Forum:Global usergroups

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This thread was archived on 10 March 2019 by Cqm.

Hi everyone,

At this point there is no formal documentation of policies on what global usergroups exist and what users in them should be responsible for. As such, I'd like to take this opportunity to define two groups:

  • Director
  • Sysadmin

For reference, Sysadmin already exists. Director does not yet exist, but it seems useful to have a group to identify directors and enable them to perform any necessary duties. I propose that both groups recieve all of the rights currently assigned to Sysadmins. Said list can be viewed on Special:ListGroupRights, and there's nothing obvious that looks like it should be restricted to sysadmins. In essence, both groups are able to do anything on any of the Weird Gloop wikis.

Moving forward to what these rights should be used for:

Director
  • Edits, deletions, blocks, etc. inline with the work of a director. This could be linked to legal concerns, e.g. copyright infringements or GDPR compliance.
  • Should not be used in place of local admins/bureaucrats except in situations where it is not possible for local admins/bureaucrats to complete an action, e.g. no bureaucrats are available to add sysop rights to a user. This should be discouraged and only used in rare circumstances.
  • Should not be used as part of normal editing. For example, if a director can delete a page but is not an admin, they should nominate it for deletion through the usual methods available to non-admins.
  • Managaing user rights on meta, as per a to-be-defined process for requesting them. Directors are not expected to maintain meta, but should support users who will as necessary.

Edit: The proposal has been reduced to defining the scope of what sysadmins are responsible for.

Sysadmins
  • Edits, deletions, etc. that are directly related to code or server maintenance. Where possible these actions should be temporary and reverted when appropriate, e.g. testing parser function usage to help debugging.
  • Other actions as requested by the board of directors. These should ideally come from the board as a whole and could include technical changes that directors are uncomfortable or not experienced enough to perform.

Most of this is off the top of my head, so there may be holes in what can and can't be done. Feel free to suggest amendments if that's the case or there's something you disagree with. cqm talk 00:45, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi everyone,

Thanks everyone for your comments so far. I don't feel it's worth pursuing the director group given the reponse thus far and have reduced the proposal to defining the sysadmin role instead. I'd appreciate if those who have added their thoughs so far could take another look and update their reponse where applicable. cqm talk 01:24, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

Comment - I'm questioning whether it's a good idea to give user rights to Gloopy directors. I don't see a strong case for it being necessary, and I think it gives individual board members more power than (at least I) initially intended -- in my view, the board isn't really the place to get your hands dirty, and I don't see a scenario where urgent on-wiki actions would be part of a director's duties. ʞooɔ 00:56, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Strong oppose - Local admins can take care of local issues. We certainly have enough of them to handle anything that pops up. Granting such broad rights to anyone across the board is a very bad idea from my point of view; this is returning to Staff types of power which would be unnecessary. Furthermore, if grandfathering wasn't an issue before, allowing these to be combined will certainly make it a problem (or at least more probelmatic than it needs to be). User:Coelacanth0794 00:57, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Oppose - sounds boring and unnecessary --cUYuYGL.png Shockstorm 00:59, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Oppose/comment? - I don't understand why directors should be given the same powers as sysadmins? They don't need 99% of the tools listed for their role? If anything, the maximum they should be given is admin rights. Talk-to Kelsey 01:00, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the amendment, the I'm a bit concerned the roles are too vague. Perhaps "technical changes that directors are uncomfortable or not experienced enough to perform." could be expanded upon. What changes specifically?
Also regarding "Other actions as requested by the board of directors", this is vague too; does this mean directors can demand what they want from the sysadmins? Is the community informed? Etc. Talk-to Kelsey 02:34, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Oppose - I can't think of a scenario where a global director usergroup would be a necessary. In the event of copyright infringements, local admins should be notified and it should be left to their discretion. Additionally, it's my understanding that system administrators deal with things that could be easily abused, and I'm not too keen on giving directors any more power than sysop. - dDbvitC.pngScuzzy Metahib8CAd.png 01:13, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Strong oppose any rights to Directors - It is the board's role to notify administrators if any content needs to be removed - they are not the ones responsible for removing the content. Such rare circumstances (eg no bureaucrat online to give sysop rights) can be on hold until a bureaucrat is online. Haidro (talk) 01:13, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Comment - wat... wat... wat... I agree with Kelsey. Meeeeerds msg 01:16, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Hastag Nope - 86 the directors getting any sort of powers past the ones they may already have. TylerJarret (Talketh) 01:25, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Oppose - As per Kelse. Kate msg 02:29, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Oppose - The proposed policy is too restricting and sparse, so I've created an #Alternative Proposal. - TehKittyCatTalk Wikian-Book 05:49, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Oppose - Too limited for the expected responsibilities our System Administrators already exercise and utilize. In the aspect of a member of the Board of Directors, any rights should only remain on Meta and not the individual wikis themselves. The only approach that I can see that might work for the board is to have a new user group that is a carbon copy of the "Jagex" user group, just listed as Director instead. - Ryan PM 08:54, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Alternative Proposal

Here is a proposed policy for [[Meta:Sysadmins]] as I feel the current proposal is too sparse.

Sysadmins, also known as system administrators, serve an important role on maintaining the Weird Gloop wikis.

  • The sysadmins are currently Jayden and TehkittyCat, both administrators over on RuneScape Wiki.
  • They are the only paid members of the Weird Gloop wikis, working as independent contractors responsible for the technical setup and upkeep of the Weird Gloop server systems.
    • For this reason they are additionally held accountable to the board and expected to follow its directives.
    • Due to this conflict of interest, they are unable to serve as board members, but are retained as the board sees fit to provide technical advice.
  • Sysadmins are expected to avoid the appearance of acting officially on behalf of Weird Gloop Ltd.
    • This means contact with third parties should pertain to memes, technical work, or to other conduct as permitted on individual wikis.
  • In order to carry out their role, they are members of the sysadmin global user group, which encompasses the user rights of bureaucrats, along with checkuser and other system administrative rights, but this does not constitute a bureaucratic role.
  • On Meta Wiki, they effectively serve the role of administrators, with additional function, as Meta Wiki acts as the global wiki for various extensions, such as AbuseFilter, and hosts shared gadgets.
  • In carrying out their role, they are permitted to carry out temporary actions for testing and debugging across the Weird Gloop wikis.
  • They are permitted to use bot accounts as needed for their work.
  • They are permitted to conduct anti-vandalism work, such as banning if needed.
  • Outside of carrying out their role, they are expected to follow the policies of the individual wikis and of their local role on the wikis, such as administrator.
    • They are however, with discretion, permitted to use tools they may not otherwise have on behalf of a user who does have that tool, when asked.

Support - TehKittyCatTalk Wikian-Book 05:49, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Support - This is a reasonable approach to the System Administrator user group. - Ryan PM 08:54, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Comment - Remove “Sysadmins are expected to avoid the appearance of acting officially on behalf of Weird Gloop Ltd.” because it’s clear that we do have that appearance and it’s also clear that we represent ourselves as such when replying to support emails, etc. Template:Signatures/JaydenKieran 10:08, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I can see your point, but I think the onus should be on official actions being carried out by directors. However, there's a grey area around things like support emails which I'm not convinced should be a primary task of sysadmins (surely there's some that don't need technical attention) but there's obvious benefits to sysadmins replying to those as necessary. I think it's better to explicitly define which official actions are part of the role and leave everything else as unofficial or within the scope of local user rights. cqm talk 10:29, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
Honestly I'd say that almost all, if not all, of the emails to Special:Contact have required technical attention - most are to do with account migration from Wikia. To be clear, I agree that it's not really a primary task of sysadmins, but I do want to acknowledge that I've pretty much been the one to reply to all of them thus far. Template:Signatures/JaydenKieran 10:43, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
Since sysadmins are our only paid group, who else should be responsible for manning the official company support line? svco4bY.png3Gf5N2F.png 10:45, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
It's a good question. At the current time, like said most of the support emails are technical (and to be honest, I don't really expect it to be much different in future) so it probably makes sense although perhaps somewhat odd that sysadmins would be manning it. So I think it might be worth sticking with the status quo on the understanding that directors should instead be giving attention to anything sent there that is legal and such. Worth noting that the emails go to a shared email address which we're all currently able to see. Template:Signatures/JaydenKieran 10:49, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Comment - A few minor points:

  • I'd remove "only" from the section about being paid employees. It could change in the future and this saves it having to be updated.
  • I think it's easier to link to listusers instead of explicitly naming who is a sysadmin. Most people won't need to contact them so I don't think there's value in making it immediately obvious.

Otherwise I think it covers all the necessary bases. cqm talk 10:29, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Comment/Support: I agree with this layout. However, I fully agree with Jayden in regards to the shared email. If it's tech related, the techpeeps should take care of it. Otherwise, to director/board members. Maybe setting up a sorter in the email box/different email for things not related to tech? TylerJarret (Talketh) 18:08, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Closed - Meta:Sysadmins has been created based on TehKittyCat's proposal above. cqm talk 11:13, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

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