UDWiki talk:Administration/Demotions

Is there a certain amount of time that we should leave demotion requests on the page before archiving them so people know? Or should they be moved as soon as completed so that they can step down quietly? And the page should probably be clarified to read a moderator may only request that him or herself be demoted - it currently could be misunderstood as trying to get someone else demoted. --Darth Sensitive ^W! 01:34, 20 September 2006 (BST)

I don't think the requests need to stay up for long after they've been completed. Go ahead and fix the wording to how you think it should read. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 01:59, 20 September 2006 (BST)

Request

I'd like to request a demotion process for a mod. How would I go about this, officially? -- Basil 20:28, 8 October 2006 (BST)

You don't. This is where a moderator requests their own demotion. Feel free to put your request up though, I know you want to. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 15:46, 9 October 2006 (BST)

HA! Nice one. ...You were joking, right? I mean, I really don't see how someone who's come from the SW wiki to stir up trouble has any grounds for having someone demoted. Cyberbob  Talk  22:00, 9 October 2006 (BST)

hagnat

well, i have been inactive for some time, i think its time for me to ask my demotion. I am sad that i have to go, but you guys will be ok without me. kkthxbbq --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 03:19, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a sad day to see you stepping down. :( 03:49, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

well, i did that awesome thing in that awesome template in some random time ago. Other than that, its been only unpleasant feeling towards current troll. I need to focus more on current real life issue, so i won't be able to exercise my dictatorial job as a sysop function --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 03:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

but if you want to, you can give me my sysop powers back and i'll try to work things out --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 03:59, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

In fairness, I reckon you could of got away with this. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 16:52, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

You're are not a sysops at the moment Hagnat, so I'm not sure what this is doing here. --Thadeous Oakley Talk 07:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Although, if he wants to be a sysop again, I don't think anybody will begrudge him.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 08:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

who gave sysop powers to the guy without a sense of humor ? --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 15:52, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Slight change to demotion criteria?

At the moment, the demotion criteria is defined as "A sysop that hasn't made any edit in four months will be warned, on their talk page, by a Bureaucrat, that they face demotion of their sysop powers in one week, if they remain inactive."

Going by the letter of this policy, Stelar technically is one week away from demotion as they haven't made an edit since April. They do however show in the admin logs as having deleted pages (related to spambots) so are obviously active. Perhaps we should reword this to "edit or administrative action in 4 months" to better cover this situation? Obviously Stelar won't be demoted out of hand, but clarity is useful, right? -- Cheese 08:39, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

We've been going with the standard that log actions (page moves/deletions, bans carried out, etc.) count as "edits" for demotion purposes. I can see listing that explicitly, though — thoughs from others? Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 11:07, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Stelar was technically 1 week from being notified on her talk page, not specifically demoted. But for future reference I'd argue that as sysops we need to make an edit to to remain 'active' as per the policy and that sysop actions won't count.

All policy that I could find specifically states edits, not global contributions (ie. sysop actions), are what count in the 4 month inactivity guidelines. When Grim was brought to misconduct for permabanning a vandal while under a ban himself it was ruled Not Misconduct, partly because it was decided sysop actions don't fall under the definition as an 'edit' by virtue of wiki software enabling sysop actions while under an editing ban. There was a deliberate distinction between a user edit and a sysop action that could be stretched to support this theory as precedent.

But it's obviously not within the letter of the law that Stelar's activity over the 4 months may have not technically counted. However, the only two things we could do right now is change the Truly Inactive Sysops policy through A/PD or decide on an interpretation of the word "edit" in said policy - an interpretation that's both fair and within the general desire of the community, and ensure it can hold up in any future misconduct cases as a worst case scenario. DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION 11:38, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm happy saying edit means edit, i.e. not sysop actions. In that case we should change the Activity Check table to list "Last Edit" rather than "Last Contribution". Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 11:45, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

And would you look at the idiot that made it 'contribution' rather than the policy-consistent 'edit'... DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION 12:09, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

If you think it would be helpful, I can put together something for A/PD? -- Cheese 14:06, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

People denied me de-escalation back in 2012 for counting spambot swatting as edits. This is a travesty of justice! (Not really, so, whatever.) -- Spiderzed▋ 00:31, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

A true travesty of justice. DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION 06:47, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Up to you I guess. Is this that big of a deal? I'd probably argue no. To me, the easiest solution is just having sysops make one edit every season. DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION 06:47, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

I mean, do we want to demote anyone now? With policies needing only 6 or so people to pass, is there really a need to demote trusted users. I'd rather have some emergency people with sop powers who might be contactable in the long future of UDwikis death.--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 13:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Or just make us all crats? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:55, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Not terrible suggestions, the last one is left field but would help alleviate my issue with the current state of our activity monitor (for me it's just that we have theoretical capacity to have a 100% inactive crat and no means to do anything about it, after that recent crat policy change) DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION 00:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

All crats would terminate A/RE (and A/BP of course); and mean we'd need 50%+1 of us (three as of now) to approve any new sopcrats. Not sure if those are good or bad things, just making clear. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 13:23, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I mean, is Kevan even contactable? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 13:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Making everyone 'crats seems more secure than the risk of having more disagreement with any potential promotions. Could be all need to agree for a promotion, or two thirds, or at least two, or not more than one dissenting, etc. And I'm not sure about The Kevan, but I'd think so. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 01:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

I would like to just contextualise this before you discuss this seriously for any longer- we are all talking about adding complex, bloaty policies 'that may fix the issues from this recent event, but will most likely be overkill without being worth the effort involved.

Depending on how you look at it, I see two issues here with Stelar's inactivity flag. The first way to look at it is that Stelar's activity on the wiki should have counted as it showed that they were here, because they were indeed making contributions to the wiki that were not edits. And those contributions show that they were checking the wiki's recent changes, quite possibly very often. Adding all these whacky new provisions because of what happened to Stelar seems like overkill to me when we could just add in a simply policy change that fixes this oversight.

Another way to look at it is that a secondary cause of this is that this wiki voted to completely strip away the provision that would have made Stelar ineligible for the latest crat election as she had been inactive for over a month at the time of the election. I described that risk in my dissenting vote on the policy and it's becoming more likely that the scenario I described will come to fruition.

So what's the issue here? That Stelar shouldn't have been listed as inactive because she was indeed, in some form, active? Or is the issue that an (at the time) essentially inactive sysop was able to be, and indeed was, voted to a crat position? Either or both of those scenarios could be easily fixed with a quick policy vote that solely address those issues, without needing to have the added complexity of completely changing the crat system to accomodate for the now-possible reality of being hamstrung with one inactive crat. DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION 05:35, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

One other note of context is that throughout this process, Stelar has been extremely active & contactable in the metagame, primarily through Discord. (She, DDR & I communicate on the unofficial UDWiki server pretty frequently.) She participated in the recent A/RE decisions, for example, it was just me who made the actual edit. And, for Ross's question, the last record I have of Kevan being contactable was due to a 2017 wiki lockout, but I have no reason to question he'd be reachable in the event of something similar happening again. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 13:35, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Just ask Stelar to make an edit and end this circle jerk. If a sysop/crat can't make a quarterly "I'm alive" post, they aren't active. If they are reachable, then they will certainly get the message and come edit whatever. --_K 21:49, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

She did make an edit (four of them actually) since this convo started; so this is about if this comes up in the future.) Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 13:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Stelar was on discord and contactable, but it's worth noting that her actions as a crat (eg. making a decision on Hagnat's bid) aren't independently verifiable, because there is no record of her thoughts on the wiki or the #sysop discord (assuming it was done via discord DM).That's something else that could be a potential issue in a worse hypothetical situation. DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION 04:06, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

So, we are planning for a potential future instance, when a crat/sysop is active and contactable, has been performing admin duties, but is unable or unwilling to just make a simple user edit? Makes sense. I could throw up some bullshit misconduct cases or start an edit war, if you just want something to do. --_K 23:22, 12 September 2019 (UTC)