UDWiki talk:Administration/Policy Discussion/Off-Site Requests for Admin Actions

In case that any of you have missed the drama that has created the need for such a policy: Izzy's sig SD discussion and related Misconduct case against Cheese for overturning an off-site request.
As should be obvious, I am not a fan of off-site requests - they are easy to falsify and hard to be made accountable without massively hurting privacy.
However, I recognize a few cases where off-site requests might be valid:

• Actions requested on behalf of a banned user (especially for, but not necessarily limited to Permaban appeals).

  Banned users have technically no other way to get anything done but to use non-banned users as proxies.

• Deletions of copyrighted material requested by the copyright holder.

  When The Man threatens us with his lawyers over copyright, we would be terminally stupid to not act on it just because The Man can't be bothered to use the petty bureaucracy of our petty fiefdom.

• Actions that would have been considered to be scheduled anyway (particularly, but not limited to Scheduled Deletions and Scheduled Protections).

  No-Brainer that hopefully doesn't need further explanation.

• Sys-Ops may temporarily tolerate other off-site requests. As such a requested is merely tolerated, it may be overturned at any time by any sys-op, unless the user himself shows up on-site to confirm it.

  This is the carte blanche for extreme cases - like, when an user's home connection breaks down and he can't access the wiki at work. As it is merely tolerated until the user shows up, there is a strong built-in incentive to show up ASAP and thus create the necessary accountability. Obviously, this would require to put some trust into sys-ops to not do instant overturnings on sight - but likewise, users would need to put trust into them anyway to recognize their off-site request.

Discuss. --Oh, and vote on Project Funny, by the way. -- Spiderzed█ 20:06, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Works for me… mostly.

Remove the whole “tolerate” section and require any other sysop to show cause for anything to be overturned. I remind you that these are sysop-only actions and thus subject to Misconduct proceedings if any impropriety is found to have taken place. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 02:27, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Regarding the "show cause" idea, I would disagree to the greatest degree possible. The onus should always be on the sysop who is accepting an offsite request, rather than on the rest of the team, to provide evidence supporting their side. After all, by virtue of being an offsite request, we can only guarantee that the sysop accepting the request would have access to any form of evidence at all. Putting the burden of proof on the team would mean that any sysop could claim to have had an IRC chat or received an e-mail but not kept it, allowing them to do virtually anything in anyone's name. Unless the person showed up later to contest whatever happened, the team would have no way of showing cause. —Aichon— 06:27, 18 May 2011 (BST)

^ to every possible degree, seriously. Keeping in mind the catalyst for this, iscariot, is someone notorious for forging off-site logs in order to prove things in issues on-wiki -- ϑ^anceϑ^anceℜ^evolution 10:49, 18 May 2011 (BST)

As these two. -- Cheese 10:53, 18 May 2011 (BST)

I'm with Aichon on this one. An off-site request has to leave a trail (request) that could be reproduced, while there is no way to get proof for the negative if the user in question doesn't actively provide it. By putting the onus on the sys-ops doubting the validity, inactive users would become unprotected game for whatever claims of off-site requests someone puts up for them. In general, off-site requests should stay the excemption, and they should be as soon as possible confirmed. --Oh, and vote on Project Funny, by the way. -- Spiderzed█ 17:19, 18 May 2011 (BST)

I very much agree with basic policy but I'm not entirely happy with the ability of Sysops to entirely unilaterally overturn the decisions of other Sysops with any discussion or cause. I believe there should be at least some sort of discussion before doing so (I.e something put-on A/SD].--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 09:11, 18 May 2011 (BST)

The general principle should IMHO remain to keep on-site requests the default case, and to have an incentive for the usee in question to confirm on-site ASAP. I see how this could lead to edit warring between sys-ops, though. Any ideas on lessening that risk while staying true to the principle and keeping an incentive to confirm on-site? A grace period maybe? Or the need for two sys-ops to agree on overturning the action to cut down on the risk of lone rogue ops willy-nilly overturning actually necessary off-site requests on sight? --Oh, and vote on Project Funny, by the way. -- Spiderzed█ 17:19, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Perhaps the requester must show just cause for the off-site request (they'd have to explain in their request why they could not make the request themselves). Also, possibly a rule that whichever op received the off-site request may only post the request on the wiki, but the action must be carried out by another sysop. This would give an opportunity for review by a peer. ~ _{17:35, 18 May 2011 (UTC)}

Yes, I do agree that off-site requests should be discouraged when not necessary. I think the best way to implement it would be to require the agreement of two or more sysops in order to overturn a deletion. Effectively, one could post it to A/U and another could undelete it.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 17:43, 18 May 2011 (BST)

IMHO I don't think we should be implementing a policy which encourages decisions to be overturned. There should be more strict rules for someone requesting an off-site action and a way for sysops to be held accountable for taking action on it (i.e. the op which received the request may only relay the info to the wiki). ~ _{17:59, 18 May 2011 (UTC)}

Hence why I think that sysops should post on A/U and wait for another sysop to overturn it: That's makes it no easier than the current system for overturning deletions. I think there should definitely be strict rules for accountability on deletions, but there are still problems with the basic principle in that is no way to absolutely prove that the user requested it.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 18:05, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Yes, there is that. Try as I may I can't think of any good way of obtaining proof. In my opinion, I think it's just best if they aren't allowed unless by a banned user. ~ _{18:40, 18 May 2011 (UTC)}

Restricted Actions

Requests should probably be limited to only deletion and protections requests. Wouldn't it be a nice little loophole if a user was able to request a self-ban off-site which would then allow them to request whatever action they wanted under this policy, then request an unbanning after they've gotten what they want. ~ _{18:40, 18 May 2011 (UTC)}

Oh, off-site self-bans. Yes, that would be malicious if abused. I'll add them to "Thou shalst never" along with votes. --Oh, and vote on Project Funny, by the way. -- Spiderzed█ 19:03, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Urgh

President Obama has prepared a statement, which he's passed to me for this wiki:

"while the idea is a good one, Iscariot has been a dick about the whole thing. I'd like to see items that aren't immediately necessary but reasonably important be initiated only by a wiki presence. Actions like taking the entire sysop team to misconduct, for example. Thanks for your hard work, citizens!

I agree with the Commander-In-Chief. --Karloth Vois ^¯\(°_o)/¯ 09:36, 19 May 2011 (BST)