Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Global groups

Two polls are currently open on the Meta-Wiki, involving the addition of global groups. The first is a poll, almost certain to fail, that would add a position of "global sysop" for vandalism-fighting across multiple wikis, particularly small wikis. The second, which is more likely to pass, would allow administrators on the Wikimedia Commons to view deleted Image and Image talk pages on all projects.

Global sysops
The first poll started was a poll to add Global sysops, or administrators with some administrative rights, in order to fight vandalism, particularly on smaller wikis. Among other rights, global sysops would be able to edit MediaWiki messages (like the spam blacklist), use rollback, delete and mass-delete pages, protect and unprotect pages, block other users from editing and sending e-mail, block IP addresses globally, and administrate SUL.

The poll is scheduled to end on Monday, June 30. As of press time, with 80% support required to enact the proposal, it's supported by just 40.4% of those voting. One common concern with the proposal is the lack of a mechanism for individual wikis to opt-out of that group; while some users withdrew their opposition after learning that such a mechanism is likely to be added by developers, many are still concerned that such a mechanism has not yet been created or promised. Other users argued that the position could be abused, or generally, that users should not have sysop status on a wiki without being a member of that community.

Voting has been somewhat controversial because of a belief that the vote had been affected by uneven turnout, particularly from the English and Dutch Wikipedias. The proposal in its current form is almost certain to fail, although it may be edited and proposed again in order to garner enough support for it to pass.

Deleted image review
Meanwhile, a second poll was also started, this one specifically to allow administrators at the Wikimedia Commons to view deleted pages in the "Image:" and "Image talk:" namespaces. The rights would be limited to only viewing deleted pages, and only within those namespaces. It was proposed so that commons administrators would be able to view image descriptions from images moved from individual projects to the Commons, in order to confirm specific details about the images and their licensing.

The proposal has been received much more positively, possibly due to its limited nature. The poll, which is scheduled to end on Sunday, July 6, had received 82.4% support. Those supporting called the proposal "reasonable", "[not] controversial" and "useful"; some of those opposing indicated that they didn't trust some of the Commons administrators, that since oversighting images is not possible, and that some pages could contain privacy-sensitive information.