Project:Requests for permissions/RfC/Receiving sysop powers tension

Clarification

The seems to be some tension in this process right now, and I think at least some of it must come from the inconsistency between what's on the administrators page (which I could paraphrase as "ask and ye shall receive") and the criteria that Simetrical laid down and that have become the guidelines here. Looking at the logs, it seems like in the last few months the attitude on promotions has shifted from "if you seem trustworthy and know about MediaWiki, it's no problem" to "explain exactly why you need these powers."

I'm not trying to complain or point fingers: I'm just concerned that the de facto policy might be shifting towards one that's less open and trusting. (And I know this goes to the heart of debates over what adminship really means, but so be it.) —Emufarmers^(T|C) 01:28, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

My involvement here was suggesting that I could help with SUL-related renames (of which we've had one, now), and failing to coherently explain that unless requested by either "real" bureaucrats or developers, I have no intention of promoting anyone. I mentioned the situation to a couple users with commit access and a shell user, and was told that in the absence of a backlog on request, there's no reason to promote anyone. I hadn't had any previous interaction with AnonDiss before this, though I'm a bit dismayed with both his and Majorly's reactions to the decision. I'm firmly abstaining from promotion-related discussion here for some time, I think. Kylu 02:17, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, partly this is a rift between sysop (somewhat stingy) and bureaucrat (extremely stingy). Let me clarify things a bit. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:25, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've clarified what I think at the top of this page. If any other bureaucrat disagrees, feel free to mess around with it. I think it's useful to point out that this place is not community-run, but developer-run. (Whether this is how it's supposed to be or not I have no idea, you'd have to ask Brion or the Board or something. But it's how it is right now.) Developers absolutely do receive special treatment here and this is important to note.
Non-developers have always had to give some reason for promotion, at least when they've asked me. For instance, I promoted IAlex before he was a dev, because he a) was a sysop on frwiki and b) wanted to localize the French system messages. If one of those two had been missing, I never would have promoted him. (Unless, admittedly, I knew him personally and trusted him, which is inevitably a way to get recognized in small communities like this.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

At the risk of putting you on the spot, what about Skizzerz? (I have no intention of interrogating you about every promotion you've made, nor do I think you would put up with it; that's just the one I was thinking of in my first comment.)

I understand your comment about the site being developer-run, but it still troubles me a little; I always understood that the implicit setup was that the developers were in charge, but would delegate most things to whoever stepped up from the community (since developers, to generalize a bit, tend to be more interested in developing than in community-building). Even though this wiki is much more tightly focused than Wikipedia, I still think community involvement can help bring out participation. Obviously, though, that's not a matter for discussion here.

Anyway, I'm glad that you expanded the introduction to more clearly indicate how/why things work. If people are going to be disappointed, it's better that it happen before they put forward a request and make an emotional commitment. —Emufarmers^(T|C) 03:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• Archived, looks like the sought answer was found. Kylu 01:26, 7 April 2008 (UTC)