Talk:Stewards policy

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

[edit] Rules proposed during the voting stage

Anthere gave the following very reasonable suggestions in [1]:

I would like to suggest that at least two rules are necessary
rule 1 : no decision alone : depending on the urgency, Jimbo decision, arbitration committee decision, full vote (like for sysoping someone), poll (like urgent desysoping)
I think this rule is very important. No decision taken by an honorary developper alone
rule 2 : report mandatory. Depending on the action taken, on the mailing list, on the wikipedia sysop vote page, on the poll page
Breaking of any of these two rules (without a damn good reason) means suspension of "honorary developer" position.
No power should be entirely in a couple of people hands without rules. And the more power, the more the rules need to be enforced.
Last : when there are questions about the actions of an "honorary developer", the one questioning should be granted free speech and public place to talk.


[edit] What a steward can do

User:Tim Starling thinks that stewards should be able to configure the entire power structure of a wiki, on an individual basis.

—Eloquence thinks that stewards should essentially be bureaucrats with global access, that regular bureaucrats should get the additional ability of desysopping, and that the fundamental power structure should be the same for each wiki. See [2] for a detailed explanation.


[edit] Use bureaucrat abilities on your own wiki

I think people who are both bureaucrats and stewards should keep these two responsibilities separate. For example, if Anthere was a bureaucrat on fr:, she should make sysops on fr: using fr:special:makesysop, not test:special:makesysop. This has the advantage of logging the sysopping on fr:, where people will see it, rather than hidden away on test. Angela 22:28, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That sounds like something I would agree with. Also, I would not want other stewards to do this on fr: either. We should try to let local sysops and bureaucrats handle things as much as possible. For Stewards remain then:
  • Actions that Bureaucrats cannot do
  • Actions on Wikipedias without Bureaucrats
  • Actions on Wikipedias where the Bureaucrats are inactive
  • Rare cases where a Bureaucrat refuses to follow up the will of a great majority of his/her Wikipedia
  • Cases like large-scale vandalism repair, where speed is more important than transparency and due process
For the record, I myself am bureaucrat on nl: and fy: and non-bureaucrat sysop on en:. Formally I also am sysop on meta: and a few smaller Wikipedias, but those are historical artifacts (meta because of the early attempt to have system-wide bureaucrats, the smaller wikis because of the March 10 spambot attack. - Andre Engels 10:09, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

I made a few changes to this page, adding "/she" to a place where the word "he" referred to "steward" (there are also female stewards). Under Stewards policy#Checks, I changed Special:Listusers to Special:Listusers/sysop, which is a new page listing the sysops only. This change made the sentence "Stewards will mostly be dealing with the small Wikipedias, so this will not take long to check." unnecessary, so I removed it. The last change was changing "test" to "meta". That seems to have been an error, or is "test" an early name of Meta?

Anyways, I'm not sure if writing this is even needed (not sure of the policies about that here), I just felt it was better to be sure. Jon Harald Søby (talk, contrib) 18:32, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the update. Test is not an earlier name of meta. Steward interface was initially only on test. It was moved to meta, as test log was frequently cleared and for transparency reasons. Anthere

Ah, then I see. =) Jon Harald Søby (talk, contrib) 09:49, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Assigning rights to yourself

Please see Talk:Stewards#Assigning rights to yourself

[edit] Abuse of steward-rights

i propose to add the following to the steward policies:
Any abuse, or even the threatening of abuse, of the steward-rights, may lead to an immediate removal of these.
oscar

I think that's pretty obvious and doesn't need to be stated; the same could be said for any special access. —{admin} Pathoschild 06:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Je pense qu'il faut aussi définir la notion d'abus et ne pas la confondre avec une erreur d'appréciation.--Bertrand GRONDIN – Talk 11:34, 26 December 2006 (UTC) Bertrand Grondin said: "I think that the notion of abuse needs to be defined, not to be confused with an appreciation error." Yann 12:00, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Something that could go a long way in increasing transparency of Steward actions would be the inclusion of a "Reason" field in the Steward Makesysop tool. That would provide an explanation as to why a Steward adjusted their own account's rights on any project, or someone else's, and help people understand better what it is that the Steward might have been doing. Redux 12:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I have no objections in principle. Adding a "Reason" summary field is a great idea. --Dbl2010 06:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, this seems to be a good idea. --.anaconda 01:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
This would seem to suffice as the entirety of the steward policy. The rest of the material should be sent to some sort of how-to page, with a list of steward duties and suggestions on how to perform them properly. — Dan | talk 06:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Overhaul

I've sandboxed an overhauled version of the steward policies (diff). Aside from various grammatical and spelling changes, I've updated all sections to reflect current usage; most notably, I moved the focus away from the English Wikipedia and adminship, since there are now many other projects and user rights. I split suggestions and guidelines into their own section, to distinguish them from policy; for example, a discussion from 2004 about new users (which I summarized) and an explanation of how requests are made are moved out of the section which includes rules about transparency and the use of steward tools on a home project. I generalized phrases that were too specific, such as "[local] bureaucrat is responsible for creating new sysops" to "local bureaucrats are responsible for promoting users" (bureaucrats can also grant bureaucrat and bot status, not just administrator).

There were many other minor changes, but I think I summarised all the important changes above. You can see for yourself by looking at the differential link. What do you think? Is there anything else you think should be changed or corrected? —{admin} Pathoschild 09:17, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Hi, I find this proposal quite good. Yann 12:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I second that. BTW, what is "your own project"? For example, though I'm mostly active on ru:, where I'm a sysop, I also have over 2K edits on en:. So, can I desysop someone on en:? MaxSem 17:10, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
    Perhaps "a project you edit" would be better? —{admin} Pathoschild 00:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    I believe we could stick with the expresion "home wiki/project", and if necessary, work on a more precise definition for it. As I understand it, a "home project" is where a user edits substantialy. Some users could be considered to have more than one "home project", some will have just one. And noticing that having an edit count that isn't negligible on a project is not necessarily sufficient to make that project a "home project". Redux 03:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    Or "a project in which you judge yourself to have some vested interest". Still, this has always struck me as irrelevant; the decision to desysop a user will always be the user's own or that of a person or body representative of that community (e.g. an arbitration committee, Jimbo, etc.), and not a steward's. As long as stewards are executing and not deciding, they should be able to do so on their own wiki(s). — Dan | talk 06:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    Not sure I agree with that... there is merit in avoiding the conflict of interest, or even the appearance of same, so I support "do not do things where you might give such appearance" as a guideline. I do however think that most of this boils down to "be reasonable", though... ++Lar: t/c 01:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
    Also, I don't think we need to "work on a more precise definition" for much of anything. This is a simple position, unburdened by rules and controversy; let it remain so. One likes to believe that the election process yields truly trustworthy users, and if in fact it does, we can assume that these users' judgement is sound, even when not guided by pedantically precise regulations. — Dan | talk 06:29, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Looks good. --Dbl2010 05:59, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Looks great, Pathsochild! Thunderhead 06:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Implemented. I've merged in the new sections about elections and loss of steward access in a new 'Processes' header. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Steward tools on home wikis

When there is some vandalism in es: that includes personal information, as there is no oversighters there and such requests aren't usually being made public, people would drop me a note. So am I not allowed to use commons sense and kill the revision after checking it even though hiding revisions specifically allows that case for oversight? I think RDsmith put it well, stewards are supposed to be trustworthy, sound and responsible users. I understand the appearance of conflict of interest for deadminning somebody or granting checkuser, and thus it's best not to act locally in such cases. But how about more janitorial stuff? drini ☎ 17:33, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

This seems eminently reasonable to me. While I am a strong supporter of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety, janitorial tasks like this don't seem an issue. ++Lar: t/c 16:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changing rights in own wiki?

There is a paragraph like this:

Stewards should not change rights on their own project with their steward tools, unless the subject requested it themselves. It is better to leave such cases to neutral stewards. This also applies to members of local arbitration committees.

How to define "own project"? I find this hard to define. Because I may register myself in all the wikis, but only active in a few of them, while only creating my own userpage in the others. What does it mean by "the subject requested it themselves"? Is it requesting to the particular steward? --Edmund the King of the Woods! 23:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Your "own project" is defined as your home wiki, the project that you most actively edit on, it is self-defined by the steward. "the subject requested it themselves" means that you should only change a user's rights if that user has requested the change themselves (like a desysop request). (If the request pertains to your home wiki.) The reasoning behind this is so that the decision is left to more neutral stewards. Cbrown1023 talk 00:16, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I've attempted to clarify this slightly and have reworded the section to reflect the fact that there may be more that one project where using steward rights might not be appropriate. Stewards are of course good standing members of the community who are trusted to use their own judgement to determine which projects exactly they feel this applies to. Adambro 00:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

But what if in my home wiki, when there was an election that have decided to grant someone a certain status, or someone have to be desysopped or whatever, may I perform the action and give the link to the relevant page? --King Edmund of the Woods 10:31, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

No, you shouldn't. A non-involved steward ought to do that, though you can help by translating the details for them. Angela 10:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

What if there is a private info need to be deleted by an oversight, and there is no oversight, may I turn myself into an oversight and perform? --King Edmund of the Woods 11:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

No, you should typically never use steward access on a home wiki. You might make an exception for self-requested removal of access, but even that might be better left to other stewards. —{admin} Pathoschild 18:26:24, 02 December 2007 (UTC)
Indeed - for the sake of the neutrality that Stewards need for their role to be fulfilled successfully, one really should not grant themselevs access at all on home wiki. May I ask this though - if one were to run an RFA on a wiki, and clearly passed (like, say, 100% support at end of 7 days): could one grant oneself adminship? --Anonymous DissidentTalk 18:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Obviously, doing the above would be done at the risk of seeming self-indulgent ;) --Anonymous DissidentTalk 18:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
No, a Steward should never, ever grant themselves adminship after an RfA. --82.31.11.207 19:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
But granting checkuser or oversight access to oneself when there are no local checkusers and oversighters seems reasonable, since the steward would understand the language and the context of the needed actions. --filip ⁂ 22:18, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

can stewards grant themselves status like adminship anywhere? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.138.2.136 (talk • contribs) 22:12, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

The software gives them the power to do so, so they "can". However, policy is clear that there are certain wikis where a given steward should not... whatever wikis are their home wikis, plus whatever wikis have local processes for determining adminship, plus whatever wikis where even the appearance a conflict of interest might arise by doing so. Stewards can and do give themselves adminship on wikis all the time, but in the vast majority of cases it is for wikis where there are no local admins at all, or no active ones, and there is a clear and present pressing need, and as soon as that need is satisfied they turn their access off again. There are a lot of stewards, (although more are needed, why we're having an election now) so there should always be a steward that can act without conflict of interest on any given wiki. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 04:47, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
As a Wikimedia Commons bureaucrat and a new steward, I may have the need to review the edit history of images transwikied from other Wiki sites. Sometimes the original image edit history has been deleted, but the Commons images have not fully credited the original sources or uploaders. Is it permitted for a Commons admin who is also a steward to grant himself or herself local temporary adminship to review the deleted original image edit history and then strip his or her local temporary adminship once finishing the review? For example:
I see a Commons image without fully crediting the original source or uploader. It is claimed to be copied from French Wikipedia where I am not an admin while I can speak French only in the basic level. I try to find it on French Wikipedia, but the original edit history has been deleted. If I cannot even grant myself temporary adminship for the sole purpose to review the deleted original image edit history on French Wikpedia for a few minutes, it can impede Commons administration as I think. This is why I have a question about the permissibility of temporary self-promotion to facilitate cross-Wiki administration. For my question, I would like to define being temporary as very few minutes.--Jusjih 02:29, 23 December 2007 (UTC) (Wikimedia Commons bureaucrat and a new steward)
Temporarily granting yourself adminship is, in my experience, generally okay. On an active wiki, you should probably only do it if you do not intend to perform any actions on that wiki (so in your example, I think it would be fine) -- except in emergencies, deletions and blockings and whatnot should be left to the local administrators, and you risk irritating them or "stepping on toes" by doing their work yourself. On a wiki without a substantial community, granting yourself temporary adminship is almost always okay. Also, if you forget to remove your adminship after you have finished your tasks, it is almost guaranteed that someone will become upset about it sooner or later. — Dan | talk 02:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment. Leaving no trace of privileged actions to local Wikis when temporarily promoting and then demoting oneself will be the best. Recently when I had my good reasons to temporarily promote and then demote myself, I explained them in the user rights. However, I have seen many stewards not leaving any words of reasons for temporary self-promotions. In case of lost Internet connection this can cause similar problems as you have said about forgetting to demote oneself. Someone, especially if unfamiliar with Meta, from that Wiki may then complain why any users became promoted there without local approval. Your scenario of "stepping on toes" include an argument at Talk:Stewards#Assigning_rights_to_yourself involving Angela and Daniel Mayer.--Jusjih 23:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I can see why a steward might need to temporarily sysop themselves to check image licensing on a project without many local admins, but in other cases a local request will suffice. I agree with Majorly [3] and Angela [4] that Stewards should not need to sysop themselves on large projects like de.wiki or fr.wiki (or en.wiki for that matter). Not only are there plenty of admins to handle vandalism or, in this case, respond to queries about deleted images, there are a good number of users from that project that serve as Commons admins in any event. Much as I think Jusjih does great work on Commons and I can see how he could use steward tools to benefit this, I don't think present steward policy can justify so liberal an approach to stewards assigning themselves admin rights on large projects. WjBscribe 03:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Please come to Requesting help from local Wiki sysops or bureaucrats with language barriers to discuss how to improve communication. Otherwise, language barriers are very frustrating.--Jusjih 02:02, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Commons-l recently received a thought that Commons admins should be able to view deleted images Wikimedia wide. Supporting the great idea, I consider that a very limited privilege should be granted to Commons admins so they may view deleted images Wikimedia wide, without the privilege to undelete them without local adminship. This will not "step on the toes" of local admins, as viewing deleted images Wikimedia wide without undeleting will not leave local trace. No matter how active a local Wiki is, having to ask local admins to reply is unnecessary bureaucracy and delay, especially if language barriers are involved. After all, I am talking about efficiency without "stepping on the toes" of local admins, so please consider it carefully.--Jusjih 01:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stewards transferring admin access between 2 accounts

I want to clarify the approach that stewards should take where someone asks for their current admin rights on a project to be transfered to another account which they also control on the wiki in question. At the moment it seems that such requests are treated as uncontroversial and performed once it is confirmed the user making the request controls both accounts. It seems to me that the relevant part of the steward policy is:

Local bureaucrats are responsible for granting sysop, bureaucrat, and bot rights. Stewards should only grant these rights on a project if there is no active bureaucrat available on that project, or if the situation requires immediate action.

Where someone wishes their admin access transfered to a second account which they control, I think it should be correct practice to have a steward remove the access and to ask a local bureaucrat to give it to the other account. Although this may seem a little bureaucratic, this is not a situation that "requires immediate action" and there may be local considerations that could make the rights transfer controversial. For example the second account may have been undisclosed and have failed an RfA, or the community concerned may wish to require various conditions to ensure transparency for the rights transfer. It also ensures the maximum amount of information is available in the local logs. Thoughts? WjBscribe 01:42, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a steward but I like this idea. John Reaves (talk) 03:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
It seems to me bureaucratic for a reason. It is imho a local community issue whether it is ok to transfer your "rights" to another account. It leaves of course major mazes for fraude etc, so I personally am very much against this practice, and would not consider transferring "rights". A user can make two seperate requests: removal of "rights" on RfP, and the setting of admin status with a local sysop, who is better able to judge whether it is allowed locally, and whether it is really the same person. Effeietsanders 11:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
(belated) tack on a "or if the local project has policies allowing for stewards to perform such transfers already" perhaps. Kylu 00:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rewording

The sentence that currently reads

However, since stewardship is typically a position likely to get into trouble and since the steward group can easily control itself, the confirmation itself will be done by other stewards.

really ought to be reworded

However, since stewardship is typically a position likely perform controversial actions, and thus be viewed unfavorably by the subjects of those actions, and since the steward group can easily control itself, the confirmation itself will be done by other stewards.

Stewards don't cause trouble, they implement decisions that are controversial because of rights removal generally, so the people they de-userright are of course mad at them, this makes it a bit clearer. MBisanz talk 23:02, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't say they cause trouble or take controversial actions. (Don't they act based on consensus? I heard somewhere they're not even allowed to make decisions.) You would be more correct to say they may take unpopular actions.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:40, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps emphasize the ... robotic ... nature of stewardship: While the actions themselves may well be unpopular, the stewards hold the position and perform these actions on the behalf of others. (I liken the idea to that of IP-Relay... an IP-Relay operator is required to merely translate text to speech, and are prohibited from exercising any decision-making at all during the call.) Kylu 02:27, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clarifying what is or isn't a Conflict of Interest

I try to use common sense about COIs but recently a situation arose where perhaps not everyone would have come to the same conclusion... so perhaps some clarification is in order. The scenario was that a duly constituted representative of en:wp ArbCom turned up on the Requests page asking that certain new arbitrators (already identified to the foundation and correctly listed on the Identification Noticeboard) be made CUs and/or Oversighters on en:wp (some were CUs already). A bit later I saw these, and since no other steward had yet acted, and since "common sense" told me that this was entirely noncontroversial, I went ahead and turned on the bits. A longtime and well respected contributor here suggested that perhaps I had a COI and should not have done it, since en:wp is a home wiki and since I voted in the elections. So I let the next one (which appeared a bit later) slide, but it was a good 16-18 hours before they got their bits turned on. An en:w pArbCom clerk later commented that they saw no issue with my doing the permissions changes, and that doing them right away was of such benefit that it outweighed any apparent COI issues. Comments? (I'm not trying to reopen any underlying controversy among the parties, which has been settled entirely amicably... just looking for comments on whether there is reason to tweak the wording here...) If we did tweak it, what should it say? ++Lar: t/c 14:24, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

IMHO in this special case as described I personally think it was even better that You did it because the request Steward_requests/Permissions/2008-12#New_ArbCom.40enwiki was so rare with information that I would have had to investigate where the voting was etc. and if the people are rightfully requesting this, but You already knew because You know who is clerk, where the voting was, etc.. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 15:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
I think conflicts are more likely when removing access, not granting it. I believe the rule is there to prevent a steward desysopping someone they're in an argument with, not to prevent all rights changes on your home wike. It's quite common for people to deal with these on their own wiki in non-controversial cases, like this one, and in situations like an admin requesting their own rights be removed. Angela 02:06, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest the policy be modified to state that Foundation-recognized ArbComs requests be considered non-controversial. The most conflict of interest I can see is if the steward refuses to perform the change... in which case it'd be filled by a different steward. Kylu 05:27, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] my question

(In my imagination) If the court of some country issued a warrant for investigation (maybe if mass personal informations such Resident registration numbers were released on wiki), Is steward allowed to perform checkuser or oversight action even in home wiki ignoring steward policy? (cf. in S Korea, when mass personal informations were released, millions of people raised legal suits and the responsible administrators were punished)--Kwj2772 07:23, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

No, public release of private information is a violation of the privacy policy. Court requests for information should go through the Wikimedia Foundation, not individual employees or volunteers. —Pathoschild 02:11:12, 05 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] en-wiki update

En-wiki has updated its global rights policy with regard to when stewards may take local actions at [5], any feedback is welcome at w:WT:GRP. MBisanz talk 01:28, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Kylu 02:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stewards_policy"