Wiktionary:Votes/bc-2024-12/A few users for debureaucratization

Voting on: removal of bureaucrat rights from the following users:

• Paul G (talk • contribs • rights)
• Hippietrail (talk • contribs • rights)
• SemperBlotto (talk • contribs • rights)
• EncycloPetey (talk • contribs • rights)

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 17:55, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
• Vote created: Svārtava (tɕ) 17:55, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

1. Support as proposer. Svārtava (tɕ) 17:55, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

   Rationale:

   • According to WT:B, we currently have eight bureaucrats and the four bureaucrats listed above are inactive as bureaucrats and administrators (verifiable by Special:Log) and were given the rights 1.5 decades ago.
   • Bureaucrats only have the extra power to add and remove sysop, interface admin and bot rights from an account.
   • These right changes (usually by passing votes or inactivity policy) are not too many on Wiktionary and are easily well-managed by the more active bureaucrats; most administrator and bot right changes are done by one of the more active bureaucrats only.
   • Thus, having four bureaucrats is more than sufficient for our community, and having more (especially those who are inactive at intervals) increases security risk and is not needed.
   • In a rare case of admin becoming rogue, at present, any admin can block another admin and the blocked admin will be unable to do any admin actions or unblock themselves, thus preventing any damage and reducing the need of a bureaucrat to be present at the moment for instant desysopping.

   So I think that bureaucrat rights from the four bureaucrats mentioned in this vote should be removed as general maintenance, with no offense intended. (For comparison, the bureaucrat/admin ratio currently at Wikipedia is 15/846 which is much lower than our's 8/75.) – Svārtava (tɕ) 17:55, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

2. Support — Chihunglu83 (talk) 22:16, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
3. Support — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 23:36, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
4. Support. Imetsia (talk (more)) 16:26, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
5. Support because those bureaucrats are inactive. --Davi6596 (talk) 14:44, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
6. Support. In the light of everything Svartava has said about this it seems pretty clear. If on the other hand further discussion, reflection, or bureaucratic steps are needed the reason for these should be explicitly stated. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:48, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
7. Changing my vote to Support in light of the new information provided by Svartava. Whoop whoop pull up ^{♀️ Bitching Betty 🏳️‍⚧️ Averted crashes ⚧️} 22:01, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
8. Support Vininn126 (talk) 01:37, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
9. Support PUC – 16:24, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
10. Support. Not a fan of people having access to rights if they never do anything with them. Polomo47 (talk) 20:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
11. Support I don't understand why this is a vote. If they don't meet the criteria, they should be removed automatically. Vergencescattered (talk) 18:44, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

    They do meet the criteria. Unlike for admins, there is no policy to automatically remove bureaucrats for inactivity, which means that unless it's something like an emergency bureaucrat-gone-rogue situation, a steward isn't going to debureaucratize someone without proof of community consensus first. Establishing that consensus is the purpose of this vote. Megathonic (talk) 21:37, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

12. Support This should be automatic and not a vote. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:49, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

1. Oppose. More research is needed. Only SemperBlotto in this bunch is no longer active. I fear he may be deceased. DonnanZ (talk) 19:05, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

   Yes - though the others are also inactive as bureaucrats and administrators with sporadic activity.

   The vote is about removing their bureaucrat status rather than admin status (for retaining which their activity is sufficient) and I don't think it is a big change that ways. I think 4 bureaucrats is more than enough for us - we don't have too many admin and bot votes. Most bureaucrat actions in Special:Log are done by one of the other four bureaucrats. See also: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2023/July § Possible vote to strengthen policy removing inactive admins for some good points on this issue. Svārtava (tɕ) 19:31, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

2. Oppose. Among these four users, EncycloPetey (talk • contribs • rights) has the most recent bureaucrat action, having desysopped a user earlier this year. Three of these users (all but SemperBlotto (talk • contribs • rights)) remain active as editors. Together, these four bureaucrats have made more than 1,000 edits this year alone. Now, as far as I know, there haven't been any security issues regarding any of these users, and given that all of these accounts have been around since 2005 or earlier, it seems very low-risk to keep them around as bureaucrats.
   I'm not a fan of how this vote was set up. If this had been four individual votes, I probably would vote for debureaucratizing at least one of them. However, since voters here only have the option to support or oppose debureaucratizing all four, I am obligated to vote oppose. I cannot in good conscience support removing rights from users who have earned the community's trust. Gelasin (talk) 00:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
3. Oppose. put the fries in the bag. Flame, not lame (Don't talk to me.) 03:40, 23 December 2024 (UTC)]
4. Oppose because whether or not these bureaucrats are inactive, they should have been contacted on their talk page prior to this vote. Ioaxxere (talk) 13:35, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

   It seems many people are opposing this as if it is a desysop vote. I doubt this would impact the users much if at all. EncycloPetey and Hippietrail even gave a no-objection from removal at Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2023/July § Call for a new bureaucrat in which discussion all the above proposed users were pinged, however Paul G and SemperBlotto did not respond there. In the particular case of SemperBlotto who has become completely inactive, writing on the talk page looks like needless bureaucracy. Svārtava (tɕ) 17:22, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

5. Oppose. Like Gelasin, I don't agree with the bundling.--Urszag (talk) 04:00, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
6. Oppose. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:41, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
7. Oppose --Alexeji (talk) 00:41, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
8. Oppose, the benefit seems overly negligible, as the contributors listed remain trustworthy, wether they use the tools they're trusted with or not. The risk of harmfulness of this may be little as well, but still present. Catonif (talk) 23:04, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
9. Oppose. Svartava (talk • contribs • rights) has moved the goalpost to add/remove admin and bot groups which is overly narrow, while EncycloPetey (talk • contribs • rights) has used his power to desysop an individual earlier this year. Lost in this discussion is the principle of Wikipedia which is assume good faith while using evidence, not prepare for hypotheticals; it's preposterous. Lumbering in thought (talk) 10:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

   I don't see what good faith has to do with this at all. PUC – 16:19, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

   It's more about the lack thereof of said assumption of an individual which immediately becomes prey to preparation for mere hypotheticals. Lumbering in thought (talk) 12:45, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

10. Oppose, I also don't agree with the bundling. --Robbie SWE (talk) 15:56, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
11. Oppose. I would vote to debureaucratize SemperBlotto. I no longer support debureaucratizing EncycloPetey (I did in July 2023), as they are responsive when directly pinged or contacted. These should be separate votes, and the users in question should be contacted on their talk page prior to any vote beginning. Megathonic (talk) 18:25, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
12. Weak oppose. This really should have been four votes. MedK1 (talk) 23:52, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

    Oppose. The potential harm is fairly minimal & leaving their status intact just makes things easier if they decide to come back. Pvanp7 (talk) 22:42, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

    Struck per WT:VP#Voting eligibility as the second criteria is not met. Svārtava (tɕ) 15:06, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

13. Oppose. Per others, the cases shouldn't be bundled. I interpret the absence of rules to remove inactive bureaucrats as an implicit recognition of the specialness of the role and the trust placed in the person. Such "vote" of trust should be acknowledged: for instance, I have a problem with assuming that an inactive bureaucrat is not taking their role seriously. The present issue, as presented, is a housekeeping one. If it's that important, it seems better—and more respectful—to approach the issue either individually or, perhaps preferably, solely from the point of view of the role, rather than the person.— Pingku^dimmi 08:21, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

1. Abstain. I agree with Gelasin that this should have been separate votes, or at least EncycloPetey should have been removed based on recent activity. AG202 (talk) 18:58, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

   Do you mean SemperBlotto? PUC – 20:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

   Sorry, I should've been more clear. I meant that EncycloPetey should've been removed from this vote because they've used their admin rights at least once in the past year per their logs. The last time SemperBlotto used them was at least before 2023, so I'd vote to remove them. AG202 (talk) 21:12, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

2. Abstain. I am not voting, but am going to point out a serious flaw is the reasoning provided by the proposal. RE: "In a rare case of admin becoming rogue, at present, any admin can block another admin and the blocked admin will be unable to do any admin actions or unblock themselves, thus preventing any damage and reducing the need of a bureaucrat to be present at the moment for instant desysopping." As someone who (as an admin) was targeted by a rogue admin, this reasoning of the security is flawed. It assumes that the well-behaved admin will be the one to take first action, rather than the rogue admin initiating blocks against legitimate admins and bringing the system down. As I say, I was the target of such an assault, and none of the other admins stepped in at any time to take any corrective action. Only my status as bureaucrat made it possible to weather the assault. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:38, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

   • This is a recent feature that allows any admin to block any admin such that the blocked admin is stopped from all admin actions or edits - this was not in place when Wonderfool went rogue, hence admins at that time were not having the ability to stop it as at that time the blocked admin could simply unblock himself.
   • Even if the rogue admin manages to block all potentially available admins before even one of them block him, from my experience I have seen that the active bureaucrats have a very good availability and it will not be hard to quickly desysop the rogue admin. You have said I am no longer especially active here so quickly reaching you would be more difficult only than reaching another bureaucrat.
   • Finally, the only rogue admin till now is Wonderfool - so it is safe to say that this is an extremely rare occurrence.

   As you are one of the users proposed for debureaucratization, I just want to reiterate that this vote is not meant to be inflammatory at all, since you are definitely active enough to continue being an admin, and as above I don't think losing the ability to add/remove admin and bot groups would impact your experience much, given that you have only used the right only once since 2012. Svārtava (tɕ) 17:56, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

   I am not talking about Wonderfool, unless Mglovesfun was Wonderfool. At the time, I was repeatedly being blocked, over and over. Some of these blocks are not reflected in the Block log, possibly because they were hidden, but it was a frustrating 24 hours that was the primary catalyst for my ceasing to be regularly active here. As far as I am aware, no consequences for the rogue admin happened, and they continued to be an admin for several years following the incident. And no, you are incorrect about it being harder to reach me. I continue to be active in Wilimedia, just not so active here. You have reached conclusions that are not warranted on the assumption that being less active on a project means it will be harder to reach me. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

   I looked up the Mglovesfun incident, and that mostly seems to be a dispute rather than WF-style admin rogue in which all admins are blocked for the purpose of vandalism, so as above, in such a case at present, any admin has the power to stop that if needed. It holds that apart from WF we have not had cases of admin vandalism in which all admins are blocked. Svārtava (tɕ) 04:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

   @Svartava I contacted EP on his talk page to let him know about this vote and he responded within a day – four hours, in fact. That's faster than a lot of highly active users.

   Moreover, I'm interested as to why you didn't attempt to contact the users in question before starting the vote. (Well, EP says he wasn't contacted, so I assume the other three weren't either.) To be honest, I feel that reaching out to them would have been the courteous thing to do. This, that and the other (talk) 03:43, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

   @This, that and the other: Firstly, see my reply to Ioaxxere above, the pre-vote discussion of this vote was there, although in July 2023, simply because no one apparently decided to go ahead with creating the vote at that time. All the users above were pinged and EP and Hippietrail even gave no-objection against bureaucrat removal; the others (noting that SemperBlotto is inactive) didn't respond.

   Although I didn't leave a talk page message, the mention in this vote would have triggered a notification, which I thought was sufficient since another discussion for this topic had already taken place. Svārtava (tɕ) 04:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

   @Svartava they likely were not notified as a consequence of you creating the vote. Apparently the edit in which you add the links to their user pages must not include new section headers within the body of the edit, otherwise notifications are suppressed. The gory details are at mw:Manual:Echo. I admit you could hardly be expected to have known this, but there it is. If proposing to take someone's rights away, a user talk page notification, if not an email, would always be the best thing to do. Perhaps their views have changed in the past 18 months. This, that and the other (talk) 04:56, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

3. Abstain. I think it's generally best to remove bureaucrat and sysop rights from users that are inactive, but I don't think debureaucratization should be dependent on the use of the tools (by contrast with desysopping, where I think that should be the main criterion), since the tools are needed less, and people should always be notified if there is a vote to remove their rights, which was not done in this case. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:30, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Failed 12-13-3. AG202 (talk) 01:07, 22 January 2025 (UTC)