UDWiki:Administration/Policy Discussion/SysOps ARE Moderators

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The Problem

There is no denying that sysops are the administrators of this wiki. Their actions are regarded (or should be) as a representation of the best interest of the community. When a sysop speaks for the administration, he speaks for the community as a whole.

Therefore, when a sysop is rude, or when a sysop is mediocre, others think the community is rude, or mediocre. Many users avoid the wiki because of this image that they have from our userbase.

SysOps also have to live with too much red tape tying their hands, which eventually diminishes what they can do for the community because ... well.. it's annoying to request permission and report every single action they do.

The Policy

SysOps are to be regarded as moderators, as they should always have been. They got promoted because the community trusts them, and therefore they should abide to that trust and not abuse it.

Be Polite

Therefore, a moderator (as sysops should be referred as) should watch their tongue, be polite to users while acting in administration areas and user talk pages. Moderators shouldn't be the ones creating drama, they should be the ones helping to thwart it.

If a disagreement between the moderation staff exists, it should be dealt with on the talk pages of these users, not on administration pages.

A moderator with a loose tongue could be brought to misconduct by other sysops, but only if he keeps up this behavior for long periods of time.

Less Red Tape

Since moderators are (or should be) trusted users, they can act without requesting permission for simple actions, and are not required to report them every single time.

Simple actions that can be done without request:

• protecting an archive page
• protecting their own user sub-pages
• deleting Criteria 1, 3 and 4 pages.
• moving pages
• warning users (reporting this action is still obligatory)

In these cases, the summary should always be well written, with the reasons why the action was done.