User:NoSeptember/bureaucrat
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<Bureaucrat statistics
[edit] Some comments I have made about bureaucrats in the past
Promoting to bureaucrat should be no big deal
The only issue is being consistent with other bureaucrats on the standards for a consensus for promotion.
Who should be a bureaucrat?
- A person who follows RfA closely, is capable of making good decisions based on the community standard for consensus in RfAs.
- A person with the temperment of a good umpire, accepting that when you do the job well, you will get little notice, when you make a mistake, you will be excoriated. RfAs are emotional for the candidates, their supporters, and their enemies. The bureaucrat has no business doing anything but acting transparently fairly and not taking criticism personally.
- A person willing to do the detailed work involved in making name changes, doing promotions, and maintaining the RfA related pages for historical accuracy.
This comment is somewhat tongue-in-cheek:
I think it is good that the bureaucrats discuss this ahead of time so you have consensus among yourselves (although having a race to see who will close would be fun to watch). Bumping an admin to bcrat seems a much smaller step than promoting a user to admin. All bcrat specific actions are reversable either by other bcrats or stewards (and those stewards are underworked anyway ;-) ). Note that at Spanish wiki, most admins are also bcrats (source), and our bcrat/admin ratio is lower than most wikis. I guess I'm saying it should be no big deal, and 80% seems like enough for consensus to me.
Bureaucrats are functionaries, not another layer of authority
They are trusted, but are really just people who are trusted to do an extra job or two, not as an extra layer of supervision in the organization chart. I regard the Check Users, Arbitrators, and Board Vote functionaries the same way, just with different special jobs to do. I don't remember anyone voting for a bureaucrat to be a supervisor over the community. And being trusted by Jimbo (like Danny with WP:OFFICE) is important, because they need to be unconcerned about being overruled (the short term action to diffuse a situation may not be the same as the long term solution), and admins need to know that Jimbo will back up their decisions.
Bureaucrats as Wheel War functionaries?
The issue of a functionary to handle wheel wars and other time critical issues is a good one. Linking the idea to bureaucrats is not correct IMO. We select crats for their judgement of community consensus. We pick arbitrators for their judgment in making long term rulings about user behavior. The Wheel War functionary should be chosen for their cool head and quick but reasoned judgment under pressure (plus for having the trust of Jimbo, since he will certainly be asked to review every case). While it would be no problem for a bureaucrat to be a Wheel War functionary (just as we currently have a bureaucrat/arbitrator), there is no need for us to assign Wheel War functionary duties to any existing class of functionary. They should be chosen individually for their suitability for this particular job.
Statusitis
There is a potential problem with a few well respected users who seem to want to hold every position of authority or functionality on Wikipedia. These are good people who's intentions are good, but one person can only do so much, and we have a lot of people who are capable of doing their bit for Wikipedia. We do not need put too many functions onto one person. Raul654 is an example. He is very involved in Featured articles and the main page, and has a lot to do associated with ArbCom. As a result his other functionary roles, such as bureaucrat gets less attention. And yet he felt compelled to run for Steward the last time. It does little harm that he is a bureaucrat, but we get more out of those bureaucrats who do not have their fingers in so many pies, just because their attentions are not so divided.
Miscellaneous
You are right that desysoping can only be done by stewards (and developers in a pinch). The other big bcrat job is name changes and they could be reversed by other bcrats.
