UDWiki:Administration/Misconduct

This page is for the reporting of administrator (sysop) misconduct within the Urban Dead wiki. Sysops are trusted with a considerable number of powers, many of which have the capacity to be abused. In many circumstances, it is possible for a sysop to cause considerable havoc. As such, users are provided this page to report misconduct from the System Operators. For consistency and accountability, sysops also adhere to the guidelines listed here.

Guidelines for System Operator Misconduct Reporting

The charge of Administrative Misconduct is a grave charge indeed. If misconduct occurs, it is important that the rest of the sysop team be able to review the charges as necessary. Any charge of administrative misconduct must be backed up with evidence. The clearest evidence that can be provided for administrative misconduct is a clear discrepancy between the relevant action log (deletion, block, or protection log) and the archives of the relevant administration service page, and this is a minimum standard of evidence admitted in such a tribunal.

Misconduct is primarily related to specific Administrator Services, not standards of behavior. As such, situations including verbal attacks by sysops, while frowned upon, do not constitute misconduct. Sysops on a wiki are in theory supposed to have no more authority than a regular user - they merely have a greater scope of power. Personality conflicts between sysops and regular users should be treated just as a personality conflict between two regular users. If, in the course of such a conflict, a sysop abuses their administrative powers by banning a user, blocking or deleting a page without due process, that is misconduct, and should be reported to this page.

There is, however, an exception to this rule - excessive bullying, or attempts to treat the status of sysop as a badge of authority to force a sysop's wishes on the wiki may also come under misconduct. Any accusations of this should come with just as clear evidence, and for such an action to be declared misconduct, there should be a clear pattern of behavior across a considerable period of time.

All discussion of misconduct should occur on this page, not the talk page - any discussion on the talk page will be merged into this page once discovered. Once a misconduct case has been declared closed, a member of the sysop team other than the sysop named in the case will mete out the punishment (if deemed necessary), and then move the case to the Archive.

Administrative Abilities

For future reference, the following are sysop specific abilities (ie things that sysops can do that regular users cannot):

Deletion (ie complete removal, as opposed to blanking) of pages (including Images and any other page-like construct on this wiki), through the delete tab on the top of any deletable construct.
Undeletion (ie returning a page, complete with page history) of pages (including any other page-like construct on this wiki (Images are not included as deletion of an image is not undoable), through the undelete tab on the top of any undeletable construct
Protection of pages (ie removing the ability of regular users to edit or move a particular page), through the protect tab on the top of any protectable construct.
Moving of pages (ie changing a page complete with the page's history to a different namespace).
Warning users reported in Vandal Banning.
Banning of Users (ie removing the ability of a specific user to edit the wiki), through the Block User page.
Editing of Protected pages by any means.
Research IP activity using the CheckUser extension.
(Bureaucrats Only) Promotion (providing the above abilities) of User to Sysop/Bureaucrat status.

If none of the above abilities were abused and the case doesn't apply for the exception mentioned above, then this is a case for UDWiki:Administration/Arbitration or UDWiki:Administration/Vandal Banning.

Example of Misconduct Proceedings

Sysop seems to have deleted Bad Page, but I can't find it in the Archives of either the Deletion or Speedy Deletion pages. The Logs show a deletion at 18:06, October 24th 2005 by a System Operator, but this does not seem to be backed up by a request for that deletion. I would like to know why this is the case -- Reporter 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

The deletion was asked through my talk page. I give my Talk page as proof of this. -- Sysop 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

It looks like the page that was deleted did not belong to the requesting user, so you were in no position to delete it on sight. -- Reporter 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

You know the rules, Sysop. All deletion requests have to go through the Speedy Delete page. Next time, please inform the user where they should lodge the request. This is a clear violation, will you accept a one-day ban as punishment? -- Sysop2 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

I'm not liking it, but I clearly broke the rules, I'll accept the ban. I'll certainly remember due process next time... Sysop 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

As punishment for failing to follow due process, Sysop has been banned for a period of 24 hours. This will be moved to the Archive shortly. -- Sysop2 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

Before Reporting Misconduct

Due to a the growing number of Non-Misconduct cases popping up on this page the Administration Staff has decided to compile a basic summary of what has been viewed as Not Misconduct in the past. Please read over UDWiki:Misconduct and make sure that what you are reporting is in fact misconduct before filing a report here.

Cases made to further personal disputes should never be made here, harassment of any user through administration pages may result in vandal escalations. Despite their unique status this basic protection does still apply to Sysops.

Misconduct Cases Currently Under Consideration

User:Krazy_Monkey

On 11 February 2010 at 05:50 Cheese deleted a page. This page was currently up for deletion with a keep vote on it. Cheese made no note of this deletion on either A/D or A/SD.

DDR challenged him on his talk page and he responded with:

"I had it marked on my watchlist from a while back and noticed it had been recreated with rubbish on it so I deleted it as a crit 6 on sight. =/ Never realised it was even on deletions. -- Cheese 20:04, 11 February 2010 (UTC)"

Pages that fit the speedy deletion criteria are required to be noted on A/SD, especially after all the drama we had over Nubis going around deleting anything she/he/it wanted. Pages with a keep vote may not be speedily deleted and are instead moved to A/D for a two voting period.

Pages that fit a scheduled deletion criteria are not required to be noted on either deletion page, crit 6 has never passed as a scheduled deletion.

The only other way this page could have been deleted is if it was a vandal contribution. There was no vandal banning case open about the creator and his previous case makes no mention of this page being an act of vandalism.

We have therefore established that there is no way for this page to have been correctly deleted. It could not have been speedily deleted as there was a keep vote on the open deletion case. It could not have been deleted as per a scheduled deletion as crit 6 is no a scheduled criteria. It could not have been deleted as the result of vandalism as there has been no ruling of vandalism against the page.

This page was improperly deleted. Cheese is guilty of misconduct. This is not the first time he has committed misconduct by deleting things according to his whim without going through the established processes.

I quote Cheese himself on a previous misconduct case over deleting pages inappropriately:

"Misconduct - The red tape is there for a reason. If you want to cut it permanently, we have established processes for that. Either get it scheduled, take it to policy discussion or just follow the rules. It's not the first time you've done it either."

He didn't take heed of his last warning, so there's little point doing it again, and he's never here for a ban to actually do anything to him. However the act was misconduct, so we have to have this case. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 23:20, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

From the deletion criteria: A page that fits this criterion is immediately qualified for deletion without requiring it be nominated on the 'Speedy Deletions' page. Like I said to DDR, the page was on my watchlist, I noticed it had been re-created so I deleted it. Didn't realise it was on either deletions or speedy deletions and if I had, I wouldn't have touched it. "and he's never here for a ban to actually do anything to him." And the fact that I've spent a decent chunk of the past few months up to my eyeballs in uni work is reason to get snarky because...? =/ -- C h e e s e 00:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Would you like to quote the entire criteria so that you aren't deceiving the boys and girls?

"6. Deletion Workaround: The page is a duplicate of a page that has been deleted from a previous deletion request (please note the relevant deletion request if this is so). A page that fits this criterion is immediately qualified for deletion without requiring it be nominated on the 'Speedy Deletions' page. Recreating a page that fits this criterion will get you a polite message to stop doing so. Any further infractions of this nature will qualify as vandalism and will be treated as such. Note that criterion 6 does not apply when the page has been restored through Undeletions. "

Emphasis added.

Now, very simple question, was the page as you deleted it a duplicate? That is, an exact copy, or was it a page that happened to share the same name as a previously deleted page and actually had different content?

Did you even take the time to fulfil the rest of the criteria and leave a note on the talk page of the user doing the recreation? Or were you just acting like Nubis? I don't see you in the history of his talk page....

I'll quote you again: "The red tape is there for a reason. If you want to cut it permanently, we have established processes for that. Either get it scheduled, take it to policy discussion or just follow the rules. It's not the first time you've done it either." --

.

. <== DDR Approved Editor 01:02, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Not misconduct - it was a terrible page last time it was legitimately deleted, this time even more so. Crit 6 pages are deletable on sight. Common sense should be used if the page is created for a different purpose to the original deletion, but when it is created with simply a message that the original author hates whoever deleted it, then no further discussion needs to be entered into. Nuke it -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 01:00 14 February 2010 (BST)

Would have liked to see Izzy magically warned for shitting up A/D with nonsensical, troublemaking votes. Having said that, Misconduct. I don't find Cheese's actions to have fulfilled the criteria 6, which would have made this fine and dandy. If you actually had intended it to qualify as a C6 you would have notified the user of his wrongdoing, which should be done according to the criteria, or even made some sort of record of the deletion. Also, as he openly admitted on his talk (and on here), "Didn't realise it was on either deletions or speedy deletions and if I had, I wouldn't have touched it.". Well, The {{delete}} template was on it the whole time, so there is no real excuse there. --