Wiki talk:Administrators
June 2023 activity review
Back in March 2019, Harry Wood revoked administrator or bureaucrat privileges from nine users due to prolonged inactivity, allowing them to regain their privileges if interested. At the time, most of them hadn't performed any logged administrator actions in over five years. A few years later, it looks like some other administrators may have lost interest in administratorship on this wiki.
We don't have a formal policy on how active an administrator needs to be to retain their permissions. As someone who once lost administrator permissions for inactivity on a different wiki, I realize life can sometimes get in the way, and there isn't usually a lot of drama on this wiki anyways. But I've occasionally heard from users who are unsure who to contact about an issue and get a prompt response. Our relatively large roster of administrators may also dissuade others from helping out with day-to-day tasks like deleting pages and responding to edit requests on protected pages.
I've compiled the table below to assist the bureaucrats in reaching out to inactive administrators. Dates more than one year ago are yellow, and dates more than five years ago are red. Note that I may have totally missed edits to protected pages, which also require administrator privileges but aren't logged in one place. My sincere apologies if I got any of the dates wrong in this very manual review.
– Minh Nguyễn 💬 22:14, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
| User | Last edit | Last logged admin action |
|---|---|---|
| Deanna Earley | 2022-11-05 | 2017-02-27 |
| Dorothea[note 1] | 2023-05-08 | 2022-01-09 |
| EdLoach | 2022-11-18 | 2022-03-07 |
| Firefishy[note 1] | 2023-06-17 | 2023-06-17 |
| Gnonthgol | 2022-03-10 | 2013-05-01 |
| Harry Wood[note 2] | 2023-06-17 | 2023-06-15 |
| Lyx[note 2] | 2023-04-29 | 2023-06-17 |
| Minh Nguyen | 2023-06-18 | 2023-06-04 |
| Pigsonthewing[note 2] | 2023-02-14 | 2020-04-23 |
| Reneman | 2023-06-18 | 2023-02-27 |
| SomeoneElse | 2023-06-04 | 2022-02-19 |
| Steve[note 2] | 2023-05-17 | 2009-09-08 |
| Tigerfell | 2023-06-16 | 2023-06-16 |
| ToeBee | 2018-12-23 | 2016-03-03 |
| TomH[note 1] | 2022-11-08 | 2021-03-28 |
| Uboot | 2023-06-18 | 2022-05-21 |
| Yurik | 2023-04-24 | 2020-08-27 |
- I would definitely support removing admin rights of inactive people, but maybe it would be a good idea to check also last edit? I would rather support removing sysop rights for people who made no edit at all at OSM Wiki for last year. Though if someone have not used sysop rights in five years.... Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:01, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
- Well, not sure how to put this down but we have administrators like User:Deanna Earley, User:Gravitystorm, User:Steve, User:Uboot and User:Yurik who are still active in projects of their own but not in administrative fashion. That is completely okay but it would be helpful for the users to know that. If the users do not want to do the administrative cleanup anymore I do not see a reason to have them on that list. It is a list of current administrators and not a list of users who have done great things for OSM. ;-) Not sure how to measure administrative activity. --Tigerfell
(Let's talk) 22:17, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
- Well, not sure how to put this down but we have administrators like User:Deanna Earley, User:Gravitystorm, User:Steve, User:Uboot and User:Yurik who are still active in projects of their own but not in administrative fashion. That is completely okay but it would be helpful for the users to know that. If the users do not want to do the administrative cleanup anymore I do not see a reason to have them on that list. It is a list of current administrators and not a list of users who have done great things for OSM. ;-) Not sure how to measure administrative activity. --Tigerfell
- My comments on this are pretty much as set out at https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/mobile-phone-repair-shops/98479/4 - I don't spend enough time managing the wiki to start e.g. blocking people here without a discussion with other admins. However some of the checking and rollbacks associated with that issue probably did use admin rights. SomeoneElse (talk) 12:41, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
- @SomeoneElse: Rest assured, this wasn’t a direct response to that episode or about anyone in particular. The immediate occasion is a new candidate for adminship, but the relatively low number of active administrators has been an ongoing known issue for a long time. I defer to the community here about what an activity guideline would look like, if any, but precedent points to the idea that there should at least be some logged administrator activity in the last 5–10 years. Also, it isn’t necessarily a big deal if someone loses the admin flag and wants it back because they’re interested again – that would be great. Minh Nguyễn 💬 21:46, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
- The wiki's permissions are set out such that an ordinary autoconfirmed user can do quite a lot of things. Only abuse filter logs, deleted pages, spam logs (latter mostly empty) are available to administrators only. So, even ordinary users are able to combat spam, except for blocking the user. Then proposing configuration changes, I always intended to keep the barrier between confirmed users and administrators low. You rolled back five edits but no mass-roll back (reverting multiple changes at once). This can be done with regular user permissions as well. I assume you did not need to look at the abuse log. It is empty for "Sherimay26" and the other ones are not spammers. User:Mateusz Konieczny, User:Chris2map, and I (before becoming admin) have used regular user permissions to fight spam multiple times. I do not want to take away your status. Instead, I want to say that we do not need more people that do spam fighting on that level IMHO. We are pretty good on that already. --Tigerfell (Let's talk) 22:17, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
- The wiki's permissions are set out such that an ordinary autoconfirmed user can do quite a lot of things. Only abuse filter logs, deleted pages, spam logs (latter mostly empty) are available to administrators only. So, even ordinary users are able to combat spam, except for blocking the user. Then proposing configuration changes, I always intended to keep the barrier between confirmed users and administrators low. You rolled back five edits but no mass-roll back (reverting multiple changes at once). This can be done with regular user permissions as well. I assume you did not need to look at the abuse log. It is empty for "Sherimay26" and the other ones are not spammers. User:Mateusz Konieczny, User:Chris2map, and I (before becoming admin) have used regular user permissions to fight spam multiple times. I do not want to take away your status. Instead, I want to say that we do not need more people that do spam fighting on that level IMHO. We are pretty good on that already. --Tigerfell
- I was originally given admin rights in 2013 to help combat a flood of spam (I still have the text of the IRC chat with Firefishy containing the instructions saved on my desktop), but since then I think the only admin stuff I've done is just occasionally checking some of the pages marked for deletion and deleting them when I have some time free. I probably wouldn't miss not having such a permission. -- EdLoach (talk) 13:09, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
- Definitely agree the activity status. Revocation/Resignation clarifies the situation for both, the editors and the admin in question. The former know who is available for requests and the latter know that they are not responsible anymore and that they "left" in a positive fashion. There are quite a lot of administrators who once got the rights but never got into the processes like Wiki:Deletion procedure or the discussions at Talk:Wiki or Data items (deletion, creation, editing). Then things like those happen (awkward useless deletion, missing the data item and current consensus; the request was flawed already, somebody might have messed up things). On one hand site, I would like to keep users out of the administrator group who do not regularly read the discussions and know the processes to avoid situations where one needs to clean up afterwards. On the other hand, I have do admit that there would not be many admins left then. --Tigerfell (Let's talk) 22:17, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
- Please remove my admin permissions. I'm surprised that the system shows I've used them at all in the last 5 years! I think it's important that it's clear to the community who is actively administrating the wiki, and I'm certainly not doing anything useful on that topic. If I ever need the permissions in future, I can always just ask again at that point! Gravitystorm (talk) 10:19, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Harry Wood, Lyx, and Pigsonthewing: Could you help out here? --Tigerfell (Let's talk) 19:38, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Harry Wood, Lyx, and Pigsonthewing: Could you help out here? --Tigerfell
- Hi @Gravitystorm:, I have removed you from the admin group as requested. Greetings, --Lyx (talk) 10:39, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- Very late to the party, but am surprised I am still an admin, when I had to use it a few weeks ago for vandal that just happened to edit the page I was watching of a previously banned user. I am very reactive and fixing things I notice rather than proactively checking, but I'm happy to stay as admin. Thanks! --Deanna Earley (talk) 23:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
- Also, 2017!! that ties up with starting my new job, dropping off IRC, StackOverflow, and Usenet... --Deanna Earley (talk) 23:12, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Policy on renaming OSM wiki users?
Hi. I received a request to rename a user on the wiki. They currently have a nonsensical username (combination of letters and numbers) and they want to change it to something that is in a dictionary. I was wondering if 1) we have a policy for renaming users and 2) whether I should proceed. Thank you. Dorothea (talk) 21:36, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Dorothea: I don't think we have much in the way of written administrative policies yet, unfortunately. If the user name is available and the word wouldn't likely cause any offense, I suspect it would be fine to rename. But if you're unsure, feel free to send me a private e-mail with the details and we can sort it out. – Minh Nguyễn 💬 01:46, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Minh Nguyen Thank you for the reply :) I'll then proceed with the change of the username, it seems unproblematic. Thanks again :)
Dorothea (talk) 17:45, 25 June 2023 (UTC)