Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:51, 4 January 2008

Please read through the proposal, and decide whether to support or oppose the general principals and implementation. Minor adjustments to the managements of it can be made in the discussion section.

The following is a proposed Misplaced Pages policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption.

Shortcut WP:NAR

The rollback feature allows intentionally unconstructive contributions to be reverted quickly, and more efficiently than with other methods. (User scripts have been written which mimic the functionality of rollback, but they merely hide details from the user, and are much less efficient, both in terms of bandwith and time). Rollback links are displayed on page histories, user contributions pages, and diff pages.

Clicking on the link reverts to the previous edit not authored by the last editor. An automatic edit summary is provided and the edit is marked as minor. (An error message is returned if there is no last editor to revert to).

Rollback is currently only available to administrators. However, many non-administrators now deal with vandalism regularly, but do not have access to this tool – and either do not wish to be administrators or do not meet the expected standards, yet are unquestionably experienced and trustworthy. This proposal would implement a process by which the rollback feature could be granted to, and revoked from, non-administrators.

The point has now come where we have a rough consensus as to what the restrictions should be in place, and the community is now asked to look at forming a consensus as to its implementation. See past discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Rollback for non-administrators proposal and Misplaced Pages:Rollback for non-administrators. Your questions or concerns may already have been considered there.

Proposal

The way it works

Users may request the rollback button should they suffice in having the minimum requirement as detailed below.

• They should first put a request in at the section below.
• Administrators should check the history of the contributor to see if they can be trusted with the tool.
• If the administrator is satisfied, they can then go to Special:Userrights (see $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups) and this will add the user into the rollback usergoup, giving them the rollback tool.
• The tool will be the same as the administrator rollback tool, with no limitations.

Requirements for users to have rollback

There are no prerequisites per se for getting the tools, although a user should not have a history of edit warring and should have shown an understanding of the project and a need for the rollback permission (i.e. lots of vandalism reversion). Although it may not be easy to determine this, administrators should evaluate requests for rollback on individual merit and review a user's edit history before granting them the permission.

Usage

This tool is provided to qualified editors for fighting vandalism. Usage is limited to rolling back vandalism and reverting one's own edits. Editors using the rollback tool for other purposes will be subject to having the rollback tool removed.

Removal of the permission

In the event of abuse, any administrator may remove the tool by going to Special:Userrights. Non-administrators may report abuse to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Administrators should be careful to give such an action the same due care and attention as a block, and the usual expectations with respect to administrative actions apply.

Arguments and counter arguments

• Other rollbacks exist, like TW.

  True, but rollback is easier on the servers and the clients.

• If someone can be trusted, they should be an admin.

  Yes, but not everyone seems to think so. I know of several vandal fighters who tried to become administrators but failed due to "lack of mainspace edits". Also, I doubt that ClueBot would pass an RfA.

• It would encourage edit wars.

  No, an admin would have to assign the privilege only if the user was trusted not to be disruptive and if it was misused, it would be removed.

• If you do this, might as well give it to everyone.

  It was going to, but there was significant opposition to that. Opposing for reasons like this makes it harder to get anything changed.

• Administrators should not be allowed to set privileges.

  They can grant and revoke editing rights. Why not something less significant? Administrators who are not trusted to do what is good for the encyclopedia should not be administrators.

• It will introduce wheel wars.

  Any administrator action can introduce a wheel war. We trust the administrators not to wheel war, though.

• Adds more bureaucracy.

  Not much more. It will be a simple page like WP:RFPP, not something as complex as WP:RFA, as that would defeat the purpose of this.

• Bureaucrats should be the only ones doing this.

  We don't have enough bureaucrats to do this, and administrators should be trusted anyway. Administrators already can revoke and grant the editing privilege.

• Users shouldn't get administrator tools.

  Rollback is not really an administrator tool, it is just an editing tool that is currently restricted to administrators, but is no more powerful than the Twinkle rollback, but is less stressful on the server and the browser.

• Too much form-filling.

  Isn't that what administrators do?

Discussion

Support

1. Nick (talk) 23:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
2. Support - Some excellent vandal-fighters who could use the rollback function very well fail RfAs for non-rollback related reasons (i.e. misjudged CSD tags, etc.). Giving these users rollback will only give Misplaced Pages a net benefit. Keilana_(recall) 23:15, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
3. Support I want rollback for myself, and I think a system like this would enable me to get it. I think there are a few users who can't practically become administrators, but who should be allowed to use rollback. I think this system will accomplish its purpose. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 23:36, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
4. Support - obviously :-) Ryan Postlethwaite 23:37, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
5. Support, though I think the text in "Removal of the permission" needs some tweaking. Is it really necessary to mention that this too can be wheel warring, I would have thought that obvious? henrik•talk 23:48, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
6. Support I think we can unbold the wheelwar bit... any admin action carries the same sanction when abused. — Edokter • Talk • 00:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
7. I think there are better ways to do this, but I don't think that they could gain consensus. Mr.Z-man 00:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
8. Support - effectively a regularisation of VandalProof. Some minimum standards for approval would be useful, principally to ease any hurt feelings from enthusiastic new editors with only 50 contributions and a desire to fight vandalism without having read the policies. However I strongly oppose any automatic approval based on edit counts (as proposed in the discussion below). Admin approval is not that big a hurdle. If a committed and reliable editor with thousands of contributions cannot convince any single admin to give them access, there is likely a good reason why not. Euryalus (talk) 00:43, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
9. Support, reasons well stated above. Can easily be revoked if a user causes problems. Guy (Help!) 00:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
10. Support. Not a big deal, especially with the alternatives now available. Offers a new means to encourage productive users by giving them a tangible show of trust. Cool Hand Luke 03:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
11. Support. However, I think that a more concrete minimum criteria should be set. I also think that requests to remove nonadmin rollback should be in the same page as that to request rollback. bibliomaniac15 03:39, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
12. Per above. And a question: does this come with the markbot permission? MER-C 03:49, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
13. Support. Per common sense. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:25, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
14. Support with concerns. —BoL 04:40, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
15. I see potential uses for it. — Dihydrogen Monoxide 04:58, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
16. Strong Support — This would be a great asset to me, as I make over 1,800 reverts per normal day (it has been sagging during the holidays, but that is irrelevant). My owner has been lobbying for this for quite a while. Thanks. -- ClueBot (talk) 05:05, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
17. Support — Rollback is the best way to prevent something like this. I have seen a few rare cases when tools like Twinkle and Popups don't catch all the vandalism by an editor to a certain page - giving rollback to trusted non-admins reduces the likelyhood of this. Graham87 05:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
18. Support but I don't think the added step of an ANI report should be necessary in obvious cases any more than it is for an admin to issue a block. If someone is unquestionably abusing the privilege, you remove it. If the user apologizes and promises not to do it again, you restore the privilege. --B (talk) 05:50, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

    I think thihs is most probably going to be the way it happens, if a user is obviously misusing it, the tool gets removed and the admin can easily post to AN/I to let other admins know what he has done (as many block reviews are done now). In not so clear cut cases, a consensus on a noticeboard should be sought first. Ryan Postlethwaite 14:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

19. Support proposal as written. RyanGerbil10(Говорить!) 06:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
20. Support Worth a try as written; in theory Misplaced Pages would never work at all, so the only way to find out if it works is to try it. :) Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 07:55, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
21. Support. Sounds reasonable; the details can be tweaked later. Sandstein (talk) 08:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
22. The undo function is abused and some admins misuse rollback, but as you have to specifically ask for this function and as it can be removed easily I think it is worth trialling. violet/riga (t) 10:38, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
23. Support very good idea. Non-admins already have access to many tools (TWINKLE, popups, the undo function etc) which are only a step down from administrator rollback, and these are accepted by the community and not often misused. Hut 8.5 11:51, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
24. Support. My first question is always "Is it useful?" and I immediately bring to mind an afternoon spent rolling back over a hundred spam links on request. Yes, it's useful. :) I see opposes below basically indicating that this is nothing that can't be done through Twinkle. (I also note below that Twinkle has a conflict with ZoneAlarm which has made it unusable for some editors.) If this is the case, then there is no harm in granting it to reliable editors, who (if they don't have the ZoneAlarm conflict) could be essentially doing it by other means already. I do support caution in granting this function, and at the least I would encourage any admin who grants it to remind editors to read the policy and note that rolling back changes that are not vandalism is heartily discouraged as insulting to other editors. --Moonriddengirl 13:51, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
25. I think the 'redundant with TW' argument has been adequately addressed; rollback is better, for both the user and the project. I can't see a reason why it would create more problems with edit warring and other bad behavior than scripts like TW. And we can deal with those problems by blocking or removing the tool anyway. I find the 'creating a separate class of editors' argument a little more compelling, but I think we should understand that that's a social problem, not a technical one. I definitely hear what people are saying about giving admins too much power and creating more bureaucracy, but I think we should weigh those potential problems against the benefit of giving out the tool. delldot talk 14:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
26. Support -- lucasbfr 15:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
27. Support: Good alternative for good editors (good = constructive) who don't like to use tools such as TW and POPUPS. Supporting since it will be closely controlled by the sysops, and I don't think it will be abused. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
28. Support --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 16:19, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
29. Support but should be considered a privilege, and thus easier to justify removal than it is to justify blocking. NoSeptember 17:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
30. I don't support requiring a consensus at ANI to remove the tool but I do agree that we need a simple mechanism to allow the application of the tool. Like all policies and guidelines this will develop with time but I'd not be opposed to widening the amount of access to the tool beyond the regular vandalfighters. All established and well behaved editors should have access to the tool even if they do not have regular cause to use it. Spartaz 17:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
31. Support this is a great idea, and I fully agree that caution in permitting users to use the tool is indeed the best way to go with this. It would save an enormous amount of effort in reverting vandalism and other such bad-faith edits. .:Alex:. 18:43, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
32. I strongly support this proposal. I think the benefits outweigh the negatives: if someone abuses the rollback, they get it removed; if a blatant revert-warrior requests rollback, they'll be denied. Regarding using revert scripts, some people may not realize that scripts like TWINKLE don't work on all browsers, and giving rollback to vandal-fighters who use Internet Explorer will be excellent. With the "go through RfA argument", as Gurch says, people who are vandal-fighters often get opposed simply for being vandal-fighters. I think we'll benefit from feature this overall. Acalamari 20:22, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
33. Why the hell not give it to trusted users and reduce server load? Maybe a 30 day trial can be done and if the problems turn out to be huge, it can always go back to the way it was. Spellcast (talk) 20:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
34. Support. After witnessing a large amount of vandalism firsthand after having an article at WP:TFA, it'd sure be nice in the future to have some more tools handy for those who wish to be trusted vandal-fighters. Cirt (talk) 22:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC).
35. Support. Great idea, this will definitely help take the fight to the vandals! Happy New Year!! Malinaccier (talk) 00:25, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
36. Strong Support - I just needed to support something :S ...--Cometstyles 03:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
37. Yeah, only if passing it wouldn't mean removing the feature from tools like twinkle. In which case, I wouldn't need it, but IE users would. J-ſtan_{User page} 03:42, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
38. Support Although I do wish there was some sort of "2 admins required to give rollback" clause. I presume there will be a log of rollback rights given by admin as there is for blocks? MBisanz 03:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

    That'd be the user rights log, same as for +sysop and +bureaucrat, I presume. J-ſtan_{User page} 03:54, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

39. Strong support I brought this issue up a while ago but was quickly shot down. You can see my essay on this topic that has been in the draft stage for months here, you wont get much out of it because I gave up half way through but still someone might be interested. -Icewedge (talk) 04:38, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
40. Pomte 07:49, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
41. Strong support What's the worse that could happen? ;) Tiddly-Tom 15:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
42. Support It's basically just an extenstion to the current "undo" feature that is available to all. I wish that it was available to IP's but that's the way it goes. The only real problem I see is at start up with the amount of people that will be applying.
43. No big deal (other less efficient tools exist), no vandalism that can't be done already without it, it can be easily taken away if abused, and it is conducive to other admin tools being modularized. The process will be lightweight, like getting AWB (which is more powerful). Nihiltres 23:07, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
44. Support. It is important that the process put in place is simple and quick, with as little bureaucratic waffling as possible. Neıl ☎ 10:27, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
45. Support. —Random832 16:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
46. Support. Something like this has been needed for a while. Normally I wouldn't just make a me-too comment like this, but for a change to the software settings a vote is normally required in practice as generally someone will demand one if there isn't one. --ais523 19:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
47. Yes, thanks, finally! I've been wishing for this for years. It would be simpler yet to just grant this automatically to all autoconfirmed users, but this is a good first step. Honestly, now that the technical limitations that prevented this before have been fixed, any remaining "dispute" is really just bikeshed-painting. It's a minor feature in the MediaWiki user interface, essentially an optimization of something that has long been available via user scripts. We don't know what, if any, social effects enabling it will eventually have, since we haven't tried it yet, but it's not going to cause any irreversible damage — this is a Wiki, after all, anything can be fixed. This should have just been turned on by developer fiat, just to see how it'll work out; but since they apparently want a poll to show consensus, well, let's give them one. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:25, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
48. Strong Support. With rollback disabled unless requested, there will be virtually no abuse of it; besides, what few cases of rollback abuse do occur probably would have happened through scripts or the undo feature anyway. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 01:02, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
49. Support. There are virtually no arguments of merit against this proposal, but many for it. Ever tried fighting vandalism on an old computer with a slow Internet connection? I have, and, believe me, you want rollback. I don't fight vandalism at the moment, since I'm currently not on Misplaced Pages full-time, but I insist that those who do fight vandalism get access to this tool. — Thomas H. Larsen 02:33, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
50. Support I think this is a really good idea! SQL 03:49, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
51. Weak support, it can be risky in the wrong hands, but so long as it's dished out minimally i don't have a problem with it. Wizardman 04:20, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
52. If the risk of abuse were so great then we would already be seeing it with TWINKLE. We're not, therefore it isn't. --JayHenry (talk) 04:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
53. Support I already do this with TW. It would be beneficial for me to use in order to further my counter-vandalism efforts. Bstone (talk) 04:43, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose, would encourage stalking and other abuses. Editors already have access to the rollback function in the article history, this is sufficient. Martintg (talk) 23:25, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
   • Encourage stalking? May I ask how? If there's misuse it can be removed straight away anyway. Users have no access to rollback currently as it's faster than any other tool. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:27, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
   • Hi there, I don't think you need to worry about the tool being used to stalk users, firstly, the user needs to have their contributions checked by an administrator before they are given the tool, and if there was allegations of stalking, we would be able to remove the tool and take any further additional action against the user that may be necessary. We feel this proposal strikes the very best balance available of helping those who maintain Misplaced Pages whilst preventing those who seek to damage the project from accessing such tools. Nick (talk) 23:34, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
   • Stalking? That's a new one. "Stalking", or at least the weird definition of it that you've linked to, involves editing the same articles as another user to annoy them... how on earth does the ability to revert vandalism more quickly have anything to do with that? – Gurch 23:39, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
     • And following people around reverting their work wouldn't constitute stalking? Martintg (talk) 04:49, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
       • It most certainly would; but reversion will always be possible. This proposal is about a specific way to revert; I have no idea how that has any relation to stalking, wiki or otherwise. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
2. I completely fail to understand why this "rollback for non-admins" proposal must return every so often. Don't we already have this Twinkle thing that basically does the same thing? Yeah, maybe slower, but on broadband you can barely see a difference. Oh, admins can give and take it? Cool, so I can see three issues here: 1) creating another "caste" of users (oh, but we love the healthy atmosphere this creates, so who cares?), 2) opens field for wheel warring (you admit that yourself, but we're used to that, so who cares?), 3) extra bureaucracy (but we love that, so who cares?). Overall, this gives very little added value (slightly faster revert) with a slightly stricter mechanism of granting it (you can't just add it to your monobook, yet a user can be de-rollbacked just as easily as de-twinkled) and possible field for abuse and inter-admin vitriol alike. No, thanks. Миша13 23:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

   Twinkle is slower and rollback is a specific built in function. I fail to see how it would introduce wheel wars? If Twinkle is so similar, why do we allow that? Majorly (talk) 01:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   You can count on your fingers the number of users who are actually going to get this feature, given the community's paranoia and love of ever-increasing standards. Apart from this group being too small to create another "caste", all of them will be experienced RC patrollers who already have enough "status" that it won't make any difference.

   If administrators wheel war over granting/revoking of rollback, then they're idiots, frankly, and probably shouldn't be administrators in the first place. They're supposed to be trusted individuals; every policy we have works on the principle that they're trusted individuals, and if they aren't then that's an issue outside the scope of this policy. Rejecting proposals for new administrator actions purely on the grounds that they "might be used for wheel warring" is stupid; how exactly would the project have ever been set up if everyone thought like that?

   I agree that it is hard work to sit here and rip out bureaucracy every time it gets inserted into the proposal. But there really isn't any more bureaucracy here than, say, AutoWikiBrowser approval, which can also be granted/revoked by any administrator, works in pretty much the same way and so far has worked without any problems as far as I am aware.

   Internet connection speed makes little difference; it's the latency at Wikimedia's end that slows things down; rollback avoids that, while at the same time cutting bandwidth requirements by 95%. This proposal is as much to help Wikimedia as it is to help editors; reversions account for 5% of all edits and while edits pale into insignificance compared to page views, most page views are served from cache, whereas all edits require (comparatively very slow) PHP scripts and DB writes to be done. There is little added value for you, certainly, because you are an administrator. Those who feel there is "little added value" won't ask for it; those who know that there is will. As for "inter-admin vitriol", well, again, that's an issue that's outside the scope of this proposal. If you want to deal with that, attack it head-on rather than blocking any admin-related proposal you come across – Gurch 10:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

3. Oppose. If you do this you might as well give it to everyone. Who possibly has time to notice or monitor abuse of the tools? The good vandal fighters need to become admins anyone to block effectively and it will not improve things. --BozMo talk 23:46, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

   Then stop turning down RC patrollers at RfA because they don't have enough article writing experience – Gurch 10:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   Oppose: I fail to see a logical reason for this and it just seems inappropriate. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC) Guess I misunderstood; Supporting. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15

   57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   How does giving some users who could do with a better tool, the said better tool cause bureaucracy?! Ryan Postlethwaite 03:08, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   I may be a bit confused with this....Would this eliminate the useability of say the Twinkle rollback script...or a "homemade" rollback script? You're saying it would give some people the ability to use, but unless I have the wrong idea here, it would also take it away from people too. - Rjd0060 (talk) 04:26, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   I don't think so, I think this would be an additional option for editors. RxS (talk) 04:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   This would soley be in addition to the extra tools and would in no-way affect the current tools (although extensions could be added to also allow admin rollback to be used with them). Ryan Postlethwaite 11:24, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

4. Oppose the implementation as the construction of an arbitrary bureaucracy. It is not fair to apply a passing admin's personal preferences to the granting of editorial capabilities. It is unnecessary to insist upon a meaninglessly-nebulous "understanding of the project" to allow someone to revert simple vandalism - particularly since "understanding the project" is not a constant meaning for all editors and admins. It is naive to suppose that some bolded words will magically prevent wheel warring over this. It is foolhardy to imagine that this will not lead to angry users denied the tool on an administrative whim, angry users surrounding an opponent granted it on a whim and angry editors that the admin failed to correctly "evaluate request". Revocation of the tool by "consensus" on AN(I) will be about as consistent and useful as a pair of knickers on a kipper. This proposal is a straight-line route to increased drama, increased power-wielding by admins, more arbcom cases and greater upset. It should be rejected until people come up with a simpler and more effective process by far. Splash - tk 06:56, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   "Passing admins' personal preferences" are applied every day to blocks, deletions, page protections, edits to protected pages... in short, to every administrative action we have. Granting/revoking of the ability to edit is far more significant than granting/revoking of the ability to revert things more efficiently, so why is that OK but not this? There's a simple solution to the problem of more ArbCom cases, which is to stop pretending that it's a good idea to let a committee of oddballs appointed to three-year terms deal with anything, and do things by consensus instead, so if ArbCom cases bother you, why not propose that instead of trying to block this? As for the other stuff, as I've mentioned above, all of our policies work on the assumption that administrators are trusted individuals; if they aren't, then all our policies are flawed; that's a separate issue that needs to be addressed separately, not by blocking every proposal that involves administrators because of paranoia – Gurch 10:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

5. Oppose Seems redundant with scripts like Twinkle. If a bot, such as ClueBot, really needs this function it should just be given admin status. Why even have admins if us regular editors start getting admin tools.. today it's "rollback", tomorrow it's "ban but subject to overturn by an admin". If an editor wants and needs the tools, he or she should go through RfA. -- ALLSTARecho 08:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   Then stop turning down RC patrollers at RfA because they don't have enough article writing experience – Gurch 10:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   Just to note that Twinkle doesn't work for everybody. I used it happily for some months before it developed a conflict with ZoneAlarm, and now I can't use it at all. I had to disable it to get my own administratorial "rollback" to function. --Moonriddengirl 13:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   Just to say, further, that TWINKLE doesn't work with all browsers, I believe it only works with FireFox and related browsers, the other benefit is that the tool provides additional benefits for the servers, making much more efficient use of the available resources. Nick (talk) 16:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

6. I'm not comfortable supporting this proposal as written. The "there are no prerequisites" statement bothers me. Sure, it's followed by "should this" and "should that", but those should's can be quite easily ignored if "there are no prerequisites". --Kbdank71 18:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
7. Several issues:
   • Admins have a hard enough time using rollback conservatively; will non-admins be able to do better? I doubt it, unfortunately. Twinkle works in Firefox, Lupin's pop-ups work in IE and Firefox, and there are plenty more which are bound to function in all major browsers. If you'd like even faster reverts, please apply at Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship. In addition, no good system for supervision and removal has been proposed. And by that, I do indeed mean "just complain at ANI and the admins will fix your problem(s) for you" is a bad system. Considering how could be forwarded to the incidents noticeboard?
   • As Kbdank17 and Splash note, this proposal has no specific prerequisites to prevent admins just handing rollback out to whoever they think won't abuse it; from the description above, it seems an arbitrary decisions, with no firm guideline (Wikipedians are notoriously bad for functioning without these), in the hands of one person who wasn't elected to make the decision? Much as I dislike the functioning of Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship, it at least manages to turn down nearly all of the people who shouldn't get tools. But if all it takes is one admin, without any actual criteria, without a specific page to make a request, to toss this to whoever asks as long as they seem trustworthy, we have an issue. The decision to block, to which handing out rollback has been compared, is different than this because it has a clear policy for use, clear method for appeal, and clear consequences for misuse. Picaroon (t) 19:38, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   There is no system in place at all for monitoring the use of tools such as TWINKLE, popups and AWB other than a complaint at WP:ANI, and that seems to suffice the vast majority of cases. In the case of TWINKLE and popups there is no entry requirement at all, in direct contrast to the system being proposed here. In the case of AWB, the requirements for getting it (500 edits) are both pretty low and interpreted broadly and the system functions fine. Bear in mind that tools such as TWINKLE can cause almost as much damage as admin rollback if used inappropriately, and AWB can (I'm told) be converted into a vandalbot very easily.

   Yes, experienced RC patrollers can be told to apply at RFA, but that tends to be rather pointless. Compared to the tools of blocking, deletion and protection admin rollback really isn't that powerful, and the oppose rationales in those RFAs, as Gurch notes, will not be related to use of rollback (and will be related to the candidate's suitability for blocking, deletion, protection etc). Why should an established editor have to go through the huge process of RFA just to get a revert feature which is a little faster and easier on the servers? Hut 8.5 21:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

8. (1) Adds bureaucracy but does not appreciably benefit the encyclopedia; (2) The standard laid out for usage is not in line with how rollback is used by existing admins; (3) I expect that the presence of a new rights level below administrator will provoke further ballooning of the standards at RFA. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
9. Oppose either give 90% of the experienced users the tool by default or make applying for admin easier or introduce "admins and superadmins", but this is just unneeded bureaucracy. I find this implementation to be the worst possible way in which this great idea could materialize. Idea is great, proposal sucks. Has everyone forgotten what the KISS principle was about? --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
10. Strong Oppose - I just don't feel that administrators should be granting (and especially not removing) administrator tools. (Imagine an admin removing an admin's rollback ability. Do we really want to set up for that wheel war possibility?) Bureaucrats "makesysop", and that should apply to the individual tools as well. Change it to bureaucrats (excercising discretion, similar to Misplaced Pages:Changing username), and I'd likely support. - jc37 12:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

    I pretty agree with this opinion. However, someone pointed out that there aren't enough active bureaucrats for this task (and, ironically, we don't need more bureaucrats). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 14:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

    Admins can allready revoke the right to edit. There are not many problems with that, why would there be with this? Tiddly-Tom 15:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

    Admins can already prevent further vandalism, not "reward" good users just by themselves. This would be more like WP:AWB approval. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 20:33, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

    The proposal does not extend to granting administrators the ability to remove the rollback tool from fellow administrators, the removal of the rollback function from administrators is solely at the discretion of the Arbitration Committee as part of a wider desysopping decision. Nick (talk) 21:53, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

    Anything that an admin can do can be reverted and therefore can become a wheel war. Should admins not get any new tools because of that possibility? As Nick said, admins can not remove the rollback tool from admins and as was said above, admins who wheel war with this should probably not be admins. Mr.Z-man 22:51, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

    should, would, could, maybe... An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The community has placed their trust in the bureaucrats to makesysop, and that was something under discussion during each of their RfBs. The giving of admin tools was never suggested to be entrusted to any individual admin during any RfA. I think we should stay closer to our existing systems than to create something out of whole cloth that is (as noted) likely to backfire, and possibly spectacularly. - jc37 00:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

11. Oppose per Splash. I'd rather have these rights granted automatically primarily rather than have to have admins waste time vetting it. If such cannot be done then fuck the whole thing, since it distracts admins to much from more important things; others could use good stuff like WP:TW then. And the performance boost of server rollback would be nice, but not exactly a huge slice off the server use pie. Voice-of-All 04:02, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
12. Oppose per TheDJ, as unneeded bureaucracy. I think that the granularization of admin rights would add unneeded complexity to Misplaced Pages. Users who want rollback have viable options right now (Twinkle and RfAs); where is the value that this policy adds? I'm not convinced that the benefits (faster revert time?) outweigh the costs (another layer of policy, complexity, and rules). -FrankTobia (talk) 22:34, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
13. Oppose Just as per the last time. I don't see any need for this, and a lot of time wasted in form-filling.--Doc 02:27, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
14. Oppose. It would be open to abuse by multiple sockpuppets engaged in edit wars. MegX (talk) 03:30, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
15. I'm not persuaded either way, but as doc just pointed out on the mailing list, insufficient time has been given to decide this. I won't support a policy made by fait accompli. Johnleemk | Talk 03:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
16. Still uncomfortable with it. Still oppose. DS (talk) 03:51, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
17. Likewise, I am uncomfortable with it. At the least, RfA's are supposed to be a discussion on the trustworthiness and decision making of editors. Are we going to have a similar procedure for this? If so, just request full admin responsibilities while you are at it. -- Avi (talk) 04:10, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
18. Oppose. I see how we could possibly benefit from it, but the whole thing with administrators granting access and how it could easily be abused, it just doesn't sit right with me. I'm sorry. Spebi 04:15, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
19. Heck no. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
20. Per Splash, Doc, and Spebi. Really don't like the admins giving it out bit. No thanks. KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 04:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
21. Oppose creating an additional class of users. Many of the arguments about possible abuse of rollback at Misplaced Pages:Rollback for non-administrators remain relevant. Eluchil404 (talk) 04:49, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Voting is evil

1. Oh BTW, what's all this "support" and "oppose" about anyway? While it's convenient to put one's comments in one section or the other to easily mark one's stance on this, I hope nobody comes up with a brilliant idea of actually making the results of this poll binding. Or did we start to enact policies by voting and I missed that? Миша13 09:49, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

   True, voting is evil, but this case is different (and it's not a clear cut vote). The devs want to see consensus clearly demonstated and this method is far better in showing consensus rather than a long convoluted discussion that conclusions can't be brought from. You also miss out on the views of people that simply support or oppose is but don't have anything really extra to add to the discussion. Ryan Postlethwaite 14:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

just some random thoughts, But I agree that admins should have the ability to grant/remove the rollback, But let me toss in another wrinkle that might make things easier, users who have more than 10,000 edits and have been with the project for over 6 months automatically get granted rollback, (by a software config, that already exists) but admins can still remove the auto given right. β 23:15, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, not sure about this, we have a lot of people with over 10,000 edits that really couldn't be trusted with it and would use it soley for edit warring. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:17, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Then it can be removed from them. Majorly (talk) 23:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

You could pass an RfA with those fixed requirements up there, making this whole thing pointless. Do away with them and let administrators exercise their judgement; they're supposed to be trusted members of the community, not dumb automatons that get spoonfed instructions with no room for discretion – Gurch 23:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure if someone could pass a RFA, but another month and he could for sure. My fear is that we will be seeing people using the rollback feature without taking the time to warn the user in their page (since rollback should only be used when dealing with vandalism). Who would be assigning the rights? Administrators? I would prefer having bureaucrats do it, as to give them some more work, especially if they will have to review the users' last hundreds of edits. However, I am not against the idea of non-admins using the feature. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 23:36, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with the bureaucrats granting is that they simply haven't the man time to do this - it would be too much to handle for such a limited resource. We already have plenty of scripts available that allow the use of admin rollback and follow with a warning, so there wouldn't be a great change in that respect. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:40, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be worried about people dealing with vandalism incorrectly. That is really neither here nor there. A large proportion of vandalism is already dealt with by non-administrators. This would change only the method by which they do it. If people warn users now, I can't see why they would suddenly stop if they were able to use rollback. If they don't, I can't see any reason why they would suddenly start if they were able to use rollback. So the situation would be no different to how it currently is – Gurch 23:43, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Automatic tools right now allow to revert and warn at the same time. I am worried that these people would either not use the rollback feature at all (since the scripting solution gives them more than a simple rollback) or migrate to the new system and stop warning users (just like some admins rollback without warning, or users in general undo others without explaining why or leaving a note in the other's talk page). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 23:56, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

There are tools available to do this both for the admin-revert and non-admin-reverts. And it's no problem e. g. to include the admin-revert in Twinkle. --Oxymoron 00:38, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Rey, warning is not essential. It's preferable, but not required. It's better the vandalism is removed faster more efficiently. Majorly (talk) 04:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I have my doubts about me being able to pass an RfA. -- ClueBot (talk) 05:05, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Somewhat related but in an almost opposite tone is Misplaced Pages:Limit the undo function, a proposal I haven't really organised properly yet. I have concerns about the use of the undo function, but mostly about its use by IPs. violet/riga (t) 23:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be better to require 2-3 admins to approve granting, rather than one. Ditto on the removal. I would also like to see that if someone has rollback removed for cause, it can not be granted again for some period of time (2-3 months)? Thatcher 06:25, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Unnecessary bureaucracy. – Gurch 10:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think that admins should be allowed to remove the permission without prior WP:ANI discussion. After all, admins can already block without discussion, which is a much sharper sanction. Unnecessary bureaucracy in the implementation of this feature should be avoided. Sandstein (talk) 08:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Said unnecessary bureaucracy has been removed. – Gurch 10:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer if administrators could "block" rollback usage for a determined time, like a block. Having two options only (give and take) is problematic, because some admins will prefer to only punish serious offenses. We can block someone for a hour, a day or a week, but we would have problems if our only options were unblock and block indefinitely. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 14:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

You can always restore access to the tool as soon as the period of suspension is over. I don't see that a major obstacle. Spartaz 18:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but it is not automatic. That means we will have to have some list of users with temporary removed access as to not bother people to request again once their "block" is finished. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 20:24, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think rollback is such a vital tool (like being able to edit at all) that there will be many uses for a very-short-term removal. If a user is using it to edit war, why give it back after a day or 2? IMO, they should have to re-request it and convince people that they can be trusted with it again. Mr.Z-man 20:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Why not simply make rollback an autoconfirmed feature, like page moving? It doesn't seem weighty enough that it should need a special approval process, since it doesn't let the user do anything that couldn't be done by hand with a few seconds more work. *** Crotalus *** 01:58, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

That has been discussed, however, sleeper accounts could be used to vandalize using rollback, or users who have shown they are clearly incapable of controlling their actions and would abuse rollback would also gain access to it. Autoconfirmed accounts mean that someone has been around for four days; that doesn't really seem like enough time to understand reverting, much less rollback and its intricacies. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:34, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that the vandalism concerns really have that much weight. Anyone who wants to vandalize can do so in a dozen different ways that have nothing to do with rollback. That will be the case as long as this is the 💕 that anyone can edit. We can set a different period (say, 60 days) for autoconfirmation if 4 days is insufficient. But I do think it should be automatic. We have too many bureaucracies already. *** Crotalus *** 04:29, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I personaly dont really see how giving rollback to autconffirmed users would be harmfull. The vast majority of vandalism (over 97%) is commited by IP's. Even if someone was to wait a while how much harm could they do? Sure they could roll back people contributions faster but they could have their vandalism undone just as fast. -Icewedge (talk) 04:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I should also note that if autoconfirmed users get rollback automatically, it means it would be hardcoded into the settings and could not be taken away from a user like with this system. Mr.Z-man 05:02, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Would IP's be permitted to use the tool as well? CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 08:07, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Nope, you can't change the rights for an IP. Ryan Postlethwaite 15:12, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

And we wouldn't want to, in case the IP got reassigned. Hut 8.5 15:37, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

If it was given to autoconfirmed, as if they were to vandalise in other ways, they should be blocked for abusing their editing right (rollback is an edit). Tiddly-Tom 15:40, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The main abuse of this would be edit warring, not vandalism. We don't block for every edit war. Also, if a user is going to wait for 4 days to vandalize, there are far more destructive things that rollback. Mr.Z-man 22:03, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but what happens when an experienced sock of a vandal rolls back all of clue-bots edits? Malinaccier (talk) 00:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

In that case we would block, but as far as abuses of rollback go, that would be a 1 in a 1000 occurrence. Edit wars happen far more frequently than things like that. Also, if it was given to all autoconfirmed users, it would be slowed by the rate limiter (the addition of which to the code was the genesis of all this discussion). Mr.Z-man 01:17, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Consensus

I wonder how whomever makes the decision will determine "consensus" from this "discussion". I note the "voting is evil" mainstay of such polls, as well as several people who have commented but not "voted". - jc37 06:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Over two thirds of this sample agree with the main idea of giving rollback to users other than admins. The main complains are "Administrators should not be the ones handling it", that "Users will abuse it", and that the prerequisites are somewhat weak. There may be some steps to try to fix those three points before implementing this. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 12:17, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Currently, 81% of those who have left a numbered comment / vote have support the idea of giving rollback to non admins. That, by most standards, would indicate consensus among the community. However, ultimately, the final decision rests with the sysadmins (those capable of making live code changes). In regard to the comment about those who commented but did not "vote," I assume you're referring to those who didn't use a bold support. For those comments, it seems clear that those users supported the idea, even if they didn't spell it out.

In response to ReyBrujo's third point, we seem to have hit a catch-22. If you look at the old versions of this page, you'll see that there used to be specific criteria for granting +rollback. However, users were quick to complain about those "strict" criteria, so the prerequisites were modified to be more loose and open to administrators' discretion. Now that the prerequisites are not so narrow, users are complaining. It seems to perfectly fit the mantra that "you can't make everyone happy." However, the current proposal is the one being discussed, and it seems that the majority of users agree that administrators can be trusted to assign +rollback.

I will say, as a safeguard, if this turns out to be a failure, there is nothing permanent about the software change. Should this change be made and deep concerns emerge that leave the community wanting to revert this change, it can, and would, be done. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

As far as "Users will abuse it" goes, only giving it to users who have shown they have some experience and no history of behavior problems, combined with WP:AGF should make this not much of an issue. Mr.Z-man 01:14, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

illegitimate gauge of consensus

I'd strongly advise any developer against proceeding on the basis of this poll, regardless of the result. We polled on this 2 years ago at Misplaced Pages:Requests for rollback privileges/Poll and got no consensus. Now, admittedly consensus can change, and maybe it has. But that poll lasted *6 months* and involved nearly 300 users, this one is scheduled to run six days over the holiday period, and despite the fact the community is far larger, attract a fraction of the involvement (indeed I only stumbled on it by accident). To suggest that the no consensus position coulb be overturned on that basis will be quite invalid.--Doc 02:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

From what I understand, this is a rough vote to check which are the weak points of the proposal, and work on them. Also, there are two main differences: the rollback privilege exists now (and it was not something hypothetical like in that poll), and the process to grant it is different (poll vs. direct granting), which was ultimately one of the main negative points in that proposal (as you see, a solution for one of the points there was offered here, and probably in a third poll there will be another for the "misuse" argument). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 02:54, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure about that, the way I read the bolded text at the top of the page it's measuring consensus for implementation. I'm surprised at the low participation here to this point. I'd have to agree with Doc, without more eyeballs this isn't an accurate gauge. I'm on the fence about this, but perhaps the addition of more rollback type tools available since the last debate makes this less of an issue and maybe unnecessary. RxS (talk) 03:14, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Anyone is free to publicize this wherever they'd like, however it's been on WP:AN, WP:BN, Template:Cent, and WP:VPR. I'm not really sure how to respond to claims that it hasn't been well-publicized. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the issue is how well-publicized the page has been, but the low level of participation that resulted. A change like this probably needs more input...RxS (talk) 03:23, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The previous "no-consensus" position was arrived at with 400 participants. Now, that may well have changed. But showing 49 people supporting it in 6 (holi)days does not demonstrate this.--Doc 03:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) For one thing on how it hasn't been well publicized, you started the poll in the middle of the holiday. How could you do that and expect reasonable awareness and publicity and participation? This is almost a poster child for when not to do things... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:27, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

This isn't a job - most people will edit more in the holiday period, they're off work and college. It's very very well publicired, where else do you want us to mention it? Ryan Postlethwaite 03:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Many people are away though, so why not extend it for a couple of weeks so those who are can opine? The low level of interest here speaks for itself and robs it of legitimacy. If you really want this to happen, it is in your interests to show strong support and not indifference anyway.--Doc 03:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

But where else do you want it publicised to encourage more people to comment? Ryan Postlethwaite 03:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The main things is I want you to give it longer, so more people have the opportunity to see the publicity there is. Personally, I only check policy goings on every couple of weeks or so.--Doc 03:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. I don't think a notice was posted to the mailing list either. It's the only policy-related part of Misplaced Pages I frequent anymore, so I certainly wasn't aware of this proposal. My opposition to it can be struck off if we extend the deadline by about two weeks, preferably more. Johnleemk | Talk 03:39, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's on the mailing list now, anyway. Can anyone think of anywhere else it hasn't been posted that it should? A sitenotice, perhaps? —Random832 04:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages proposals