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2012

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



Closing as successful since it's been two weeks and all votes occurred on the first day of the nomination and there have been none since other than Will's somewhat ambiguous withdrawal of support. Making it a 4-1 consenus. --Patrick M (TUFKAAP) (talk) 05:49, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

LauraHale (talk · contribs) — adminship

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Let's see... where to start? Piles upon piles of original OR work all of which has been published, aside from one at this time, which is still pending review. Is accredited. Has flagged revs permisson. And last week, she helped me prune the Newsroom by nominating various spam and nonsense articles with speedy delete tags. Granted, she could have done that herself had she had the mop and bucket. And I think it's by time we give her that right. ;) Plus... it's been six months since we last have an admin nomination, it's high time for one. ;) :P --Patrick M (TUFKAAP) (talk) 17:22, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Yes, I accept. --20:44, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

World domination starts with Australia and then moves eastward towards New Zealand. If I can't get a visa to stay in Australia, I'd like to get a kickstart grant and do Wikinews coverage on Oceania because I love the region and we don't get enough news. --LauraHale (talk) 04:50, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



I am archiving this request. User had his rights emergency-removed, and with no forthcoming explanation for actions or any indication that the account is not compromised - the pertinent action is to keep them removed! --Skenmy talk 12:17, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Diego Grez (talk · contribs) — remove admin

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Without explanation on-wiki, Diego deleted an article from the archives — without, by the way, replacing it with a stub, as is always done when deleting a published article so as not to create a memory hole — and then, again without explanation on-wiki, hid the delete actions in the deletion log. The only remark about these actions on-wiki was to ask anyone who wants to know about it to PM him.

Had only the deletion occurred, not the log-hiding, there would still be a reasonable possibility that the deletion was at least intended to be some sort of privacy-related action, and I'd not be making this nomination just yet. However, the log-deletion doesn't appear to have any likely reason behind it except revisionism, trying to erase from history the fact that the article existed. Which is, btw, quite quite futile since there's plenty of evidence of it even on other WMF sister projects.

It's possible that Diego will have a private explanation for the action that cannot be shared publicly, in which case it might be necessary to shelve this public discussion (if the private explanation has some merit). Presumably ArbCom would then have to take up the matter privately. But there is nothing to be accomplished by not making this nomination immediately, since the existence of the article long ago became irreversible and there is nothing minor about the seeming breaches of site policy and journalistic ethics.

See also: w:Streissand effect.

--Pi zero (talk) 14:03, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Because the stats template (above) only (currently) turns up items from before a certain date, here are a couple of others possibly relevant; can't guarantee they're the only ones. --Pi zero (talk) 16:31, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Questions and comments

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I was linked here from his Encyclopedia Dramatica page, probably has something to do with it, j/s —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 174.232.131.83 (talk • contribs)
  • About the Emergency Rights Removal: I cannot believe (neither do others, I think) that his account was compromised, his actions were perfectly rational (rational as in matching his personality, because they still were foolish/stupid), I'd like to have a CheckUser to compare the login he did for deleting those articles with some of the previous (I bet the IPs are almost the same, i.e. same subnet). And also, he was already a know sockpuppeteer, so it should be easy for him to create a sockpuppet and talk privately with Blood Red Sandman, thus tricking him deadmin him because Grez already saw his actions were bad and that he could not make a decent defense here, so he decided to, at least, deadmin him with "honour" and saying that it was a "hacked account". Clever moves. AndrésSnape (talk) 22:58, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If someone could not catch my thoughts properly (as some people probably inferred, english is not my first language), just let me know here so I can rephrase those thoughts up. AndrésSnape (talk) 23:00, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, the allegation is that the account was hacked after these actions. So that in itself is not a defence. A CU has been filed as a matter of course for any possible hack, and that really takes the matter out of my hands. I trust out CUs (and ArbCom, if need be) to deal with it. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 23:06, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hacked after? Hmm, that should probably be social engineers, although if the account was hacked after the deletes I cannot find any logical reason for someone to hack it. However, how did he contact you? (IRC, email, et cætera) AndrésSnape (talk) 23:15, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Looking at the rights BRS has removed on a basis this would be wise in the short-term, I note that Diego had granted xyrself bot. Since that hides edits from casual perusal in RecentChanges, this is further grounds to consider not returning these rights. --Brian McNeil / talk 06:12, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Snape is blocked on Wikipedia for sockpuppetry; xyr intervention here would appear an attempt to inject dramah. --Brian McNeil / talk 06:25, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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There are a wide range of options available other than deletion, and deletion of a long-archived article without at least consulting other administrators privately is unacceptable.
If Real-life issues, such as stalking, are a concern then the image could have been removed without deleting the text. If there are serious issues with the factual accuracy of the content, which I have no reason to believe there are, then that's something to 'fess up to rather than commit a Hari.
In any case, the 'rouge act' merits removal of administrative privileges unless very convincing extenuating circumstances are put forward. I am minded, following this act, to speedily remove administrator privileges and restore them should reasons to do so be found, or this vote favour retention. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:13, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove I'd favour speedy removal of admin rights, with the option to return them if a good explanation is offered either privately or publicly. I'm also concerned about the removal/deletion of his talk page, with no explanation. (I've deleted my own stuff but it tended to be re-directs, articles that were not going to be submitted, draft templates.) There has been other multiple deletion of pages of his with out explanation, which I feel warrant a speedy removal with possibility of restoring rights once the story is clearly understood in order to prevent future possible abuse of tools. --LauraHale (talk) 20:38, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove, It has been confirmed (not only once, but several times before) that he is not prepared to be an admin because his emotional inestability and foolishness. AndrésSnape (talk) 21:53, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Under your current account, you aren't a Wikinewsie; while we welcome input from outsiders (well, civil input, of course :-), persons from outside this project don't get a vote in these proceedings. --Pi zero (talk) 22:04, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I perfectly understand, I just wanted to explicitly state the reasons he did this and my opinion about this (although I'm sure that I am not the only one who thinks like me about this issue). Thanks for your feedback. AndrésSnape (talk) 22:15, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It seems the account was compromised. There's a good chance no such interaction/explanation will be forthcoming for a very long time. --Pi zero (talk) 13:20, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


2013

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful request for adminship. Please do not modify it.

Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs) — adminship

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Been on Wikinews for eight months now and have produced over 70 articles, including original reporting, interviews and news, oparticularly relating to sports and the Paralympic Games in London. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:33, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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  • Question You've addressed your qualifications for adminship. For perspective, though, what is your reason for requesting adminship? What do you have in mind to do with it? --Pi zero (talk) 12:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Mainly to assist in the creation of news articles without having to ask for admin assistance. Protect and unprotect pages. I will also assist with minor maintenance tasks. Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:35, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I've remarked elsewhere, there are only a few points were admin access helps with article production. Adding categories to fully protected articles is facilitated (one doesn't have to ask an admin to do it). Renaming unpublished articles without leaving a redirect is a luxury (renaming published articles must always leave a redirect, of course, and renaming fully protected articles is almost unheard of). Undeleting articles is unusual too. But certainly being able to do those things directly, rather than enumerating the request and waiting for someone else to process the request, means less work for everyone. --Pi zero (talk) 16:45, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question Do you think Wikinews needs more help with reviewing, or with administrative tasks? --Gryllida 07:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wikinews can never have enough reviewers!!! Many admin tasks can remain undone for months on end, but news must be timely! When I am working on WikiNews full time, I can generate a great deal of material in a short time and swamp the review process, and for that I must apologise. The best I can do is try to arrange for reviewer support beforehand, try and make the articles as easy to review as possible, and thank the reviewers for a job well done afterwards. I have the highest regard for our reviewers. They are worth their weight in gold bullion. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:33, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question Did you think of nominating yourself to become a reviewer? Thanks, Gryllida 07:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, never. I requested adminship in order to facilitate article creation. I am more than willing to pitch in with minor maintenance tasks, but my focus is on article creation. If, in the opinion of the WikiNews editors, I have reached the point where my understanding of policies and standards is sufficiently advanced that I could be a reviewer, then they will nominate me; but I will not nominate myself. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:33, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Do you think there is a need for a timely response to a request to an edit to a protected article, or can it wait several hours without any serious harm? How timely should such responses you think should ideally be? Gryllida 11:58, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Do you think the current response times to protected article edits requests are close to the ideal? Thanks! --Gryllida 11:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's always unwise to compare against an ideal, for surely the ideal must be immediately. It is very rare that such a rapid response is required; but we are talking about news. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Thanks for your kind, detailed replies to all the questions. They brought light to an activity I was entirely unaware of: adding categories to archived articles. I appreciate that you volunteered to help with this task. Gryllida 12:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it.. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful request for bureaucratship. Please do not modify it.

Pi zero (talk · contribs) — bureaucratship

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I would like to nominate Pi zero, our great reviewer and administrator, to a promotion to bureaucratship. I can see the following things peculiar in the candidate and invaluably useful for making fair, sensible use of the new proposed position.

  • Being familiar with the policies and atmosphere after months (probably over a year) of consistent review work. Pi zero is familiar with the key policies as closely as a glove fits one's hand, and shapes them to the right direction.
  • Devotion to the project (we all _know_ it!).
  • Willingness to do a research and look into things and issues that are brought up. Look for reasons behind every actions.
  • Familiar with the software behind the wiki, including (most notably) templates and gadgets, how they work, and how to fix them properly without breaking things.
  • Ability to make sensible judgements of what to do and what not to do. I would point it out that pi zero clearly follows the "never assume" rule but remains warmly courteous at all times.
  • Open-minded, courteous spirit with a knowledge when to drop a topic or discussion if needed.
  • Openless to collaboration and detailed explanation for any topics that is useful to talk about: pi zero likes to tell a thing in a neutral, informative way, if there is a need to make something more clear.
  • Balanced, calm reaction to events, discussions, issues, and concerns.
  • It can never be stressed well enough: ability to think about why something happened, and make a new guideline or policy to shape the atmosphere to improve efficiency of work of everyone at Wikinews. This includes the development and collaboration on the WN:PeP policy, just as an example.

I expect the nominee to leave a note to the I-accept-this-nomination effect shortly. Thanks, Gryllida 13:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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  • It surprised me to see your last 50 edits cover about a year. But, they're spread enough through that period to indicate you're probably aware of what is going on, if not able to get more involved.
Translation: I think you're perfectly entitled to vote. Is there anyone else taking part in this discussion does not know Bawolff? --Brian McNeil / talk 20:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Like bawolff, I don't want to explicitly support because I haven't been here for a while, but based on Pi zero's work before I went away, I support this nomination. Kayau (talk · contribs) 07:42, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Like bawolff and kayau, I don't want to explicitly support because I am not exactly here, but based on Pi zero's contributions, I support this nomination. Wikiwide (talk) 02:25, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment From what I know of Wikinews procedure, the vote of MZMcBride certainly doesn't count, and probably not KhabarNegar, due to lack of record of contribution to the project. (Though I'm not aware of any such obstacle to Computron, who now has several published articles.) --Pi zero (talk) 23:51, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Support Been really supportive to me as I am new here and as far as what MZMcBride is saying, I read the first four lines and got bored, you've just proved you are a "dick".--Computron (talk) 23:27, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it.. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.


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Bddpaux (talk · contribs) — adminship

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Self-nom. for Admin. I've been here for about 4 years. In that time I've contributed 46 articles, about 30 with OR. I've been a reviewer for about 18 months and have reviewed about 20 articles during that tenure. Overall, I've made about 4000 edits here and try to encourage new contributors. I really believe in the "new wave" of citizen journalists and I also know that we're at the very crest of that! --Bddpaux (talk) 01:41, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



Billinghurst (talk · contribs) — adminship

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I am nominating Billinghurst for administrator. They are an administrator on Wikisource and do a lot of of work on meta. The user hangs out on wikimedia-stewards and has been providing a lot of assistance with spam related content. As a contributor to a non-Wikipedia project, I believe they would respect local rules. The purpose in nominating them is so they can assist with spam filters, read deleted edits to fix things, etc.--LauraHale (talk) 00:57, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Billinghurst has global steward rights. This explains the low edit count. --LauraHale (talk) 09:11, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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  • Question Does the nominee accept nomination? --Pi zero (talk) 01:17, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question If the nominee does accept nomination, what does the nominee have to say about how they would and would not use the privs? I'm concerned not merely with the nominee's intent (which I have no qualms about), but with the nominee's understanding of what not to do. (Granted, a contributor to a non-Wikipedia project is more likely to appreciate the need for caution.) --Pi zero (talk) 01:17, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Umm, this was a little unexpected. Can we pause this request in this format, and instead look at this in terms of the outcomes that you would like to achieve, rather than step into straight admin discussion, as it is obvious I am not an active member here. FWIW 1) Yes, I know which buttons to press, and basically know not to press them. 2) I would generally decline adminship as I am not fully conversant with your rules, and recently declined adminship at WD for similar reasons.

If the help that you are looking for here is the means to actively allow someone to add/amend abuse filters then there are alternative two directions that your community can take. 1) Allow stewards (of which I am one) to do so, and that is simply a policy decision here (and to note that this I did with some consultation with some of your community a couple of days ago); or 2) Look to the ability to directly assign and remove abusefilter rights independently (enWS allows admins to assign this right to users) This would be done via a bugzilla request. You would be looking to have changes made to settings in the wgAddGroups and wgRemoveGroups sections to have 'abusefilter' by sysop or by bureaucrat, compare Special:ListGroupRights and s:Special:ListGroupRights where the extra group exists.) This would allow you to assign the right to whomever you wish via whatever process you define, though not to see deleted contributions, which is a separate right within the wiki system.

To note that as a steward I can already see deleted contributions, and the back-of-house for 800 other wikis. If the end route you require me to take the adminship route to give the assistance that your community desires, I can happily promise to keep my fingers out of the main ns pie, etc. Billinghurst (talk) 02:02, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Though it would keep me out of your PENDING queues. <lol> Billinghurst (talk) 02:09, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



Housekeeping; inactive, privileged accounts

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The below have all been actioned; good to see one or two with little time pop up and say a few words.
The following are a list of users who have elevated privileges on Wikinews who qualify for de-privving under the proposed inactivity policy.
  • I am working to build this list, and will take time to ensure efforts are made to contact these individuals via email, their talk pages here and any talk page they may indicate as a home project.
Unless otherwise indicated, this move to de-priv should (with the exception of reviewer rights) allow a speedy regaining of privileges should these individuals become active again. --Brian McNeil / talk 15:17, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reminder: We don't need the proposed inactive policy. We have an enacted Privilege expiry policy, which already covers reviewer, and which does not require prior notification (though it doesn't forbid it either). --Pi zero (talk) 17:06, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Action the lot?

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  • With Pi zero having reminded me of WN:PeP, all of these technically qualify for privs being downgraded. Is there anyone who wants to comment on the merit of doing so? --Brian McNeil / talk 13:01, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Although all of these may technically have expired, there is no harm in politely informing them via usual channels, waiting for a brief period of time (48 hours? a week?) before acting. Remember, these are people who are not involved and not using their privileges, so there should be no need to rush.
    For future expiries we may wish to drop a reminder note a day or two in advance of technical expiration. "We noticed you have not been active lately, and we know life may get between a Wikinewsie and the wiki. Just so you're aware, after {time period} of inactivity your {privilege type} will be reduced from {X} to {Y}." - Amgine | t 14:27, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Yah. I just had a little chuckle at the thought of processing one of these a year after the prior priv went (tomorrow). --Brian McNeil / talk 14:39, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Also worth pointing out to people that privileges can be regained with the greatest of ease where inactivity was the only reason for removing. BRS (Talk) (Contribs) 14:41, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A discussed idea was not reminding people in advance, as "We don't want people coming back to make a token edit because they were pre-notified" (wording of Pi zero, copy pasted from the talk page I linked). Gryllida 10:02, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"I don't think we're going to agree on the "token edits" issue..." same talk page. Echo chambers do not a consensus make. - Amgine | t 10:09, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bit of a lawyerly reflex there, Amgine? :-)
At the time we enacted the policy (as I recall, much of the discussion on that particular point was on other pages), we'd had several examples in recent memory of folks from the fork returning abruptly with egregiously policy-violating reviewer actions. So we crafted the policy with a similar spirit of admin's discretion in it as in our —imho, extraordinarily sane— blocking policy. When I applied the PeP on a large scale shortly before New Year's, I chose not to inform anyone in advance, because there were some on the list whom it would have been a bad idea to inform in advance and I had no wish to single them out by informing others. --Pi zero (talk) 13:16, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps. However, any such action taken without attempting prior notification is, by definition, uninformed consent. Which, I'm sure, you would not normally wish to accurately be applied to en.WN dev actions. While I understand the arguments in favour of such a policy, I do not feel their potential, even probable, benefit outweigh the certain harm. That was and is my opinion, and not likely to change. It costs very little to correct an error, much less than to repair a project's reputation. - Amgine | t 14:02, 21 October 2013 (UTC) [reply]
That's specious, since there's no consent involved (though sadly I'd not be surprised to see some legalistic... nonsense... conjured to claim otherwise). --Pi zero (talk) 14:43, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it's clearly a point at which we are unlikely to agree. You have the policy you are comfortable with. It does not prevent you from dropping a note to inform, neither does it require it. - Amgine | t 15:00, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hah. So there is something on which we agree. ;-)  --Pi zero (talk) 15:04, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

About 10 days passed, I think; I would perhaps suggest taking this action in bulk, as planned. Gryllida 10:14, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

All below changes actioned; closing, and will notify via talk pages. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:43, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You got a little eager with the actioning Brian, my last edit pre-revocation was on the 25th :) - Cartman02au (Talk)(AU Portal) 10:40, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bastique (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Calebrw (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Cartman02au (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Chiacomo (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Cocoaguy (talk · contribs) — remove Admin, Editor

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Divol (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Eloquence (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Foxj (talk · contribs) — remove Editor

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Juliancolton (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Peter.C (talk · contribs) — remove Editor

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Phearson (talk · contribs) — remove Editor

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I am deeply sorry that I have not been active. I have been struggling with a health issue and time away from the computer is neccessary. I intend to resume recording voice for articles tomorrow. Phearson (talk) 00:58, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Phearson! Take care of yourself, first. When you are able to take up the mop again, there is an expedited process for getting your buttons back again. - Amgine | t 08:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Pmlineditor (talk · contribs) — remove Admin, Editor

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Ragettho (talk · contribs) — remove Editor

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Terinjokes (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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The wub (talk · contribs) — remove Admin, Editor

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Tristan Thomas (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Voice of All (talk · contribs) — remove Editor

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Wackywace (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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Zanimum (talk · contribs) — remove Admin

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



Tom Morris (talk · contribs) — CheckUser

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Following the resignation of Cirt from the roll of CheckUsers, we are now down to three local CheckUsers. I suggested earlier that I would be happy to volunteer to take on this role. In an ideal world, I would never have to actually use the CheckUser tool as these days English Wikinews seems to be both quiet and mostly drama-free.

In terms of my qualification for the role: I am a technically proficient person and understand more than enough about IP addresses, DNS, CIDR notation and so on to operate the CheckUser functionality. I try to be a drama-free editor on the projects I participate in: I've done and said things in the past I've regretted, but I have a strong record for amicable and friendly work both here, on Wikipedia, on Wikimedia Commons and other projects. I have contributed over 100 published articles to Wikinews. I've been an administrator here for nearly two years, and a little over two years on English Wikipedia. I also have OTRS access and I am already identified to the Foundation (diff). —Tom Morris (talk) 21:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Support--27.33.74.30 (talk) 19:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with this comment by Bawolff (t · c · b), above. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 05:37, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I tend to agree on Oversight, but that's Tom's decision. If our remaining CUs could highlight the vote on the closed list (as I've done via the WM-UK list) I suspect we'll hit the required 25 votes fairly quickly. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:49, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If oversighters are needed, I'm happy to take an oversigher role too. —Tom Morris (talk) 06:07, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just to note: I am going on holiday for two weeks on Tuesday. I will have Internet access but I intend to actually have a holiday. I'll hopefully also be taking a wikibreak from both Wikipedia and Wikinews. I therefore won't be here to answer any questions raised. If this closes before I get back, I'd like to pre-emptively thank the community for their support and consideration of this request. —Tom Morris (talk) 18:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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  1. Support --Pi zero (talk) 22:29, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support, strong candidate. -- Cirt (talk) 22:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Bencherlite (talk) 23:51, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support --Rschen7754 02:02, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support, with lulz at Amgine's above remark. --Brian McNeil / talk 07:41, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support, --Jacques Divol (talk) 13:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support--Cspurrier (talk) 17:18, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Without hesitation, although it shall be difficult to acquire sufficient votes owing to Rules From Above™. BRS (Talk) (Contribs) 19:52, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support. Gryllida (talk) 06:16, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support, I've known Tom for years, ever since he came back from Citizendium. I consider him very trustworthy and technically capable. WereSpielChequers (talk) 10:35, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support. Very capable of using the tools well, both technically and in terms of trust. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support as an enwp checkuser - alas, I have very little activity on WN! Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 10:53, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support as enWN CU. Strong level of support shows trust - no issues with extending my support. --Skenmy talk 11:29, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support — Tom's been around for quite a while now. He'll undoubtedly put the same level of professionalism into CU as he does into everything. — Gopher65talk 13:38, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support Kanags (talk) 14:53, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support —Mikemoral♪♫ 06:25, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Well known user: adding myself as the community wishes it though I don't know details on his opinions on CU tools. In normal conditions en.news shouldn't need own CU IMHO, but... ok. --Nemo bis (talk) 18:51, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support--RockerballAustralia c 04:32, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Support -- well known admin. --Nikolas (talk) 00:22, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Support -- Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:06, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Support Tom would do well in the role. Tyrol5 (talk) 20:49, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Support Tom is both trustworthy and a family man. Of course, some of the world's worst scoundrels were family men, but we can always assume good faith in the case of Tom, because we are a Wikimedia Foundation community, and assuming good faith is what we do. May Tom's cadence in the shoes of a check user be absolutely and completely devoid of scoundrelness (The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.)
    second blessing
    --Mareklug (talk) 21:49, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Support -- no concerns from a fellow en.wp admin. Nick (talk) 21:38, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Support -- Wikiwide (talk) 22:43, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  25. Support -- — billinghurst sDrewth 21:12, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  26. Support —레비Revi✉SUL Info 05:32, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  27. Support Seems good. --Goldenburg111 (talk) 23:36, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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2014

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Microchip08 (talk · contribs) — adminship

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I don't have a problem with Microchip08 having Adminship back, and would ask if (assuming happy to take mop again) we should run this one on 'speedy re-grant'? Xe asked regarding wikinewsie.org email access, and I mentioned there had been changes from indefinite privileges across the board - but one of those is re-granting when seen as non-controversial. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:38, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to take the mop up again. Microchip08 (talk) 11:49, 14 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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2015

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Bawolff (talk · contribs) — resign Oversight

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This is just to let everyone know, I intend to resign oversight permissions in the near future (by dec 15). I'm really not active here anymore, and I believe oversight like permissions should be held by people who are active. Additionally, the last time I used oversight was over 2 years ago (And the last time Cspurrier (t · c · b) did was roughly 18 months ago). Given how rarely its needed, I wonder if we should just let the stewards handle any oversight requests that come up. But that's for the current community to decide.

To be clear, I intend to retain adminship (Assuming of course that's ok with everyone). I occasionally poke at local js in mediawiki namespace.

Thanks everyone Bawolff ☺☻ 20:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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2016

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acagastya (talk · contribs) — adminship

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Questions and comments

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  • @Acagastya: Could you tell folks a bit about your history on-wiki, to provide them with some perspective on your request?
    (I'm fairly familiar with the nominee's wiki history, myself; but I think we'd all benefit from hearing what the nominee says about xyrself, and I'm interested to hear what others think independent of my impressions.) --Pi zero (talk) 21:10, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: I made my first edit on Wikinews exactly thirteen months ago. It took me nineteen more days, and four unsuccessful submissions for my first article to be published. I have contributed to 72 news articles. When I am not writing news articles, I read the project pages, and sometimes see the changes of those pages, to know how rules were changed or modified over time. I frequently check the recent changes, except when I sleep. That time, Pi zero is online. As I mentioned earlier, I am requesting for adminship to fight vandalism. Many a times there is a notorious IP editor or user, who tries to vandalise, if it can be undone, I undo it. If it can be deleted, I place the delete template. If I can't do anything, either I inform it to admin on IRC or I just let them delete it. Is thre anything else I should tell the community?
      acagastya 08:30, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi acagastya. I must say I was out of the loop for several months or years. I am glad to see you around; this is I think one of the first times.
This is just a question for getting more background; it seems to me only tangentially related to the role. What is your level of technical experience with wikis, and with programming or scripting? Thank you. Gryllida 01:39, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Before contributing to Wikinews, I used to edit Wikipedia for a year. I am a Computer student, who has just completed first year. About technical knowledge, I would say that I have worked in JavaScript and yes, C. (CSS won't be considered as scripting language but I have also worked on the front end development.)
acagastya 11:05, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! To further illustrate this point, have you got any JavaScript code uploaded to public? This, along with PHP, is the language wiki uses. (Furthermore, administrators get access to editing some JavaScript snippets on-site. This is something not everyone engages in, but that's just one more part to it.) --Gryllida 07:53, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry for responding late, but I did not make any of the JavaScript work public. I did not work much on GitHub; as I had no idea how it would help me. Though my work on school website was available, but that was three years ago. Later, students who were junior to me changed the entire look.
acagastya 13:17, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
But yes, I do remember saving SVG file of a clock. I used canvas to draw the clock, and to animate it, I used JavaScript. Though a simple side-project, I enjoyed its simplicity and design. I would share the drive link tomorrow morning.link
acagastya 19:15, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That requires login, so I'm unable to view it. Thanks for the answer; I had moved it to maintain the discussion structure. I must say I'm a bit excited; a bit of interest in JavaScript is a good thing. We have an extra question now, below. --Gryllida 03:05, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Would you consider reviewing? (This is the resource that might be needed most; this privilege, and the corresponding responsibilities, may or may not come together with admin, even as a part of a separate request.) --Gryllida 07:53, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: I don't think I can be a reviewer. I was tangled trying to stay up to date with sports news in the month of June (plus being at home, preparing for an entrance exam). It was a busy month; I was able to create 30+ articles in one month for the first time. Few were deleted as they got stale. But, Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn failed the peer review twice before losing freshness with NPOV issues. I had to ask Pi zero to know why it was the problem. Other submissions required a lot of copyedits. I didn't proofread a couple of submissions. I don't think I am ready for it. Also to add, I placed {{delete}} template on a userpage thinking it was in main space. I feel I am not ready for either privilege at the moment. Don't know about others, but I fail when I try to evaluate myself.
acagastya 10:22, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

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Neutral at present but leaning oppose - little activity recent here save for the last month upon which to judge Acagastya's suitability; worryingly, Acagastya left Wikipedia in a huff last year (requesting a block) after another editor criticized their dealings with a vandal. Not convinced that there is enough evidence to show that Acagastya has since gained the temperament to cope with the responsibilities of an admin, even though the workload of an admin on Wikinews is much less than that on Wikipedia. Bencherlite (talk) 07:29, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Thanks for pointing it. I have an alternate account (Agastya Chandrakant (t · c · b)). I requested Pi zero to block me from editing in August. I used my college IP (14.139.242.195 (t · c · b)) for a while. But later, when I had to upload some media (Audio Wikinews), I was obliged to use the alternative account. If I count, the number of edits using my IP is greater than that of my registered accounts put together.
Also to add, the reason why I left en.wikipedia is true, it is because Rms125a@hotmail.com insulted me when I was trying to help a newbie, to understand how he/she should edit Wikipedia as the user had no idea what to do, and thus was vandalising the project.


acagastya 10:24, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Switching to Oppose - I did not realise that you did not have the "reviewer" permission at Wikinews. I cannot think of circumstances where it's appropriate to allow someone to edit the framework of the main page when the community doesn't trust that person to review the content of the main page. Also, you still seem unable to realise that you were dealing with a vandal at Wikipedia (here's a clue for you, a self-confessed vandal at that) not an innocent newbie. As you still approach this on the basis that this was just a newbie needing help, I have no confidence in your judgment. Bencherlite (talk) 23:56, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The vandal discussions are, alas, one of the big problems of Wikipedia; being an admin there requires ability to be stern-looking enough to not spend time explaining things to people who are already doing harm. The same point applies at Wikinews; as much as we help newcomers, we don't spend time deleting harmful contributions over and over. (At a point I myself had left a number of projects which I was helping to run for the reason of me being too kind to moderate them adequately. That seems to be recovering with time.) Again, I am not seeing obstacles to learning that point through experience. Gryllida 03:14, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose An editor should at least be a reviewer before requesting to be an administrator. Becoming a reviewer allows an editor to to further understand and explore how the project works and can show if you can be trusted with additional user rights. Furthermore, I'm concerned about your request to blocked and how you handled the situation with another editor on Wikipedia. Administrators have more responsibility than simply dealing with editors who vandalize articles and other pages. They need to have the ability to help new users and deal with problems that may arise on the project. Most importantly, administrators must be trusted by the community. For now, I am unable to trust that you would use administrative rights wisely. – Nascar1996 (talk • cont) 00:29, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment About reviewer vs admin. When asked, I've remarked that we have sometimes had users who were admins but not reviewers. Come to think of it, though, I can only recall two such cases; in one case, the user had been a reviewer at one time, and later gave it up; and in the other case, ultimately things didn't work out well. So I can't offer any example to refute the claim that someone who's never been a reviewer might lack some perspective on adminship. --Pi zero (talk) 00:58, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just to leave a quick note here, I was at one point a reviewer, though through my inactivity I no longer am, though curiously I still have the admin flag. —mikemoral (talk) 06:09, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ah! A third case. Though not, apparently, an exception to the principle that those who make admin have had the experience of being a reviewer. (I've a memory that the privilege expiry policy makes it easier to hang on to admin than reviewer.) --Pi zero (talk) 11:33, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Not ready", rather than oppose; to me, everything tells me that you could make a great admin, granted you hang on to the project for a bit more. (I haven't yet received a response to the last question, that of you considering reviewing things.) I trust you do not get demotivated by the discussions above. -Gryllida 03:14, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - It's nothing personal, but I don't think that the editor has enough experience. --Queen Laura/King Ethan (talk) 23:24, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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2017

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  • With opposing votes, and noting the nominee has pointedly reduced their presence on the project and relinquished other privs, this nomination isn't passing at this time.

Self-nomination: Acagastya (talk · contribs) — admin rights

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It has been almost eighteen months since I applied for this right to fight against vandalism. The amount of spammers or vandals has been consistent all these months however, there are increasingly more things to deal with right now -- like making editprotected edits, adding categories to archived articles, clearing the queue of {{speedy}} or {{abandoned}} articles, {{w}}ikifying archived articles, protect articles and redirects, block spammers, and moving pages without a redirect. I agree these aren't the only things an admin should be doing, but to be honest, whenever there is a vandal and I am on site, I have to notify an admin on Twitter, or ping admins on IRC -- most of them are afk at that time, or request a global block. I could prevent those things from happening, and address it quickly. Now, for example, there is a big list of articles to be deleted or wikified or new categories to add in. I am making lists for an admin to do that. Of the many things we are supposed to do, this might not be on the top of the priority list, but I could tackle that list. There is so much work, and I can do that so the overall backlog can be shared to do other things. Right now, if I am granted with those rights, my work would be limited to only those things I have mentioned above. I will not be crossing that boundary since I do not find myself qualified for those (since I am not aware of all the other things one can do -- just like how reviewer rights had something more that I expected it to be.)
acagastya PING ME! 17:34, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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  • Question @Acagastya: You mention adding categories to archived articles. We have some ongoing discussions on some kinds of categories, such as about league categories. How would you handle league categories (as a particular example), or these sorts of controversial questions in general, if you had admin privs? --Pi zero (talk) 01:09, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Pi zero: It is not a straight-froward yes or no question. There are multiple ways to look at this thing.
We thought about league seasons, and if we do that, we have two options. Either a match report goes to league season, or it goes to both, league season and season category. The first way would virtually kill the league category, and it would serve as internal category, because there might not be anything we can add to the category. Stories like "Bundesliga announces team of the season", "XYZ wins Bungesliga trophy", "Bundesliga to make use of Video assistant referee" would be the only things that would go to the league category. Now here is the trouble. Video assistant referee would be one story. Apart from me, there is no [active] editor who would write a football match report. For the last three seasons, Bayern Munich is winning -- the club I support. Yet I could not write even one article about it. Team of the season? I would be surprised to see an article about it. There are very less chances anyone would write that article. Moreover, categorising only on the basis of season seems wrong. It is encyclopedic. Another thing -- 1. Bundesliga has eighteen teams. Each team plays one home and one away match against seventeen teams. There are 306 matches in a season. This number for LaLiga, Serie A, or Premier League is 380. We don't produce five match reports each football season for these leagues, meaning, we might not even reach the minimum threshold needed for a category to exist. And if we are not categorising it under the league, there is no way a reader can find out about match reports, when they visit the league categories. Other news websites categories match reports under the leagues, not seasons. What would we do for the wikilinks to the league categories, if it will be -- something like an abstract base class in object oriented programming? Trust me, everyday, I think about this thing, and find how complicated this situation is. I also need to discuss with you, why you think a league match report should not be categorised under the league category. That might give another angle to it. I do feel that it would be better if we use the season-wise category, for better organisation, but we need three articles for a category to exist. If we do that, next thing to think about it should we do something similar for club categories.
Have you ever wanted to see the list of all articles published in 2013? I don't think it is possible to do at the moment, but it would make a lot of things easy. Like, finding all articles having category:Germany, category:football (soccer) and category:2013 to generate a list of those articles which would go to Bundesliga 12-13 or 13-14 category. Now, think about this, if we had a category called "articles published in 2016", wouldn't we categories India discontinues ₹500, ₹1000 denominations; releases ₹2000 and new ₹500 bills under November 14, 2016 and "articles published in 2016"? Seems a good idea, no? Similarly, if we have season category, and league category, why not add articles to both? [It will solve most of the issues we would face otherwise, but yes, we need to discuss if it is a good idea or not] Since it is a new idea, and we haven't discussed about it, right now, I think it would be the best thing to do. So, even if we don't have enough articles for a season category, it would not be a problem. But there are 619 articles in football category. So, before creating league seasons, and adding it to them, we need to think if it really is the best idea or not. I will avoid adding categories to those articles until we reach to a conclusion. Because if we decide it was not a good idea, it will take hours to revert.
TL;DR I would not to that until we decide this is the best call. If possible, I would like BRS to comment on this issue. He has shared his views for Wikinews' categorisation policy, and would open another dimension to think about possible problems. But I really think league + league season is a good idea.
•–• 18:45, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Question You have informed us that there is no AGF on wikinews , by which I assume you meant to say that Assume Good Faith is not required on wikinews. In that case I would like to ask if you routinely engage in sockpuppetry on wikimedia-owned pages in general and on wikinews pages in particular. Btw at which of your addresses do you want to be pinged? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:44, 15 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me[reply]
Um, who all are included when you say "informed us"? If you want to know about the unofficial policy of Wikinews about it, here it is: WN:never assume. I did not mean AGF is not required. I just said that there is no AGF on this project, so anyone (in that case, you) could criticise anyone. But there should be some moral/journalistic ethic/news related motive behind it. It is easy to complain about what one did wrong, in that case, you said why I was ordering people, and I think I explained why I do that. (Just in case you want shorter answer, let me give you an example. When we were born, our caretakers would change our diapers when we should shit. But after we grow up, they don't. We are supposed to shit in toilet, and clean. Ourselves. Nobody else is going to do. If you notice, the caretakers would stop doing all the tasks for us, slowly. Same applies to Wikinews. If you write something, make sure you give your 100%. I would not ask a newbie to do everything, I would even rewrite an article for them to explain how it is done. But not for a grown up wikinewsie.)
I fail to see how my RFP is related to my alternate accounts, but yes, I have more than one account. There is even a category for it is you want to see. There should be a tag on the userpage for alternative account, which I did not use for many months, but usage of those accounts are mutually exclusive, and I don't think I should tell you why I had to have alternative accounts -- at least until you establish what it has to do with my request. When not writing an article/working on hierarchy, I don't always log in to my account, when there is something really important thing I have to say, or probably a very trivial tweak to make. I have mentioned this earlier, I do not come from a place where we have uninterrupted or high speed internet connection, and to go and log in would be time consuming at times, since time is the most important thing on this project, and after all, it is a wiki -- anyone can edit. And anyone, who raises issues regarding an article/issue is totally acceptable. This will be hard for a Wikipedian to accept, but IP editors are always welcomed to write articles on Wikinews. (Or if your question was because of my signature, which changed from "acagastya" to a star emoji to a Baymax logo, with "Agastya Chandrakant" making a brief appearance -- I changed my sign.)
•–• 16:17, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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2018

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  • It appears there is only 1 person opposing this. While admin requests are not majority rule, given that the objection is based on activity level, and not "trustworthiness", I think its reasonable for the majority to rule in that matter (As activity level is not as serious a criticism as lack of trust). Thus this RFA passes in my judgement. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:48, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Green Giant (talk · contribs) — adminship

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It is an honor for me to nominate Green Giant as administrator/sysop on Wikinews. Not only do I trust Green Giant with the tools, but I also feel this user has a strong need for them, given the type of work undertaken at Wikinews. Green Giant has spent a lot of time hunting for spam and unused images and other inappropriate content which Green Giant could speedy delete given the authorization to do so.

Green Giant also has a strong Wiki resumé. Green Giant has been contributing to Wikinews since July 2015 and was awarded a tireless barnstar by Acagastya in September 2015 and a Exceptional Newcomer Award by Pi zero in October of the same year. Green Giant is already a Reviewer here. Elsewhere, Green Giant is an Administrator over at Commons and a Rollbacker at Wikipedia. Additionally, Green Giant is a Curator at Wikiversity and a Reviewer at Wikibooks.

Green Giant has my full confidence. I thank you for considering this nomination. Cheers, --SVTCobra 17:38, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have been informed that Green Giant is also a Steward. --SVTCobra 02:29, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
... and OTRS volunteer. --SVTCobra 19:38, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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Questions and comments

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Comment Green Giant became a reviewer after I had joined Wikinews and I have a fairly close look on their contribution on a regular basis. They had been inactive on the project for long stretches — looking at the contributions they might have lost reviewer bit on two occasions if PeP was taken seriously. And as someone who had to find admins on different IRC channels, go to cvn for global block request and sometimes even tweet to an admin for the ongoing vandalism/spam, I would expect all admins (even the new nominations) to be fairly active on the project — because number of admin/reviewer is misleading. Let them display frequent activity on the project for some time.
•–• 01:44, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with admins being active before and after candidacy, which is why I was going to wait a few months before nominating myself. I will point out that I’ve just recently become a steward, and for that reason alone I’m wary of standing for admin here so soon (I don’t want even the impression of hat collection, something I disapprove of). Partly I was able to stand for steward because I was quite active on other projects (mainly Commons and Wikiversity) during 2017 (and for a few years before that). Last year I was busy in real life but I now have more spare time for the foreseeable future. Acagastya, you can’t see them, but the first inactive period you refer to was broken by three deleted edits in March 2016 (not much of an excuse). However, you are correct that I should have lost reviewer permission at the end of 2017. As for being available, I’ve deleted hundreds of pages and blocked dozens of users vandals and spammers on Commons and Wikiversity over the last year, when I had a lot less free time. If I became a WN admin I would be at least as available as I was last year for Commons and Wikiversity. I hope that clarifies a few things, but please feel free to ask questions. After a short discussion with SVTCobra on their talkpage I will accept the nomination because I want to help Wikinews in any way I can. Cheers. Green Giant (talk) 02:54, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Acagastya, it would seem to me that your anecdote about hunting for an admin would be an argument for more admins at Wikinews, and not for fewer and stricter enforcement of PeP. Even if Green Giant is periodically absent from Wikinews, chances are it is because they are busy (yet available) on a different Wiki project. Cheers, --SVTCobra 03:21, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Not related to this nomination: I never said, or wish for more admins if most of them would hardly edit anything in months. I guess there are 20+ admins on the project but when the spambots were spamming, for months and all I could do is wait until pizero wakes up because there was no other active admin (not even editing-once-a-week admin) This is happening since 2016, or even before that. For the part about PeP; there should be a policy like that, I feel. Because if someone who was inactive for a decade (having the rights) edits again; them might not even know that there were so many changes on the project. If you feel PeP should not be taken seriously, vote for it and remove it. (Surprised to see your comment as you always point to policies for your points) I don’t want more number of admins because that is just an illusion. Just like the number of reviewers. For the record, pizero has admin rights on multiple projects but they don’t go missing from one project for long duration. You can say that I did not review enough articles last year; but look at the stats; I wrote ~35% of all the published articles. So in the end: regardless of who is the candidate, if I have to spend my time hunting for an admin while a vandal is set free; I would rather wait for pizero to wake up and deal with it. In 2016, I had thought about taking the mop in my hand; didn’t get to touch one. But having an admin who is hardly available for dealing with the mess is of no use. In any case, what Green Giant did recently, I feel {{testing}} would be helpful. There is a huge backlog to clear and the current admins who aren’t busy writing/reviewing should tackle that.
•–• 03:59, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
A few notes, regarding PeP. As I undertand it, the policy allows removal of rights, it does not mandate doing so. When we first applied the policy, I made a point of eliminating really old ones, from before the era of review, for which there was not some special consideration (in consultation with other Wikinewsies from before my time); and I was particularly interested to see that anyone who had left for the fork project and their activity lapsed would need to reapply since we had a couple of folks come back from the fork and abuse reviewer privs. Since then I've sometimes applied PeP, but not as aggressively unless there seemed some specific concern about the user involved. --Pi zero (talk) 19:32, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Question @Green Giant: do you really want this to go into consideration (or as you had said on talk page, you would like to wait for a few months before applying?) In any case, can you explain how are you going to balance your time (on-wiki) with various rights on different WM projects (it is directly related to your long duration of inactivity after becoming a reviewer [in late 2015?])
103.254.128.130 (talk) 19:43, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I do believe Green Giant answered both of those questions above in response to Acagastya's comment. --SVTCobra 19:53, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No, it does not answer the question about the balance. Nor it clarifies if they want to run for it or not. If they would like to accept nomination after few months, close this one and create a new request when the nominee feels ready. Re the balance — activity on Commons is different from Wikinews. Often there are media files which does not qualify for free license, which is to be taken care of. It crosses three digit figure easily.On Wikinews, the abandoned articles don’t reach that much and one admin can do it easily. There are not much admin things to do (admin+reviewer that is a different case). But purely admin thingy, like fighting vandalism, one needs to be really active — and I don’t want to be a “show-off” but I don’t think there are enough active editors as I am. And the amount of vandalism I had to watch (in last three years) silently, it outnumbers all the non-admin editors. Well but, since you didn’t have a great experience with me, I was not handed the mop.
103.254.128.130 (talk) 20:26, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
103.254.128.130 - I was going to delay the candidacy because of the 2017 inactivity here but as SVTCobra pointed out on their talkpage, the minimum requirement is two months activity (which is almost the case for my edits this year) and being trusted. I don’t think there is anything I’ve done in 12 years on Wikimedia that could be classed as untrustworthy or disruptive apart from a few instances of not understanding policies in early 2006. Indeed you’ll certainly find some angry messages from some users on my talkpages but usually they either didn’t understand policies or they were POV-warriors (point of view). I’ve generally tried to be diplomatic and polite, even with the angriest ones. As far as time management is concerned, certainly for the next couple of years I have much more flexible real-life work arrangements including being able to work from home two days a week. In 2016 and 2017 I had a lot more out-of-town assignments, often in areas with poor internet access, but I managed to keep up admin work on Commons. Last year for example I had 10,000 edits (with a break in August) and 7,000 admin actions on Commons. I tend to use recent changes to watch what’s going on and often I have recent changes open for several wikis. I can’t predict what this year will bring in terms of vandals and spambots to WN (quite probably the same as last year), but I envisage being able to devote more time to WN for at least the next couple of years. In case it isn’t clear, yes I want to run for admin now (there’s not much point in delaying now) and yes I will be able to balance my activity between wikis including reviewing some articles. Green Giant (talk) 21:24, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@103.254.128.130 If you are who you talk like you are, why are you turning this nomination into being about you? And why is it so difficult for you to be logged in? It makes conversations extremely excruciating. In the two months your nomination was open before I cast my vote, you had managed to garner one opposing vote and no supporting votes. So, no, I don't believe my vote was the deciding factor. --SVTCobra 21:28, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 Long overdue (should have commented two weeks ago): There are two questions: should Green Giant be an admin? Do we need another admin? Well, I am leaning towards support is that answer for the first question. For the second, it is an enthusiastic bold "yes". Green Giant has done more work these days as compared to most of the other admins, and the only thing that was the problem was that they could not edit the protected pages otherwise a lot of editprotected and category request would have been processed and marked completed ages ago. Without being an admin, their work for the infrastructure and tying things together was better than almost every admin. TL;DR leaning towards Support.
•–• 23:33, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

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  • Support per my own nomination. --SVTCobra 17:38, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since Green Giant has said they aren’t delaying the nomination — NOT RIGHT NOW. I do not find the user active enough on the project — long inactive period gives false hopes — which is what I have received over the last three years. I expect more activity, which is ought to take many weeks, probably months to change my decision. Other editors might disagree — but I have never felt that Green Giant has shown frequent editing. This is not undermining their contribution for other projects, but I cannot say “I support” just because they have similar rights on other projects which work differently.
    •–• 22:33, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You are free to vote as you see fit, I just want to point out that there are over 100 edits in 2018 that you can't see because they all involved tagging pages for deletion. For comparison, you have five such edits in the same period. --SVTCobra 22:50, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have just voted as “not right now” — I just saw the user contribution (which I don’t believe is the best way to — since I sometimes write articles in a single edit; and some takes more than five, for a paragraph); Green Giant’s main space activity is 320 — too low, considering they first edited in 2007; and got reviewer rights in late 2015 (why don’t you take that time range in account, SVTCobra, who many edits did I have, in that duration? — even if the count excludes my edits from static college IP, which I had used for my first OR). Okay so main space edits are not everything. One would have to do categorisation work, archiving, page protection — but I cannot think of those instances where I found Green Giant doing those things. I had attempted for a centralised dashboard for that work. Let’s consider the deleted edits since their first edit — that number is still 157 less than what I did, in my first calendar year, using this account. I don’t think any active editors would disagree about the degree of activity of Green Giant on the absolute or even the relative scale. So shall we stop discussing about the stats which anyone can see? Let the user first display serious degree of commitment to the project.
•–• 23:15, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This nomination is about adminship, not reviewership. Green Giant is already a reviewer. --Pi zero (talk) 12:21, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
OK - thanks for clarifying. Anyway I still vote in favour of this nomination. De Wikischim (talk) 13:38, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Marshmallych 16:33, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support per SVTCobra and because of obvious trustworthyness. Even if the jolly Green Giant may not have much time to help here, any trusty admin improves the situation. However, I wonder, why is this request still open? Shouldn't it have been closed months ago? Gray62 (talk) 13:55, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



  • There's no clear need, here, for sysop at this time based on the discussion. Spam cannot be released anywhere important. When admins come online, they can readily check RecentChanges; tagging it just serves to artificially inflate an edit count. There are, however, many things a new admin would be very helpful for. I hope to see you writing content, learning the project ropes, and hopefully sometime in the future joining the admin team to help with such things are archive curation. The idea of granting admin powers on the basis they only be used strictly for one specific task isn't a bad idea, per se; it's just that the project has decided not to go for it. (I recall this being attempted once before with disastrous results for the review flag.) Additionally, it's noted by yourself that you're keen to explore alternatives to your assisting with your own pet corner of site maintenance (I am aware tone can be hard to read online; I do not mean that disparagingly) and there's some discussion to the effect that chewing over the possibility of new content filters seems a good way forwards. BRS (Talk) (Contribs) 04:36, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Leaderboard (talk · contribs) - sysop

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A bit of a reluctant request, I would appreciate if I could receive sysop here.

The main point to note against me is that I don't have much news experience (hence the reluctance) - I've never written an article (and hence don't have reviewer). However, the main reason I'm requesting adminship is the high level of spam pages that I see everyday which I can't remove (which I refer to as "classic spam" due to their frequency). Yes, those aren't published. But they still shouldn't be here.

Hence, if I were to get adminship here, I do not plan to use it for anything that's news-related, including reviewing articles (if that's enabled for sysops). I'm only requesting it to combat spam (namely deleting and blocking). I can be 'sanctioned' to do only that.

For a quantification of how many pages I catch every day, take a look at my edit count. Nearly 90% of edits I make involve tagging speedy-deleted articles, and I have >200 edits. Leaderboard (talk) 13:37, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Questions and comments

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  • Comment A concern. How we interact with newcomers is, inevitably, key to recruitment, which we're pretty much always intensively focused on. Being just a bit heavy-handed in one's treatment of newcomers can have a huge impact on the future of the project, and while I'd certainly agree there's a great deal of classic spam, it's also vitally important to sift out the cases to handle more softly. In effect, handling those borderline cases can ease over into a grey area nearing reviewer territory. --Pi zero (talk) 16:01, 16 October 2018 (UTC) --Gryllida (chat) 23:56, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I need to remark that I would be personally glad to support this request because I am tired of the spam. I presume that when asked about news writing you can direct people to the water cooler or the articles talk page as appropriate. Do you have evidence to support this presumption? Have you been approached about content work here or at Wikibooks or elsewhere before? How did you handle the requests? --Gryllida (chat) 23:56, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Anything from mw:Manual:Combating spam or similar that you recommend to decrease manual work? --Gryllida (chat) 23:56, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • How would you semi-automate the deletion of spam? --Gryllida (chat) 23:56, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • And what is the most important barrier to your participation in "direct" (writing of new content) content work on-wiki? Do you not have a time slot large enough to make a bigger edit? Or there is something else stopping you? (This is probably not directly related to the request, however, I think it would be an interesting point to raise, even if tangentially.) --Gryllida (chat) 23:56, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: Wikibooks' equivalent is Using Wikibooks, which is where I would direct users to (or the Reading Room) if asked about content work there.
My recommendation is to implement proper abuse filters - sorely lacking at Wikinews. I asked Pi zero about this before, but he didn't seem interested at it because he felt that it could drive new users away. In contrast, Wikibooks' abuse filters do their job very well and Wikinews' "classic spam" occurs far less frequently. I do plan to start importing some abuse filters to see if they could decrease manual work (obviously testing them before deployment). In fact, it took a user this to bypass the filter: 🅱🅸🅽...
As for the lack of "direct" content work, I'm currently not interested in writing news articles for now, though I occasionally make minor edits. Leaderboard (talk) 09:20, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Leaderboard. Is there a link to this past discussion of abuse filters? --Gryllida (chat) 10:53, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: It was over IRC, so unfortunately I don't have a link. Leaderboard (talk) 12:19, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Although we do have to be very careful not to impose filters that interfere with recruitment —and in that regard any damage done is permanent (there's no second chance to make a first impression), so it's a very big deal— I did not mean to give the impression I was rejecting the importation of some of those filters from Wikibooks. I think my point was that before importing any given filter I would want to vet it carefully to be confident it wasn't going to do that sort of harm; so it might or might not get rejected upon vetting. This goes to the concern I was expressing earlier about the need to be selectively gentle when dealing with possible spam. --Pi zero (talk) 13:40, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have experience modifying, creating, or importing the filters, demonstrated at another wiki? --Gryllida (chat) 23:51, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Beyond very minor modifications at Wikibooks (JackPotte, not I, made the filters), no. While an admin imported some of them to Wikiquote, it did cause some adverse effects, with a significantly higher rate of false-positives than what I saw at Wikibooks. Leaderboard (talk) 08:00, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ta. I'm not competent enough to supervise this hard work. I reckon that it needs to be done though. Let's see what others are willing to do. --Gryllida (chat) 00:40, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of things we can observe:

  1. There is a problem of spam. And that is nothing new, which I have been observing from Nay 1, 2015--the day I started monitoring Wikinews' RC. Also, this problem is not unique to this project.
  2. It would be really helpful if there was someone who could promptly prevent things from being spoiled by a vandal. I would have to wait half a day for an admin to wake up, or search for other on random IRC channels, or even tweet to other admin hoping that they would clean up the mess which they had manifested during their RfP.

And sometimes, if the user has some rights elsewhere on other project, that can be counted in their benefit. However, there are lots of users who would occasionally come by, tag articles for deletion. Yes, there is a need to have a responsive, attentive admin; but that does not mean anyone who has tagged articles for deletion will pass the cut. I also wonder why Bddpaux (t · c · b) finds this an interesting idea, as this "idea" has been used so many times (on various wikiprojects). An admin needs to do more than just deleting the "spam". There are times when it is tricky to strike the balance, to make understand the person how things should be; to look for if something is actually an article and if it appeared as spam because the user lacks experience on this project. This is just a fraction of what one needs to master for deleting the pages. There is a thing about page protection, archiving, protecting main space redirects, modifying and listening to {{editprotected}} requests. One needs to know the project in-and-out to be able to use admin rights in their entirety. Otherwise, anyone who marks articles for deletion could be granted the rights. There are so many tasks pending since late 2015-early 2016, which were not taken care of till earlier of this year. There are editors with admin rights who do not process editprotected requests because they are not confident (problem is not that they are unaware of, it is just that they have used this excuse so many times!)

Oh, well, I would not emphasise on those stupid filters and triggers who has no idea about being a human, who would trigger at the wrong time, relegating me and taking away my privs. If those things worked, we would have bots for adminship who could delete spam. I can not say about other projects, however on a news related wiki, a human interaction is required more than a chunk of code handling things.

Again, an admin who is restricting themselves from performing many admin-related tasks will hardly make a difference. If there is more spam, current admins would take more time, but would eventually remove it. It would be really helpful if someone who had a skillset more than that. For which they need to know the project in-and-out.
•–• 05:30, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your second point is something which I've experienced many times (and for some reason Wikinews isn't GS-enabled, which prevents those users from helping either). While the problem of spam does exist in other projects as well, Wikibooks receives less spam (especially "classic spam") than Wikinews does. Leaderboard (talk) 08:00, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As best I recall (though I'd feel the need, very reluctantly, to do some intensive wiki-archaeology if the subject were seriously raised), we didn't want global sysops here brodly becuase of the differentness of Wikinews culture and the unintended damage that someone with admin privs could do here. --Pi zero (talk) 13:12, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I really can't see what more Leaderboard can offer, which anyone who combats cross-wiki vandal can't. Maybe they should familiarise themselves with the project; and the best way is to by participating in content writing, which is the key to next steps for various inner thing to be known about the project.
•–• 11:20, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If spam was well managed here, then I probably wouldn't be driven enough to request adminship. There aren't many who "combats cross-wiki vandal" here. Also, it wouldn't be incorrect to state that my experience in handling spam here would, in a sense, help in getting at least the minimum "inner thing" that I should know (after all, I do often read content here).
In all fairness, you really did not spend much time to know how many people come by, randomly, and take files for deletion. Locally, Green Giant and even I had informed admins on and off-wiki. No, just deleting spam will not give the overall inner picture nor will just "reading" provide the entire overview, to be honest. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Acagastya (talk • contribs) 12:04, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(Btw, Green Giant appears to have vanished from the sisterhood last month, with their last multiple-edits-per-day on September 6, one edit September 12 and one on September 21, and nothing since.) --Pi zero (talk) 13:37, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 I think they mentioned they would be going off-wiki. Not sure when their break ends. However, I don't think it is relevant here. Nor does that undo all the deletions they tagged or the FTC requests.
•–• 15:10, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(Quite right, it's an aside, hence my parentheses. Don't think I'd heard about a break; good to know.) --Pi zero (talk) 17:03, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
CommentTell you what: let's take a deep breath here. Are you willing to HELP this project? Are you willing to help this project be better at doing what it does? Then, if so:how about you come here and do some very simple copy editing of articles that are in the development phase? That's our VERY SIMPLE WAY to get started around here. Drop in a comma, take out a semi colon......that type of stuff. 'I want to help the way I want to help.' doesn't work very well around her until you've earned your place amongst the tribe. I'm not being a jerk, I promise!! The newbie-est user in the whole wide world is VERY WELCOME to come here and do day-to-day stuff like that! How about you start 'washing dishes' (so-to-speak)....and we'll see where things go from there? --Bddpaux (talk) 16:23, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously, I'm willing to help this project, otherwise I wouldn't bother to tag pages in the first place. From the comments I've gathered it seems that the concern is my lack of "direct" experience (as expected). That being said, it should be noted that I'm not necessarily looking for my being a sysop as the only solution; if someone else can do the job better, so be it. Also, I suggested that you allow GS to delete this so that I can bug them instead of tagging classic spam over and over again. Or just implement filters which can catch spam like we do at Wikibooks. Or create a group that allows me to delete pages and nothing else. I reluctantly simply applied for adminship because there was no other way (and tagging pages isn't enough, contrary to Pi zero's comment that I'm helpful enough with that).
and about @Bddpaux:'s suggestion to contribute directly? Well, Wikinews is surely interesting. But I don't have the time to 'throw' myself into the project. While I regularly read the articles and policies around here (and occasionally make the odd fix or two), I just can't commit to writing news at this time. And even if my adminship request gets thrown out, I don't intend to "run away hurt and mad" at this time; I'm used to it. Leaderboard (talk) 18:42, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

[edit]
  • Oppose Truthfully, I don't feel it'd be wise to give someone the admin bit over spam issues without a strong sense of the pulse of the project. They're helpful with their current status. --Pi zero (talk) 19:42, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose ....for the moment. (See my above comment). If XE doesn't run away hurt and mad, then maybe XE is willing to help this project. I like to say, 'In church, there's never any shortage of people who're called to beat their bongos for Jesus! But then, the floor buffer appears, and people start vanishing at high rates.'--Bddpaux (talk) 16:26, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I guess the comments above clearly highlighted that adminship for the basic level of "aye mate, will clean up the spam for ye", here is the third "no". Also, a big no for GS (global sysop) for those who wondered about it, like I had to.
    •–• 22:40, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • not ready per above I guess...
    But perhaps propose a specific set of filters or a filter choice strategy on the forum and someone would consider importing them for you? I would be glad to involve team work if it helps this situation to move. --Gryllida (chat) 22:51, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


2019

[edit]


The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



acagastya (talk · contribs) — adminship

[edit]

[Self nomination] I have been editing enwn for more than four years, and I know the dynamic and of project fairly well. I have been a reviewer for more than two years, and I am also a an accredited reporter. For what it is worth, I am a license reviewer on Commons (where I have to check for copyright status and licensing-related activities); which happened earlier this year in February.

I want to take up the categorisation process, wikification of old articles, occasional counter-vandalism and spam actions; and maybe improving filters. I am confident I have the inside insight for the mop and the bucket. (Basically working on all the tasks that I mentioned in the admin dashboard) -- •–• 18:44, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Stats

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Questions and comments

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Thanks for volunteering. Someone just pointed me to this request today and I am amazed at how old it is. Just a quick question, do you have prior experience working with filters? Many thanks. Regards, --Gryllida (talk) 22:43, 11 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, @Gryllida:. Filters is something that has often caused trouble to me personally, getting triggered at the wrong time even for the genuinely good actions or heading titles. I remember when I had to write an article, and I guess it was the fifth article for the day, or maybe sixth, and the Abuse Filter triggered and decided to take away my privileges. While I could not get into the details why it happened, as I asked -revi and Pi zero, and maybe even Green Giant looked into this matter, I think Pi zero suggested it was because I created an article which had "poo" in it. That title was about "Liverpool". I think it was a bad regex pattern. Such annoying incidents had lead me to try the AbuseFilter extension on my local wiki, when I was trying things on the home wiki. It has been a long time now, since then, and I don't remember it at the top of my head, and so, yes I have very basic idea of filters. However, it has been so long that I don't remember any of it at the top of my head.
•–• 18:00, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, the Scunthorpe problem. Plaguing people who live in Penistone, Liverpool or Scunthorpe since swear checkers were a thing. Seemplez 09:15, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Acagastya (t · c · b), thanks. As I understand that wiki is sitting on unstable Internet and is not available for experimenting? Just checking as I had a wiki at localhost once but the Australian Internet upload speeds and stability are quite miserable.
(I would perhaps also invite @Green Giant, Blood Red Sandman, Mikemoral, Bddpaux, Microchip08, Tyrol5, Pathoschild, TUFKAAP, SVTCobra:, sysops who have been active in the last year, to comment or vote at their discretion.) Gryllida (talk) 02:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
@Acagastya: Apologies for not commenting earlier. I know you don’t like being pinged unless it is important but this is important. Before I cast my !vote, could you please provide brief answers to the following questions?

  • This is your third nomination for administrator. Could you outline how you have changed and improved since your previous nominations, with reference to a concern raised at a previous nomination e.g. you were accused of not having the right temperament for an administrator?
  • You requested a block on your account about this time last year because of security concerns. Without giving details of the security concern, are you confident your account is secure? Have you taken additional measures to secure your account?
  • You have mentioned several admin actions which you want to carry out. Which one will be your priority and why?
  • An upset user leaves a foul-mouthed message on your talk page because you deleted their unpublished article, which had been abandoned for five days. Without going into too much detail, how will you respond to the user?
  • You have recently deleted a Userpage that was tagged as a spam/advertising page; you’ve also blocked the user for good measure. They send you an email and it seems they misunderstood what to put on a Userpage. What is your response and why?
  • Wikinews is being plagued by fake articles promoting casinos and online gambling. You feel that the user accounts are probably linked to each other. What actions can you take to try to stem this onslaught, apart from blocking users and deleting pages?
  • How many administrators does it take to change a light bulb? This is a rhetorical question! Cheers. --Green Giant (talk) 00:27, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Green Giant: Hi. I would sequentially answer your questions.
  1. "not having the right temperament for an administrator" -- well, that time I was interacting with another veteran with their strong opinions of how things should or should not happen. I can go on explaining that situation and how it has improved, or I can, in a timely manner say one grows on-wiki, they learn new things. Experience, working with others even if they disagree with you: that leads to developing new skills. Certain things are learned passively. One of them is this. Now I know better to peacefully resolve the situation by proper communication channel.
  2. Regarding my blocked account, it is important to explain the situation. That time, I was unable to login to my account. If you notice, I choose to write my username in lowercase. And while signing in, when I typed "acagastya", it would just not let me login. It was just a few days after many people received a spurious notification and many people pushed for changing passwords + requesting 2FA. That time I could not figure out why I could not log in, but I did not want to take any chances. If my account was compromised (which I was later to learn was not the case, else I would have received notifications about it, and nor was my 40+ characters long password compromised) it could have been misused. I requested Pi zero to block it, I requested off-wiki, an indefinite block until I figure out why I could not log in. Cleared the cache of the system, restarted the computer, updated the browser, and voila! The login worked. But only when I used "Acagastya" instead of "acagastya". I never faced that issue again, but it is scary. If it were my Flickr account, I would not be panicked to that level. But I really understand how one can abuse the rights they get with holding the reviewer bit, so it was best to have a block than to have anyone potentially abuse the account. It was not the case and FWIW, my credentials is well above 55 characters long, which would make it extremely difficult to break. For curious heads, Birthday problem.
  3. Admin actions that I wanted to carry out...It has changed over time based on the context. At one time, enwn had heavy spamming and trolling happening. That time, I would have wanted to block the malicious accounts and nuke/revert/delete their edits. Later on, I went on to make {{testing}}. Right now, I would focus on populating categories, and creating new ones. Fixing the categorisation of the old articles. It was well established back in 2018 during the FIFA World Cup that we need to have a better categorisation process. So right now, that is what I would start with. And then, I will take up the rest of the entries of that template.
  4. Losing an article is always terrible. But it is important to respond anyone nicely, in a way they can comprehend. Sometimes people have high expectations with some article. I had. And often I have lost many good articles. I was never foul-mouth for losing the article, but I know that time what worked for me. We are volunteers and we try to do as much as we can. Sometimes it is not enough. But that does not mean we should give up. This wiki is not into being because editors gave up. Sometimes we don't get what we expected. But we should move on quickly. If you are married to an article, you are yet to realise it is better to not think much about the article after it is either published or gone stale. Once a mentor told me: "I learned from my father, always leave things better than you found them." Yeah, so I would not use these things, I was lost in the moment, but I would feel sorry for their shattered expectations, and quietly explain them how they could have improved, and tell them: "sometimes even with the best efforts of all people, we lose some really good articles. But we should not forget we are a team. And the team needs you, as much as they need anyone else."
  5. If I find an userpage which is tagged as spam/advertising, I would make sure that is the case before making any decision. If it is the case I would first delete the page, and leave a talk page message to the user about it. If I could hide edits and keep the recent most non-spamy page, I would do that. I would explain to them what is or is not allowed. If I had to block them, I would explain they why I had done that. And if they were to send me an email, I would first say I had informed them on their talk what is and is not allowed. Looking at the contributor's history, if there is no other fishy activity, I would grant them one chance. I would tell them about it, and also to be very careful from the next time. If I am not sure about the account, I would discuss with them and tell them I am not convinced if I can trust them yet. And then, I would see how they respond.
  6. I am not sure about this, but I have discussed about this with other admins. I think the term for this is "range block" where a range of IP addresses are blocked. I don't know how to do it, but I can ask other admin how to do it. Learn it and remember for the upcoming times. Also, I would see if it would be helpful to CU that account, and request someone with CU rights. Cirt had released themselves from that role, so I would have to find someone else. Perhaps Bawolff?
  7. While it looks like a trivial question at first, however it is not a wise thing to make the decision without properly understanding the deeper meaning. When a bulb at your home is dysfunctional, it has to be replaced. It may or may not be the most pressing issue. There could be other things happening which are higher on the priority queue. And when a bulb is to be changed, one does not want to go out to buy just a single bulb. So it is also important to know how urgently we need to replace it. Just because it is boring is no reason to neglect it. And then, when a bulb is to be replaced, it is to be done with great care. Not only choosing the right bulb -- because on-wiki, this metaphorical bulb may prove to be very costly -- but to install it properly is to be taken care of. You don't want to electrocute yourself. In other words, one should know what they are doing. Do only if you know you can. Else call the expert rather than burning the house down. It takes 1 admin to do that. If they know how to. Else it would take an infinite number of admins, and it still would not be done, if all of them are clueless about it.
    •–• 11:19, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent answers. You have numbered your responses so I will give me reaction in like manner.
No.1 was about personal reflection. If an admin had been criticised by other users, they should not become combative. We see the worst of this type of behaviour very occasionally on ENWP, where an admin blocks a user they are in dispute with.
No.2 was about being careful with your account because you will have access to sensitive tools. You’ve demonstrated this is the case and I applaud the lengths you’ve gone to.
No.3 and 4 were about a bread-and-butter issue for admins - the "wronged user". Whether or not they have been wronged and no matter how many swear words they use about you, a good admin is responsive to such contact and tried to calm things down.
No.5 was about recognising that there are limits to what we can do in the face of such concerted efforts by spammers. Being unsure about what to do beyond blocking and deleting is absolutely fine. What I was looking for is the recognition that sometimes you need to ask for help and you shouldn’t be hesitant about it. By the way, there are indeed no users with CU or oversight on ENWN currently, so don’t hesitate to go to m:Steward requests whenever the need arises.
No.6 really was just to lighten the mood but I do like how you’ve deconstructed it. :)
--Green Giant (talk) 14:41, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: Every reviewer is aware of the policy of not making any substantial edits after 24 hours of publication. That is because of the archiving policy. The same applies for the archived articles. The cases like: fixing the links, inserting missing image credit, marking a broken source url, adding or removing categories, adding wikilinks to the articles, removing hard redirects where not necessary in favour of {{w}} template are some of the scenarios where editing an archived article is appropriate. Necessary? Depends on case to case. Some are on the high priority basis: some are not.
•–• 16:18, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Acagastya (t · c · b), I do not have any substantial experience with category creation. Just to make sure we are on the same page (someone correct me if I am wrong):
  • I have seen some reviewers edit archives to correct wikilinks after they have created a new category. For example, if a volunteer were to create Category:India, they would go through the archives and correct links to India and replace them with India, which is a redirect to the category.
  • I have seen categories be created only if a new article has been published recently which needs a category which does not yet exist, and can be populated with at least five members.
Would you say this is an accurate description of how things are currently done?
How do these observations correspond to your principles? Do they agree?
Thank you a lot for your responses. Gryllida (talk) 10:11, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: I would not be answering sequentially, but breaking the response in smaller points.
  • There was a time when {{w}} didn't exist and volunteers would link to en.wp by typing [[w:India]] (I call it as a hard local link). This is called a hard link and had its disadvantages.
  • Part of the work is to convert them to {{w}} links which is smart enough to see if the page exists locally or not. It can also handle suppressing foreign redirects or forcing foreign redirects.
  • The conversion of {{w}} to hard-local-link is something I used to do, yes. But it is not because a local category of India (for example) exists. It is the category exists (which should also contain a threshold articles in it) plus that scenario must warrant local link.
  • There are some cases, which I can't recall right now, which require foreign links. For them, local hard links should not be used. Instead, {{w}} should be used with forced foreign link. One must keep in mind if a local link is necessary or not. And then proceed with the change of links.
  • Creation of category is not dependent on how recent is an article published(which is directly related to the category). At least I have never seen anyone enforce that.
  • Category Creation warrants a threshold number of candidate articles which can populate the category. It was five articles, but I have seen sometimes the number is relaxed to three articles.
  • For example, Category:Ed Sheeran just has four articles.
  • If you were to create a category (assuming you did not have admin bits), the procedure I recommend is to find at least five articles (good if you can find all the articles), create the category page using the required template, go to talk page and list all the candidate articles. You should then place {{Fill this category}} template for an admin to take care of it. After that, please make a list of all the mainspace redirects, that are to be created. (In case of the example: India, India and Republic of India are candidates to be redirected to Cat:India). Make sure you explain why those articles should belong to that category, and why that redirect should exist. Have a look at Category talk:Felix Brych for the example.
    •–• 11:53, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
My take on some of this, fwiw.
  • In recent years, three published articles is the category-creation threshold we've aspired to; it used to be a bit higher, before {{w}} made new categories easier to wrangle. Occasionally I've set up a category thinking there were at least three, only to come up short because, on closer inspection, some of those mentions weren't really categorizable. When that happens, sometimes I delete the category, or sometimes (one would think, with two articles) I just let it stand. Once or twice, I've created a category for a person knowing there were just two articles; in the case I recall, the second article was their obituary, there was realistically no chance there'd ever be a third article, it seemed really desirable to have a category for them, and there seemed nothing to be gained from not having one.
  • Once a new category has been fully populated, I would create one or more mainspace redirects to it. I'd wait till it's fully populated so we don't send readers to an incomplete category. A recent example has proven quite complicated, in this regard; I feel I haven't yet fully populated Category:Executive Office of the President of the United States (as noted on its talk page). The creation of mainspace redirects instantly causes {{w}} to those targets to link locally (unless the calls have parameter foreign=force). Sometimes, some of those links to a redirect are articles that maybe should be categorized after all; so, whenever converting a {{w}} call to a hard local link, I'll pause to consider categorization.
--Pi zero (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(Btw: we usually create categories for things mentioned in current news because (a) we're reminded of those topics and (b) we figure readers are especially likely to have an interest in those topics, but we do sometimes create categories for stuff that has nothing recent; e.g., yesterday I set up Category:Kathmandu.) --Pi zero (talk) 15:01, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Acagastya:, thank you. I agree that recently published article is not relevant for category creation. You mention editing archives to correct links like w:India to {{W|India}}, for categories which do not exist. Is this correct? Do you intend to actively clean archives like this in cases when no other edits to the archive are needed? This may require millions of edits... --Gryllida (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
@Gryllida: part of the job, when you are given the mop and the bucket is to clean it. It might be an ever increasing impossible task, but someone has to do it. Might not be the most important thing to do, but it is surely something we can't ignore.
•–• 01:51, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Closed as promoted. --Pi zero (talk) 14:32, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gryllida (talk · contribs) — bureaucratship

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Gryllida is one of the valuable and trusted Wikinewsies. Gry's skillsets extends to wonderful support for user script and gadgets. Currently, they hold admin rights, reviewer rights; they are on the Commons' OTRS team, and they are accredited reporter. I trust Gryllida, and would like to nominate them for b'crat, provided they accept the nomination.

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Not a credible request at this time. --Pi zero (talk) 12:48, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Zacharycook543 (talk · contribs) — bureaucratship

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I will like to request bureaucratship -- Zacharycook543

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  • Comment You have no experience on this project at all. Your account has only existed for a couple of hours, and most of the edits you've made on the wikimedia sisterhood as a whole have been requesting elevated rights on various projects. That's not a productive way to approach the projects. Make yourself useful on the projects, and over time show that you're worthy of an elevated level of trust. There'll be plenty of time later for you to decide whether you can help some project by wielding some elevated privilege somewhere. --Pi zero (talk) 13:58, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Oppose The user lacks experience, and since making the request -- they have not made any edits.
•–• 11:12, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Well, 7 oppose and 6 support. Maybe if user gets re-involved, we should look at it again. Closed as not successful.--Bddpaux (talk) 17:07, 24 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Blood Red Sandman (talk · contribs) — bureaucratship

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Hi. Blood Red Sandman has been one of the most important editors on Wikinews. BRS was away from the project for several months, for genuine reasons, and now they are back. They lost the b'crat bis due to PeP. A trustworthy editor, an AR, reviewer and admin; I trust BRS with b'crat rights and would like to nominate them to regain these privs, provided they accept this nomination. --•–• 07:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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  • Support as nominator.
    •–• 07:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose didn't meet the activity requirements of an administrator or reviewer (see Wikinews:Privilege expiry policy); before June 1, 2020 no edits or log actions since February 2019. The rights weren't removed, and the user may be active again (I say may to avoid assuming anything, noting that so far all of their edits since returning have been related to the creation of a single category) but until they are a more active participant in the community again I cannot in good conscience support granting more rights, especially in light of the fact that wikinews' need for bureaucrat actions is quite low. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 08:00, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Update to reiterate oppose after it was noted that this is regaining the privileges: policy says that "A period of re-acclimation with the project, being active, becoming familiar with current policies and observing current use of said privileges may be followed with fast-tracked request for the rights to be reinstated." - no such period has yet to take place as far as I can tell, so this request may not be timely. That being said, the fast-tracked procedure requires "at least two users currently trusted with similar or greater privileges", as well as "no doubts [being] expressed nor expected", and thus does not apply here as doubts have been expressed (by me) and there is only 1 user with similar or greater privileges (bureaucrat). --DannyS712 (talk) 08:22, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Policies regarding b'crat did not change during the time of BRS's inactivity. So a "said period" is not warranted. We do have two users with similar or greater privs. As far as "no doubts" is concerned, expressing concerns over not-spending-enough-time learning updated policies when the relevant policies were not change is not a legitimate doubt.
•–• 08:42, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The policy says that a period of re-acclimation is called for - policies can be changed, but for now this is the policy. As for whether my doubt is "legitimate", my doubt was about not being an active member of the community, not about learning updated policies. There is no criteria in the policy for what is a "legitimate" doubt, nor does the word "legitimate" appear in the policy at all, and I resent the misrepresentation of my concerns, and the mischaracterization of them as illegitimate. --DannyS712 (talk) 08:47, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyS712: To better understand your position (without taking any position on any of this myself, atm): is your objection solely about activity level; and if so, does that imply that there is a level of activity at which you would withdraw your objection? --Pi zero (talk) 12:46, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
My biggest objection is regarding activity, but it is not my sole objection. That does imply that there is a level of activity at which I would withdraw that objection; I can't say what that level is, but w:I know it when I see it --DannyS712 (talk) 13:03, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment None of what was said above has anything to do with regaining the privs. But let's wait for a few days.
•–• 08:08, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
True, but the nomination did not at the time specify that they were regaining the privileges (I responded at Special:Permalink/4567478#Blood_Red_Sandman_(talk_·_contribs)_—_bureaucratship, before you changed the nomination statement in Special:Diff/4567481) so it would make sense for what I said not to have anything to do with regaining the privileges, because that was only first mentioned afterwards. --DannyS712 (talk) 08:17, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Had to update because you did not know BRS's history on this project, and very likely did not see their talk page.
•–• 08:21, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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