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Disallow Meta bureaucrats to administer global accounts
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Description

In Bug https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13810 the meta bureaucrats were given after a very short discussion in the meta Babel the rights to administer wikimedia wide the global accounts. After some discussion on the stewards-l, this seems not appropriate, not desirable since:

  • Bureaucrats on meta have no special election besides the one for admin.
  • Meta admins are elected to perform *local* duties, not crosswiki duties.
  • The unmerging of accounts is not appropriately logged

Until there is real community consensus (not only Babel community) this change should probably be undone.


Version: unspecified
Severity: normal
URL: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13810

Details

Reference
bz14461

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 21 2014, 10:11 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz14461.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

spacebirdy wrote:

P.S. there already have been incidents when crats deleted global accounts although there had been a warning on the request page not to do so until bug 14330 is solved (and the affected users _had_ automatic created accounts).
Account deletions (in contrary to article deletions) can't be undone but can cause real trouble for the affected users. Thanks.

(In reply to comment #1)

P.S. there already have been incidents when crats deleted global accounts
although there had been a warning on the request page not to do so until bug
14330 is solved (and the affected users _had_ automatic created accounts).
Account deletions (in contrary to article deletions) can't be undone but can
cause real trouble for the affected users. Thanks.

It can be undone by users. It couldn't because of software bugs, and that wasn't fault of bureaucrats. Some stewards also ignored a red notice and deleted global accounts affected by bug 14330. So that doesn't make a difference between bureaucrats and stewards

I'd suggest people to move discussion back to meta pages and don't bring our flame to Bugzilla.

lar wrote:

Meta admins do in fact administer things that are global... the interwiki map (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map) and the global blacklist, just to name two.

Nevertheless, although I hold local meta 'cratship, (gotten by election, prior to the policy change granting it to all admins on request after a waiting period) I agree that this change has not worked out for the best and ought to be undone. I believe per common practice, voting here won't convince the devs, a consensus will need to be shown. However it's not clear to me whether it is a local (meta) community consensus, or a consensus among stewards, or some other consensus, that is needed. Many stewards, including myself, feel this does need undoing.

VasilievVV, perhaps you could include a pointer to where you think discussion should be carried out.

(In reply to comment #4)

VasilievVV, perhaps you could include a pointer to where you think discussion
should be carried out.

I opened discussion at the babel. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Promoting_Meta_bureaucrats_access_to_Special:CentralAuth . I'll prmote it using mailing lists and site notice

It has almost been a month since there is very clear community consensus. Could the change please be reverted to comply with the clear community consensus? Thanks a lot!

lar wrote:

Consensus does seem quite clear. Is there anything that some developer is waiting on to flip this off again? Presumably it's a very simple change (guess, so maybe not)... the consensus is overwhelming, in my view, and a large number of people have participated (by meta standards) so I'm assuming there is a technical reason, or it just hasn't been gotten to? I think I speak for many (the bug has 17 votes as well) when I say I'd appreciate it if this were addressed as soon as is practical and convenient.

Presumably nobody got around to it, as there doesn't seem to be any functional utility to restricting administration of something that requires a fair amount of administration.

Done.