Talk:Stewards/Archive 2

becoming a steward?

What does one have to do to a) Become trusted enough to be a steward and b) where to go to nominate oneself or that is, ask for this highly honorable position :D . (if you reply on here, I would appreciate it if you tell my on my talk on enWiki). [btw, I speak English and Russian] Ilyanep 23:29, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Somebody suggested to me to add why I think we need more stewards. I'll tell you why. First, there are only 8 stewards, which means that it will take longer for someone to notice (unless all the stewards are insomniacs). Second, I have not seen a steward who could read russian (or is it just my ignorance?) Third, if we're gonna establish a heirarchy, let's fill it up (fine, that may not be the best reason). — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:53, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean with "it will take longer for someone to notice"? To notice what?

There are 1000 languages in the world. Do we need 1000 Stewards?

Just my point of view: As a steward we just do a minimal job. See the russion Wikipedia as an example: In the moment, that we have a russion bureaucrat, there is no steward for new admins needed.

If there is an admin to be de-sysopt on the russion wikipedia, the request can be put on meta, and there it will be handled.

Think of this: There was a big fight between 3 Admins on the German Wikipedia. I got a phone call by one of them, asking me "Can you de-admin us please for some time"?

I explicitely denied the request (and told them, to ask a non-german steward), because I am working in the german Wikipedia! It should not be the Russion steward to de-sysop a russion admin if there is a fight between them. How can you as a russion admin be neutral?! Never!

And being neutral is the fundamental thing for a Steward.

The german story ended so, that on IRC they asked another steward, not working on the german Wikipedia, to do the de-sysop, and that worked well.

I hope, you understand what I wanted to tell you. Otherwise just contact me, and I will try to explain better.

See you :-) Fantasy 容 12:18, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Makes perfect sense. Thanks for actually replying :D — Ilyanep (not logged in)

But are there exactly 1000 languages in the world? Alex43223 ^{Talk | Contribs | E-mail | C} 04:35, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

New Stewards

Yann

I would like to be steward too. I am currently admin on French Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikibooks, on English Wikibooks, on Commons, on Wikisource, on Hindi Wiktionary and on Gujarati Wikipedia and Wiktionary. I am usually available on IRC (#wikimedia, #in.wikimedia and #fr.wikipedia). Yann 21:52, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia

I would like to give a help, if necessary. But supposingly there are many good people who will request for stewardship, too. Aphaia.

Waerth

I to would like to become a steward, for the simple reason, I am in a different timezone of others, I wouldn't add much in the scope of other langauges. I have done work on different projects as well. I am a choosen sysop on: nl:wikipedia and on: nl:wikiquote ; I was asked to stay sysop on: th:wikipedia after I had a temp status there ; I am taking care of the lo:wikipedia untill it gets users. I am in the process of being chosen a bureaucrat on: nl:wikinews (I am a temp untill then), and a sysop on: nl:wikiquote.

I am an active contributor. If I have spare time I am usually available through IRC. Waerth 13:51, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

1. support - Waerth is, besides other wikimedia-projects, a very active sysop at nl:wikipedia. He is always busy fighting vandalism and stopping fights before they can get out of hand. Furthermore he is our Dutch spokesman whenever there are requests for interviews. CE 20:52, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

oscar

moved from Request for permissions

• oscar 03:48, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

thx for moving it here aphaia ;-)

i am a bureaucrat on nl:wikipedia, and would like to request for stewardship if possible. oscar 12:31, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

1. support - Oscar is a very active sysop at nl:wikipedia. He organised the first dutch Wikipedia-symposium which was a succes. He is dedicated contributor to the democratic process and the rules that are needed to make that a succes. Besides that he's active in setting up a dutch "foundation". CE 20:52, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fire

Fire also requested for stewardship on foundation-l.

his message from foundation-l

I found this mail, it remembered me that I always wanted to do this job due to the interlingual - side of this task, but also because of the help - aspect.

More information: Fire's mail

notafish

Same as Aphaia, if help is needed (and I believe it is - for proof the many sites still with a fundraising notice...). Same as villy, if direct appointment. I speak fr, en, de, es, it and probably can get by in a few more languages, present on many different projects.notafish }<';> 16:02, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:Jean-Christophe Chazalette (villy)

I said somewhere (where was it?) I was willing to help out as long as I had not to go through votes (I went through votes for :fr adminship, :fr bureaucratship, :commons adminship+bureaucratship, :meta adminiship, not to mention plenty of others for various projects,just getting sick of it for the moment). I speak fr, en, it, es, can cope with pt, am very bad but still read de and nl, and am an enthusiastic long time learner of ja and zh. villy 15:03, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

vote again?

(Fantasy's first comment was originally added to Danny's self-nomination.)

Yes, I would really be happy if we would have some more, sometimes I feel really bad for not being able to look at the Request-page every day... (But if I would look more often there, I would probably need to look for a new wife as well :-( Just an Idea that came to me now, I have not thought it through, I don't know if it is good or bad, I just put it here: We have now hundreds of Admins. To be Admin you have to have some experience with Wikipedia. So we could do election for new Stewards, with rules like:

• Admin can candidate

  It would be strange, if a "not-Admin" would be steward, wouldn't it?

• Admins can vote

  Admins are Wikipedians that have gotten a certain level of trust. So they could be seen as the Trust-people, that are given the trust to take the right choice for a decision like this.

  And it would make the election much easyer, not much checking for sock-puppets, no big advertising for the elections.

  And Stewards have (normally) nothing to do with normal Wikipedians. The main relation is to admins. So it should maybe be the Admins to decide who they want to do the temp-Admin/de-Admin/... things.

Just some thought, please don't hit mi for this things, this Ideas are just to start a discussion I look forward to your comments :-) Fantasy 容 09:54, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fantasy, your proposal seems to me very reasonable. On the previous vote (I read it after the election was over), rude people tried to make a confusion. If such can be avoided, it would be better. And admin vote is very effective to avoid sock puppetting.

On my part, I have two proposals:

1. by language. Some major project lack the steward who can speak their language. Usually we communicate here, but it is a bit unconvinient. I think it would be better we have a steward who speaks Japanese, Polish or other languages of major Wikipedia but not as their mother tongue - or he or she can't deal the project. I look for a steward who can speak Japanese. Perhaps Polish people think a similar thing or not? For this reason a steward candidate can speak at least two langauges, I think.

   From this view, Yann would be a good candidate. He is a trusted guy and fluent in several languages, including Indian ones.

2. by area. In my opinion it is better we have one or two steward in Asia. Now there is no steward living in Asia or Oceania, if I recall correctly. Sometimes on Japanese projects some worried craking and sysop vandals. For emergency, it is ideal a help from stewards as soon as possible. Recently Looxix helped us as a steward, and then some of us think perhaps it would be a grant for us we have a Chinese or Austrarian Wikipedian as a steward near tu us (on timezone).

--Aphaia | WQ2翻訳中 | talk 21:04, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I do not fully agree with Fantasy. The request that candidate be sysop somewhere is fair. But voting should not be restricted to sysops. Many very trusted people are not sysops and I wish not that people feel they should be sysop to have the right to vote. Besides, a lot of our activity is precisely not with sysop, since people are asking us to be set sysop.

Finally, I will generally say that though it is important to manage more languages than we do right now, we also had concluded that stewards should avoid for example unsysoping in their own language, as they might be biaised. Anthere

The "only sysops vote" is mainly to keep the procedure simple. Sysops already went through a trust-process, and therefore they are "trusted people in Wikipedia". Why should "trusted people" not be able to select between them a "specially trusted person" who they would like to have the power to take away from them the sysop-right.

Stewards have mainly to do with sysops, so (IMHO) sysop could/should decide on who is looking after them.

But we can do a vote on who can vote ;-) Fantasy 容 22:01, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Once I support your idea, but I agree if we can avoid some troubles like sockpupetting, it is better good people without sysopship can also vote ... steward treat with bot status and it is not always related to sysopship. So an idea came to me. If this matter is so serious, why can't we use Boardvote? The arbcom on en used it and it is effective to allow qualified users (e.g. experience of three months more, no sockpupeet, etc) to vote. --Aphaia | WQ2翻訳中 | talk 16:47, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia, AFAIK Boardvote is currently limited to en: wiki database. I got adminship on it.wiki and still had some troubles when voting as my first edits on the english wikipedia I did'n use a login. --M/ 18:14, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the usual trolls, vandals, etc. pay much attention to Meta. Unless applicants plan to campaign on other WikiMedia wikis, I doubt there would be a problem with letting all users vote. Bureaucrat is also a "specially trusted" person, and (on en: at least) anyone can vote for them. The last (and least important) reason to leave the vote open to all is that it discourages claims of a "cabal". If you just want to lessen the chance of sockpuppet votes, require all voters to be 1 month old with 100 edits, or something like that. —Ben Brockert < 00:44, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Local bureaucrats removing rights

See w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-03-07/Block war and desysoping for a report on related events and discussions.

Assigning rights to yourself

Please could stewards be more careful when assigning rights to themselves to:

1. consider if it's necessary or whether there are local admins who could deal with whatever it is you need an admin for
2. let the local community know why you've become a sysop
3. record this at requests for permissions or its archive page so other users know what's going on
4. remove those rights as soon as possible to prevent complaints about unelected admins appearing for no apparent reason

I've had two complaints today from different wikis when the community had no idea why people had become admins against their local admin policies. In both cases, there were plenty of local admins on the wikis (pt and es), and no apparent reason for the stewards concerned to have retained their adminship on those wikis. Angela 22:05, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I need to edit the sitewide messages of many different wikis each quarter to start and end fund drives. This is the only thing I use admin rights on those wikis for and it is an official part of my duties as CFO. Having to readd those rights every single time I need to edit makes a huge undertaking almost unbearable. So I think a special case can be made for me, at least until we have a global sitewide message that is autotranslated with variables/templates is in place. --Daniel Mayer 23:10, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Dumb question - why not just notify an admin on each respective wiki? My even have an admin on each one dedicated to updating the message. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 23:15, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Needless bureaucracy and delay.Daniel Mayer 00:06, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Being a steward is not the same as being a global admin. If you want global admin rights, make a policy and become one. Don't try to turn stewardship (the ability to make other people admins after consensus on the relevant wiki) into something it is not. Angela 20:23, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Again, more bureaucracy and delay. I've just been doing my job. --Daniel Mayer 20:28, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Angela and Daniel Mayer, I understand what both of you have said. After reviewing many other stewards' user right logs, I have seen so many cases when they have temporarily promoted themselves and then reverted their own actions. Many of these self-promotions and demotions are not explained in the logs. As I have an unanswered question at Talk:Steward_policies#Changing_rights_in_own_wiki.3F, temporary self-promotion for the sole purpose of reviewing deleted pages on local Wikis will not leave any traces there and this is especially critical for Wikimedia Commons images claimed to be transwikied from local sites without proper credits or sources. Leaving no trace of temporary self-promotion on local Wikis should trigger no complaints therefrom.--Jusjih 01:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC) (new steward and Commons bureaucrat)

Another election

When will be the next election procces? I can see there is needed one because now as the projects are developing itselfs the number of active stewards is decreasing. Maybe we should see which curent stewards didn't used their powers, which didn't used as much as they could use and also make list of real temporar inactive and so one. We have a big list of not procesed requests at RfP here at meta. I don't say that stewards are not working and I know many of them have many things to do and so little time and in this case we should think about having new elections and set up some new stewards. -Romihaitza 20:56, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Two of the current sysop are subject of adminship cancelation here at meta. We should at least have another two to substitute them in case of removal if not having elections for more stewards. -Romihaitza 12:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Only one is subject to cancellation. And he will not be missed as he never did even one steward action :-) There were elections pretty recently, so I suggest we wait a bit more. Last point is that most of what people are waiting for are bot flags and my last suggestion on the matter is still pending for comments : ie, bureaucrats having local possibility to set bot flags, just as they currently set admin flags. Anthere 12:40, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The fact is that people elected 10 stewards to help and just 9 of them really helped (more or less... it doesen't matter). Why not having another person insted of the 10th? This just in case of removal, of course. -Romihaitza 12:42, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Because in this case, it will not be a quiet nomination of a bunch of editors, but a contest of popularity to elect ONE person amongst a bunch. Not something I feel very motivated for :-) Anthere 12:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-October/032025.html : give bureaucrats the ability to set bot flags. Anthere

Maybe we should send a Call for stewards and see how many candidates will be and then Board of Trustees can decide about the number of stewards elected. -Romihaitza 14:10, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

As the projects grow, more stewards are needed. For. - Kookykman|(t)(c)

Absolutely agree! Borgx 07:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• See: Stewards/elections 2006.

Changing usernames

Why was changing usernames removed as a steward task in mid-October? I don't see a reason why we shouldn't be able to give that service (at least, not now, with 8 new stewards. Jon Harald Søby 11:04, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Local bureaucrats have this rights now. Hopefully they will recive the right to manage bot flag also soon :-) We can change usernames in wikis with no bureaucrat. -Romihaitza 11:16, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I meant. This is a service we should be able to provide for wikis with no bureaucrats… Jon Harald Søby 16:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Personal information disclosure conflict in ruwiki

Hi guys. There's a discussion in ruwiki that could be resolved by a single yes from one of the stewards. Has anyone of you discussed the recent identity disclosure case in ruwiki with our admin ru:User:Jaroslavleff and moreover has anyone instructed him by email (added by ACrush ^?!/_©) to delete the page containing the disclosed info which also led to deletion of talk page history? --ACrush now also a sysop in ruwiki.

This indeed was my edit. --ACrush ^?!/_© 12:25, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

If anyone did instruct him to delete it, have they done it before March 25, 21:35 (UTC)? --ACrush ^?!/_© 14:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Please excuse my request if the answer cannot be given. I may still be unaware of certain aspects of Stewards policies, but I think that a recommendation to make certain information that may be harmful to a third party would not violate any policy whatsoever. Please email me if I'm wrong.ACrush ^?!/_© 21:22, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible...

Is it possible, that steward will desysop everyone and he is able to do whatever he/she wants?

No. Stewards can, in theory, desteward all the other stewards and then begin desysopping on individual projects, but it would be of no benefit. The developers control the servers, and do so with a separate login and password that cannot be affected by any changes on the projects. If a steward were to go rogue, they would simply be destewarded by one of the developers and their actions reverted. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 21:51, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Bot flagging now bureaucrat task

Just a quick note (cross posted to Talk:Requests for permissions and Talk:Requests for bot status for full disclosure) that an extension has now been enabled making bot flagging a task for local bureaucrats (accomplished through the Special:Makebot interface). This allows for both flagging and deflagging. Knowing that bot flagging has been described as a less-than-happy-task by stewards, I assume bot requests will now be handled like Requests for permissions; that is, if there is a local bureaucrat, stewards won't set them any longer. Am I correct in this? (I'll be watching here for requests from en.wiki; I've already cleaned up what I could find.) Given that I've cross posted, I suggest centralized discussion at Talk:Requests_for_bot_status#Bot_flagging_now_bureaucrat_task. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 09:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Third election

Hi all. After being asked about this by a couple of people and asking Anthere about how this goes, I am starting here a request, or suggestion, for a third open Steward election.
The reasons why I thought this can and should be done are (a) Since the last election closed, 3 Stewards have, for various reasons, lost their status, and 2 others have gone completely inactive (all of this is indicated on this Meta page); (b) Not all the other remaining Stewards have been active on Requests for Permissions regularly (in fact, my observations indicate that only 3 or 4 Stewards attend to requests regularly).
I'm starting this proposal now so that we might have time to work everything out and get this going, if in fact we decide to press forward with this. But I had thought that the election would take place only in December, making it a year after the previous one — although not necessarily to the day; as a matter of fact, I would suggest that, if this happens, we make it a 2-week run lasting for the second (but first full week) and third (second full week) weeks of the month; I had though of opening on December 3 and closing on December 17, thus avoiding the season-end holidays in most western countries.
Finally, although I don't know if this kind of suggestion is necessary, given what I said in point "a" above, I would estimate something between 5 and 8 slots. Thoughts? Redux 13:41, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

• Support this idea. Considering the difficulty in locating stewards at many times, I believe this is a worthwhile notion right now. We've also experienced tremendous growth since the last steward elections, meriting a necessary increase in number of stewards. Bastique 16:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
•  Support. I think too that there aren't enough stewards, and there could be a few more (something like 5 to 8). -- mzlla 16:42, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• I do think we need more stewards, for the reasons given by Bastique. guillom 16:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• I support this idea as well, per above. Having more people available to help is always good. — Timichal 16:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support as well. In my experience stewards are in demand, but are typically hard to get ahold of, so having more could help.--Shanel 17:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support! Can't get enough of 'em --Filip (§) 21:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
•  Support Also, I think we should have elections on a regular basis, once a year seems to be good, and the time is good also. Jon Harald Søby 15:27, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
•  Support I agree, elections once a year seems like a sensible idea. —Xyrael / 16:06, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
•  Support Elections once a year *is* a sensible idea.

Asnatu 17:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• Support --Frank Schulenburg 10:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

What is a Stewart?

I am just wondering, what exactly is a Stewart/what do they do? --166.70.232.84 07:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Stewards are people who can assign rights (like admins rights) on any Wikimedia wiki. It's like a bureaucrat, but they can do that anywhere. They can also remove rights which bureaucrats can't do. Angela 08:47, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

So what is a Stewart?Talltim 22:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no user access level called Stewart. If you mean in general, see Wikipedia:Stewart. Angela 22:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks ;-)Talltim 10:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Lol. Interesting place to post this. Alex43223 ^{Talk | Contribs | E-mail | C} 04:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Neutral votes

I'm just wondering what is the purpose of neutral votes? It appears from past elections that they aren't included in the count, so they are effectively just comments, maybe it would be clearer if only Support, Oppose or Comment entries were allowed? Allowing people to place a neutral vote gives them the impression that their vote means something when it really doesn't. RoscoHead 04:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Only logical explanation for neutral vote may be, because they do not know the candidate enough to support or oppose, they want to show that, that they cannot decide. If they just do not vote, who knows if they even saw elections? Or who knows if they care about the elections? It is more like showing responsibility as a community member even if you cannot decide but you care. --Dbl2010 05:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Özgür. But that could be conveyed with a comment rather than a neutral vote to save confusion. Or even change the main page to read "At least 80% overall votes in favor with neutral votes not counting toward the overall total", so that people don't have to go searching through old poll results checking numbers and percentages to work it out. RoscoHead 02:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes I agree. That would be more clear and do not confuse anyone. --Dbl2010 02:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, no disagreement, so I went ahead and added it. If anyone disagrees, feel free to remove it. RoscoHead 01:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Stewards@enwiki

In case anyone was wondering, we were under the impression that the already-existing user group on enwiki "Stewards" was merely informational, and so we had decided to flag all the Stewards there, in order to make the group useful and help users locate Stewards if necessary. When we started the procedure, which was done by me, we noticed that an extra button was appearing in Special:Specialpages. We're not sure if that would actually still be functional, since the only user on that group has been Jimbo, for as long as I can remember, but I asked Walter to undo the flagging, just to be sure. Redux 01:00, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

There should be no stewards on any wiki other than meta since this is where all steward actions ought to be logged. There is no advantage to having steward access elsewhere since Special:Makesysop works cross wikis for stewards. Angela 23:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. When we noticed that the flag wasn't merely informational, I asked that the initial part of the procedure be undone asap. This seems to be something unusual, since that user group already existed on enwiki, and I don't know when it was created or exactly why; Jimbo is the only one to hold that flag on enwiki. Redux 02:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC)