Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Genisock2


 * ''The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a request for adminship that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Genisock2
Final (28/25/3) ended 21:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

– My sock. I understand this request is a little non standard. There is a feature in the mediawiki software that allows admins to view which pages are not on anyone's watchlist. The idea being that they could add items that are not watched to their watchlist. Now I can't really do this because at 1,900 items many of which are rather busy my watchlist is already too large. What I want to do is create a secondary account that can have a watchlist completely made up of these unwatched pages that can use rollback (since most ofFlcellog these pages have a pretty low edit rate I could probably watch at least 5000 of these pages no problem). The other advantage of this being an admin account is that I can populate the watchlist in something under a month using the features available in the mediawiki software. I will then check this account and its watchlist at least once a day and deal with any vandalism that has slipped through the cracks. The account will be openly declared to be a sock on both userpages and will do nothing other than revert vandalism and warn. Any blocks required will be carried out by the geni account.Geni 21:29, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Um yes I can't quite figure out how to do this within standard process but I do accept.Genisock2 21:35, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * withdrawn User:Guettarda's workaround appears effective.Geni 21:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Support
 * 1) Um... well I'm not quite sure how this is going to work either, but I trust the user, so support. —  FireFox  •  T  • 21:49, 3 February 2006
 * 2) Support unorthodox, but it's actually not a bad idea... smurray   inch   e  ster  ( User ), ( Talk ) 21:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Support seems like a reasonable project. (ESkog)(Talk) 21:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) As per Firefox...I suppose.  Unprecidented request (AFAIK), but I trust geni.  Guettarda 21:54, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 5) Support A novel idea... seems worth a try.  It's not like this new "user" will abuse its powers either.  Ikh (talk) 21:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 6) Support Great idea Mjal 22:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 7) Support Based on the answers of the Puppetmaster on the talk page. Dr Debug (Talk) 22:31, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 8) Support. I recognize the scalability issue that Durin mentions below, and agree that: 1.if this works, we need to have a discussion about what to do next, not just have people ask willy-nilly on RFA, and 2.RFA probably isn't the best forum for it in any case.  However, I like the idea and this is why: I can't see the list in question and have no idea what's on it.  But I would be able to see the contributions of Geni's sockpuppet, and thus would be better equipped, a month from now, to talk about whether it's working and how well. Chick Bowen 22:46, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 9) Support - seems like a decent workaround for the limitations of watchlists, and I trust geni to actually watch the second watchlist. FreplySpang (talk) 23:11, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 10) Support - Geni would use this well, and if there are any problems we can see what they are. Of course, getting the multiple watchlists feature would also be good ... - David Gerard 00:14, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 11) Support in the absence of any dangerous or worrisome aspects of this. &mdash; Knowledge Seeker &#2470; 00:40, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 12) Support, harmless. But the technical capacity for multiple watchlists would be a good thing to add. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:53, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 13) Support. I believe that I understand the objections, but I find that I trust the user to evaluate this experiment realistically.  Jkelly 02:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 14) WP:BB. Neutralitytalk 02:32, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 15) WP:BB. :) --Irpen 05:40, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 16) Support. Worth a try, until a more elegant software solution can be created.--ragesoss 08:05, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 17) support its non-standard, but so what? Are we really so hidebound? Worth a try at least William M. Connolley 12:05, 4 February 2006 (UTC).
 * 18) --Signed by:  Chazz - (responses). @ 13:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 19) Support. --Adrian Buehlmann 15:30, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 20) Support. The user is already an admin, and appears to use his powers responsibly, so I don't see why giving him admin abilities on a 2nd account would be problematic. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 17:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 21) Support Not standard process but I'm sure this sock would help curb vandalism. -- M @  th  wiz  2020  20:44, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 22) Support, although I would have preferred a technical solution. Several such solutions are suggested on the talk page, but they would require software changes and so are unlikely to happen for some time. If this RFA succeeds, I'll probably create my own sock for the same purpose.-gadfium 21:07, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 23) Support i See nothing wrong with this frankly Borisblue 23:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 24) Support Though it would be nice to handle this more elegantly, there is no reason to oppose. Geni can carry out any potential abuse of privileges from the existing account. Conceptually, administrative privileges should be extended to a person. Demi T/C 07:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 25) support. this is one of the best reasons i've heard yet to request adminship. Avriette 15:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 26) SuperBowl Sunday Support [[Image:SuperBowlXL.png|25px]] ε  γκυκλοπ  αίδεια  *  21:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 27) Support. Admittedly a tad unorthodox, but if we trust a user with one SysOp account, why wouldn't we give them a second one for a perfectly valid and admirable reason? EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 21:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 28) Support, but I don't know if this is the process for a sock account. It's not a bot account either, so it makes it tough to figure out. OTOH, Geni's a trusted admin and is clearly declaring this is as a sock account. --Deathphoenix 13:01, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Oppose
 * 1) (oppose for now) Seems that the same can be much better achieved by creating a list of articles and using the "related changes" features to monitor them. - Liberatore(T) 21:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * That list would have to be visible only to admins, and I don't know how such a thing would be programmed. Chick Bowen 22:11, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * That would involve creating a public list of say 5000 articles (the exact number will depend on traffic levels) that were only watched by one user. I would rather not do this.Geni 22:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Discussion continues on talk page.- Liberatore(T) 22:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose: (Not for anything have to do with my estimation of Geni) This is, as you note, rather non-standard. I'm not being a procedure wonk by stating this, but I'd really like to see this discussed more with possible alternatives suggested and debated. The fact that a talk page sprang up on this RfA so quickly I think points to a lack of discussion on the merits of this possibility. I can see the utility, but I myself have done as Liberatore has suggested for articles that are of interest to me and for much the same reason. I'm also a bit hesitant on the idea of easy scalability of this concept; what if all admins had sock puppets? Good? Bad? I don't know. Again, more discussion needed. Lastly, Special:Unwatchedpages exists for a reason. By creating this sock and adding 5k+ articles to it, Special:Unwatchedpages becomes undermined and useless. I'm not comfortable with that, most especially without more discussion on this issue. I would encourage you to withdraw this nomination and allow some opportunity for discussion of this idea outside of RfA. Developers might want to comment on this as well; perhaps adding a feature that allows an admin to see recent changes to unwatched pages is in order. --Durin 22:29, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've emailed you a responce.Geni 22:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what you mean about how Special:Unwatchedpages woud be undermined&mdash;could you explain, so that I may reconsider my vote? &mdash; Knowledge Seeker &#2470; 05:40, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Durin means that, if the sockpoppet-admin adds all pages listed under Special:Unwatchedpages to its watchlist, then the unwatched pages list will be empty because they'll be on a watchlist (that of the sockpuppet). Possible workaround: instead of creating this sock account, program the software to allow any user to view all unwatched pages in a "watchlist-style" format, so that it shows each page in the order they were last edited. -- M  @  th  wiz  2020  20:44, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose per Durin Juppiter 22:37, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose for now. This really needs to be discussed as policy first since there could be dozens of us who would want an admin sock for similar purposes. It would seem more appropriate to hand out such priviledges to existing admins by some responsible authority, rather than have RfA requests by any of us who decide this would be useful. It is a neat idea though.  NoSeptember   talk  22:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * There could be. We will deal with that when it becomes an issue. Depending on the traffic levels as this could be solved by as few as 30 of us. In know there is one person who already has a 19,000 page watchlist.Geni 22:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose for now, per Durin if this user watches all unwatched pages there won't be any unwatched pages... I can see the goal but not convinced this is the most appropriate way to achieve it. --pgk( talk ) 22:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I cannot and will not watch 300K pages.Geni 23:21, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose. Durin has good points. Using a sock admin may not be the best way of doing what you want to do, and may be a problematic precendent. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * And besides, you may watch pages just by adding them to a list, and see the recent changes to that list. I could provide you with a bot to update that list everyday. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I am not going to publicaly reveal a list of 5000 pages only watched by one person. You also run into scaleing issues. I think I can watch 5000 low traffic pages but 300K? By doing this I make a comitment. I will keep an eye on those 5000 pages for vandalism. But 60 pages with 5000 articles listed? We will never be able to keep track of who is watching what. I could manualy add them to the sockpupets watchlist but that would take a lot of time.Geni 23:20, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Getting a brand new admin account just for the purpose of watching 5000 low traffic page seems not worth the trouble. Besides, you are human, like everybody else, and you may get bored in half a year of watching 5000 pages in addition to your already rather big (I guess) watchlist. Also, I see no danger of making that public. Vandals will have better targets by just picking a random Wikipedia page than by vandalizing one of the 5000 guaranteed to be on your watchlist (even if you won't check it so often). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:18, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, you can do vandalism rollback and {test-n} just by using javascript, while going to your usual account for an occasional block. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:18, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I could blank the watchlist inside 20 seconds and then apply for the account to be de-admined. Alturntivly if this proves to be an effective technique it may be worth renameing the account and transfuring it to someone else who is interested. Creating the watchlist without useing admin powers would take a long time and there are issues with godmode light. Blocking will have to be done by geni otherwise the block notice will look wierd.Geni 01:20, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose - while the goals are respectable, this sets an extremely dangerous precedent; never before have we had an user have two administrator accounts (well, at least we haven't heard of any.) Does that mean all administrators should get multiple accounts with administrator priveledges? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 23:05, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * What danger is there in giving me an open and declared second account. If an admin has a good reason for a second account then I don't see a problem. A user is after all free to create multiple accounts to edit as long as they stay within the rules.Geni 23:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, you are asking us to vote admin powers to your sock. It's kind of absurd. Perhaps it would be better handled if you spoke directly with a bureaucrat and got their advice. Eluchil  00:36, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose low edit summary usage ;) Sorry, I don't see the need for this, certainly not this way. It's rather... unorthodox. Oppose per Durin, but if a crat says okay I'd be glad to support. NSL E (T+C) 00:43, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose for now - this is a bad precedent to set without prior discussion on the issue. I'm in full support of the idea in principle, but I'm with Durin on this - I think we need to discuss this first before taking action in this way. -- Francs2000 [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px|  ]] 03:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose. I have no problem with Geni's reasoning for wanting an admin sock (as long as we were assured that an account with 5000+ pages on Special:Unwatchedpages would not pose any scalability issues to the software), but I have major reservations with the way the sock is being requested. Most of my objection is per Flcelloguy and Durin, but there's a separate problem I have with this sort of request, which is by far my biggest objection: If approved, it would give admins an entirely new power out of nowhere without even the slightest bit of policy discussion having taken place. (Please note that I am in no way attempting to allege that I think Geni would somehow misuse this admin sock; it's not Geni that is at issue here, IMHO.) There are tons of non-admin WP editors who are part of the WP:CVU, and any one of them could make excellent use of such a specialized tool as that which Geni is attempting to set up here, but if any of them were to post a similar RfA, they'd be shut down with a vote around 2/84/5 within an hour. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I have a major issue with the way admin duties and rights on WP tend to keep slowly expanding in a mission creep sort of way, almost subconsciously, and I don't think that's good for WP as a whole. Please, consider punting this over to WP:VPP and letting the community as a whole chew on it for a few days, so that all the potential problems raised by this can be explored (including the technical ones). Who knows, when it's all said and done, maybe the consensus will be that admins can have allowed such an adminsock without even having to go through an RfA. But I would really, really, really prefer to see an out-of-the-blue proposal like this go through a more formal process. --Aaron 04:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Addendum. At the very least, can we consider the possibility that such requests must be mulled over by bureaucrats instead of just users and/or admins? --Aaron 04:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that some sort of process needs to be set up to handle creating admin socks (not the ad hoc RfA process), but lets be clear, this is not an expansion of admin powers. We already have sole access to the Unwatched list; this request is only about managing that access better.  NoSeptember   talk  04:23, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose -- a BOT with admin powers? This needs to be thoroughly discussed first, as such a proposal would be open to misuse. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  04:54, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * huh? I'm not proposeing to use a bot.Geni 05:17, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Oops, getting rusty here. I think this issue needs to be discussed further first. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  05:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose: agree with Durin. Jonathunder 05:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose - I would like to be bold and vote support as done by others, but that guideline applies only to updating pages and not for voting on rfa ;). Seriously speaking, I've found some pages that are frequently vandalised and added them to my watchlist - I find that within a 12 hour period some of these are vandalised by different IPs and rollback is very ineffective. Also, oppose per Durin. --Gurubrahma 07:30, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose per Durin. Sounds like an ok idea, but I don't think it should be implemented ad hoc by a votes at RfA without a full discussion of the merits/drawbacks at a larger forum. Xoloz 16:56, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose. This may not be a bad idea, but I'm uncomfortable granting adminship to a sock through RfA. Carbonite | Talk 18:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose per low edit count and 0% edit summaries. Just kidding. Oppose per Durin's concerns, here and on the talk page, and a desire to get more bureaucrat input and policy in place first. Turnstep 22:27, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 6) Oppose. I'm not comfortable with setting this kind of precedent without a policy discussion first. -- Run e Welsh | &tau;&alpha;&lambda;&kappa; 22:44, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * What precedent are you worried about setting?Geni 23:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * One person with two admin accounts, of course. You even hinted at it in the nom. -- Run e Welsh | &tau;&alpha;&lambda;&kappa; 00:39, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Why are you worried about someone haveing two two openly declared admin accounts if they have a reason.Geni 03:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose - for reasons given above, precedent and is it technically necessary being the biggies for me. ++Lar: t/c 22:49, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose, bad idea. No opposition to geni, but sock puppet admins seem to be a bad call. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stifle (talk • contribs) 20:01, 4 February 2006
 * 3) Oppose, I find Durin's arguments convincing for now (both on this page and talk page). Petros471 10:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose. A rather clever idea, but I think creating a sockpuppet admin just for this purpose is unwise and unnecessary.  Sorry.   &hArr;    | | &oplus; &perp; (t-c-e) 10:25, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose: I laud the goals, but I'm against sock puppets in any shape or form, even benign ones, and I think this is a line we can't cross, even if it's for a very good reason. I'd rather see developers create work-arounds than see two admins for one person.  Geogre 19:01, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 6) Oppose with utmost respect to Geni, I think that what Geni plans to do will break the unwatched pages function, and is really generally unnecessary. &mdash; Ilyan  e  p  (Talk)  03:24, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 7) Oppose. I also feel the same way as most everyone above who opposed.  I'd like to see a community discussion first.  It is possible that an alternate, perhaps better idea could be thought of.  If there is a general consensus supporting this idea, then I would be all for having Geni (and maybe a few other admins) do a trial run to be reviewed in a month or two.  I personally think the idea is a very creative and good one, but it was just sprung on me a little too quickly.  --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 06:29, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 8) Oppose, one admin account is enough per person. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Neutral Comments
 * 1) Sure, but if the only issue is to undo vandalism, you don't really need rollbacking for that. You can use godmode lite, and if it's a bot script anyway you can code something creative without requiring the button.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  00:41, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not planning to use a bot script. I don't know if godmode light works with the classic skin and in any case it has known issues. I will need admin powers to get at the list of unwatched pages. It is far quicker to transfer articles to the sock's watchlist if it has admin powers.Geni 01:26, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Neutral. Seems like a reasonable request but I think it's too big a change in policy to debate in an RFA. --kingboyk 23:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * stragely there is no policy change whatsoever. There is no rule agaisnt an admin haveing more than one admin account.Geni 03:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Neutral. Not really a support or oppose issue; there should be a discussion elsewhere about whether this is a road we want to go down first, and an RFA is not the best test bed for this to be evaluated.     P r o t o    ||    t y p e    13:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Edit summary usage: 0% for major edits and 0% for minor edits. Based on the last 1 major and 1 minor edits outside the Wikipedia, User, Image, and all Talk namespaces. Mathbot 21:45, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * See Genisock2's edit count and contribution tree with Interiot's tool.


 * I'm leaning towards support, but want to suggest that perhaps there should be some discussion about setting this precedent. Jkelly 21:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I too am leaning toward support, but have a question on the talk page. Chick Bowen 22:11, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1492 is the feature request for multiple watchlists (submitted by me, in fact). Note that no-one's actually coded this yet. I've linked this discussion there. Anyone who thinks this RFA is a bad idea and can code, please do so, it would be most welcomed! - David Gerard 00:17, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Please also note I'm trying to think of a clean way of implementing this, interface-wise. Any ideas would be welcome. Rob Church (talk) 02:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:
 * 1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.
 * A. Reverting vandalism and warning.Genisock2 21:35, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
 * A.


 * 3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
 * A. Well Geni has but his socks have a flawless record of avoiding conflict.Genisock2 21:35, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * ''The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.