[Translators-l] Thank you for Tech News & see you soon

[Philippe Verdy]

So there's a problem by one WMF staff member, JEissfeldt (WMF)
<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:JEissfeldt_(WMF)>, taking the lead
himself on DE.WP, when German admins are currently either in holiday or in
Wikimania in London.

Seriously, those that are currently in London should be contacted to
initiate a discussion about this unexpected deployement and use by
J.Eissfeld working in the WMF bureau in US, when his own chiefs are in
London...

May be he was authorized to do that temporarily, but as this action was
remarked, it can still be reverted and an interesting dicussion can start
to develop the policy applicable to this new group and the scope of its
actions.

I don't think the "Common.js" on WP.DE is the main field of action of the
WMF staff, and that the German-speaking chapters should have their word on
this issue. Anyway the community of WP.DE should have been notified; even
if this was just a temporary protection while there are many missing admins
in August for holidays or for Wikimania.

The WMF staff has a mission to execute the daily administrative tasks for
managing projects, organizing events, organize discussions, handling legal
issues and donations. help preparing reports, controling things that must
be controled, and contacting the various communities. That staff can work
freely on the Foundation wiki. For the rest, they should operate on open
projects like all other Wikimedians; but they don't need privileges that
the community cannot decide openly.



2014-08-10 21:00 GMT+02:00 Hong, Yena <lists at revi.pe.kr>:

> Global usergroup 'staff' got 'superprotect' permission[1] after the commit
> was merged, by Reedy. And you can see the de.wp page super-protected in [2].
>
> [1]:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&dir=prev&offset=20140810134614&limit=1&type=gblrights
> [2]:
> https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.js&action=history
>
> -Yena Hong (Revi)
> http://www.revi.pe.kr
>
> -- Sent from Android --
>
> The gerrit comment said "no user" added to this group. The problem is then
> not the patch itself but the ativation of the new user group without any
> policy and prior discussion.
>
> I also agree that the WMF staff should NEVER have any privilege on public
> Wikimedia projects (including Meta-Wiki whcih is a cooperation of all
> Wikimedia projects), except in the closed Wikimedia Foundation wiki.
>
> The WMF staff is there to **serve** the community and work with the Board
> directing them for the benefit of the community. They are also not much
> trained and many wikimedians do better jobs than them in many technical
> issues, or for helping maintaining the policy and doing most of the
> monitoring of projects for quality, and fighting spam.
>
> The WMF staff is still helpful because of their commited (and paid) time
> to work on specific issues that need them. But they cannot/should not drive
> the projects themselves, and notably they should not protect pages on
> Wikimedia projects, except very specific ones (such as those exposing the
> official versions of approved policies, and specific pages related to legal
> isuses and communication by the WMF, such as budget and accounting
> reporting, public statements needed after a legal order, such as disclosing
> decisions to block some pages due to copyright violations... but in most
> cases the OTRS team was performing a good job with the community and if
> needed there were already contacts with the WMF Board and boards of
> Wikimedia affiliates).
>
> If what you say about the German Wikiemdia is true, yes this is abusive.
> That should be reverted because it as not discussed and no policies was
> effective. If this is done because the XMF starts aving problem managing a
> large crowd of admins (especially in the English Wikipedia), this is the
> wrong method.
>
> And this should have not been done during Wikimania when most active
> admins from various projects and chapters are not there to cast their
> opinion. There was no emergency to deploy this feature.
>
>
>
> 2014-08-10 20:07 GMT+02:00 Tomasz W. Kozłowski <twkozlowski at gmail.com>:
>
>> Philippe,
>> the patch is not for the MediaWiki software but for the configuration
>> of Wikimedia wikis (it's in the operations/mediawiki-config repository
>> on Gerrit).
>>
>> It has been merged and deployed on the production cluster. The user
>> right has been added to the global staff user group, and it has
>> already been used to protect the MediaWiki:Common.js page on the
>> German Wikipedia so that no one can edit it except Wikimedia
>> Foundation employees.
>>
>> Wikimedia Foundation is using this user right to actively fight its
>> community of volunteers.
>>
>> This is something I cannot and will not support.
>>
>>                 Tomasz
>>
>
>
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