Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat

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WM:RFH
Meta-Wiki has a small active community. When a normal user requires the assistance of an administrator or bureaucrat for some particular task, it is not always easy to find one. This page helps users find one when they need one; asking specific admins directly via their talk pages is one way to elicit a fast response. It is only for assistance required at Meta-wiki, help for other wikis needs to be requested at those wikis. See also: Stewards' noticeboard, Access to nonpublic personal data policy noticeboard, Category:Meta-Wiki policies, Category:Global policies

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What's going on here?[edit]

This is not a complaint against anyone in particular, but a comment to express my disappointment in Meta's RFA process. Whether something useful comes out of this, is up to those commenting.

  • As a non-paid longtime volunteer, I've decided to request for sysop rights so that I could expand my area of voluntary work.
  • My background: Active since 2008, commons sysop since 2011, enwiki sysop since 2016, RL-identified by WMF, and known by a number of you in RL for offline Wikimedia work.
  • At the time the RFA was supposed to be closed (on 15 March 2020 14:42 (UTC)), there was 6s and 2o. The oppose reasons squarely being on the edit count alone (~750).
  • Due to lack of active crats, the RFA was left open for a whole extra day. During which three more oppose votes were added for the same reason - edit count.
  • Per my note on the closing crat's talkpage, I disagreed with their reasons. See here for the brief conversation. Why I disagreed:
    1. The RFA was not left open intentionally (which is done on rare cases when unknown issues surfaces), but due to lack of volunteering crats.
    2. Edit count on Meta is irrelevant. This is not an encyclopedia or parallel project like Wikidata/Commons. How does someone legitimately raise the edit count here? And should they?
    3. Thus, it is the crat's responsibility to decide on the validity of the vote, rather than basing purely on numbers.
  • For the sake of argument, on the other hand, I have over 40,000 global non-deleted edits. Although again, I don't think edit count reflects the quality nor quantity of work done.

From my observation, I feel that the process here has evolved in such a way that legitimate non-paid volunteers (most of whom have full time jobs and families) cannot volunteer freely because of the strange criteria that has been automatically adopted. I may not be able to revolutionise Meta in my volunteering time, but the fact clearly remains that a legitimate volunteer was blocked from helping in whichever way they can, due to a silly criteria that really has no relevance to Meta.

I've posted this here on this page, not because I needed some help, but with the hopes that the community would be willing to discuss and hopefully change the process and understanding/purpose of RFA's on Meta. Anyone is free to move this to any other venue they deem appropriate.

As a courtesy, I am pinging our 3 crats User:MF-Warburg, User:MarcoAurelio, User:Matiia, and those that opposed on the RFA User:Steinsplitter, User:BRPever, User:1997kB, User:Hasley, User:Herbythyme, to share their views. Again, this is to strike a productive conversation, and not meant to be anything else. No one is forced to participate. Regards, Rehman 07:41, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

  • Comment Comment Meta's "processes" have always been rather loose compared with Wikipedia projects. The active community is massively smaller than en wp for example. I for one prefer it like that. --Herby talk thyme 08:20, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment Comment I supported the RFA, but this post-closure asking crats to reconsider seems not too appropriate. The RFA closed at 6/2/1 (75%) support, but the oppose get built up and there is a declining curve (i.e. support ration declining), with my support turning into a weak support. However, that doesn't matter much as meta we tend to go without discounting any votes. I am very glad you are willing to help, but this seems not the general consensus. I think the main issues are activity, while it isn't a big deal IMHO as we have the inactivity removals, we clearly do not want to go back to 2004 where any sysop on WMF are entitled to sysopship here and then we have all the reconfirmations. We expect sysops to have some form of activity here, for example, there are ample vandals to revert, bad pages to be speedied. I will recommend you to take part of some of these and come back a little while, say 6 months later and I think the community will be happy to accept. In order to do some of this work more effectively, you can apply for patroller, which I am happy to grant, just leave a note below this. Well wishes.Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 08:39, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment Comment Policy for requesting adminship: "[...] with at least one week allocated for the community to express opinions [...]". As far i can see MW-W followed standard practice when closing the RFA. Needless to say that this is also standard practice on other wikis such as Commons. The complain is unfounded. --Steinsplitter (talk) 09:45, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
  • We grant permissions based on experience, trust, responsibility, and a number of other factors, not willingness to help. For example, were I to request adminship on Wikidata, I would surely not pass for I do not have a track record of experience editing/collaborating on Wikidata. If I had seen your RfA, I probably would have opposed on the basis that there is no observable need for the right and inactivity on this project. As you do not have a track record of collaborating on Meta-Wiki, I'd have no way to ensure that you know what is involved in being an administrator on Meta-Wiki. Though Meta is not a community-based project, there are Meta-specific rules, policies, and practices that govern how this project is run, and that knowledge is necessary to act in an administrative capacity. Best regards, Vermont (talk) 15:47, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
  • @MF-W: Would it be possible to re-open the RfA and give it another week. If there are concerns that there was a sudden burst of votes at the end, how about we just let it run, and see how it goes. I don't feel comfortable with any of this commentary being here, and in this manner.  — billinghurst sDrewth 02:48, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
    I would also be happy to see this. I think when an RfA (like this one) receives far less participation than the average Meta request, it is worth extending the time for a while to allow users more time to comment. – Ajraddatz (talk) 03:21, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
    Of course we can do so. It would however seem to me to go against Rehman's wishes, who called for a timely end of his request? User:Rehman, what do you think? Or maybe an entirely new request? I am open to both options. --MF-W 18:18, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
    Good call to ask him. I also fear that the outcome will not change; I am not particularly inclined to support the request, and would like to see more active participation in Meta discussions and activity on Meta requiring sysop access before supporting. My comment was meant to be more general for these type of circumstances. – Ajraddatz (talk) 18:24, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
    @Ajraddatz: As Comment Comment each RfA takes place on a different subpage, so if you don't notice an addition on a page, then you often don't know that it is occurring. Personally, I would only notice through my watchlist, as it is rare for me to visit the page and read it; as I am less into the wikipolitics these days and rarely vote anywhere.  — billinghurst sDrewth 20:52, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
    Thank you all for opening up the options. Per the initial response on the closing crat's talkpage, reopening was declined. Hence for the sake of process integrity, I don't want this discussion to overturn that on the basis that the crat's call should always be final. Of course, if other crats voice out, that's a different story. Per the OP, the main reason I started this thread was only to voice out that the outcome should have been different. And comments like this should ideally not be entertained. This is not a private wiki, and having an existing bunch of people who seems to be able to handle things, does not and should never mean new volunteers shouldn't be onboarded, regardless of the project's size.
    The fact that the conversation ended up with more options, suggests to me that the message is (hopefully) conveyed. And I'm happy with that. Any next action, be it closing the case entirely, tweaking Meta's RFA criteria, changing the outcome of the closed RFA, or reopening another RFA; I will leave it with the existing Meta community. Thanks for listening, Rehman 06:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
    I think the existing RfA criteria are quite vague at the moment, like on most projects. It's an issue of whether people support granting the userright, not meeting a set of written criteria. Vermont (talk) 15:25, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't see any out of process actions here and fail to understand why it would need to be reopened. Nihlus 14:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Well, I wouldn't have any issue re-opening it for a few days, if that's what the users want. That said, it seems it's unlikely the outcome will change. Matiia (talk) 23:52, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
  • @Rehman: Now a crat above is willing to reopen the RFA, so the ball is in your court, do you want it to be re-opened or else I think this thread can be resolved. Thanks.Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 10:47, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, Camouflaged Mirage. Per my note above, I don't wish to instruct on, or be directly involved of, what happens next. The purpose of this thread was to convey the message that this should not have happened - and I feel that that message is conveyed. And per that same note, I will leave it to you, the other crats and admins, to decide on what needs to be done next (i.e. the last sentence of my last post). Cheers, Rehman 12:45, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
welcomed. I think this thread had served it's purpose and since the OP is fine with not re-opening as indicated to leave to the community, I don't see what else can be obtained via this thread. In addition, there seems no consensus that a re-opening will change anything. If Rehman wants to run for a next RFA, he can proceeds anytime. Further discussions on the rules of RFA, validity of vote couting, criterias shouldn't be on RFH but rather Meta:Babel. Closing as no further bureaucrat / admin action needed. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:00, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:00, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

user:InteGraalityBot[edit]

Question: is InteGraalityBot approved? I'm seeing its edits unpatrolled in recent changes, and cannot find a discussion about it. If it is approved, I request that it be granted autopatrol. If not, it should be stopped and discussed. @Jean-Frédéric: --DannyS712 (talk) 01:39, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

4 edits a day to a single page, what is the problem? Why would we need to go through an approval process or autopatrolled for that?  — billinghurst sDrewth 05:05, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
Its 4 pages, and there isn't a problem, I just didn't know if the edits should be patrolled or not, and suggested that the bot be autopatrolled if it is running properly --DannyS712 (talk) 05:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
I don't think that we want to set it to autopatrol. If you wish to patrol them then go for it, otherwise I think leave it as it is.  — billinghurst sDrewth 10:48, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
I patrolled the rest of the unpatrolled edits.Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 10:53, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Comment Comment if we have issues with (low) volume repetitive editing needing patrolling on a page, or a small page series, then we can look to implement the pywikibot patrol.py. We use(d) it at English Wikisource. I can get wikisourcebot doing it here if needed, or we can start up a local bot with shared users to have it running.  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think even a bot is needed, as it's just 4 edits / day at the most. I had once again patrolled all. Closing as clearly nothing else need to do, at such a low rate of edit, no autopatrol is needed. The edits aren't problematic. Closing. Re-report if the bot is behaving in an undesirable way and we will look into it then.Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:02, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:02, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

[edit]

I have received mail from Hjfocs, which asks to vote for his project. I don't know which rules are active here, at meta, but this mail looks like like a spam for me. If it is ok, then just close this request. — Vort (talk) 04:58, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

It isn't a metawiki specific issue. I too received an email and left a note on their enWP user talk page, and I would suggest that you provide your feedback directly.  — billinghurst sDrewth 05:00, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
No, you are wrong. It is specific, because advertised project is located here, at meta + wikimail has arrived with "Meta" <wiki@wikimedia.org> source address. — Vort (talk) 08:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
This feedback is not about advertised project, it is about mass messages (which is prohibited in many Wikimedia projects), that is why I discuss it here. — Vort (talk) 08:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
@Vort: Courtesy would be for you to address your concerns with the user initially. If you don't get an acceptable response, then maybe we can put it to the community.  — billinghurst sDrewth 10:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
So no one want to help me understand if such messages are fine. Ok. Will ask it in different place. — Vort (talk) 11:02, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
Comment Comment.Grants_talk:Project#Projects_advertisement. They went to this page for the same issue. --Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 11:12, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
If a person has an issue/problem with another user's behaviour it actually is a problematic situation, and rightfully they should address it to the person in a polite and respectful manner. The recipient should be open to positive feedback/criticism and considerate of others.

In my opinion it does not require the community to intervene unless a behaviour is egregious, continuing or flagrantly in contravention of policy. We are not people's mothers, we will treat you as adults (or trying to be adults) and capable of managing your own affairs.  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Looks like such messages are allowed. It is strange for me, since it is prohibited, for example, at enwiki: en:Wikipedia:Canvassing. But if Meta community thinks that it is normal behaviour, then nothing more is needed to be done here by me. — Vort (talk) 17:52, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Nothing else to do, behaviour isn't egregious, OP given advice on how to proceed. Closing.Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:03, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:03, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Request to block User:Garam and delete his user page[edit]

He claimed I made fun of him at an offline meetup about ten years ago without any evidence, and he constantly requests me to apologize to him for it. He blamed me, "I condemn past/present actions and attitudes user Motoko C. K., who is a director of Wikimedia Korea." on his user page. Please check my usertalk page. --Motoko C. K. (talk) 05:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

"without any evidence"... 10 years ago, there were a lot of people in the conference. But there was no poilcies yet, like Friendly space policies. Then, how could I get some evidences? --Garam talk 05:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
And you were a staff at that time. --Garam talk 05:21, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
"Are you dyslexic?" doesn't sound like a productive discussion. I'm slightly involved in the background discussion (korean wikinews closure) so I would rather avoid handling this, then there is no Korean speaker to handle it. — regards, Revi 06:24, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
However, attacking someone on their user page has been unacceptable, is unacceptable, and will continue to be unacceptable per WM:NOT and Meta:Urbanity, so I am removing it. — regards, Revi 06:29, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
Prior case: Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat/Archives/2018-03#Has my userpage been contrary to META policy? - there were few more cases similar to this but I can only recall this one. — regards, Revi 06:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Since I discuss with him/her, always he/she twist my words, such as Special:diff/19920460. Really I do not know it is on purpose or not. But I feel tired when I discuss with him/her. So, now... I asked to him/her respectfully about his/her ability. Because if he/she have some disabilities, I should write my texts more easily. BUT, really I did not have another meaning, such as discrimination. --Garam talk 07:53, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
    "이건 좀 실례되는 말이긴 하나 원활한 토론을 위해서 여쭙고자 하는데, 혹시 난독증과 같은 읽기 장애가 있으시진 않으신지요." - "I know this might be offending, but for the ease of discussion I ask, do you have a problem disability with reading things, like dyslexia?" I don't think this is 'respectful'. It is plain intimidation/harassment. — regards, Revi 08:23, 23 March 2020 (UTC) (problem modified to disability — regards, Revi 12:53, 23 March 2020 (UTC))
    @Garam: If you said that, then I would agree with revi that it is not how we look to edit at this wiki. I would suggest that you remove the text and apologise to Motoko. @Motoko C. K.: Garam is aggrieved with a 10 year old conversation which you do not recall, and I would think that looking to settle a dispute after this time would make you both better people, whether there was intent or no intent. That it has escalated to here and that two grown ups are unable to settle it is quite disappointing and one could say does not reflect well on either of you. Reach deep!  — billinghurst sDrewth 10:55, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19 banner[edit]

Even though three translations of the banner have been published, the banner doesn't seem to show up on those wikis. I can only get it to show up if I use ?force=1 ( https://bs.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA?banner=programmatic_mlWW_rsp_covid19&force=1 or https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA?banner=programmatic_mlWW_rsp_covid19&force=1 for example). What gives? Is the banner set to only show up on en.wiki? – Srdjan m (talk) 09:48, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

So far, yes. I assume Seddon (WMF) and SPatton (WMF) plan to enable the banner on non-English projects soon. You can always check the status of any campaign at Special:CentralNotice. --Martin Urbanec (talk) 11:25, 23 March 2020 (UTC)


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