UDWiki:Moderation/Policy Discussion/Bureaucrat Promotions

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It has come to my attention firsthand that Bureaucrat Promotions is fundamentally flawed and against the spirit of the wiki by only allowing one Moderator per round to be promoted to Moderator.

Promotions operates on the basis that every user who meets the criterion after two weeks of discussion is given the opportunity to become a Moderator. We don't screen Promotions into a popularity contest by requiring people to compete with other users to claim status. Why? Because it encourages elitism amongst moderators, sockpuppeting votes, spamming of talk pages for vouchers, and other acts that debase and devalue the institution. It has been proven time and again through Misconduct and through the vouching system itself over the past year that this system works.

However, although we can trust any user who gets enough vouchers to qualify for Sysop status with that status, this is not the case with Bureaucrat Promotions. You can't just be a well liked person who upholds the wiki, but you have to be the most liked person who upholds the wiki. Why? Because apparently letting practically every mod become a 'crat is stupid.

Now this implies that the vouching system doesn't work.

But then how come, in the year that we've had it, no moderator who reached his position through vouchers has been stripped of his status because he misused it?

That in and of itself should be proof enough that vouching works.

So then, why do we allow the Bureaucrats to prevent worthy moderators from becoming bureaucrats simply because they didn't recieve the most vouchers? Are the bureaucrat powers so controversial and contain so much potential to do wrong that only the people with the most friends can use them?

That doesn't quite make sense to me.

Regardless of how people acheive said status, there has only been one instance of abusing the system. And guess what? It was handled through Misconduct, reported within 2 hours of the infraction, and both the inappropriatly promoted user, and the user who abused the powers trusted with him were stripped in a day. The wiki didn't die. The sky did not indeed fall. Life resumed as normal. Just like any Misconduct case with a regular Sysop. The idea that only a select few can be trusted with these powers is ludicrous and goes against the community spirit of a Wiki. (Note: Said Misconduct case can be found here, for users who wish to see for themselves.)

If anything, more bureaucrats is a good thing. Why? Because it allows any infractions made by other bureaucrats to be resolved that much quicker, as there is no need to wait for two or three users to make decisions about what action needs to be taken to rectify the situation, and it allows more voices that can do something the ability to make sure the correct action is taken to rectify the situation.

As such, I move that the last line of Bureaucrat Promotions be changed from

Once the two weeks are up, the vouches will be tallied, and the against subtracted from the total. Each moderator has one week to put themselves forward as a Bureaucrat then, when the voting on all the moderators has finished, the moderator with the highest total amount of vouches will be made a Bureaucrat.

To

Once the two weeks are up, the Bureaucrat will review the community discussion and make a decision based upon it. The user will be notified of the status of their request, and will be promoted should it appear that the community is willing to accept them as a bureaucrat.

This makes it no different from Promotions in the terms of how promoting individuals to a higher station should work.