Talk:Admin activity review/Archives/2014

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Massive edit to policy needs approval

I reverted some changes which changed the meaning. However, for translators' and translations' sake, I would also like to urge everyone not to make pointless wording changes like changing a headline from "Reason" to "Explanation" or changing "but" to "however" or vice versa in a sentence. Every change causes the Translate extension to make translators recheck everything. --MF-W 17:25, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, MF-W! Sorry for missing these slight changes in meaning, I had better things to do and will probably be a little busier than usual in the near future. Sorry for missing that mistake, TCNSV/Abd, I hope you realize that I did check the changes, just didn't notice any difference in meaning. PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
That is fine, but in my opinion translation is a work in progress that we volunteers should be free to choose to do or not to do, and it's a work I am proud of and enjoy participating in. Perhaps not for translation administrators, but for translators minor wording changes matter to make an approximation as grammatically close to the original as possible as well. The changes are fine; however regarding this edit and the accompanying edit summary stating its intent, I am highly concerned that because of English's possibility for multiple semantic interpretation that that was how I originally took that statement. Other people might take it the same way. This needs to be specified: "it was decided to establish... a maximum inactivity time without community review of two years" can mean either "without community review of two years, a maximum inactivity time" or "a maximum inactivity time of two years, without having had community review." You say that it is the latter, but the fact is that same sentence that is now in the lede can also say the former as well. My proposed alternate wording then would be "A requests for comment from April to June 2013 decided to establish a maximum inactivity time period spanning two years for administrators and other "advanced rights" holders who do not have local community reviews for those rights." One other thing that I have also been greatly confused with as a translator working on this document is the difference between "maximum inactivity" and "minimum activity", and I think that should also be clarified, but I do not know how to do so. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 19:17, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
Re the translation extension, I was careful to select "Do not invalidate existing translations" on all units. PiRSquared17 (talk) 19:21, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks, MF-W, I had similar concerns, i.e, I wondered if improvement in expression, i.e, "more correct" language, was worth the trouble of review or risk of inadvertent change. But a user had gone to considerable trouble, which is why I reverted inviting review instead of just arguing for rejection. --Abd (talk) 20:44, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Then you need to say so, because to anyone and especially to new editors a revert is generally the equivalent of an outright rejection of the changes. Anyway, your work is done, you've raised your objections on the talkpage so unless you're going to provide some useful comments about how best to move the discussion and changes along, or even better change the page yourself, I suggest working in a different area. For future reference, rather than waste some bytes and the time of the person who has to review these talkpage comments, the Thanks feature commonly found in pagehistory next to the undo button is sufficient in displaying gratitude. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 21:08, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
Well, since I keep seeing this pop up, there are the two versions:
Original: "In a requests for comment from April-June 2013 it was decided to establish, for administrators and other advanced right holders, a maximum inactivity time without community review of two years."
Proposed Change: A requests for comment from April to June 2013 decided to establish an inactivity review for removing the rights of administrators and other "advanced rights" holders who have not had local community review for at least two years.
The proposed change actually changes the meaning of that paragraph. The original establishes a maximum inactivity time, absent community review. The changed version doesn't mention time of inactivity, but triggers the inactivity review based on the time since a community review.
The difference shows up in the process. Consider a wiki with no review process. If a user with advanced permission is inactive, defined as zero edits and zero administrative actions, for a two year period, a process is initiated to address the inactivity.
With the proposed change, just from reading the first paragraph, what triggers the steard review process is not inactivity, per se, but lack of community review.
Yes, the language could be improved. It's also not exactly correct. I.e, the "maximum time" will, by the time the process is done, exceed two years. However, bottom line, it's unclear to me that the effort to improve the language is worth it. Stewards will know, from the policy, with the original language, what to do. "Good enough" may be exactly that.
What the policy establishes are trigger conditions, i.e., if there is two years of inactivity, and no community review of the user, at the time of the "annual or semi-annual process", then certain actions will be taken to notify the users in question, the users may be expected to take certain actions, and then stewards will review this and decide whether or not to remove the privileges. As described, the time without activity and without removal could be as great as three years plus about a month, or even longer under some conditions.
The proposed change was less clear than the original. However, the language "maximum inactivity" is indeed potentially confusing. There is no maximum inactivity, there is merely a level of inactivity which triggers steward action at the time stewards run the review. An inactive user is not violating any policy.
But there is no ambiguity in the policy itself, which authorizes a procedure, and the procedure is clear. The ambiguity is only an issue with the explanation. The new proposal is worse. I recommend letting it go. Working on this language here will not improve the projects. --Abd (talk) 02:52, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Well, that's how the proposed change interpreted the current wording's ambiguity. I foresee such conflicts later in the future over steward and community interpretations of the current policy's lede sentence. We should correct it now while we still have the time. I proposed an alternate wording above that would make this distinction clearer and closer to the intent of the original:

"A requests for comment from April to June 2013 decided to establish a maximum inactivity time period spanning two years for administrators and other "advanced rights" holders who do not have local community reviews for those rights."

Again, if you do not find this discussion about tightening the wording of this policy constructive, I suggest you invest your volunteer time on some other area of Meta-Wiki. There is lots to be done, and debating and responding to this discussion as you have done without intent of improving the page is about as constructive as working on the page itself. I'd like you to explain why, when the community is actually reviewing it, as you had so loudly called for before, you now seem to be now declaring it as "not improv[ing] the projects". TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 03:10, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Continual complaint about my involvement isn't improving anything. I have confirmed what MF-W wrote above, I would also like to urge everyone not to make pointless wording changes ... The community is actually reviewing it, as I simply called for, it wasn't "loud." And it does appear that there were problems, as I suspected might be the case. I have, so far, found no actual ambiguity in the policy itself, as to what will be implemented. This is not a general behavioral guideline where clarity of expression is far more important. There is nothing there that could cause a steward to misinterpret it, as far as I've seen, and this policy only affects steward behavior. TCNSV apparently misinterpreted the policy, and, then, good-faith, implemented in his improvements his incorrect interpretation. But his approach was different from that of a steward. A steward would be looking at the process established, and the described process makes it clear what is to happen. It is possible that the notice described could be confusing.
So we can focus on the "notice of maximum inactivity." An exact text should be drafted and approved, to save time and avoid confusion. I created a subpage, placed a link to that subpage in the policy, simplified the language of that section, and then self-reverted to allow review. (Undo [1] to accept the change.) I am creating the subpage as Admin activity review/Notice of inactivity, so that the notice may be drafted immediately as a separate process. There is at least one other change that will be obvious to make if my proposed change is accepted. --Abd (talk) 20:19, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
We already have such texts: Admin_activity_review/2013/Notice_to_communities, Admin_activity_review/2013/Notice_to_inactive_right_holders. --MF-W 22:47, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
I'd not have expected to find the standard notice on the 2013 subpage! In any case, those are fine notices, detailed and accurate explanations, and though there are at least two clear grammatical errors in the user notice, it will still be understood. I have requested speedy deletion for the page I created.[2][3] Thanks. --Abd (talk) 05:03, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
MF-W is right, that other notice page is superfluous since we already have one in place, which coincidentally I have been trying my best to translate, and I recommend speedy deletion for Abd's version. This thread is getting terribly off-topic. @MF-Warburg:, if you could follow this thread, could you please make a response to my concerns above, which are more directly about improving the page? Here it is duplicated for visibility and ease of access:

The changes are fine; however regarding this edit and the accompanying edit summary stating its intent, I am highly concerned that because of English's possibility for multiple semantic interpretation that that was how I originally took that statement. Other people might take it the same way. This needs to be specified: "it was decided to establish... a maximum inactivity time without community review of two years" can mean either "without community review of two years, a maximum inactivity time" or "a maximum inactivity time of two years, without having had community review." You say that it is the latter, but the fact is that same sentence that is now in the lede can also say the former as well. My proposed alternate wording then would be "A requests for comment from April to June 2013 decided to establish a maximum inactivity time period spanning two years for administrators and other "advanced rights" holders who do not have local community reviews for those rights." One other thing that I have also been greatly confused with as a translator working on this document is the difference between "maximum inactivity" and "minimum activity", and I think that should also be clarified, but I do not know how to do so. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 19:17, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 23:19, 26 January 2014 (UTC)