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[edit] Requesting a more active bureaucrat role in high profile RFAs

Having discussed a recently withdrawn RFA with several editors on both sides of the fence, there's been one point of agreement: a more proactive bureaucrat involvement in keeping the proceeding orderly would have been better all around. Without pointing any fingers or rehashing the particulars, the community didn't have its best moment there. Something isn't right when a discussion about whether to entrust a dedicated contributor with additional ops ends with the prospect of losing people from the project. For want of a better word, the discussion needed clerking--or at least closer management. Respectfully requesting a closer eye and a swifter response when future discussions begin to go off track. DurovaCharge! 22:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I've taken a fairly strong hand to spats that have risen up around Kurt's opposes, but that was as an admin. It's a little outside the "permissions-based abilities" line drawn around bureaucrat 'powers', and I would rather that the community police itself (otherwise the bureaucrats become too much of an authority group, which in my estimation they shouldn't be).
Still, I'd be fine giving a little nudge here and there when things are getting out of line; a gentle hand at the onset of an "episode" (for lack of a better term) could potentially nip a lot of things in the bud, meaning it wouldn't be quite as draconian as I'm fearing it could be. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Bad cases make bad law. It is not at all unusual for a failed RfA to result in the loss of an editor, so in that respect the recent high-profile RfA was no different from many others. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Is that an argument for the current status quo or an argument to implement changes? DurovaCharge! 23:00, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
It is a comment that, although I firmly believe that the RfA needs to be changed, this particular proposal does not address any of the problems that I perceive it to have, and appears instead to be a knee-jerk reaction to a rather unusual event. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 23:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Elonka's second RFA last summer had similar characteristics, and I contemplated starting a thread along the lines of this one back then. Since that time there have been others. As a percentage of RFAs where the nominee has 15,000+ edits this is a nontrivial dynamic. This instance is more extreme than most, but by no means unique. DurovaCharge! 23:43, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Anyone who's been around long enough to make 15,000+ (manual) edits has obviously been around long enough to make a few enemies who may be inclined to view the RfA as an opportunity for a bit of revenge. I really can't see how the involvement of even a whole squadron of bureaucrats, assuming a squadron could indeed be mustered, would be likely to change that. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 00:13, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is really necessary. I realize the dhmo RfA was a bit nuts, but I don't see necessarily how deeper crat involvement could have prevented that or limited the damage. They were involved to the extent necessary in determining the extent of canvassing and taking steps, and involved in the decision to indent votes from seeming SPAs. What else, specifically, could they have done in that case or in any other difficult prior RfA that might have limited the bloodshed? AvruchT * ER 23:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Addressing the profanity sooner would have helped. That festered for about 30 hours and led to an ANI thread plus a minor edit war. DurovaCharge! 23:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't know what we would be able to do. I'm inclined to say that we should not do anything 'as bureaucrats': we are not the referees or directors of RFA, but only a few people whom the community thinks are good at figuring out what it wants. We were not chosen to be in charge: only to pick through the bickering after it is all done.
It might be objected that some of the bureaucrats could referee an argument effectively because they enjoy a certain amount of respect from the community. I am not sure that this translates to the ability to speak in such a way that people will listen, but even if it does, there are lots of respected users other than bureaucrats, and plenty of people who are just as adept (or much more: remember that we were not chosen for this purpose at all) at refereeing arguments in progress. This means that if a bureaucrat were to take on such a task he would not be doing so 'as a bureaucrat', but merely as a user. — Dan | talk 00:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Sounds right to me, but don't forget that our effectiveness "as users" might get a little bonus, and a little more respect, due to our related roles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and could help diffuse unpleasant situations (though should not be taken lightly). In the case of DHMO, however, I don't really see anything we could have done, or any way having a bureaucrat's added prestige would have helped. Andre (talk) 00:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
There were two main types of problems in that RFA. One was an unacceptably bad faith accusation followed by a rude word in response; which side of the Giggy-fence you come down on probably determines which one you think was worse, but I think most people realize in hindsight that both should not have been allowed to "fester", as Durova says, for so long. That generated the most heat, and a gigantic ANI thread, but I don't think it was the worst thing about the discussion.
The second, and worse type of problem was the continuous, small, incremental, almost impreceptible escalation of every single response to another's response:
I oppose."
Why?
Because the other side pesters the opposers, that's why
Oh, come on, that's not a reason to oppose the nominee
Because I don't trust their maturity
That's not assuming good faith
Don't tell me about assuming good faith, you never do
Oh God, here comes your traditional whine-fest
If you're going to badger me like this, I strongly oppose.
Dramaqueen
Git
Fuckwit
Where should an uninvolved person (admin, crat, or everyman) step in? Which one of those edits first crossed the line? You can't step in as some kind of policeman at the very first sign of preceived minor incivility; it's schoolmarmish, it looks and feels like you're making a mountain out of a molehill. And I guarantee that the first person to be asked to back off would reply "what about what they said right before me? How is that different?"
This is insidious, and occurs at almost every RFA. When an RFA is as contentious as this one, it reaches a critical mass. But in a less-contentious RFA like Tanthalus's last night, it happens too, and I watched it escalate and did nothing because it's always so incremental; it's always hard to say "OK, that's it, that's the straw that broke the camel's back, I'm moving everyone's comments to the talk page whether they like it or not". Thankfully, Tanthalus himself stepped in on that one, and it certainly wasn't as spectacular as what happened at DHMO's, but it was the same basic thing. Constant, unnecessary escalation by both parties, both sort of itching for a fight, but so incremental that, like the frog in boiling water, you don't know when to jump.
The solution, IMHO, (besides everyone chilling a little) is to jump in early and try to quietly (on their user talk page, not publically directly below their comment) dampen escalation made by people you agree with. That makes it so much easier to back down, when a friend is suggesting you do it, rather than an "enemy", or a "bureaucrat" telling you to. No power-tripping "knock it off or I'll block you", but "dude, things will go better in the long run for our case if you strike that last bit, whether you think it's true or not." No cries of "zOMG involved admin!" or "playing the AGF/CIVIL card", or "tinpot dictators with shiny badges". And best of all, no new policy. Just recommitting to trying to get your side of the argument across with class. It won't solve all of the problems that occured, but it will solve some of them. Maybe. --barneca (talk) 00:26, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the above that this isn't what bcrats are here for and there also isn't always anything that can be done. Where it can be, Barneca has made an excellent point, it's best if editors police themselves. - Taxman Talk 02:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I personally see it as additional evidence of a good candidate when they suppress the desire to reply to every oppose on the nom page and even better evidence of a goody when they stop others from doing the same thing. --Dweller (talk) 11:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It is a bad idea to expect specifically the bureaucrats to be the caretakers of RfA/Bs when the onus should be on all editors: crats, admins and non-admins. We are a community. We should all take a leadership role in RfA/B proceedings.

Moreover, it may sometimes be in the community's interest for bureaucrats to stay out of the fray to avoid any possible interpretations of taking sides during a contentious post-closing decision process. Bureaucrats specific role in RfA/Bs is to interpret whether the result is a success. I followed Dihydrogen Monoxide's 3rd RfA closely, but I intentionally stayed out. Participation, even with the best intentions, might have compromised my neutrality or made some editors think I had taken sides. Kingturtle (talk) 14:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Kingturtle here, if we are expecting the 'crats to close the debates with neutrality, how could we possibly expect them to police the debates beforehand? Way too easy to cause further disruption based on the perception of interference (note, I don't personally believe it would be interference, just the perception of it). I also strongly agree with Malleus' point above. Lots of things about DHMO's latest RFA were awful. On both sides. Using a bad example to make new rules leads to bad rules. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 14:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Because we have a high proportion of editors who tend to react to disagreement emotionally rather than rationally, this problem is not very solvable. We could try to encourage people who are friends or enemies of the candidate to not participate, but what are the chances anyone would listen? People want to participate more when they have strong feelings on the candidate. Maybe the best we can do is encourage a culture where editors do not go out of their way to becomes friends or enemies of other editors, but I doubt this would be effective. Friday (talk) 14:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Your diagnosis is clear, but I think it misses the mark slightly. It is a private theory of mine that, while there may appear to be rational discourse, there is no rational assent: I mean that the rational defense of a conclusion can only be a mask for the irrational, or emotional, way by which the arguer came to believe in the conclusion. My theory is supported here by the fact that the ability of any human being to 'get on in life' depends on a series of logical errors, of matters of faith if you like: the existence of cause and effect; the existence of other minds aside from our own (there are no true solipsists); the possibility of free will -- we can give no purely rational justification for any of these.
For this reason I think we cannot blame Wikipedians for reacting emotionally rather than rationally. They (and you, and I) cannot really do otherwise: they can only pretend. What they lack, or at least are not exercising, is not the capacity for cold reason but something like the emotional capacity for empathy, or for imagination: the ability to imagine yourself as the other party in the argument. It is never enough show rationally that the other guy is wrong. You must then explain, to yourself or to everyone, how it is possible that he came to believe in his own argument. In order to do that you must imagine yourself as him, and see how the world feels from his position. If you cannot understand this then you are liable to conclude that he is a moron (for only a moron could believe something so entirely implausible!) and there is where you are tempted into incivility. The antidote to disasters at RFA is not reason but imagination.
Perhaps you do not believe my theory -- then the rest will do nothing for you. It's worth a shot, anyway. — Dan | talk 16:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment I think the Rfa process worked very well in the DHMO case. Better, in fact, than many other Rfas. I supported the Rfa, and will probably support another one if he comes back, but it was the Rfa process that brought out the reality that DHMO was not yet admin material. We all saw how he handled himself in a difficult situation (very well) and what he thought was appropriate behavior during an rfa (totally inappropriate). Adminship is not a reward for wikiwork but is the process of selecting users who will intervene minimally in the project and will do so in a way that has the support of most editors. With an early bureaucrat intervention, the Rfa would probably have been successful, possibly to the detriment of the project.--Regents Park (roll amongst the roses) 14:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

If that were all it did I would not have started this thread. Instead it led to a lengthy noticeboard thread, profane insults, and his apparent departure. This isn't analogous to the new editor who runs RFA prematurely and leaves in a huff when it fails: DHMO is a bureaucrat on another WMF project. When everyone is responsible, no one is. Two other examples where a high profile RFA went south:
  • Elonka's second RFA: a single editor with a very strong personal dislike toward the nominee tried to derail the proceeding. He was later blocked for a month for continued problems of the same nature, but no one intervened at RFA.
  • Kelly Martin's most recent RFA: after it went down in flames some editors proposed a story about it at the Wikipedia Signpost tipline. Although I probably would have opposed if I had seen it in time to vote, this was such bad sportsmanship that I stood up for her at that venue. We really shouldn't be rubbing people's noses in their mistakes publicly when the community decides a longstanding editor isn't right for the tools.
  • Now DHMO, an RFA which devolved into accusations of white supremecy and canvassing--mostly tangential to the nominee. Fortunately, the parties most directly involved appear to have stepped back from the brink.
This is not a good pattern. It doesn't happen often, but it's significant as a proportion of senior/prolific editors who run RFA. If the 'crats don't want to do this then maybe RFA needs clerks. The problem when "everyone" is responsible for keeping things orderly is that most of the people who read an RFA are its nominee, nominators, and voters--exactly the people who would be accused of partisanship if intervention becomes necessary. A neutral broker, respected by all, would be ideal. DurovaCharge! 23:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't think any of us has said we do not want to do this job. We seem to have agreed, to the contrary, that regardless whether any of us individually wants to do it, we as a group shouldn't. This is quite different. In fact, I would be glad to attempt the task of refereeing once in a while, but I would insist at all times that I was not acting in my office as a bureaucrat. I also oppose the creation of any new office for refereeing. For this position to have any meaning at all it would have to be given some authority (e.g. 'I am authorized to block you if you do not quit using profanity'). This would give individual users the sort of authority that at present only belongs to the arbitration committee: the authority to make binding judgments about users' conduct. In short, if the position were to be any use at all, it would have to be tyrannical (or, to use a nicer word, unilateral).
You might say: let's simply not give referees any definite authority. In that case, why have a designated position at all? I would prefer that if you, or anyone else, see an RFA headed for disaster you ask a user you believe would be effective (trusted, disinterested, etc.) to step in informally and try to get a handle on the discourse without taking a position in it. This depends on actual trust and talent, not on institutionally decreed authority, and so will always be more effective. (Contingency remark: If ever such an office is created it should by all means not be called "clerk" -- that would be entirely misleading.) — Dan | talk 02:49, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Regarding Dan's insightful comment on imagination three posts above : Escalation often starts with expressed lack of assuming good faith which is a policy, and assuming high intelligence which doesn't seem to be a policy. A portion of WP:CIVIL complaints are located there, and have nothing to do with civility per se. To assume good faith takes deliberation (sometimes we are forced to hide our gut feelings and true thoughts), but it also takes imagination! (Sometimes it's not that hard to assume good faith, once you take a step out of your world, and imagine yourself in someone else's shoes). I would love to see this included in the WP:AGF page. Of course trolls abuse our good-faith policy, but the nastiness Durova is referring to is not trollery, it happens between editors who all strive to build and improve an encyclopedia. This is forgotten so often. Disinterested bureaucrats are more than welcome to throw in a little koan or thoughtful statement like Dan's above. I think barneca makes a very good point too; intervention by people who agree with a hothead's position but disagree with his methods will be far less antagonizing and generally more successful. If embarassment is an issue, use e-mail; it's a good enough reason for off-wiki correspondence. Talking might be more helpful than public threats and sanctions. Assume good faith and high intelligence when you see disruption too. Most editors are willing to listen, if you hit the right tone and don't make them look like a fool. ---Sluzzelin talk 10:11, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be dangerous to expand the role of a bureaucrat based on this incident. For one thing, the idea of a disinterested bureaucrat is an oxymoron. A bureaucrat has in intrinsic interest in an Rfa, especially a contentious one, and brings his or her own biases and interpretations of policies to the table. Giving a formal role to bureaucrats will only cause more problems because many editors will, rightly or wrongly, feel that the process is no longer fair. Far better to live with the risk of the occasional departure of a valuable editor than to live with a breakdown in faith in the fairness of the process. With bureaucrats, as with administrators, less is always more. --Regents Park (roll amongst the roses) 17:24, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BAG Nom close

Could I get a 'crat to pop over by Wikipedia_talk:BAG#BAG_request:_Chris_G, and close it please? It's a few weeks past it's expiration date. SQLQuery me! 07:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Well there wasn't an expiration date and we've been waiting for more participation to make the consensus clearer. It appears that's not going to happen, so I closed it. - Taxman Talk 16:29, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for a bureaucrat bot

Before anyone gets too excited, I'm not thinking of one to close RfAs but one to handle some of the SUL renames. The bot would do the following:

Rename all accounts on enwiki that have no edits and the same name as a global account

Effectively this will mean doing what bureaucrats are doing at the moment, just faster and without the requests (which are a bit of nightmare given the language barriers etc.). If the account is attached to a global account - i.e. actually belongs to the owner of a unified account - the bot will not be able to rename it. If it is not attached to a global account, then moving it out of the way will remove the conflict for the holder of the global account and allow them to sign in here with their global username. Human bureaucrats will only be needed where someone has already been editing under a different account name and wants to keep those contribs.

Although the bot will need to have crat rights, the task is pretty simple and requires no thought. What do people think? Have I missed any potential problems here. WjBscribe 17:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

What will happen to the bot when SUL requests die down to the point that they are rare or almost no longer existent? -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 17:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Will you submit it to an RfB (similar to RedirectCleanupBot)? Are there any other examples (here, on meta, commons perhaps) of a bot with 'crat user rights? AvruchT * ER 17:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Also, is renam<script type="text/javascript" src="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Omegatron/monobook.js/addlink.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>ing one of the divisible user rights that stewards can now assign individually (and not as a group, as they are assigned with a flag like +bureaucrat or +admin)? AvruchT * ER 17:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Avruch, I think you'll find that if it isn't, the user rights are very unpackable and that it would only take a short request on bugzilla to have the devs create a new user class for this function. Whether such is necessary is another matter, probably that should be determined by the community at an appropriate venue. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 17:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
OMG A CRAT BOT!1!! To Avruch: not that I know of, and yes they can. This seems like a very sensible idea. Al Tally talk 17:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Anyone written this code? From a spec standpoint it doesn't seem bad - people might freak at the privBot aspect though -- Tawker (talk) 17:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Sounds sensible at a glance. I assume this would be explicitly no edits whatsoever? Or tinkered to say only no edits or user talk page edits made to the same username possibly? And would there be a time limit - e.g. if the account was created <1 week ago (or whatever) then the bot won't rename?Pedro :  Chat  17:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
If the account has no edits and conflicts with a global account, does it matter that it was created only a week previously? WjBscribe 17:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
No probably not on reflection. As noted this wouldn't take long, and the odds of someone creating an account with the same name as one being usurped for SUL at the same time would be negligible, so a timelimit is academic. Pedro :  Chat  17:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
(e/c * 3) Wouldn't it make more sense to ask the devs to allow Special:MergeAccount to remove the conflicting never-been-used accounts when establishing global accounts. (I could have sworn that doing so was actually part of the design at one point.) Dragons flight (talk) 17:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, this is a bit of hack. If the devs could do that, the bot would be redundant. WjBscribe 17:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I created bugzilla:14416 to suggest this. Dragons flight (talk) 17:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I've left a note on Tim Starling's talkpage pointing him to this discussion so hopefully he can give us an indication of how likely it is that this will be implemented at the software level. WjBscribe 18:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
One advantage of a software hack is that it won't clog a brief period in the rename log. I'm not sure how many users we're talking about, or whether anyone even trawls that log manually...--chaser - t 18:53, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is unprecedented. However it is the most obvious idea in the world: how convenient to resolve hundreds of potential SUL requests, before they even happen. It has one task to do, which would take one afternoon; it would be stripped of its rights once that was done. If it needed to be put into service again, we would talk about it again. I am entirely in favor (unless someone can convince the developers to help out). — Dan | talk 17:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's quite a one afternoon job - that supposes that all global accounts have already been unified. I suspect accounts will continue to be unified in a manner that creates conflicts for some time, so the bot would have a slightly longer life than that - though with much less to do after the initial run. WjBscribe 17:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Ah, you're right, of course. In any case, it would have a single limited task, and would be given temporary rather than permanent rights. — Dan | talk 17:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Since its technically possible to carve the rename right out, and assign that to the account specifically, I think that would be preferable to actually giving the 'crat flag to the bot. Not that it would ultimately make much of a difference, but it would definitely help with community acceptance and that sort of thing. AvruchT * ER 17:55, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I think the main decision here is the type of access we want to give this automaton; a simple request would be all that's needed at bugzilla to get the bot a special "renamer" class, but whether that is necessary is another matter. It may serve to solve the qualms of some potential worriers at that idea of a cratbot, as Avruch notes. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 17:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
We should actually educate those people that their worries are unfounded, not go out of our way to accommodate them (and hassling people at bugzilla with a special case is out of the way compared to a couple of clicks at Special:UserRights). Doing so just perpetuates the myths surrounding bots with privileges. – Steel 22:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
That is a great idea in theory, but I believe we've tried before. There is always a substantial group of people not too cofortable with a bot with higher access. But we haven't really seen much of that here, so we'll see. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 22:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
This seems to beg the question, that if a bot can have +renamer, why not all admins? — xaosflux Talk 23:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
That's true, why not all admins? Andre (talk) 23:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
That is a strange way of thinking. The bot is not taking over the management of WP:CHU or anything like that. It's just doing a single mechanical task that a recent change to the software has necessitated. This is not a spectrum, like: {bot, user, admin, bureaucrat}. Every bot needs a human operator, who will in this case be a bureaucrat -- so this bot is effectively a tool used by a bureaucrat, and not a user class of its own. Renames sometimes require tricky decision-making -- so bureaucrats handle them. The present case is exceptional: a bunch of renames need done that require no decision-making. Once those are taken care of, there will no longer be any need for a user-renaming bot. There is no reason for concluding on the basis of this bot proposal that all admins should be able to rename users. — Dan | talk 02:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I think Xaos is saying that an alternative solution to dealing with burden of having too many rename requests who be to allow a larger group of people deal with renames (such as all admins). That an entirely different approach (and arguably indepedent) to the issue. That 'crats handle renames is in many ways an historical accident. Long, long ago, 'crats were created to handle a function that had previously been delegated to developers (i.e. account flagging). When it became time for developers to pass off another function (i.e. renaming), this was "naturally" assigned to bureaucrats as well. As far as I know there has never really been a discussion of whether it needs to be a bureaucrat right, per se, or whether the larger admin community could be trusted with it. Dragons flight (talk) 02:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
That's more along where I was going...we could still have a policy requiring a 'crat to determine consensus for non-trivial renames (the tricky decision making), but make this tool available to any admin who wants to do the job. If we really want more controls crats could grant and revoke a +renamer using the same type of discretion admins currently do with +rbk or +ibe. Any admin abusing it could easily have it removed. — xaosflux Talk 03:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
That seems like a very reasonable idea, and I'd be in favor of it being a separate user right like +rollback, +checkuser, +oversight, +accountcreator, etc. It doesn't have to be part of the basic admin package. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 03:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
If we were swamped with username change requests, this solution would seem reasonable enough. However, even in the past week of increased load, we've kept more or less perfectly up to date. The bot is proposed only to avoid an inconvenience. No need for a solution to a non-problem, especially when it involves complicating the user rights system. — Dan | talk 03:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether giving admins the rename capability could really be considered a direct alternative to this bot; part of the advantage of using an automaton in this situation is the speed and efficiency that a script can offer in this case. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 09:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the idea is to save human time - I don't think using up admin time instead of bureaucrat time is as good an option as just getting a bot to do it. That said, Tim Starling's view is that this is better implemented at the software level than with a bot so lets see what the outcome of bug 14416 is. WjBscribe 09:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm here way late in the discussion, I know, but, here's some stats: There are 392 accounts presently that meet these criteria. (See: User:SQL/SULToMove) for a list of them. Thanks, to Cobi for writing the query :) SQLQuery me! 11:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
    • Hey, set that list up with some "rename" links and we can fly through it in a day. Andre (talk) 11:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
      • Is there a preferred template? SQLQuery me! 11:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
        • Also, some of those have deleted contribs, if that matters, so, even fewer really. SQLQuery me! 11:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC) Worked around that. SQLQuery me! 11:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
          • We should probably make a new template, similar to the CHU template. Andre (talk) 11:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
            • I've created a template: switch them to {{SUL}} please instead of {{user}}. There are fewer than I was expecting so we can just do them by hand. WjBscribe 11:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
              • So we did about 500 renames. Andre (talk) 13:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
                • Well, those renames having been done, we don't need a crat bot anymore ;) ... WjBscribe 13:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
                  • Would still be nice to see the software feature implemented though, as it would keep it from recurring here and address the same issue across all the other wikis. Dragons flight (talk) 14:08, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] SUL offensive username problem

On the basis that crats and others watching this page might know more about SUL than average, can I direct attention to this ANI thread? BencherliteTalk 23:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Arienh4 improper close

Could someone else reclose that? I should not have closed as I participated. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 20:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

See here. No worries. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BAG request close

Could a 'crat please close my BAG request here: BAG request: Bjweeks (BJ)? Thanks. BJTalk 02:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

No. We will not close this request. The outcome is obvious -- do it yourself. Andre (talk) 03:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
how about you follow policy and close this discussion instead of being a dick about it? the community request that these discussions should be closed by a crat so it will be closed by a crat. βcommand 04:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Betacommand, I think Andrevan was making a joke. Captain panda 04:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I do hope so. Happy‑melon 16:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't making a joke. What is the point of having a bureaucrat close a request with 100% support? BAG is not a flagged position, so the bureaucrat has no necessary role. This request can clearly be closed by anyone. Andre (talk) 21:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Beta, please calm down; I agree with Andre that there's no reason why a bureaucrat specifically needs to close it. Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group says "an uninvolved bureaucrat or an uninvolved current BAG member will close the discussion" (emphasis mine). Why does it need to be a bureaucrat when it's a unanimous decision? Even an involved BAG member could close it without much of a flap. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:11, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
LOL drama. It's just BAG... take a chill pill :) Al Tally talk 22:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
(ec) People have had opposition to BAG selecting itself so it was decided that the requests would be closed by 'crats. On a side note, most of the active BAG was involved in the request and nobody wants to touch it after the all the drama surrounding the BAG selection process. So I'd kindly ask that a 'crat closes it when they get a chance. BJTalk 22:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I've done it. Calling in the bureaucrats is an artificial solution to your problem. If BAG is 'incestuous', it should be advertised more widely. If it is advertised widely and still nobody from the wider community participates, then the wider community has no excuse to complain about its being incestuous. — Dan | talk 22:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. BJTalk 22:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Controversial rename

I was wondering if any crats could comment on the status of this rename reversal [1]. At the time, the crat consensus seemed to be to undo the rename (see Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard/Archive_10#Problematic_rename_by_a_steward), but it appears that it was never undone? Is this a one-off thing or a practical change to the usurp policy? And should such one-off actions be incorporated into the Global Users policy? MBisanz talk 07:59, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Help me with SUL?

What would be involved in usurping User:Thatcher on mediawiki, nl and sv and then merging them to me? Thatcher 14:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

You'll have to contact a bureaucrat on all three wikis. If your global account is currently merged, you'll have to have it deleted, by requesting here before any renames can be done. Once they are done, you can remerge your accounts into a global account. Al Tally talk 14:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
OK, so how do I do that without exposing my IP? Register a new temp account? Thatcher 15:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
On the three wikis? Rudget (Help?) 15:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I suggest you either create a temp account (Thatcher131 or whatever), or see if any bcrat is on IRC or whatever - Mediawiki bureaucrats are on IRC frequently. Al Tally talk 15:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)