelgänger too.  =Nichalp   «Talk»=  07:58, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * er, I blame aleena, she started it =) – xeno  ( talk ) 13:38, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

WJB makes sense to me here. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 23:58, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

User name
How to replace my user name? Krisaureli (talk) 17:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You need to go to Changing usernames and make a request there.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  17:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Ed Poor RFA
Oh dear. Anybody considering closing the Ed Poor RFA early per WP:SNOW? This is getting embarrassing. Bishonen | talk 23:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC).
 * I think it may be time it came to end- the result is a foregone conclusion and there isn't much light being generated there. It's getting a bit painful to watch to be honest. <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 00:53, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes indeed it was. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 23:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Question regarding usurption
Hello, I just tried to create an doppelgänger account under the username to prevent impersonation. However, there is already an account named, so it did not allow me to create an account as User:J.delaney. The existing account has one edit, made in 2006. Is there any practical way I could have that username assigned to me as a doppelgänger in order to trigger the anti-spoof filter if someone tries to impersonate me?

Thanks for your help,

J.delanoy <sup style="color:red;">gabs <sub style="color:blue;">adds 01:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Since his one edit was promptly reverted, there's probably not much GFDL concerns, but since the account is already registered, technically you're already protected from someone impersonating under that exact username. (Unless someone goes through the trouble of usurping into it). – xeno  ( talk ) 01:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That's what I wanted to do, as a legit sock, but I don't know exactly how I could do that. Should I create an account as a totally random name and go to WP:USURP? J.delanoy <sup style="color:red;">gabs <sub style="color:blue;">adds  01:24, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, if you really want control of it. but it might be easier just to leave a note on the talk page asking bureaucrats not to allow anyone to usurp the account because of impersonation concerns. – xeno  ( talk ) 01:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * . i re-read what you asked - do you want the J.delaney account or the J_delaney account? The first one I can bypass the antispoof and create for you. – xeno  ( talk ) 01:30, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I really want the J_delanoy one. The only reason I wanted to create User:J.delaney was so that the anti-spoof would be triggered if someone tried to create a username like that. If someone already owns User:J_delanoy, that already triggers the anti-spoof. I just want to be the one who owns the account that triggers the anti-spoof. J.delanoy <sup style="color:red;">gabs <sub style="color:blue;">adds  01:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * k, throaway account, WP:USURP is the way to go. – xeno  ( talk ) 02:11, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Steward remames
Per off-wiki discussion, I wanted to advise the crats that the steward guillom renamed four users on enwiki due to private info in the username of the accounts. Because of the urgent nature of the rename, and since no bureaucrats could be found at the time, it seemed appropriate to have a steward preform this action. Just letting you guys know, in case you have any questions about the renames. Prodego <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  04:05, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I confirm this; although the usernames remain in the user rename log, at least they are not in the history of the articles any more. I hope nobody feels I've stepped on their toes. guillom 04:17, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Renamed one more; Tim Starling has now enabled the username blacklist back, so that should be all. guillom 04:25, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not a bit -- we're not touchy. Thanks for the help, Guillom. &mdash; Dan | talk 04:46, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That was a short term measure and the troll who did it will do it again, maybe with some other wikimedian and unfortunately the username blacklist fails at stopping it and a bug in SUL allows these "bad" names to be created on multiple wikis unknown to most so unless a developer comes out with a "Global username blacklist' or something similar though this could be a short term measure that can be implemented till the devs can find/make a good replacement...-- Cometstyles 01:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Question regarding inter-wiki renames.
Quite often at Steward requests/SUL requests, we get users requesting renames on wikis with established bureaucrats (such as, say, this one). I'd like to clarify if you'd prefer the user in question request the rename, or if it'd be allowable to perform more of these requests myself on the behalf of these users? If so, do you prefer I identify myself on the rename pages as a Meta bureaucrat? Kylu (talk) 20:03, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My opinion is that if the rename has SUL issues, then please go head. If it's just a simple rename for only the English wikipedia, direct them to WP:CHU. Some of the clerks here do a wonderful job alerting us to possible issues with the renames which may be missed at meta. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  20:13, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

autoconfirm admin proposal
See Wikipedia_talk:AutoconfirmAdmin — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 21:34, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Admin accounts hacked?
Please see AN history of the page confirms it is both and  that made those edits. – xeno  ( talk ) 15:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Neither account has admin rights currently, as far as I can tell. Kingturtle (talk) 15:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It's been taken care of already. cheers, – xeno  ( talk ) 15:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me! 15:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 15:38, 16 July 2008 Drini (Talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:RickK@enwiki from Sysops to (none) ‎
 * 15:37, 16 July 2008 Drini (Talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:Zoe@enwiki from Sysops to (none) ‎ (hacked)
 * Not that bureaucrats can help in this situation. Daniel (talk) 15:42, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Still, the accounts are hacked. Should we indefinitely block each one? Kingturtle (talk) 15:42, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * They're already blocked. I saw them in the block log. Acalamari 15:43, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This is also a friendly reminder to everyone: As a rule of thumb a password that is reasonably long, with a mix of upper and lowercase letters and numbers, and not mostly made up of dictionary words or names or personal information (date of birth, cat's name, etc), is likely to be reasonably strong for everyday use. Kingturtle (talk) 15:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * and please change your password somewhat regularly. Kingturtle (talk) 15:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * @daniel /nod, I realize that but figured should be noted here anyway. was trying to flag a steward, it appears someone beat me to that. @Kingturtle, probably, until such time as they return and confirm identities. – xeno  ( talk ) 15:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Account passwords can readily be sniffed because using the secure server is bothersome. I tried using it for a few weeks and discovered that was the cause of most of my editing woes:  major slowness, frequent dropped items, timeouts, and the fact that combined secure and insecure items means loosened browser security is necessary.  I just hope no one on my ISP segment is inclined to scrape my password.  —EncMstr (talk) 14:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * If the server sent a random salt to the client which could then use to HMAC with the entered password then we could avoid sending the password(thus preventing sniffing) without the need to make changes to the server. Of course this would only be available to browsers with javascript, if not then you would need to log in normally. This is pretty basic stuff and really should be how we do it. Chillum  14:20, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * This sounds like something that should be filed at the bugzilla. Has anyone done this yet? Jesse Viviano (talk) 01:50, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If we're going to go that way, might as well implement SRP. There's an AGPL JavaScript implementation available.  Probably would make most sense as a MediaWiki extension.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:08, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Alternatively, the login page could use https (Secure Sockets Layer). That would work on more browsers and environments.  Perhaps more servers could help serve https?   —EncMstr (talk) 07:32, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I had requested it on VP. But I did not get any response. I strongly feel SSL should be implemented on the login page. It doesn't take too much to implement it. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  07:36, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Bug 225 is rather old, but this latest problem might generate more interest in the bug. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 20:04, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Vanishing assistance requested
Hiya. There's this one user requesting help vanishing. I'm not all that familiar with the process, but given the situation (i.e., his username), I figure that at some point he'll need a bureaucrat anyway. :P Cheers =) -- slakr  \ talk / 12:37, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Right to vanish is the reference page. Ask users to read the policy page and then list on WP:CHU with a random available username of their choice. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  13:21, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I put a note on the requestor's talk page. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 19:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

TestEditBot needs flagged
Hey there. I'd appreciate it if a bureaucrat could finish my bot's approval and flag it. You can view the approval page here. Thanks. tj9991 (talk | contribs) 22:40, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Deskana (talk) 04:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

+sysop
Hello. I resigned my bit earlier this month, and I'd like to have it back, please. Thanks. <font color="#00C">W<font color="#006">ODU P  04:05, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅. Welcome back! --Deskana (talk) 04:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow, that was quick. Thank you. <font color="#00C">W<font color="#006">ODU P  04:12, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Limiting the CHU page to non IP addresses only
I've noticed a recent spurt in IP addresses requesting usernames changed. Since such requests have increased recently, I was thinking of preventing IP addresses from editing the page. I don't see any reason why an IP address should edit the page, since it involves only registered username changes. I have proposed that the editing rights for page be kept off limits to those not logged in. User:Soxred93 said it would be possible to implement such a scheme by using JavaScript. A notice would popup to an IP address user asking him/her to log in to make a request. I would like to know the opinion of other bureaucrats. Thanks! =Nichalp  «Talk»=  07:08, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Could there also be a pre-loaded template (like this) for those recognised as not-logged in/logged out. I guess that with the increase of IP requests it must mean less people are reading the instructions at the very top of the page. Emphasising the instructions may mean less incorrectly formatted requests (both from IPs and logged-in users, if the pre-loading when recognised were to be possible). Rud  get  11:39, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting! We could give the preloaded template a shot and see the effect it has on faulty nominations. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  14:09, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Great, I'll see what I can do. Rud  get  15:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

See this image: =Nichalp   «Talk»=  12:30, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me-no reason an IP should request a name change. However you skin the cat is fine with me. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 12:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Some humour
To use in future 'crat chats. :-) —Giggy 09:23, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Nice! Acalamari 15:52, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Quick note
Hi, I've noticed that many times, when a bureaucrat makes someone into an admin, they neglect to remove redundant rights, such as <tt>+rollback</tt>, from the user. I mentioned this to someone, and based on their reply, apparently this is a result of using Special:Makesysop to change the user's group membership.

It would probably be better to use Special:Userrights to make people into sysops; that way you can add <tt>+sysop</tt> and remove <tt>+rollback</tt>, <tt>+accountcreator</tt>, and/or <tt>+IPblockexempt</tt> at the same time. (I say "probably" because I can't see Special:Makesysop, so I don't know exactly how it works. If Special:Makesysop is completely different than what I am assuming it is, feel free to ridicule my lack of knowledge :-) J.delanoy <sup style="color:red;">gabs <sub style="color:blue;">adds  15:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * In addition, the parallel use of Special:MakeSysop & Special:MakeBot, and Special:UserRights, is fragmenting the user-rights log over several separate pages. I'd suggest that the use of the two limited special pages be deprecated (and, ideally, the extension uninstalled and the logs merged) and all rights changes be performed through Special:UserRights. Is there a reason why that shouldn't happen? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:14, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with all. Shapiros10  <sup style="color:chocolate;">contact me <sub style="color:#3D2B1F;">My work  17:24, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If you want, we can modify MediaWiki:Makebot-header to show that the extension is deprecated. Same with MediaWiki:Makesysoptext. I would strongly agree to the suggestion of deprecating the pages, due to the log fragmentation by itself. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 08:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've been bold and added a box to those two messages deprecating the interfaces and asking 'crats to use UserRights instead. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 19:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It's something to do with code that User:Voice of All placed in our monobook.js. See mine User:Nichalp/monobook.js. If someone is familiar with JavaScript, and is an admin, they could modify the code. I tried, but is getting messed up. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  17:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Just confirming, since J.d asked and nobody else directly responded, that Special:UserRights does allow you to remove rollback, etc., when adding sysop. It uses checkboxes so you can uncheck those things when checking sysop. —Giggy 04:18, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Changing username/SUL
I noticed some month-old requests haven't bee fulfilled yet. Is there a reason for that? Thanks,  Maxim (talk)  13:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think Will has gone on wikibreak, and since he's the (if memory serves) main 'crat for the SUL renames it may be a little longer for those requesting. Perhaps the new 'crats can take a look? Rud  get  09:39, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've been getting tutored in renames, and have done several. It's easy to learn. I also did an RFA promotion yesterday. I'm doing the easy ones and working my way up ;-) Thanks for the help from all! — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 09:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * SUL renames should be a lot less of a pain in the butt now that that the annoying no-renaming-over-an-SUL bug was fixed. —Giggy 09:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There is that aswell. :) Rud  get  09:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I came to know about the unfulfilled requests there only a day back. I'm not sure how to handle those since I'm not sure about the policy on SUL. There is nothing mentioned about forced usurps on m:Help:Unified_login. In addition, I'm not sure what would happen if an inactive user with edits whose account has been usurped would face when logging back in after a long period of time. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  10:57, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Before Will went on vacation he told me a few edits from a user from long ago are usurpable. This was in IRC when he usurped an old name for my wife, User:JoJo. He told me the old account has to be dormant for at least six months, but I'm not sure what the whole rule of thumb on time and number of edits is. I do know the home wiki of an SUL account "owns" the name and this will be an even more crucial factor in the next SUL phase. We do need more info on what is and isn't usurpable, ie, what is and isn't a miscellaneous (usurpable) account and isn't. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 11:34, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That six months waiting period is between the time the account was created and till date to carry out a usurp. I don't think it applies to SUL. I think we need to debate this policy on meta. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  12:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Link to a thread there? — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 13:06, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Needs to be raised there. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  13:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Thread on account usurping started here: meta:Help_talk:Unified_login — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 23:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Need new link at SUL page
See Wikipedia_talk:Changing_username. Can some update the form/template? Thanks. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 11:38, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Deflag TestEditBot
should be deflaged. It is a low volume anti-vandal bot that's edits should be subjected to human review. BJ Talk 18:31, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ BJ-please notify bot owner. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 18:34, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I put note on bot talk page. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 18:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My comment was left on the operator's talk. BJ Talk 18:58, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Re-sysop
Hello, After a long and much-needed break, I would like to resume my admin duties that I resigned back in March. Could a 'crat please restore them? Thanks --<b style="color:#6666FF;">Spike Wilbury</b> <b style="color:#000000;">♫</b> talk  17:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ I was not familiar with your case but found admin logs and your request on meta and your en wiki confirmation. You must have had different name at one point too (no RFA under Spike Wilbury). — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 17:40, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Requests for adminship/Aguerriero.  MBisanz  talk 17:43, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

SUL home wiki confirmations
User:Nichalp and I have been talking, see SUL thread on his talk page. We feel we should require the users making requests at CHU/SUL that are IPs to post a confirmation on their home wikis as a security check. I'd be surprised if there's any objection to that. We may even want to go further and require confirmation on home wikis from all users. Please provide your thoughts on this. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 13:19, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I certainly see no reason why this can't be implemented, although obviously it remains largely an issue for the bureaucrats to decide (that is: undertaking the decision they reach amongst themselves, unless there is a strong expression of community consensus for an alternative). This issue was discussed in a past thread, either on this noticeboard, or on a closely related page (I cannot recall exactly where, but will dig through the archives for anybody who requests so), and it was generally agreed that "confirmation links" were not necessary at the time.


 * Similarly this time around, it's really a matter of whether having every editor who makes an SUL request confirm at their home wiki that it was them who made the enwiki request (and post a link to that confirmation, at the enwiki request -- plus, have a 'crat / clerk double-check the confirmation's authenticity) is a necessary adjustment to the process. I have no opinion either way, although I will note that there has been zero abuse of this process thus far: the 'crats here have to balance the question of the risk of abuse and damage that will be caused by any abuse (also note, how reversible an abusive rename would be), against the effort of making the change and enforcing it.


 * <font color="#2A8B31">Anthøny 19:35, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * As a clerk, I'd be happy to visit other wikis and verify information about SUL requesting users (although there will need be some provisions for the linguistics required). Rud  get  19:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If there is already a global account created, there's no need for the IP post confirmation. If it's a straight forward usurpation, when the old account is usurped, the global account holder will automatically take over the account name. Even if the IP isn't the user, they couldn't create the account once the old one had been usurped. The bureaucrats have previously used the global account list to usurp a lot of SUL accounts where there hasn't been an edit without even a request from the user - they do these runs every so often. Obviously if the global account hasn't been created yet, but there is still an SUL request, you should probably request a confirmation link on the home wiki.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 21:08, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed - the rename is only risky, and hence a security check is only required, when the username is not 'covered' by a global account. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:13, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Ryan's remarks are spot on. This came up shortly after the implementation of SUL. Confirmation is only necessary when a global account under the target name does not already exist. &mdash; Dan | talk 22:16, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Global bot policy
The global bot policy at meta has recently been finalised, and en.wiki is required to 'opt in' to any associated global rights. All comers are welcome to participate in the discussion at WT:Bot policy. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:01, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Possible rename
Hi there. My name is. I was thinking of renaming myself to, but it seems the account, RyanCross, has been created by someone else already. RyanCross has only made one edit on January 27th, which was merely reverted and RyanCross was warned about it. Even if this account has made one edit that was reverted, could I still be renamed to that account? Thanks, <font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">RyRy (<font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">talk ) 07:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Six months from the last edit, and one non GFDL-significant edit, I should say you can rename it without hassle. Put it up on CHU/U. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  07:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Heh, thanks. I was only wondering if it would be possible though, I wasn't requesting to be renamed. If I do want to rename myself to that account name, I'll be sure to ask at WP:CHU/U. Thanks, <font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">RyRy (<font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">talk ) 09:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, you can't. It has one edit.  Maybe Ryan_Cross?  Shapiros10  <sup style="color:chocolate;">contact me <sub style="color:#3D2B1F;">My work  11:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, I can. The edit was a non GFDL-significant edit. It was also reverted. So it won't do any harm. Best, <font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">RyRy (<font color="navy" face="Times New Roman">talk ) 11:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The only edit was a copyviolation. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  15:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Looking for crats with balls
So I was thinking... I have this that (duh!) imports headlines from Wikinews and places them on various pages of Wikipedia (mostly transcluded by portals). Recently an idea popped up (see the relevant thread) of importing the most high-profile "lead articles" with the possibility of transcluding them on our Main Page. As such, the "template" in question would fall under cascading protection, which means the bot couldn't edit it anymore. Which brings us to the question that begs to be asked...

Quick straw poll: which 'crat, and under what extra conditions (such as some special explicit approval from WP:BAG), would be ready to just go rouge, "disregard consensus" (or whatever the angry bypassed masses are gonna call it afterward) and flag the bot +sysop so we can just go about our business of improving the encyclopedia without the questionable pleasure of a RfA (which I feel would stand some chance in this case but be a sick hassle nonetheless). Миша 13 20:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC) And as an aside, your interpretation of IAR in this matters is pretty far off the mark (in my estimation). EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 20:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * My balls are certainly big enough to promote a bot that has passed an RfA. It wouldn't be our first admin bot, so it's not like you'd have to wade thru uncharted waters; if you can't handle the sick hassle of an RfA, I don't see why any bureaucrat should be expected to handle the sick hassle a rogue promotion like this would cause. Approval from BAG is of course a requisite, but when it comes to choosing administrators, authority is solely in the hands of the community.
 * I agree with EVula, BAG approval is first required. Then a successful RFA. I see no reason a bot should get the admin bit without one when users have to pass an RFA. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 21:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Oops... I thought you were a girl! <tt>:S</tt> However, I agree entirely with the sentiment. We haven't had a bot RFA for a while now, but I hope the phenomenal success of the anti-vandal bots will have put to rest the majority of the skynet complaints that plagued our early such candidacies.  When my toolserver account finally comes through I'll be writing my own adminbot (to maintain protection templates); I fully intend to put it through RfA if that's what the community desires.  I have every faith that it will pass, with no balls required (not that I haven't got them if needed :D). <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Did you mistake EVula for a girl? If you saw the Bathrobe Cabal's page before the pictures were taken down, quite the contrary...  bibliomaniac 1  5  21:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Am I alone in wondering why we have administrators of this project who believe that we don't need consensus that would come from "the angry bypassed masses" (i.e. the community)? Disgraceful attitude Misza13. Suggest you reconsider your balance of "improving the enyclopedia" and WP:IAR against your position as someone entrusted by the community to do only as the community wishes. Pedro : Chat  21:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * To be sure, you are not alone in your diligence to avoid "bypassing the angry masses". I don't think there's a bureaucrat anywhere that would just +sysop a bot just like that. Useight (talk) 21:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * At least I'd hope there's not a bureaucrat the would +sysop to a bot like that. If it is in fact a legit bot, then take it through the process.  Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy.  « <font face="Tahoma"> Diligent Terrier    [talk]  21:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It's silly to advocate process in one breath and say Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy in the next. The not-a-bureaucracy attitude would be to ignore process and focus solely on whether such promotions would benefit the encyclopedia.  We have a dozen admins openly operating unapproved scripts on their primary admin accounts because the approval process as currently exists is a terrible mess.  History clearly suggests we need a better way of dealing with adminbots than simply trying to force them through an RFA process that was intended to judge people not machines.  Dragons flight (talk) 22:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * But the machines are operated by people. By argument, as an editor is trusted to be an admin then their bots should be trusted as well. This approach seems sound in logic but not in reality. Slipping an admin bot "through the net" seems to me to be against our ideals of collaboration and peer based agreement. Pedro : Chat  22:46, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Exactly, Pedro. You took the works right out of my mouth. :P  « <font face="Tahoma"> Diligent Terrier    [talk]  01:18, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm disturbed by the judgment shown in this attempt to disregard the community. Actually, this disrespectful attitude from bot operators is precisely the reason that some of us have Skynet concerns. Here again we have a demonstration that a bot operator believes himself to be above the community, and believes he ought to be unaccountable. If bot operators want the community to trust them, why not try cleaning your own house? We had an RFC on this issue just a month ago: please review. This is an extremely inappropriate request, not to mention a strange idea. If there is community support for including WikiNews articles on the main page of our encyclopedia, why is this not already done? If this were a good idea we wouldn't even need a bot to implement it. --JayHenry (talk) 22:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Meh. Your arguments are entirely flawed and mostly nonsensical, but I'm too tired / lazy at the moment to refute them individually. However, I will say that if MediaWiki's rights system were more modularized (that is, if it were possible to assign accounts only certain rights), we could easily assign certain bots and users the "editprotected" right and this entire issue would be solved. But, alas, rights can only be given inside of user groups, and another single-right usergroup is a bit silly .... --MZMcBride (talk) 22:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Try again. Your meh is duly noted, and does a brilliant job proving my point. Please acknowledge the existence of the rest of the community at that RFC. --JayHenry (talk) 22:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I strongly urge you to read some of the 40+ supports for Majorly's statement. People have supported a vague notion of approval by an unknown group. One could almost argue that it's simply a re-affirmation of the "radical transparency" mantra that wikis have been following for years. "Secrecy bad, transparency good." Majorly's statement received the level of support that it did because it is two values sentences articulating that transparency is good and a "relevant process" is needed. It's simply shocking that so many people could agree to such language. I think east put it best when he said the notion was "wishful thinking," though others' comments suggested that there's absolutely no consensus for what this "relevant process" would be. Replying to Carcharoth's question, Majorly said that it would probably be a Request for bot approval followed by an RfA. However, had Majorly put that into his original statement, you and I both know that he wouldn't have 40+ supports. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, and in that RFC twenty-seven people endoresed the view that RFA is redundant and unnecessary for bots already approved at BRFA. We need less hurdles not more.  Whether Misza's particular request is a good idea is a seperate issue that can be addressed at BRFA etc., but we shouldn't hamstring ourselves with process solely for process's sake.  Dragons flight (talk) 22:54, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think that RFA should be used for bots because bots and humans should be judged differently, but there's something about this request that sets me on edge. I think this is much too far of an ignore to be comfortable with.  bibliomaniac 1  5  22:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * (ec) If a bot is only going to be doing a simple job, like editing a protected page, I do not see why that bot needs to go through a full RFA. The average commenter at RFA does not have the skills to evaluate whether a bot is malicious, or not, by examining the code. Perhaps we should have a community discussion to empower the bot approval group to authorize adminbots, within certain specified parameters. Obviously we don't ever want bots blocking people, but editing protected pages and deleting useless redirects and stuff like that should be fine. RFA is a test of judgment. Bots don't have any.  Therefore, RFA is the wrong process. Jehochman Talk 23:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I never said anything about RFA. Do you honestly think BRFA has the authority to determine the content of the Main Page? --JayHenry (talk) 23:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * No, and I'm sure Misza doesn't believe that BRFA should make Main Page decisions by itself either. But if there were a widely endorsed decision to include Wikinews content on the front-page, I'd like to hope the community would have the good sense to allow that process to be automated without also requiring an RFA, as several comments above seem to want. Dragons flight (talk) 23:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * In that case I apologize. I didn't see any mention of implementing widely endorsed decisions, or any suggestion for getting approval anywhere beyond BAG that the concept was valid, that WikiNews articles belonged on Wikipedia's main page, etc.  I did see a suggesting to bypass "angry masses" and was responding to that.  My apologies if those other points were implicit. --JayHenry (talk) 23:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * No, but that is a separate issue. The first issue is whether all admin bots should have to go through RFA.  Bots should not exercise judgment, like choosing content.  However, if there is a decision to put certain content on the main page, sourced from a reliable feed, and a bot is needed to do the tedious job, that is potentially approvable. Jehochman Talk 23:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * As I see it, RFAs for admin bots serve two purposes. First, to confirm that the task is something the community wants. Second, to confirm that the community trusts the person who controls the bot. That said, both of those purposes could be achieved in other ways. People who are admins to begin with have already established that they have community trust. So it really ought to just be a matter of getting community approval of the task... which hasn't always happened in the past and absolutely should be required. Something like a widely advertised 'centralized discussion' should suffice for non-controversial tasks. Anything that a sizable portion of the community is likely to oppose is probably best served by going through RFA. Of course, review of the bot for technical soundness is also required, but already covered by the BAG. --CBD 23:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it should be pointed out that 29 people supported krimpet's proposal that admin bots should not have to go through rfa --<font style="color:Red;">Chris  04:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * ...Provided that the bot is approved by the Bot Approvals Group. « <font face="Tahoma"> Diligent Terrier    [talk]  14:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The bot approvals group is qualified to determine whether a bot is technically sound... but not whether the task it performs is accepted by the community. For the example in question... they could tell us whether the 'post Wikinews lead stories to the Main Page' bot would work or not. However, they could not decide for the community as a whole that Wikinews lead stories SHOULD be shown on Wikipedia's Main Page. That's not the BAG's call. Nor the call of any single bureaucrat or even all the bureaucrats together. It's a community issue. One way of determining whether there was community support for such a bot would be to hold an RFA for it. A centralized discussion might work too, but the more formal structure of RFA is probably the quickest / most efficient way of getting to an answer. --CBD 16:33, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Have you looked at the previous bot RFAs? It is hard to argue that the 100s of KB generated are efficient at anything.  A core problem is that there are really two decisions that get mixed up at RFA: Is this action a good idea, and Can a bot do this?  The former is for the community to decide, the latter is generally addressed at BAG.  In my opinion, rolling them both into a single RFA is an ineffecient and counter-productive way to answer those questions.  Yes, they need to be addressed, but doing so at RFA is not the best solution.  Dragons flight (talk) 16:40, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so I know this was a bad idea
And I apologize for wasting everyone's time on this. I should've known better - bureaucrats are by definition slaves to the process and are unable to go creative. And the creative way should be to split the project into two layers (as it's done with IT-related projects): After the project passes the above, it enters the deployment phase, whereupon a bureaucrat combines the business consensus (i.e. "yes, we want that, and done this and this way" - well, I call this consensus - how's this going against it then?) with the IT assessment (i.e. "yes, it will work the way the business expects it to") and grants the flag. Sorry, for being so straightforward, but I do have some experience with project management and I know it works in practice.
 * 1) The business layer, where we decide whether we want the Wikinews leads on our Main Page in the first place (and where to put them in the layout) - that's something to be decided on Talk:Main Page, crossposted to the Village Pump/Community Portal for higher visibility, but in abstraction of the technical realization of it. (Oh, you missed that? You thought I was suggesting bypassing this step? Well, you don't know me well enough it seems.)
 * 2) The IT layer, regarding the code itself, which (if the above is leaning towards approval) gets discussed by a relatively smaller group of competent programmers, checked for possible vulnerabilities etc.

Instead, I see people stuck with the ineffective routine, where incompetent people can trash an idea simply because they can (voting on RfA gives an unhealthy sense of power that in this case should be taken away). Furthermore, several people have ridiculed themselves by suggesting that Main Page design is something to be decided on a Request for Adminship discussion - thanks, I lol'd hard at that.

To summarize (because I know you're all dying to know what I'll do instead... or not), I think I'll wait until the request clarifies (I didn't say I want to do it right away - was just probing the ground) then try the scheme I described above. If it doesn't work (because no crat would be willing to flag it), and I feel I can't be arsed to do RfA (which is the dumbest way to delay project deployment), then I think you all know what I'll do (even though it will look dumb when the bot edits through my account). Миша 13 18:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Why would you ask for the technical ability to implement your proposal before its even been proposed? The technical element is the easiest part of what you describe above, so why you would approach that first escapes me. Ask for and receive consensus first, and then no crat will have a problem flagging your bot. Simple as that. <strong style="color:#000;background:#fff;border:0px solid #000">Avruch <strong style="color:#000;background:#fff;border:0px solid #000"> T 19:30, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Not from what I've read above - it seems the only acceptable way to establish said consensus on this case would be an RfA, which is an outright wrong idea. In this light, it seems beneficial to probe first that to have the idea trashed later. Миша 13 19:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Misza, again my apologies. I did not realize from the initial comment that you also intended to have the "business layer" discussion.  I don't care about RFAs for bots, just that there's input in some form from the community about how they operate.  I misinterpreted the proposal as an attempt to avoid the input phase and have only an "IT layer" discussion.  My error. --JayHenry (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Misza - It wasn't such a bad idea. I agree with you that it might be nice to have some bots with admin privileges. With respect, however, I think this was far from the right way to get your bot sysopped. Bureaucrats are certainly not 'by definition' slaves to process: everywhere that bureaucrats are described in policy, the word 'discretion' is mentioned. Nor are they always slaves to process in practice. They have power to implement changes gradually, without asking or making proposals first, and if they end up 'getting away with it' then the precedent is set and the change sticks. (This is actually true of plenty of jobs on Wikipedia, but the job of a bureaucrat is uniquely relevant to a lot of hotly contested issues.) However, the effectiveness of this procedure depends crucially on there being no public announcement of the change. It's as near as we have to an absolute truth on Wikipedia that when something new is suggested publicly in advance of its being implemented, enough people chime in to cite the law of unintended consequences that the 'proposal' fails to acheive 'consensus'.
 * The error in your strategy is amply demonstrated by the middle-sized kerfuffle that has followed your suggestion. When a bureaucrat implements a change, he's always making a gamble: if he 'gets away with it' then he hasn't committed some abuse or subterfuge -- he's only demonstrated that a consensus did exist for the change. When he doesn't get away with it -- when there's a big uproar -- then he risks losing his job.
 * Nice try, and so forth, but please don't deal with your frustration by pinning the blame on the bureaucrats. You'd act no differently in this position. &mdash; Dan | talk 21:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. The Wiki way is be bold, revise, revert, discuss, consensus, repeat. If a trustworthy person came to me with a request, bureaucratic or administratorly or other, that was outside of policy but demonstrably, unequivocally beneficial to the encyclopedia without stepping on too many toes, my prerogative under the consensus system would be to carry out this request and explain my rationale if anyone asks, and diplomatically deal with a wheel war if one ensues. Consensus has a kind of inertia, which prevents changes from sticking too easily, and the theory is that only good ideas will overcome this inertia, thus proving themselves worthy of becoming the new consensus. If you can demonstrate that your idea is good, well, it will overcome any political boundaries via the openness of the Wiki. You don't need an RFA right now, you need to propose your idea for what the bot will do with its adminship and get a consensus that it should be doing it. If people generally understand the value of your proposal it will maybe have legs with the bureaucrats with balls. Right now you seem to be asking us to do your work for you. Andre (talk) 06:27, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well said, Andrevan. I concur with that comment. <font style="color:#2A8B31;font-family:sans-serif;">Anthøny 14:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Quick question, if I can get consensus from the community for an admin bot and get it approved via brfa would any crats be willing to flag it without an rfa? --<font style="color:Red;">Chris  09:15, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Try it and find out :D <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * What is your plan to gauge consensus without an RFA? — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 11:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think he's saying if BAG approved it, would the consensus of a BRFA be good enough to +sysop and +bot an account.  MBisanz  talk 12:18, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't just start doing that without wider community input. The people most interested in this are BAG members, crats, and those who frequent RFA. One possibility is to start at thread at WT:RFA, with notices here and at BAG. If a consensus develops to allow BAG to endorse +admin in addition to +bot, this may be a possibility. IIRC, the last time this came up, there was no solid consensus as to if RFAs were needed on bots getting +admin, but this idea is a little different, so it has possibilities. The way BAG goes about this (same as +bot or not, etc), needs looked at too. Thoughts anyone? — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 13:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If the only reason an admin-bot needs the +sysop flag is so that it can edit a full-protected page, I see no reason why the bot should have to go through an RFA after a successful BRFA. After all, the bot's operator is already an admin, so if he wanted to destroy the project with an admin-bot, why wouldn't he just deploy the bot through his main account? Also, to prevent problems if the bot makes errors (which is extremely unlikely IMHO, especially if it successfully passed BRFA) there could just be an emergency shut-off page like Redirect Cleanup Bot has so that non-admins can stop it. I would personally be extremely unlikely to support a automatic page-protection bot (if such a thing were ever proposed) and I cannot conceive any situation where I would ever support an admin-bot that can block users, but like I said, if all an admin-bot is going to do is edit full-protected pages, I see no reason for it to have to go through an RFA to obtain +sysop. As far as other admin-bots go, I think that they should be dealt with case-by-case. Maybe if an admin-bot is being reviewed at BRFA, place a notice on WP:AN, WT:RFA, and probably on one of the village pumps to encourage greater participation from the community. If there is no substantial community opposition to the bot and the BAG passes it, just give the +sysop at the same time as +bot. If there is small but non-trivial resistance to the bot and the BAG still passes the bot's code, then we should probably have an RFA for the bot. I think that someone already mentioned this, but the fact that our only admin-bot has not caused any problems, coupled with the absolutely insane accuracy and speed of our anti-vandal bots, particularly ClueBot, may make people less inclined to knee-jerk oppose admin-bots.  J.delanoy <sup style="color:red;">gabs <sub style="color:blue;">adds  19:21, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * (, what's so bad about protection bots? --<font style="color:Red;">Chris  10:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think any bot that actively uses the 'big three' admin tools (block, protect and delete) is likely to be allowed only in very minimal circumstances and operating only on very narrow sets of pages/uses, where the applicability of an action can be very objectively determined. We appoint admins primarily for their sense of judgement in using these three tools: a bot, by definition, can't have such judgement (what it can do, evaluation if you will, is entirely different as I'm sure you can see). <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 20:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * (to Chris) When I said a protection-bot, I meant a bot that would do something along the lines of automatically semi-protecting pages that receive a certain level of vandalism/time. Your bot is fine. J.delanoy <sup style="color:red;">gabs <sub style="color:blue;">adds  20:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have opened a brfa for the bot here --<font style="color:Red;">Chris  04:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

edit protected
This is by no means the first request we've seen for someone who wishes to edit a protected page for technical reasons (either via a bot, or as a template coder to have access to protected/high risk templates).

Due to this, and since it's now really less of a big deal due to the new software upgrades, I think we could request for an "edit proected" stand-alone permission.

Process of granting can be determined later. (I personally prefer through an RfA-like or Change username-like process, done by bureaucrats.)

Thoughts/concerns? - jc37 05:10, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I can has administrative privileges?
In December I resigned my administrative privileges in good standing. Due to the compulsion I had at the time, I insisted on leaving as minimal of a mark about it as possible, therefore I insisted on doing it through IRC exclusively. Dan took every step possible to ensure that it was indeed me who he was desysopping. I come back eight months later, requesting that I have my administrative privileges returned. Thank you, and have a good day. --harej 20:35, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. Verified RFA here: Requests for adminship/Messedrocker 2, admin logs such as, and the removal log link he provided. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 20:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Welcome back. AGK ( talk ◊ contact ) 21:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Welcome back :) &mdash; E  ↗TCB 09:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Admin bot discussion
This discussion has also been raised at WT:RFA, but I reckon I should inform you guys on your own noticeboard, if you haven't already seen the discussion. Cheers, <font color=#3333cc>weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 21:23, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Adminbot approval process
Touching on one of our perennial subjects, adminbots, as a continuation of one of the threads above, I have proposal: Adminbot approval.

In this process, the only ones who may nominate an adminbot for approval are administrators in good standing on this project (after all, someone who isn't trusted with the administrative tools themselves shouldn't have access to them through a bot account), and the code should be made public by some means (on-wiki during the request, but not necessarily left on-wiki afterward; being available to respected editors upon request seems sufficient, so that the integrity of the bot isn't jeopardized by vandals). From start to finish, this should ideally last somewhere around 7 days, give or take a few. This procedure is comprised of two constituent stages:


 * 1) Technical side: When a preconceived group of editors (possibly the BAG, but not necessarily constrained to its members) verify that the source code is technically sound.  This panel will have to verify the code again at the end of the process if any changes have been made due to the input of the community.
 * 2) Idealistic side: When the larger community decides on the idea, not the bot itself.  The discussion itself would be formatted such as an XfD would:  No Support/Oppose/Neutral sections (perhaps not even Support, Oppose, or Neutral at all), but rather a general discussion approving or rejecting the idea.  Queries regarding the bot's functionality or stability should be directed to the aforementioned panel, and will not be a valid grounds for disapproval of the idea.

Of course, both stages would have to pass for the adminbot to be approved, but one stage would not be granted more weight than the other. The views in the recent Adminbot RFC seemed to have garnered the most support when they proposed that the BRFA approve a bot, and then the bot be subsequently adminned; however, Dragons flight's comment above about the breaking down of a process into two discrete parts, technical and idealistic, sounds like a reasonable augmentation of the ideas put forth at the RFC, and deserves some input from the collective (or at least those who keep track of BN ;-)). Feel free to leave ideas either here or at Wikipedia talk:Adminbot approval.  Yours, —<b style="color:#002BB8">Animum</b> (talk) 01:54, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * See also: Bot policy. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:28, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Removing bot flag
There's currently a discussion on WT:BAG about User:WikiDreamer Bot, it was revealed that the operator is using a year-old version of Pywikipedia (we normally require interwiki bots to update pywikipedia daily). The bot's global bot flag has already been revoked but it has local bot flags on some projects (including here) and there is a discussion ongoing on fr.wp as well regarding the local bot flag. As we really don't have an established procedure for this, its mostly up to bureaucrat discretion. The bot is blocked, so there is no hurry. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 03:03, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Given that the bot operator has not followed policy for a year, the global flag is removed, the failure to update can disrupt interwikis, missort them, add IW to now-closed projects or ignore new ones, no one can guarantee that this year-old pywikipedia bot is minimally functional to do its job, I have removed the bot flag. This all brings forth questions about the bot operator running a complex bot. Once the bot operator updates his bot and assures us that it will be updated daily per policy, restoring the flag and unblocking it can be revisited. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 11:28, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I whole-heartedly support the de-flagging. There are just too many potential issues that can arise when using older frameworks; they're updated for a reason. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 18:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Request for crat
Hi. I need a bureaucrat to perform a rename of a banned user for me, but, for obvious reasons, it needs to be done privately. If possible, could someone contact me via email? Sceptre (talk) 13:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * responded. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 14:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hold on. Why does a banned user need to be renamed? =Nichalp   «Talk»=  14:26, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * See this discussion I had with Arbcom: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Archive 3. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  14:29, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Personal information. Sceptre (talk) 14:51, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll handle it. Will respond by email. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  15:12, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I know of one that was renamed because it was the real name of an innocent third party. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 15:54, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Grawp attack on CHU
Please see Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. =Nichalp  «Talk»=  09:27, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I filed a bug requesting queued renames. Dunno if it will be WONTFIX'd or not, but it's viewable here. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:50, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 16:54, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * How about automatically blocking the old usernames from being recreated while renaming? That's a bigger problem than Grawp's usurp. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  19:04, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "While renaming"? Most renames should be pretty quick. The only ones that go to the job queue are for users with more than 10,000 edits, so all renames for users with fewer than 10,000 edits should be pretty much instant. Perhaps you meant while there is a request filed? If so, there's no real way to block that currently. That's why I proposed the queue. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:47, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think Nichalp just means an option to check a box to block the old username from creation on the rename form, for convenience. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  19:49, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ya, that's what I meant. While renaming, we have a check box that allows us to set the option to prevent the old account from ever being recreated in the future. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  19:50, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Neat idea. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 19:52, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * That would be fantastic. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 18:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The only thing I'm concerned about here is that we could be reserving potentially desirable usernames where the users being renamed might not care if some other good faith user shows up wanting to take over that name. Thoughts? – xeno  ( talk ) 18:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * A time limit perhaps? Reserving a username for three months after the rename makes sense. Tied to something toggle-able, though, for cases where it's a private name or a WP:U violation. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 18:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sure, that works. – xeno  ( talk ) 19:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

A more straightforward option might be to get back into the habit of creating an account under the old name after carrying out a rename. This leaves the old name usurpable by future legitimate users, but unusable by vandals in the meantime. Also, we already have the technical capacity to do this. As for childish people coming along and creating requested usernames: perhaps a complicated solution could be found with new features, but it's probably not worth the trouble. It's easy enough just to move the name out of the way before doing the rename, as though it were a usurpation. Perhaps we could just put a new link into the request template to make this easier for bureaucrats. &mdash; Dan | talk 19:13, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In keeping with the "hey, let's add checkboxes!" theme, would it be possible for the system to automatically register the old username in the background using the 'crat's account? EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 19:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Or CHU could be replaced with a mailing list or a toolserver thing like was done with WP:ACC. That way only bureaucrats and other trusted users (clerks) would have access to the information. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 19:37, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * As I say, I don't think this is a serious enough problem to justify complete restructuring. It's very easy to do two renames rather than one. All vandals get bored and go away sooner or later. &mdash; Dan | talk 19:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And features are not likely to be added by the devs where there's an existing, sensible workaround. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 08:31, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Re to Rdsmith4: Grawp has proved to be hard to dismiss and is known to be a persistent vandal. I'm concerned about user privacy. There are many who request that their real name be changed, and then they quit Wikipedia. If Grawp were to hijack those old usernames, and then use it for malicious intent, it could certainly turn ugly. Besides, it would keep the checkuser department flooded with requests. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  17:52, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I like the ACC style idea (but maybe that's a little COI, as I am adeveloper for the ACC tool). Soxπed93 (blag) 15:24, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think SQL is working on a MediaWiki extension to replace the toolserver tool, maybe this could be rolled into it. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 15:28, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm helping with the extension too. I'll see if I can lump it in. Soxπed93 (blag) 15:33, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, a number of users are helping, (all the bolded ones). I'm sure one of us will be able to add it. :-) <font face="Verdana"> Stwalkerster [  talk  ]  23:04, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Template:Renameuser2
Following the recent threads here and on AN/I about vandals creating accounts that other users have requested at CHU, I've added a feature to the template to take the bureaucrat to blast the vandal account out of the way. The vandal account would be renamed to <NEWNAME> (vandal account). Although (rename)(rename vandal) looks a bit crammed, I decided it would be better than having (1)(2) as in Template:Usurp. A possible option to fix that, if necessary, would be to add a second line. (I just added the extra line) <font face="Rockwell"><font color="43AA54">Maxim ( ☎ )  01:40, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I like it. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Won't they just create the (vandal) account name now? Daniel (talk) 05:10, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If somebody tries it, then we'll add an arbitrarily chosen five-digit number to the end. Let's not worry too much about problems that haven't happened yet. &mdash; Dan | talk 05:32, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Can you remove the word 'vandal' from the template? I'm not sure legitimate users would like the term vandal alongside their name. Instead, a number could do. Thanks! =Nichalp   «Talk»=  17:46, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * When I did some of the Grawp-impacted renames, I just changed the Grawp-registered accounts to be "Username (renamed)" (and then left a generic "registered by vandals" block summary for the renamed account). No real need to draw too much attention to the affected accounts. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 18:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Judging by the comments here, and a vandal creating <NEWNAME> (vandal account) once, I think this feature causes more trouble than good, so I've reverted its addition. <font face="Rockwell"><font color="43AA54">Maxim ( ☎ )  21:55, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Tangobot question
There has been 1 neutral !vote in RfA/Ice Cold Beer for two days. Tangobot has continuously shown 0 neutrals. It's not a big deal, but does any know why this discrepancy? Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Usually the neutral don't show up until there is more than one neutral. Not sure why, but that's what I learned from seeing the table on other RfAs. 90.194.244.76 (talk) 11:06, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, this appears to be the case, as someone else who uses the same framework, I've run into this frequently as well. SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  05:38, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm working on a new version of the framework, hopefully this problem will be solved Soxπed93 (blag) 15:21, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Adminship for User:Black Kite
previously requested desysopping to go on Wikibreak and has requested the Stewards restore their sysop bit. The request has been remanded to you, the English Wikipedia bureaucrats. Thank you. Kylu (talk) 21:57, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * So why is he not asking for it here? El_C 22:03, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The link says that he forgot.  bibliomaniac 1  5  22:05, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * He posted on my talk page since I was online and I did from there. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 22:07, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks much, Rlevse. :)
 * El_C: I was posting the note for him as a courtesy, as I clerk some of the steward pages on Meta and am familiar with processes on both sites. I request renames for others on occasion in the same manner. Thank you for your input, but I don't see the need to force people to learn all our various arcane systems. Kylu (talk) 23:17, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I feel the love. El_C 23:24, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

SteveBot
The notice accompanying this message box is made by me, in my role as an administrator It is not made in my role as a member of the Bot Approvals Group. In light of WP:AN, I am wondering if the crats would feel it wise to de-flag, as it seems apparent really doesn't have the trust of the economy to use multiple accounts.  MBisanz  talk 22:21, 23 August 2008 (UTC)


 * MBisanz, what is the meaning of a message box? We are not here to seek drama or draw attention to scandal. If you want to request SteveBot be de-flagged, surely you can do so without a messagebox.  bibliomaniac 1  5  22:24, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The messagebox is because last time I approached the crats about a controversial deflag, there was a large amount of confusion in what role I was acting in and if I had violated any BOT/BAG policies, so I was just trying to be crystal clear.  MBisanz  talk 22:50, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * No comment on the template but, I think it should be done.  Syn  ergy 22:25, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I suppport deflagging but would like more input first. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 22:43, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Given the contentious nature of the issues a deflag seems in order, without prejudice to future debate - as does a removal of the rather large box at the top of this section ....! Pedro : Chat  22:49, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Slightly off-topic comment: I believe the box is there to make it clear that the BAG is not revoking approval of the bot per se, just that MBisanz as an administrator judges that there is a consensus to shut down the bot until Steve can regain the community's trust or transfer the bot to another user. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  (t/a/c) 22:50, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I like boxes. Maybe all messages to bureaucrats should be placed in colour coded boxes. Something to consider. --Deskana (talk) 22:57, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅, regardless of the removal of the funky box. --Deskana (talk) 00:04, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * My opinion as a BAG member (is there a box for that?) is that the bot should be unflagged, so I endorse this. —Giggy 05:06, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I dislike boxes. However, out of the sheer goodness of my heart, I'll contribute a bit of experiential wisdom to the project of devising a scheme of boxes for the BN: I searched for several minutes and couldn't find a "dissenting comment" message box to put around this comment as a signal that I was disagreeing with you. Obviously if we're going to have a specific box (and graphic too, I hope) for everything, we'll need one for dissenting comments. Idle brainstormers, that's your cue. &mdash; Dan | talk 07:18, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Steve Crossin, the bot owner, mailed arbcom-l and (amongst other things) asked for the flag to be removed. --Deskana (talk) 10:02, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Allow stewards to deadmin based on community consensus
See here. (crossposting across noticeboards). NuclearWarfare  <sup style="color:green;">contact me <sub style="color:purple;">My work 23:26, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Odd happenings with renames
User:Thatcher, User:Ryanpostlethwaite and I were chatting in IRC about this last night with a rename I did from Internet Resource Providor (yes with an 'o') to IRP. This am User:Avineshjose says on my talk page page, User_talk:Rlevse, that the same thing happened when I renamed Avineshjose to Avinesh. It appears that upon rename the old is being recreated. Thatcher checked the bug fix site and there is a request in to do this but it's not marked as done. It's apparently an anti Grawp fix. There are some other possibilities too. Note that at the time I read this post on my talk page just now, the sig of Avenish says and points to Avineshjose, but Avineshjose shows no contribs but Avinesh does. Also, the Avineshjose and Avinesh home pages are exactly the same as I write this. Anyone know what's really going on and maybe some could approach the developers about this. There apparently is supposed to be a new button on renames to tell it not to do this but last night there was no such button. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 10:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Rlevse. I will say what I did in this morning. I tried sign-up with ‘avineshjose’ (old id) and it didn’t work. Then I thought of trying with the proposed (usurped) id, i.e ‘avinesh’ and it worked. However, it appears that ‘avineshjose’ is inactive with no contribs. I immediately signed out and recreated a new id of ‘avineshjose’. After seeing the ‘welcome’ window of ‘avineshjose’, I signed out again and signed-in with ‘avinesh’. Unfortunately, at that time, ‘avinesh’ appeared with blank page and 'avineshjose' with old contents without the 'welcome' window. Now I am manually copying contents from ‘avineshjose’ to ‘avinesh’. The process is yet to complete as I have to copy all my archive pages. -- Avinesh Jose <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#000000;font-family:Verdana;"> T  10:50, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Unless I'm missing something, I'd say it appears someone created the account for the old name shortly after you renamed it. There does not appear to be any sort of functionality in the software at this time to do what you suggested, and, I re-installed / updated Renameuser locally myself, to try to get it to do so.


 * 21:12, August 25, 2008 Rlevse (Talk | contribs | block) has renamed Avineshjose to Avinesh ‎ (2,746 edits. Reason: WP:USURP)
 * 00:01, August 26, 2008 Avineshjose (Talk | contribs | block) New user account ‎

You might check, and see if you can reset the password on your old account, otherwise, I suspect it's someone watching CHU. SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me! 11:07, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Grawp? — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 11:43, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Checkuser info: the old account, now, has many edits on a specific IP range, and within that, many of them are on one specific IP. The new account was created on that same IP. FT2 (Talk 12:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, that kills my theory. SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  12:02, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I already commented above that I re-created my old id (avineshjose) since it was not showing any contribution. So not to be confused with it. -- Avinesh Jose <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#000000;font-family:Verdana;"> T  04:47, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Additionally, avinesh (usurped) is also shows any contribs. Is it so? I'm totally confused now. -- Avinesh Jose <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#000000;font-family:Verdana;"> T  04:56, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, there's a very old edit. Bureaucrats can process usurpations of usernames that have edits that do not require GFDL attribution, and it looks like that's what happened here. <font color="#0000CC">W<font color="#000066">ODU P  05:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I know, but my contribs also should be moved to the usurped id, right? At present, it is not done. -- Avinesh Jose <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#000000;font-family:Verdana;"> T  05:25, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * No. See the contribution pattern: Step 1: (old) Avinesh --> Avinesh Step 2: (old) Avinesh --> Avinesh (usurped) step 3: AvineshJose --> Avinesh.  =Nichalp   «Talk»=  05:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It was odd. The user subpages were moved from the old name (Avineshj...) to the new name (Avinesh), but the userpage and user talk page were not. I moved them. <font color="#0000CC">W<font color="#000066">ODU P  05:57, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, it is working fine now. -- Avinesh <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#000000;font-family:Verdana;"> T  08:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Also note, it often takes a day or so, especially if there are lots of edits, for everything to be fully processed in the database. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 10:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Usurpation

 * Request actually filed at WP:USURP. Useight (talk) 22:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * *facepalm* <span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica;color:steelblue;">X! who used to be Soxred93 04:10, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I would like to have a second, non-admin account so I don't get interrupted by "New Messages" banners in the middle of working on articles; it's not clear to me whether I can usurp User:Janitor of Lunacy and still keep this account. It has no edits so there shouldn't be a problem. Your advice welcome. -- Rodhull andemu  21:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You could make a dummy account with which to usurp the one you want. Assuming the account exists and needs to be usurped, I didn't check. Useight (talk) 21:57, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Strangely, that had just occurred to me, but then it's been a long day. As I see it, the account exists and has no edits, so seems open to usurpation. Leave it with me. -- Rodhull andemu  21:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks very much. -- Rodhull andemu  22:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Bot flags
Re this readd: here, MaxSem took those out earlier this month, saying that "make" was obsolete and to use UserRights for everything. He's not the only one to say that. We need a final understanding/agreement among the crats and BAG members on this as currently the crats are doing it two different ways (make vs userrights) and the instructions are flip flopping back and forth. I think we should all be consistent here. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 00:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In the long term the Bot log will be merged with the Userrights log, this needs to be done through the Bugzilla process and I believe MaxSem has a code fix to this end. Until that time, it really doesn't matter which system is used, since both will be merged.  Of course, if the crats want to keep it separate until that time, that is their choice.  MBisanz  talk 00:59, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Will, do you want to keep it separate merely to make the monthly counting easier or is there another reason? Give MBisanz' input, maybe we should just go ahead and all switch to user rights. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I prefer it because it makes it much easier to keep track of what actions are taking place. Were the user rights log searchable by which permission was changed in a given action, it would be a lot better. <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 01:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, the fact that Special:MakeBot adds bot flag actions to the bot status log makes it preferable. It's already getting hard to keep track of general user rights changes now that there are rollback, accountcreator and IPblockexepmt rights being given left right and center. If it is agreed that bureaucrats should stop using that system then so be it, but I think it should be based on discussion. As far as I know, no one consulted any bureaucrats about which interface works better for us before ruling one to be "deprecated". It would be nice if those who use technical features are occasionally asked their opinions about changes to them... <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 01:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm wide open to discussion. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I suspect it is not being done at the Meta level (where you would be consulted), but at the MediaWiki level, if you look at Makebot you see that the developers have formally declared it obsolete, as they did with Makesysop. I think the general goal is to move all actions to the Userrights log. Possibly that log needs a better filtering system, but since these changes were already committed the the code, I doubt the devs will be willing to keep support for the Make-X functions forever.  MBisanz  talk 01:12, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sometimes I find the disconnect between those using the software and those writing it rather frustrating... <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 01:13, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think our best bet at this point is to get the log merge into Userrights, as opposed to the last time they obsoleted a log and just did a page dump at Bureaucrat log. Maybe one of our devs like MaxSem or Krimpet could act as a better information conveyor.  MBisanz  talk 01:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Argh! Everytime I'm glancing through text and see "Userrights" I always have to take a second look, thinking I saw my name. Useight (talk) 05:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

As the new boy round here, I'm happy to go with whatever the other Crats think best. And Useight - I'm getting quite handy at CHU, thanks to Will's expert help. How would you like to be renamed something that'll be less confusing on this page? How about User:Botflag, User:RfA or User:BAG? :-) --Dweller (talk) 10:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm, User:RfA, that could be fun. Useight (talk) 16:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If accusations of being an SPA are your cup of tea, go on ahead... :)  bibliomaniac 1  5  23:01, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

15376
I noticed that two renames of users with high edit counts create multiple log entries, so I've submitted a bugzilla report about it. <font face="Rockwell"><font color="43AA54">Maxim ( ☎ )  13:59, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * From experience, I think multiple log entries result if a bureaucrat resubmits a request that has timed out. Renames involving users with many edits are most likely to time out. <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 14:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Is there any way the developers could help prevent time outs on these requests? --Dweller (talk) 14:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It is the same effect as deletions of pages with vast number of revisions timing out. I guess it's a performance issues. If a rename times out, you're best to do something else for a bit and check the logs a few minutes later to confirm that rename happens. <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 14:38, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * WJB renamed MBisanzBot as a test; no log duplication occured. The bug seems fixed. <font face="Rockwell"><font color="43AA54">Maxim ( ☎ )  15:19, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It still timed out, but not for very long. When I resubmitted the request, it said that MBisanzBot didn't exist so presumably the request had already gone through. Duplication doesn't happen every time there's a time-out so we may have to keep an eye on the log for a while to see if the issue reoccurs... <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 15:24, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Seems like the change of attribution for each edit could easily be job queued. The downside is that the old user's Special:Contributions would visibly shrink as the new one grows, which could confuse onlookers depending on how long it takes. — CharlotteWebb 13:56, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It already is - for renames of users with many edits it can take some time for all the edits to be reattributed to the new name. <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 13:58, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well that's some relief (I've never witnessed something like this) but if that's the case it shouldn't have been timing out. Anyway Werdna says he might have fixed this but is unsure . — CharlotteWebb 14:11, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've seen renames take a whole day to update everything in the db. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 14:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Vote canvassing
A note to the bureaucrats: I appear to have been vote canvassed by email to vote oppose in the Everyking RFA. The person doing the canvassing seems to have missed the fact that I have already voted support. I am going away for the long weekend and will not be acitve on wiki, but I have sent a copy of the suspect email to Newyorkbrad. I doubt any action could or should be taken, but feel I should let you know, just in case the situation is more widespread. Martinp (talk) 18:59, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Obviously this is serious, if true, I've added the notavote template to the RfA in question for the time being.  MBisanz  talk 19:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Naturally I am concerned about this, and I hope whoever is responsible for this canvassing will stop or be held responsible somehow. I have been perplexed for some time by the fact that, while the vast majority of the support voters are known to me, I do not recognize many of the names voting oppose. Everyking (talk) 19:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I am also sad to see this, but personally am of the opinion that far more canvassing happens in these "discussions" than ever comes out in the open. I am convinced a lot of off-wiki conversations occur among both opposers and supporters in situations like these, plus a lot of "user contribution following" creating voting blocs. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. I hope that confirmation of the fact will however doubly encourage the closing bureaucrat to evaluate arguments on their merits rather than purely numbers, something I think the bureaucrats have generally done well in contentious situations, even if I have sometimes disagreed with their conclusions (which is neither here nor there - they are the bureaucrats, not me). The fact is, Everyking, that your RFA is a contentious one, and will be so regardless of who communicates with whom over what. At this point, I'm off to the airport, so going offline. Martinp (talk) 19:30, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Who sent the e-mail? Or do you not feel comfortable saying in public? --Random832 (contribs) 19:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much Martinp for stepping forward. Please do follow up; bureaucrats--please provide guidance about the best way of doing so.  And if anyone else believes they have been canvassed inappropriately--for or against--I urge them to step forward.  A primary reason I conominated Everyking is because he impressed me very much with his integrity over more than a year; he deserves a clean RFA, whatever the outcome.  Best regards,  Durova Charge! 19:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This is very serious. Martinp, would you consider sending the email to the active crats? I will attempt to contact Brad as knowing more details will certainly help resolve this situation. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 20:01, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I received Martinp's e-mail forwarding the e-mail he received. It is from a "throwaway" non-Wikipedia e-mail account and I don't think it is possible to identify who sent it (although I am hardly an expert in that area). Martinp has given me permission to forward it as needed, so I will be glad to send it to one or more of the bureaucrats, although it is not necessary to read the contents of the e-mail to know that off-wiki canvassing of opposition to this RfA has occurred. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:04, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Brad pls forward me the email. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 20:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It is from a "throwaway" non-Wikipedia e-mail account and I don't think it is possible to identify who sent it In which case the possibility of a joe job springs to mind. Or maybe not. Whichever side it came from, none of us should pretend to be shocked and surprised. The best solution would be to get rid of the silly, counterproductive rules against canvassing. Basil &quot;Basil&quot; Fawlty (talk) 21:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Rules against canvassing are not "silly" nor "counterproductive", they are in place to prevent biases from creeping into a discussion. Useight (talk) 20:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Some off-wiki critics have actually said that it's a poor system that could be biased by canvassing in the first place. --Random832 (contribs) 20:25, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Dear IP, in good faith I'm going to suppose that you simply failed to log in as an honest mistake. Please re-sign under your regular account or contact someone with appropriate ops; I recently supported a checkuser request on someone who was using an IP address for meta discussions in violation of the Privatemusings arbitration case finding on sockpuppetry.  Very few edits appear under your IP, but this is a high tension discussion, so please reduce the tension by helping to work this out in a regular manner.  Best regards,  Durova Charge! 20:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)  Thank you very much.  Durova Charge! 21:31, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And to MartinP, Brad, and Rlevse: thank you all very much for your prompt and diligent attention. Durova Charge! 20:40, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * {remove a wp:abf comment} ah, that's better Tombomp (talk/contribs) 20:49, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Please can anyone that has received canvassing e-mails forward them to me. I can investigate this, and hopefully find out who's been doing it. As a bureaucrat, it might not make much of a difference, but as a checkuser, this is certainly something that needs investigating. --Deskana (talk) 23:35, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I support Everyking's RfA but come on, this is almost certainly a joe job. Why would the mysterious canvasser send the email to martinp when there is no prior indication that he'll oppose the RfA? There are very good reasons to discard a number of opposes in this RfA but canvassing isn't one of them. Of course, I can't see any bureaucrat closing the RfA as successful when so many people with clout have opposed (guess this is like the reverse-Danny RfA...) Pascal.Tesson (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's keep an open mind and invite more input from honest editors. I've made the mistake of jumping to conclusions in the past--wouldn't want to repeat the error or see it repeated.  Durova Charge! 20:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have forwarded the copy I got from Brad. And I've asked at the RFA too. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 00:02, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Deskana that would be very helpful if the throwaway e-mail address happens to be connected to a throwaway Wikipedia account connected to a non-throwaway IP range. As most of us know, Special:Emailuser is now logged (and by that I mean "logged and available to checkuser"—I don't doubt that it has always been "logged"), but there doesn't seem to be any indication that the e-mails were sent internally, so possibly no dice here. — CharlotteWebb 13:51, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I should point out that there are a number of interesting and useful headers to be found in the email envelope that, with the proper knowledge, could correlate nicely with CU. I'll give a hand to any arb or CU that would like me to take a look (it needs complete forwarded emails, though, not just a cut-and-paste of the contents).  &mdash; Coren (talk) 14:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It depends on if he sent it from wiki or from an outside, non wiki source. From looking at it, I think it was done outside wiki. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 14:19, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You can identify emails sent internally through the presence of MediaWiki:Emailuserfooter's text at the bottom of the message. If they do not have that, it is safe to say that they were sent from an outside client (eg., gMail; ie., not through special:emailuser), or they were sent before Emailuserfooter was in use (as of a few months back). <font color="#2A8B31">Anthøny <font color="#2A8B31">✉  14:53, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * That could be pasted into the email too, ie, spoofed. Checking the header is better. It'll show Atlanta routing if it's a wiki email. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 15:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

As an aside, there's a rather large thread about EKs RfA on WR. That would seem to be the same style of canvassing as the email (viewable/sent by/to both support/oppose personalites, but perhaps frequented by those more inclined to be of one or the other persuasion). Certainly the goal of reducing canvassing is admirable but let's not lose sight of why we have the canvassing guideline and what is bad about it. The guideline correctly calls out "messages that are written to influence the outcome rather than to improve the quality of a discussion." It could be argued that a strong reaction to a canvassing complaint when it's scope or influence is unknown will tend to inlfuence the outcome. Worrying about whether a particular viewpoint is a "canvassed" viewpoint without regard to the content itself undermines the very thing the guideline was intended to address. Canvassing, like trolling, would best be handled with "revert, block, ignore" rather than lots of boilerplate notices and consternation over a particular viewpoints motivation for posting. --DHeyward (talk) 07:56, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I am back from my trip and have made a statement on my talk page. Martinp (talk) 23:30, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

RFA options
I've started this: Requests for arbitration, specifically on Coffee and PeterSymonds, but also with the hope that the arbcom will be clearer on future desyssops. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 02:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Motion passed and archived. --Jeremyb (talk) 06:53, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

What happens when consensus changes?
Majorly was promoted in December 2007, apparently after a discussion amongst the crats. The most recent RFA is Requests_for_adminship/Majorly which was withdrawn. Majorly's tendencies toward childish and disruptive behavior have been discussed again quite a lot lately. There's now Requests for comment/Majorly which demonstrates the problematic behavior in question. There are quite a few editors there who have stated that Majorly's behavior is not what we expect from an admin. His own responses during the RFC have been criticized as evidence that he's unwilling to accept any responsibility for the problem. These behavioral issues have been going on for a long while now, and he shows no signs of improvement.

I submit to the crats that consensus has changed. Is there something you can do about this? Before you object, yes, I understand you lack the technical ability to change this permission. But, I cannot imagine a steward would refuse a request from our duly-appointed crats. Just to be clear, I am not asking you to institute some new process or approve some change in policy. A generalized solution would be nice, but it's not what I'm after today. Today, I'm just asking the crats if they would consider taking action in this one particular case. If you're unwilling to just proclaim that consensus has changed and have the bit pulled, how about another RFA whose results are binding this time? This would presumably be more palatable to anyone who would otherwise object to an overly-activist crat decision. Friday (talk) 14:58, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * My only concern here is that an action like this has a very high potential of setting a dangerous precedent. J.delanoy <sup style="color:red;">gabs <sub style="color:blue;">adds  15:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's a concern. However this is a unique case, as far as I know.  The crats gave him the bit after a withdrawn RFA.  This is already unusual territory.  The crats use their own judgement sometimes on whether a bit was resigned "under a cloud".  One way to look at a decision here is that they changed their mind on that call.  This would be entirely within their proper jurisdiction. Friday (talk) 15:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Bureaucrats can't decide this. Admins can only be desysopped by order of ArbCom or Jimbo (or a steward in an emergency). Bureaucrats are there to evaluate RfAs, nothing else. My RfA was determined as void. And I am not going through another RfA (I'd rather have my teeth pulled out without anesthetic). I suggest you open a request for arbitration asking the people who do have the power to do the job to do it.  Majorly  talk  15:07, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Majorly's right about this one. As I've written elsewhere recently, we do not reconsider decisions already made, especially nine months ago. I don't take Majorly's promotion as a reconsideration: the RFA was only withdrawn because someone claimed to have evidence of Majorly's being a sockpuppet of another user. When those claims turned out to be without merit, Raul wisely evaluated the RFA as it stood at the time it was closed: so he didn't revise a bureaucrat decision -- he only allowed Majorly to take back his decision to withdraw. Majorly was therefore promoted as an administrator in good standing, without any asterisks or caveats. Like any other administrator, then, only Jimbo and the arbcom can desysop him at the moment. &mdash; Dan | talk 16:12, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, novel things do happen occasionally, so I'm not very swayed by the argument of "We've never done that before, therefore we cannot do it." I guess he was not only allowed to un-withdraw, we're now pretending that his RFA never existed at all?  I don't know if that's literally the first time this ever happened, but it's certainly not typical.  I don't see what's automatically wrong with doing something new.  Friday (talk) 16:43, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I would say Majorly is correct in that this is beyond the purview of the 'crats. While action may very well need to be taken, that is for arbcom to decide. Chillum  17:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I have to agree... the question is, who will make the formal request? I do believe that somebody is working on the request now.--- Balloonman  PoppaBalloon 17:40, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I wish they'd hurry up.  Majorly  talk  17:49, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Majorly, you could always set one up yourself an hijack the process --- Balloonman  PoppaBalloon 18:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea.  Majorly  talk  18:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Friday, the community must first bestow the bureaucrats the mandate to recommend a desysop to stewards. We work on a consensus model, so this would need to be decided through regular channels if we have the mandate to do what you mention and not step on arbcoms toes. Regards, =Nichalp   «Talk»=  17:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Majorly's regaining of the bit (not with a "forgotten RfA" as Friday suggests) is an unusual situation, but that doesn't mean that we can similarly suspend the usual process for demotion. One unusual situation does not necessarily beget another. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 17:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The bureaucrats will recommend to the stewards that Majorly's sysop bit be removed when there is a community-approved desysopping system in place (the caveat being that that same system would also have to be in the bureaucrat's jurisdiction). Until then, it's up to Jimbo, ArbCom, and/or Majorly himself.


 * I concur. The primary role of the bureaucrat is to implement the community consensus for an RfA. Bureaucrats do not have the ability to remove the sysop bit on their own. Also, the community does not currently have the mandate to enforce a sysop-bit removal; that remains under the purview of ArbCom and Jimbo. If there is a sizeable grass-roots concern about Majorly's use of the sysop bit, it should be brought as an RfAr. I will take this opportunity to reiterate that I do believe that ArbCom should set up a dedicated subcommittee to expedite sysop-related issues, but that is not directly relevant here. -- Avi (talk) 17:42, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

A steward would never desysop on consensus of bureaucrats: it's against policy. They'd only ever do it if an ArbCom member requested it as the result of a case (public or private), and Jimbo would just do it himself.  Majorly  talk  17:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with the other Crats. Even if Majorly was sysopped in an unusual fashion that is no carte blanche for the Crats to unsysop him in even more unusual fashion. If there were community consensus for the lines to blur between ArbCom and the Crats, then we'd have to consider how we respond to that consensus, but in the absence of it, I would argue strongly against this move. --Dweller (talk) 09:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with the other crats. While we don't always need a mandate for something new, as Nichalp says, I also think it is wrong to go reverse ourselves on something that was done 9 months ago. One of the key tasks of a crat is to read consensus and since +sysop is a consensus issue, changing how it is done or undone should come from the community. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 10:14, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Toward an explicit mandate
Something like Removing administrator rights/Proposal, perhaps? Friday (talk) 18:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The most obvious question is how the loss of community confidence would be demonstrated. It's certainly not clear to me that Majorly has. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 18:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This proposal depends on the crats using their discretion. How and when they choose to do so is up to them.  This is why I intentionally used vague wording.  I'm not sure why someone would request such a nasty job, but the crats asked for it. :) Friday (talk) 18:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I disagree it's a nasty job: see my thoughts on it.  Majorly  talk  18:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It was interesting just to note the current wording for "removing admin rights", criterion 2 :"Requests for comment: If a request for comments on use of administrator privileges is filed against an administrator, and there is a strong indication that the administrator has lost the trust of the community, the administrator may voluntarily resign or stand for reconfirmation. A bureaucrat may be asked to review the comments to help determine consensus, though they have no obligation to do so." - I know Majorly called the RFC on himself so I guess it doesn't necessarily equate to an RFC on "use of admin privileges" (although it links to plain old RFC, so that may be considered a moot point), but some could argue that the discussion has gone that way. Majorly has stated he will not resign, so if (and it's a big if) there's a "strong indication that the administrator has lost the trust of the community", and Majorly doesn't resign, he must stand for reconfirmation, right?  The Rambling Man (talk) 18:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No, if the RfC determines that there's serious problems with his adminship, and the desired outcome for him to be desysopped, he can either voluntarily have himself desyopped, or others can take it to arbcom for them to look at it. We don't force people into reconfirmation RfA's.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 18:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, so what I'm reading at Removing administrator rights is not correct? If not, fine, but it should be reworded, deprecrated, deleted, or whatever because right now it's a little confusing.  Well, it is for me.  The Rambling Man (talk) 18:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the key word is "may". The problem with all processes short of ArbCom is they're voluntary. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 18:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it's okay, the confusion comes from me not being awake enough to note this isn't a policy, guideline or anything more than just private musings. Heh. Perhaps, Friday, you should start with firmer foundations...! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:26, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It's documentation of what processes exist for those who may need to know. I have made adjustments that hopefully will reduce confusion.  Feel free to edit further.  Jehochman Talk 20:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

It's all become somewhat academic. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Why? I see this as a reasonable and harmless step in the right direction, without regard to any specific case. Friday (talk) 18:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Strongly opposed as discussed here. -- Avi (talk) 18:52, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't actually agree with Nichalp that an explicit mandate is needed for everything new. The great majority of standard practice on Wikipedia is the result of ever-growing tradition, rather than explicit mandate. Furthermore, this community is so fearful of the law of unintended consequences that it is all but unable to agree to any explicit proposal. My goal in my above comments was simply to argue that we should not begin to re-evaluate a months-old decision. Let me try to explain why.

RFA is a formal process for getting the opinion of the community in writing. We accept comments for a week, and at the end of the week we make a decision on the basis of what has been written. The idea is to make a decision that reflects what the community thinks at that moment. It's the formal process for gathering data that ensures maximal fairness and openness. So we cannot simply reverse a nine-month-old decision on the basis of suspicion that the community's opinion may have changed. If we suspect that the outcome of another RFA, held right now, would be very different, then we need a new formal process for holding a review of someone's adminship, or something like that. It in turn needs its own standards of evaluation. Ad-hoc speculative reversal of decisions, as has been advocated in this thread, is out of the question.

Nor should we allow the possibility of reviewing an old decision because we think that we made a mistake in interpreting the data as gathered within the original week during which the request was open. Since that's not the issue here, I won't waste space by defending my view, though I'd be glad to write up some arguments for anybody who's interested. &mdash; Dan | talk 19:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * We don't need to have a mandate for something new. I mentioned the mandate part as desysopping has been the traditional role of arbcom, and if bureaucrats were given the rights to desysop or recommend desysopping a person, I would be certainly interested in the devolution of powers and roles. That needs to be figured out. I note that Wikipedia has moved from a open collaboration model to a more feudal system of rights management. A good or bad model, that open to question, and out of scope here. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  06:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments requested
There have been perennial proposals for a community de-sysopping process. Apparently the community wants a process so that we can exercise the implicit power to remove administrators. If we can appoint them, we should be able to remove. ArbCom is not a perfect alternative because they are highly bureaucratic, and only a small number of editors can serve on the committee. It would be good for Wikipedia to have a process that allowed broad input. Fortunately, such a process already exists, requests for comment. The downside of RFC is that they can be hard to read. We do have bureaucrats who should be able to read such things, sometimes, when they produce a clear consensus. In cases where there is no clear consensus, the matter can be referred to ArbCom. This may result in fewer ill-prepared cases going to Arbcom, and allow the Committee to focus efforts on the hard cases, rather than suffering enhanced drama in cases that really aren't borderline (I think the one from yesterday is a good example of that!). How do bureaucrats and others feel about Removing administrator rights/Proposal? Jehochman Talk 15:11, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

My RfA
Given the percentage at the moment (70%), I have decided that I would like to make a small and simple request. In the event that my RfA is closed as unsuccessful, I would like the closing crat to provide me with their rationale or reason (basically, I would appreciate an analysis) for doing so. Thank you.  Syn  ergy 00:48, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Certainly a reasonable request. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:05, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It wouldn't be out of line to see such an analysis, even a single paragraph, at the closure of all RfAs in the 65-75% range. <strong style="color:#000;background:#fff;border:0px solid #000">Avruch <strong style="color:#000;background:#fff;border:0px solid #000"> T 13:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd expect more analysis if it was closed successfully at that range... John Reaves 21:20, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Regardless, analysis is needed. :) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 21:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

All crats should probably provide a relatively detailed analysis/explanation in virtually all borderline cases. <font color="#660000">Wisdom89  ( <font color="#17001E">T |undefined /  <font color="#17001E">C ) 22:25, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For transparency's sake, I agree that the closing bureaucrat should include a brief analysis on some of the RFAs that close on the edge. They already put in a paragraph or so on some of the most controversial closes, but I see a couple sentences on some of the others as being beneficial. Useight (talk) 22:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think a list of other RfA close calls is necessary; each situation is different, and rarely are multiple RfAs contentious for the exact same reason. Some RfA closings will need a historical perspective; some won't. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 23:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * By mere virtue of the fact that most "close-call" RfAs are disparate precisely underscores why the crats should explicate them all. <font color="#660000">Wisdom89  ( <font color="#17001E">T |undefined /  <font color="#17001E">C ) 01:44, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It would be a common courtesy to the candidate and possibly help avoid indignation. <font color="#660000">Wisdom89  ( <font color="#17001E">T |undefined /  <font color="#17001E">C ) 01:46, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Please note that I'm not saying that bureaucrats shouldn't explain how they came to their conclusions; I'm merely saying that a flat-out standard "'crats must reference previous RfAs" stance is mistaken. Also please note that I'm opposed to it primarily because I'd totally be screwed if I had to sift through tons of old failed RfAs, so I'm slightly biased there. ;) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 05:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Wisdom... I'd like to see more of the reasoning behind the close on RfA's in the gray range. Without it, it appears that this is merely a vote not an !vote.--- Balloonman  PoppaBalloon 05:03, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Strongly agree.  Enigma  message 05:32, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

At the suggestion of Thatcher I would like to mention this conversation about a blocked user, and a new user.  Syn  ergy 19:46, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally speaking, unless a user is indefinitely blocked, I'd say that their !vote still stands (unless they participated as an alternate account just to get around their block). Their newness is an issue, but really, I wouldn't consider it the breaking point of the RfA. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 15:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm actually unsure of what you mean by the breaking point of the RfA. Could you elaborate maybe?  Syn  ergy 04:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Let's cross the bridge when it comes, shall we? =Nichalp  «Talk»=  15:23, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:CHU and "Praveen" requests
It could just be my faulty memory, or it could be coincidence, or it could be that "Praveen" is an extremely common name, but I've seen a lot of requests float by at CHU in the last couple of weeks with this name in them. They're not all from the same person, are they? --Dweller (talk) 15:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Praveen is a very common name (closer to Mark than John in, um, common-ness, but common). --Regents Park (count the magpies) 15:10, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, that's good enough for me. Thanks. --Dweller (talk) 15:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I confirm this. Although the requests for renames from praveens outnumber other Indian names by quite a large margin. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  05:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

unqualified bureaucrats and administrators
The Wikipedia, although sanctioned under a foundation, appears to be a continuation of the old dial up bulletin boards run by "sysops" to a great extent from university computer engineering departments. Hence most bureaucrats, administrators and volunteers appear to have connections in one way or another to this sphere.

Consequently, they have an advantage over, say an expert plumber who may edit an article, get into an edit war and then be blocked by an administrator who has done some plumbing of his own and has come up with a different explanation he likes better. In such situations, because of the position of the administrator the article becomes bias in the direction of error.

I have a current example and have placed an original research tag in the section but I'm concerned now about this hidden but apparent "good old boy" hierarchy in which the Wikipedia appears to be based, since the systems responsible for funding and accrediting university engineering departments and the like, if operated in the same way, could begin flushing personnel with whom they disagree in those departments down the proverbial toilet, if only to make a point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.12.147 (talk • contribs)


 * You misunderstand the role of admins and bureaucrats. We're not referees. As a Bureaucrat, my opinion weighs no more or less than that of any other user. Wikipedia is a mirror, reflecting what is said in WP:RS. Where two RS disagree, both can be cited. There's no hidden or open good old boy hierarchy applicable to editing. If you're in an edit war with someone, justify your concerns at the article talk page and consensus will determine the argument, not someone's tools. Abuse of tools by admins in edit wars is taken very seriously and can lead to desysopping. --Dweller (talk) 11:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You are sadly mistaken believing that most admins and crats are from university engineering departments. Dweller, well said. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 11:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I can also confirm that I'm not in a university engineering department either. I think, however, compared to where I am, it would be preferable ... The Rambling Man (talk) 11:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yawn. Wikipedia Is DoomedTM because someone dares to disagree with his OR tag. Personally, I'm in no mood today for egotistical whining that everyone but him "has no clue".  If you don't like editing in collaboration with others, go away. --barneca (talk) 12:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Bureaucrat assistsance requested
Request: could any bureaucrat with a few minutes on his or her (are there any active female 'crats?) hands, who is willing to chip in a rename for a sensitive RTV matter, please ping me on if they are available?

I chose to solicit volunteers on this Board, simply so I immediately reach a free bureaucrat; this is probably the quickest way. :)

Thanks in advance. <font color="#2A8B31">Anthøny <font color="#2A8B31">✉  22:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)


 * This is taken care of. &mdash; Dan | talk 22:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * All done, yes. Thanks again, Dan. <font color="#2A8B31">Anthøny <font color="#2A8B31">✉  22:56, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Crat discretion?
A semi-related thread about whether Kurt's blanket oppose to all self-noms are, in fact, weighed by the 'crats led to me doing a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation that had surprising results: given the same one-year interval examined by the folks doing the RfA review, it turns out that the strict numerical RfA headcount (75% barrier) has a correlation of an hair over 0.9895 to the eventual result; placing the difference well below the level of statistical noise (roughly .02 for 581 samples over a continuous function), well below the generally accepted lower limit of statistical significance (.05).

This means that the null hypothesis (bureaucrats have no influence over the results of RfA) "wins" without any doubt. This feels really wrong&mdash; 'crats were, in theory, chosen to evaluate consensus, not simply count raised hands. Is it the position of the currently sitting 'crats that a simple headcount invariably represent community consensus? If so, why don't we have an automated process do the whole RfA thing and eliminate a great deal of the drama?

Care to comment? &mdash; Coren (talk) 04:22, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally, I would be quite uncomfortable with a bot arbitrarily +sysopping RFA candidates with 75% and denying it to those with 74.9%. We have the bureaucrats in order to closely examine RFAs in the ~70-75% range to determine whether an consensus exists. This is not something a bot can do, it takes a personal touch, an actual human reading every word of the RFA. If a policy was passed that 75% was the absolute minimum, regardless of any other factor, then I'd agree that a bot could technically handle requests, but I still wouldn't want it done. Those who know me know I am not a fan of bots doing much at all, so I'm biased in this regard, but I would be strongly against a bot handling requests with the magnitude of RFA. Useight (talk) 06:28, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Then how about a bot that gives +sysop based on 75%+ support, denies 69%- and leaves 70%-74% up to human discretion? According to Coren's statistics, that's all that is happening anyway. What I would like to see is an overview of each RFA, made by the deciding 'crat, that discusses the 'evidence' in the supports/opposes and how much weight they are given; this would require that the substance of the opposes and the supports be increased and puts more of an onus on the 'crats to make decisions about RFAs, instead of carrying out an action that could be made autonomously. ~ Ameliorate! U T C @ 13:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * My point is that this close examination either doesn't occur or always ends up confirming the headcount and that, in practice, there is no difference. I'm not genuinely suggesting the RfA as they currently exist should be closed by bots because there would be no gain, but that it might be worthwhile to seriously reexamine the role bureaucrats currently play in the process.
 * Past attempts to change the RfA format have met with failure (mostly because while many agree that it should be changed, everyone disagrees on what it should be changed to), but perhaps this is a signal that bureaucrats might want to be less timid when evaluating whether consensus exists or not, or a hint of which direction RfA might be tweaked towards. &mdash; Coren (talk) 14:28, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There are always those RFAs that require a human factor bots simply can handle. This is especially true of reconfirmation RFA and admins asking to regain the bit. Though not only those particialar RFAs. We can all think of other RFAs, ones not in those categories I just mentioned, that bots could not do an adequate job of evaluating. Bots can also not provide meaningful feedback on reasons for a decision. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 15:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Several RFAs (oft-mentioned in RFBs) passed with below 69% support. These are extraordinarily rare and required a personal touch and a detailed explanation of the decision and thought process. Neither of these can be provided by a bot. Useight (talk) 16:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, just make it a vote already, like it is on other wikis. For most practical purposes RFA is a vote, dropping the charade and the mysticism would be all for the better. Haukur (talk) 16:58, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Hear hear. Bishonen | talk 17:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC).
 * As long as circumstances exist (no matter how small) that shun a macro/script's eye, then we cannot rely solely on a bot to make the decision as others have already pointed out. A human factor will always be needed. <font color="#660000">Wisdom89  ( <font color="#17001E">T |undefined /  <font color="#17001E">C ) 17:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, we need someone to check for sockpuppets, very new users etc. but we don't need much beyond that. Haukur (talk) 19:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm sure your statistics are accurate, but you've approached your analysis from quite the wrong direction. It looks like the bureaucrats are straightforwardly following the semi-official numerical norms of promotion. (I haven't treated them as sacrosanct, but most of us seem to follow them most of the time.) But you've moved from here to "we may as well have a bot", a step which makes some assumptions I am not willing to make.
 * The first thing we should do is wonder why the bureaucrats act the way they do. For some, it's probably out of personal conviction: they believe that their sole duty is to implement the will of the community, keeping out their own interpretive biases as much as possible. This has led them to look for a method of judgment that is entirely dispassionate. The only available option that fits this description is a quantitative method. These bureaucrats have turned the traditional numerical range, whose purpose for a long time has not been exactly clear, into the primary method of judgment. If the community and all the bureaucrats agreed on this approach, then a bot would be just the right thing (putting aside the problem of sockpuppets).
 * Other bureaucrats are more willing to read through the text of a request before making a decision, with an eye to weighing votes according to their relevance, the familiarity with the candidate they reflect, or the validity of the arguments they present. This attitude is what we call "bureaucrat discretion". Why do bureaucrats who are in principle willing to exercise discretion rarely do it? Presumably because they feel the pressure of normativity, and fear the uproar that has in the past followed abnormal decisions.
 * So the question should not be: "All we do is count heads, so why don't we just use a bot?" It should be: All we do is count heads, but
 * Is that what we should be doing?
 * Is that what the community wants us to do? and
 * Which of the first two questions is more important?
 * That's the direction I'd like to see this conversation take. I've stated my own opinions on the subject on a few occasions, but I'll gladly talk about them with anyone who's interested. &mdash; Dan | talk 23:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll bite. I select question 2 above as the more important of the two. Useight (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but can you answer it? Are they (or "we all") agreed that head-counting is better, or that discretionary decision-making is better, or are they divided? I'm not too sure myself, and I'd be glad to hear from anyone who has a better sense than I. &mdash; Dan | talk 23:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Alas, I cannot answer question two with any more detail than this: the community wants the bureaucrats to count heads unless the headcount falls within a certain range or in extenuating circumstances, to use discretionary judgement when counting heads. Perhaps that sentence is oversimplified, but I believe that is a decent assessment of the currently accepted RFA closing procedures. Useight (talk) 23:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, normally "counting heads" is enough unless the RfA is hopelessly confused, in which case, the Crats' discretion is required to disentangle the various arguments to determine the reality of consensus; the same problem arises in that grey area between obvious pass and obvious fail, in which case we trust their judgement, which is a major reason they were approved by the community as Crats in the first place; in fact the major thrust of the RfBs I've seen has been along those lines. Having said that, I've never seen a public reaction to a promotion or refusal to promote (although I'm sure someone will prove me wrong), which tells me that the community is largely satisfied with the work they do. It would have to be a pretty bizarre RfA for it to turn on a Crat's assessment of Kurt's boilerplate objection, so in real terms, I doubt it would arise in practice. -- Rodhull andemu  00:07, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Requests for adminship/Ryulong 3 caused a hue and cry for days in the aftermath. Danny's RfA is another that comes to mind.  Enigma  message 05:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The interesting question, I think, is whether that would make a difference in the first place. An argument could be made that classes of votes that might be weighed during an RfA:
 * Votes based on a verifiably incorrect assertion;
 * Votes "per X" when X would have a weighed down vote;
 * Votes based on criteria generally discouraged by the community; or
 * Votes made when the voter has little or no familiarity with the editor's history.
 * Whether any, or which, of those (or perhaps other) votes should be weighed down is an interesting question; but before we ask ourselves if we want the crats to start weighing, we should first as ourselves would it make any difference in practice? That is: are there actual RfA where, if the bureaucrats evaluated rather than counted, the result would not have been the same?  &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes it would sometimes make a difference. Check Krimpet's RFA. Or ^demon, etc — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 01:30, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * A definite yes to that question. In some cases a bureaucrat has actually been bold enough to make an 'abnormal' decision, but in many more the decision might have been different had the bureaucrat felt more comfortable 'exercising discretion'. I'm a bit wary of producing a specific example, lest I make somebody feel like the victim of an unfair procedure, but my experience leaves me with no doubt that greater freedom with 'discretion' could make the process visibly different. &mdash; Dan | talk 03:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Crat discretion is necessary as proven e.g. here and here. Just image the havoc a straight voting process would have wreaked there. Unimaginable. <span style="font-family:lucida sans, console;">Everyme 08:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Er, no. There was havoc wreaked because a bureaucrat used discretion.  Majorly  talk  23:55, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I thought it was obvious that was my point. <span style="font-family:lucida sans, console;">Everyme 05:56, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Sock Hop
At Requests for adminship/Cirt there is some socking action. Could we get more uninvolved eyes watching that page, please. For instance, oppose #23 by might or might not need to be indented. The user has been indef blocked for a bad username and WP:POINT, according to their block log. Jehochman Talk 20:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I discounted that vote and yes, this will need a deeper look. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 20:53, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Here are some hooks to hang the socks: Requests for checkuser/Case/Eastbayway. Jehochman Talk 20:57, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

It might be of interest that 20% of the opposes come from users/accounts that have not contributed to an RFA prior to that one (not counting the already excluded socks). ~ Ameliorate! U T C @ 06:00, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It might also be of interest that every other RFA active right now does not have a single oppose from a user/account that has not previously contributed to an RFA. ~ Ameliorate! U T C @ 06:13, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

OMG - the regular clique are being usurped by normal wikipedians!!!

Crats might like to note that although there's been some sockpupperty here, concerns have come to light in the last 48 hours that have led to a stream of oppose votes, and supports switching to oppose. The arithmetic went from 150-10 to 160-40, legitimate opposes (discounting the socks) now coming in at 3:1. Because of the rock solid initial support, this will be an arithmetical pass, but the movement in consensus is such, that a crat might want to let it run a little longer to see where consensus is moving to. Now, I'm guess someone will scream at me for suggesting this, but I don't intend to say more.--Troikoalogo (talk) 13:15, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The 40, however, includes some 'suspicious' !votes. And while I would like to AGF, I have to point out this, sorry. ~ User:Ameliorate!  (with the !) (talk) 13:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * IF you'd like to AGF, then please DO SO! If your evidence of some of the 40 being "suspicious" is as piss-poor as that, then I think we can discount it. What would it matter if this was the first RfA I'd opined on? EH? Again this looks like an attempt to limit RFA to a clique who agree with you. Oh, and see this for evidence of how ridiculous your mud-slinging is.--Troikoalogo (talk) 14:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Just for reference, the past precedent for extending RFAs is ABCD by Raul654 for suspected sockpupptery, HolyRomanEmperor3 by Linuxbeak for compromised account, and Cla68 by Taxman for suspected sockpupptery/aiding a banned user.  MBisanz  talk 13:20, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * In this case, the socking has been in the oppose section. That's why the vote has swung as it did, in large part.  Extending the RFA will just provide more opportunities for malefactors to continue their vote stacking.  There has also been canvassing.  Given enough time, I think these dirty tricks would be successful in sinking the candidacy.  I strongly oppose any extension. Let's not have a repeat of Requests for adminship/Cla68. Jehochman Talk 13:25, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I count seven struck or indented opposes from socks. Congratulations on the fine work you and Durova did of convincing everyone of the spin that if you are opposing, you must be a sock and/or a troll.  No, it couldn't possibly be that some of us opposed because of the mischaracterization of his block log, which, when the scope of it was revealed, is appalling that he is now an admin.  I suppose it's moot anyway - the scientology nuts will surely be watching him like a hawk and in the event of any problems, we'll probably know pretty quickly. --B (talk) 21:56, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Quite the opposite. I think I convinced a number of people to oppose or withdraw support, based on their comments.  Jehochman Talk 23:05, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I looked into every single vote, support and oppose. There were problems on both sides. It just so happens in this case most of them were in the opposes. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 23:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Irregularities that need investigating

 * - a single purpose account with fewer than 50 contributions.
 * blocked 6 months for "tons of socks"
 * blocked 2 months for sock puppetry.
 * - confirmed socking at this RFA.
 * This RFA has had unusually high participation by folks who have never voted in an RFA before. Oddly, most of these appear in the oppose section. See Ameliorate!'s comments above.
 * There is evidence of meat puppetry at Requests for checkuser/Case/Eastbayway.

Feel free to add to the list if you find any others. Jehochman Talk 13:32, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you to the bureaucrats and checkusers for stellar work on this nomination. As I stated at the recent Everyking RFA, the integrity of the process is more important than the outcome of one candidacy (up or down). Now I promise I'm not planning to nominate any more high profile RFAs in the near future. Time to get back to content, and warmest regards. Durova Charge! 21:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)