Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2024/June

Opt in global sysops?
Although this wiki will soon meet the automatic criteria to opt in global sysops, I would like to propose that the English Wikinews becomes a global sysop wiki.

As a steward dealing with anti-abuse I've noticed that this wiki gets a lot of vandalism, spam etc., but has little admin support to deal with it. Out of fifteen administrators on this wiki, only four of them have edited in the last month, and out of those four, only two have taken admin actions this month, and only one in the last week.

Looking in Category:Speedy deletion, there are 320 (!) pages nominated for speedy deletion, and many vandalism/spam pages which have been sitting undeleted for months. With the current situation here, having global sysops being able to help would be a benefit. We have many active global sysops in multiple different time zones who are active and able to quickly act when needed.

Keep in mind that global sysops are only allowed to use their tools for anti-vandalism/anti-spam purposes; other actions are outside of global sysops' scope, and global sysops do not interfere with the content side or other unrelated areas of the project. EPIC (talk) 16:50, 24 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes please. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:53, 24 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I often work with EPIC and have found they respond quickly and effectively to cross-wiki abuse. Their help (and other's) for local vandals would be greatly appreciated. Speaking of vandalism, have you see your user page here @EPIC? ツ —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Published) 17:45, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I have actually not, but I'm surprised it's been up for over a month now. Well, you see my point here. EPIC (talk) 18:28, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 100%! I am SO EXHAUSTED dealing with vandalism... it drags this project down! Silly question, though: Global sysops will know/learn/understand what constitutes vandalism here, right? ...not just someone who is off to a rocky start on what may be a good news article.--Bddpaux (talk) 19:39, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It's a reasonable question actually, but yes - it shouldn't be a problem for global sysops to tell what is obvious vandalism and what is just a new user unfamiliar with local practices, especially since this is an English wiki and language barriers aren't as much of an issue here, unlike with other GS wikis. And like mentioned, global sysops should not be using their tools to get around the local procedures for becoming a local administrator, but should be following what is allowed within GS scope. EPIC (talk) 21:22, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I generally agree that global sysops can be trusted, but please note that not all global sysops have experiences at Wikinews, and not all languages have their own Wikinews edition. I would like to welcome the global sysops, but I also believe that borderline cases should be handled by our local admins/reviewers or a global sysop who has sufficient experience in any version of Wikinews. MathXplore (talk) 01:32, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * +1 to this one, I have no problems trusting global sysops to clean up vandalism and spam, but like mentioned, other maintenance work outside of that scope, and, like you mentioned, borderline cases, should be left to local administrators. EPIC (talk) 03:16, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * but can you clarify the automatic criteria to opt in the global sysops? Where is the documentation? MathXplore (talk) 23:53, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I absolutely can; as per Global sysops, if the wiki has fewer than ten admins or fewer than three admins having taken an admin action in the past two months, it will be eligible to become a GS wiki. Of course there can be exceptions to this, such as if the wiki has previously voted to opt out global sysops, in which case an opt-in discussion will be required. This is not the case for enwikinews (it was automatically opted out when the GS wiki set was created), but I opened the discussion here anyway to see the community's opinion. EPIC (talk) 00:54, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think I have read that documentation before, but I didn't notice that it means the automatic criteria to opt in the global sysops. Thank you for the information. MathXplore (talk) 01:26, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Support pretty strongly. This wiki has an odd history of rejecting similar (past) help; nice to see that isn't the case now. Leaderboard (talk) 11:11, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose because most global sysops have very little experience of this wiki. I don't think many of them will understand the subtle difference between a newbie article and real vandalism. I admit I've been absent for a few months but I've had to decline multiple speedy deletion requests, which I don't think a global sysop would have recognised. I don't doubt their abilities elsewhere (particularly the very small wikis) but out of 27 global sysops...
 * sixteen haven't edited here in more than a year including one that has never edited here.
 * seventeen have fewer than 100 edits on this wiki (14 with fewer than 50 edits and 1 with zero edits).
 * the majority of edits by the others are due to global renaming (done elsewhere).
 * We should not be trusting these administrative tools to users who would not yet qualify as local administrators. I can see only one user (DannyS712) who has both a large number of edits here and recent editing experience. Since we can't pick and choose amongst them, we should not accept global sysops.
 * The solution to the problems of vandalism lies partly with having more local administrators. I'd suggest inviting some of the more active recent contributors above to put forward their names for the admin hat. [24Cr][talk] 19:12, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd probably have opposed global sysops as well had the admin/functionary situation been better - but the problem on this wiki has mostly been that local administrators have not been able to act in a timely manner when needed and traces of vandalism have been undeleted for months, especially now that there is an LTA (ACV) who has been taking advantage of that and created vandalism here for a few months now (a lot of which is still not deleted). I've seen multiple users request steward action for this reason - mainly global blocks/locks, but now more recently also CU requests and SRP requests for removal (as bureaucrats/CUs had not been editing here before I emailed the crats recently to forward some requests we have gotten). I do agree that this wiki has a slightly different profile than wikis where GSes/stewards mainly act, but should there be a consensus here, I would suggest making it clear in Global rights usage what global sysops/stewards can and cannot be doing here. EPIC (talk) 19:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that vandalism should have been dealt with much earlier but it is nothing new here or on many wikis. I was a steward (until ill health pushed me to resign in 2023) and saw plenty of LTAs targeting smaller wikis over several years. No amount of admin actions will prevent a determined vandal. Long before I became active here, I was very active on English Wikipedia, where the presence of hundreds of active administrators has not solved vandalism in the 20+ years since it became a phenomenon. As I said above, part of the solution is to recruit local administrators but a major part of the solution lies in removing the one thing that drives vandals. Many of them do it because they think their vandalism will be visible to the general public and because it will annoy some editors. The fact that many wikis allow anonymous IPs to edit mainspace pages makes the vandals bolder. The fact that user pages are soft targets is what helps vandals. We can play whack-a-mole all day but it won't stop them. We can block huge swathes of IPs but it won't stop most vandals because they can swap IPs. Part of the solution is for us to implement a Draft namespace (like the ENWP one) for all new articles and to prevent anonymous IPs and new accounts from editing mainspace pages. That would eliminate the motivation to vandalise pages they think the public will see. Another part of the solution is to prevent user pages from being edited or moved by anonymous or new accounts. A final piece of the solution is to improve tools like the abuse filter (which is responsible for preventing numerous bad edits and blocking many potential vandals). Allowing the global sysops to act against vandals will not prevent the vandalism. The other issue of CU is nothing new either. Myself and Acagastya stood for CU in 2021 precisely because stewards were slow to act on our requests (and as a steward I couldn't use the tool here). I do understand the frustration of not having someone act on a request quickly but if you look at the history of WN:RFCU, there have been two requests in April and May this year. One request was retracted by the requesting user and the other was acted on after 12 days. Before that there were no requests locally for almost three years. I honestly cannot see how this is being construed as a track record of local CU requests not being acted on. On the contrary, the two of us have performed almost 500 CU checks in the 2+ years between being appointed and October 2023. Yes, we've both been less active for a few months but I don't feel it's fair to characterise us as being completely inactive. [24Cr][talk] 21:12, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I find your and 's stance rather frustrating, and I've had this issue with Agastya in the past as well. I've been around for a while and I can't recall of a time where I thought that this wiki was well-managed in terms of routine housekeeping (regarding "The solution to the problems of vandalism lies partly with having more local administrators" in fact I tried to be admin unsuccessfully and was opposed because I did not have the reviewing experience and whatnot even though my sole purpose of applying was because I was tired of seeing the spam). "I think the GSes or stewards would need to learn so much about this project and how it works that they'd practically have the experience to become admins locally" - sorry I don't agree with that. You say things like "play whack-a-mole" but my experience (at least on my wiki) is that global sysops do a very good job of removing nonsense. "because stewards were slow to act on our requests" is unfortunate though if true.
 * Instead of being so dismissive, how about write a short guide on how global sysops are to operate on this wiki? They tend to be conservative anyway. GS making a mistake? Just tell them; they tend to be pretty good at learning from it. Leaderboard (talk) 12:27, 30 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Cromium makes a very convincing argument here, and I trust their expertise. I just have a few things to add. I think the GSes or stewards would need to learn so much about this project and how it works that they'd practically have the experience to become admins locally. The statistic EPIC uses (current at that time) was from around the end, and therefore culmination, of an approximately two-month stretch with an unusually low rate of admin speedy deletions &mdash; particularly early on, which created such a backlog of speedy deletions that it would take a significantly above-average amount of effort to clear it, and so admins ended up just containing its growth (Cromium has since made that effort and cleared most of the backlog). And, I don't think removing the vandalism we get here is as urgent as it is for, say, a lot of the vandalism at en.wp, because the published content of the project is by default protected by the combined effects of FlaggedRevisions and the archive policy &mdash; published, unarchived articles are supposed to be protected upon publication so they can only be moved by admins and edited by autoconfirmed users, with any edits still subject to review by a reviewer, archived articles (nearly all published articles) are only editable or movable by admins, and nothing can be published without a review. Heavy Water (talk) 16:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's enough to allow global stewards to respond to WN:AAA requests. Those are normally completed by Wikinews editors who are likely more aware of what is actual disruption here. I also don't think it takes much experience here to know what constitutes abuse. There are good give-aways that an experienced steward would recognize, regardless of their experience here, such as 1) posted by a new account, 2) new page created, 3) contains an external link, 4) contains offensive language, etc. The vandalism we see normally fits many of those descriptions.
 * They also theoretically have the benefit of seeing global disruption and may recognize sooner a specific, cross-wiki LTA.
 * Besides, what would be the downside? A false-positive deletion of genuine content running off what might otherwise become a long-term wikinewsie? We are already struggling to review articles we're getting from existing users. To me, that is the real problem we should be working on. Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Published) 16:30, 29 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Although I think we should say something along the lines of generally speaking just use it for
 * A.Blocking/Unblocking
 * B.Deletion
 * C.Anything else urgent Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 21:33, 29 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I appreciate Cromium's and Heavy Water's concerns about giving global sysops access to this local wiki. However, I'm worried about the state of this project without allowing global sysops. Furthermore, IMO, the project's autonomy isn't strong enough to withstand any more vandals and sockpuppets and LTAs. I can see one of admins being burned out from such common incidents. To allow ourselves being relaxed from work, maybe global sysops should see the workload and be burdened instead? George Ho (talk) 21:32, 31 May 2024 (UTC)


 * per @George Ho. I would like to see global sysops taking the most conservative stance possible, only removing obvious vandalism. If there is any doubt, they should leave it up and defer to our local admin team. I recognise the concerns of @Cromium and gsysops editing here need to look at what we consider vandalism before touching anything. A lot of the vandalism tedium could be effectively handled by gsysops though. @Michael.C.Wright's shout about WN:AAA requests may be a good start, and we could see how effective it is from there. A.S. Thawley (talk) (calendar) 18:25, 2 June 2024 (UTC)


 * It's beyond ridiculous that some of ACV's pages have stayed up for days – a clear sign that this wiki needs to allow GSs. --SHB2000 (talk) 12:28, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

✅ This has been open for a while, and after checking with some other stewards beforehand, we have determined that there is a consensus to give global sysops access, with caveat that they will only use their access for clear cut cases, such as clear vandalism and spam. As I am not a regular at this project, I will let another user update Global rights usage accordingly, with clear mentions of the allowed use cases above. EPIC (talk) 13:03, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Global sysop restrictions
So, since we've opted into global sysops, now comes the time to define some more precise limits for what they are allowed to do here. @Leaderboard and I have added a bit that reflects the basics of what was said in the original discussion, but I feel what we've written so far is a bit short and vague for a policy that affects what people who have nothing to do with this project can do.

As a first note, I'd like to copy the "Any English Wikinews administrator can ask a global [sysop] to stop [using their permission] if what they deem to be misuse occurs, and the global [sysop] must comply with such a request." general rule that we apply to global rollbackers into the policy. I thought I'd bring it up here because I'm hesitant to just go and write out an entire policy myself, and people who have been here for longer will probably be able to write it in a better way than I could.

If anyone has any thoughts or policy suggestions in this regard, please share them here and we can reach a consensus on what to put in the final policy. A.S. Thawley (talk) (calendar) 19:28, 3 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't see a problem with adding that. Beyond this, I don't see the need to expand on this further. Your linking to Wikinews policies should be enough for global sysops to understand what's going on, and should any clarification be needed, it should be OK to update it then. Put it this way: a global sysop should be able to easily figure out what they can (or cannot) do on this wiki, and the policy as written does that. Leaderboard (talk) 20:08, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That's a fair point. I'm just wary that the opt-in didn't pass unanimously, with some quite high profile (@Cromium, @Heavy Water) oppose votes. I'd be interested to hear their opinions on if we should add anything else to the policy page, given that they opposed the opt-in &mdash; something to help address some of their specific concerns, perhaps. A.S. Thawley (talk) (calendar) 21:48, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for starting this discussion and making those changes to the policy page. I am still unsure about letting global sysops do these tasks but I'm willing to see what it produces. I'd like their remit to be limited to obvious vandalism and cross-wiki abuse. We have already had one global sysop action today by a user who had only made 15 edits here (mostly reverting vandalism or requesting deletion), which deleted a page that had random letters as a title BUT the content was the basic layout of new articles, as might happen if a new user used the system on WN:Writing an article. The deletion happened five minutes after page creation. I checked on the global user contributions page and this was the IP users only edit, so it did not seem an obvious vandal although there may have been deleted contributions elsewhere. Although it most likely was a test page, my personal inclination would have been to leave it a while in case the new user tried further edits. For me, it wasn't a clear case of speedy deletion being needed. My feeling on restrictions is that global sysops should only delete pages that clearly fall under criteria A3, A6 or R4 on Wikinews:Criteria for speedy deletion. I will keep observing these deletions and may comment further. [24Cr][talk] 23:18, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Outside of some of the later CSD's for articles I don't see why they can't do everything else. If there trusted enough to be a global sysop, I'd imagine there trusted to use common sense and not do anything if they have no idea what their doing.@Cromium Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 23:45, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Cromium's concern is valid for the reason that Wikinews operates so differently to any other WMF project. Common sense that works on other wikis doesn't necessarily work here. I was hesitant to opt in too, honestly, but I feel with clear enough guidelines we can limit false positives on the global sysop side. I'm not entirely sure myself of the final restrictions we should impose on global sysops, so I feel this discussion is important to have so we don't argue about it in 3 months time if someone messes up because we didn't provide them any guidance. A.S. Thawley (talk) (calendar) 23:57, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed. What I am trying to say is that global sysops should know this is a different wiki, and if there not used to it, either they don't do things here or they look around and learn.@Asheiou Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 23:58, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That being said: I've updated the policy with information for GIE and AFH (which wikis cannot opt-out of, so in essence codifying what already happens). Also I moved the "can ask to remove" part to a single place so that it's clear that it applies to all rights. Leaderboard (talk) 20:30, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with that first note for sure. I think that, maybe, we should have a restriction on the more controversial things, but I think were mostly okay. Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 21:18, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Removal of Microchip08's reviewer tools proposed
After notifications and invites toward the user, I have just now proposed the removal of Microchip08's reviewer tools: Flagged revisions/Requests for permissions/Removal/Microchip08. George Ho (talk) 02:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)