Requests for Stewardship

Archives:
 * Archive 1 (December 2016 - May 2019)

Nomination of Dmehus as Steward
User: Dmehus ( contributions &bull; CA &bull; blocks log &bull; rights log &bull; global rights log )

Reasoning for nomination
In my opinion, Dmehus is an outstanding Miraheze contributor. He is one of the most active users at Miraheze. He has gone above and beyond with [ wiki requests], reviewing approximately 90% of all wiki requests through mid October 2020, and has created more than 630 wikis (as of 7 November 2020). He is a community-elected member of the Code of Conduct Commission, an administrator on Meta, a global interwiki administrator, and the only Consul on TestWiki besides Miraheze system administrators or existing stewards. He has made nearly 5,000 editing contributions on Meta alone and over 7,000 editing contributions globally. He is always eager to help, is very active on Discord and IRC, is extremely active in answering all questions to the best of his ability on all noticeboards. I believe he would make an ideal steward, primarily because of his activity, eagerness to help, and willingness to seek advice from others when it is either necessary or he is uncertain of something. Based on conversations I have personally had with Dmehus, it's abundantly clear that he understands all global policies, and is capable of upholding, such policies, and will investigate without making brash or rushed decisions. He understands the myriad functions a steward performs, and should he accept this nomination, I have faith he will successfully make the Miraheze community significantly better with him as Steward. Thank you for considering Dmehus as Steward.


 * Nominated by:
 * 05:42, 1 December 2020 (UTC) ］ |
 * As a reminder, please give the nominated candidate time to accept the nomination and add their candidate's acceptance statement. Thank you.


 * Candidate's indication of acceptance:
 * Dmehus (talk) 05:45, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Universal Omega, both for the kind, thoughtful, and eloquent words in your nomination statement and for nominating me for steward, which I am pleased to accept. The primary reason for my requesting stewardship, by my accepting this nomination, is essentially the same reason that I joined the global Miraheze community in that I am passionate about its raison d'être, which is to provide ad free wiki hosting in a community volunteer-run, entirely open source, and free environment, and so, central to that reason is that as Miraheze continues to grow over the long term, it becomes of paramount importance to ensure our resources scale commensurately with the growth of both our hosted wikis and total users. Resources, in this context, certainly means funding and server resources, which the board will manage and plan, as applicable, together with the advice of system administrators, but its resources also means growing our people resources in order provide service to our customers that is both exceptional and excellent, as our customers are central to Miraheze's very existence. Customers run and collaborate in building the wikis which they request from us, but they are also our sources of financial capital, which pays our server hosting expenses, and human capital, for editing or translating content pages on our central community-run wikis, answering technical support questions on the noticeboards, writing or adapting code, and the like. As we continue to grow and because we run entirely by community volunteers, all of whom have other real life obligations, we need to ensure we continue to scale up our global community volunteers and managers, in order to fulfill customer requests that cannot be actioned by local wiki bureaucrats for myriad reasons which include technical, security, and legal. At the same time as there is a need to scale up our people resources, Miraheze has seen its steward complement actually decrease by 40% over the previous twelve months thereby making the need for an additional steward that much greater. Of the remaining three stewards, two of them are also Site Reliability Engineers, one of whom is both the cofounder of Miraheze and the primary developer of the CreateWiki, ManageWiki, and other extensions central to Miraheze, so they have incredible competing demands and pressures on and for their time. While I am indeed only one person, I feel that both my level of Miraheze global community activity and volunteerism combined with the fact I am not also a system administrator should not only fill the gap created by the steward resignations in the past year, but also actually significantly increase our capacity for handling customer requests more quickly and efficiently, which, in turn, would maintain and help to increase total customer/user satisfaction levels.
 * Candidate's acceptance statement:

While the steward user group does add extra technical bits, the reality is that, as one of English Wikipedia's co-founders somewhat famously remarked on requesting advanced permissions, it's really not a big deal, and the principle reasons behind this are two-fold. For one thing, stewards are both grounded and guided by a combination of our community-adopted global policies and non-codified steward conventions and customs that have normalized over time. Secondarily, they already have an established history that clearly demonstrates that they are both responsible and trustworthy, In this way, a steward is not that different, really, from the trusted public servant in the department of motor vehicles or even a bank teller that helps to facilitate customer requests in line with government or company policies and practices. As Universal Omega has also articulated in his nomination statement, I believe that I have so clearly demonstrated that in myriad ways, some of which include, but which are by no means limited to, my clerking work on Meta's noticeboards, responding to requests whether I am able to complete them or refer to other colleagues and volunteers as necessary, answering customer/user questions on community noticeboard and Discord, handling wiki requests, handling local interwiki table requests on community noticeboard, Discord, and my own user talk page, and responding to and handling requests and counter vandalism work on Miraheze Commons and Miraheze Template Wiki. Perhaps equally importantly, too, since stewards are often called upon to mediate disputes between users or between two wikis, has been my dispute resolution work, whether officially as part of the Code of Conduct Commission or, even more importantly, as just a community member, engaging with local wiki community members when users have come to me with assistance resolving local blocks on wikis to which they'd never previously contributed, as just one type example. So with that, I look forward to being able to help handle customer/user requests more efficiently and engage with local wiki members to help them get the most of both their wikis and their Miraheze experience, and thank you all in advance for your consideration of my request for stewardship, and am always happy to answer any questions, whether as part of this request or following this request, at my user talk page, which remains one of the more active pages on Meta Wiki.

Prerequisite

 * Non-disclosure agreement signed and on file with Miraheze. ✅ (verify)

Support

 * 1)  As nominator.  05:42, 1 December 2020 (UTC) ］ |
 * 2)  for the same reasons. &mdash;Lakelimbo (talk) 05:49, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 3) In my short time here he's been super helpful and friendly! Verne (talk) 05:54, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 4)  Very active, very helpful, I don't see why I should not support this request! There tools will be benefic for him and the community! HeartsDo (Talk || Global || Wiki Creator) 05:55, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 5)  I have had the opportunity to have numerous discussions with Dmehus regarding various wiki related topics, and I have also seen his vast contributions to Miraheze. For the past few months, Dmehus has been very active on Miraheze's several platforms: on-wiki (especially Meta), on Discord and on IRC. He has been very kind and helpful to all users and has responded to a large number of requests and questions on Meta's several noticeboards. In addition, he has also participated in various community discussions and has also mediated a few incidents between users, not to mention that he's a member of the Code of Conduct Commission. All these different factors (including my various discussions with him) demonstrate to me that he understands Miraheze's global policies well and also has a great dynamic with users, which would in my view make for a good Steward. Since two thirds of our current Stewards are also sysadmins, I also think it will be nice to be able to have a non-sysadmin Steward, and Dmehus would be especially helpful since, as I mentioned before he's been very active ever since he joined Miraheze. Reception123 (talk) ( C ) 06:07, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 6)  I think you'll be a credit to the Steward team.  ~ RhinosF1 - (chat)· acc· c -  08:02, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 7) He is extremely active on Meta and its sister wikis and very well-mannered. There is no way I am not supporting this. R4356th (talk) 10:53, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 8) Zppix (Meta &#124; Sysadmin &#124; talk to me) 15:16, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 9)  Always willing to help everyone, even trying when not sure to guide you to the right direction!  SkarletWitch (talk) 15:48, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 10)  Yes I agree with everyone. Dmehus has done an excellent job on both here and on Discord. He is always helpful when it comes to advice and especially since he's been helping not only me, but other users along the way. In other words, I'd be honored if he becomes a steward. DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) 16:07, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 11)  I agree with the above points, Dmehus has been extremely helpful in a lot of areas. It would be a major benefit to have him as a Steward.  Hypercane  (  talk ) 03:20, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 12)  He is pretty reliable.--Waki285 (talk) 05:08, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 13)  Waldo (talk) 05:29, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 14)  I cannot think of a better candidate for stewardship. They're a Meta Administrator, a Consul on TestWiki, and a Wiki Creator. They also have all of the qualities needed to be a good steward, and are active on Requests for Adoption. Justarandomliberal (talk) 10:22, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 15)  I have said already months ago that I believed that Miraheze needed more active Stewards because the current ones were not enough for all the wikis. After that, unfortunately another Steward, The Pioneer resigned and we have been left with even less Stewards, and even the ones that we have are not very active because I am sure they have other things to do to keep Miraheze functional. The task of Steward is surely not an easy one and I it is reserved to a small group of very experienced and trusted people. Even though five months is not a lot to have been on Miraheze and that fact would usually make me very hesitant to cast a supporting vote to a candidate for such an important post, I think that Dmehus' activity (7000+ global edits) is enough to overcome that issue. While there are of course some areas of improvement, looking at Dmehus' contributions, I think that he would make a adept Steward because he is a very courteous person who tries his best to help users. Of course, a Steward also has to know when and how to be more firm in some situations, but it is always important to begin by assuming good faith and trying to help users, which Dmehus does very well in my opinion, and his actions could be used as an example for some other users. Finally, I hope that Dmehus will continue to stay this active and help out the community which he has done very well so far from my observations. DeeM28 (talk) 11:25, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 16)  He is a good faith user and i think He is worthy of Steward, he is very helpful  --Cocopuff2018 (talk) 15:17, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 17)  Very helpful on the Miraheze server and website, I definitely have support for this Paramount1106 (talk) 15:56, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 18)  He has Integrity, he is passionate and I think he will do right by the community. He will go above and beyond. He's also very active. Paladox (talk) 15:58, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 19)  What I would say, was already said by my colleagues. In short, he is always willing to help in any way he can. Good luck! Hispano76 (talk) 16:56, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 20) I was no doubt surprised when I found out that Dmehus had only joined a little under six months ago. From the edits he makes, you would definitely get the idea that he has been here for several years. While granting steward to such a new user may be risky, I believe that my impression shows that Dmehus has overpowering standard and ability to act as steward well. Naleksuh (talk) 19:13, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 21) GrahamSH (talk) 16:08, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Revocation of Dmehus' Steward rights
Since Doug has became steward his behaviour on and off wiki has been consisting of "I don't hear that", changing/adding/etc things on off wiki venues (I.E. IRC/Discord) without discussion or proper reasoning [1 ]. He constantly brings up CoC in conversation, which can be interpreted as threatening. He also expresses behaviour that can be interpreted as him believing he is always right, and when challenged, he just "can't understand why [the user] can't DROPTHESTICK." I believe the steward has just given him too much power and its sadly turn his behaviour for the worse. Looking elsewhere, he did have a previous block on the English Wikipedia for behaviour similar to this. Since he became steward, it is of my belief drama has much more increased within the community. Zppix (Meta &#124; talk to me) 03:08, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) as nom. Zppix (Meta &#124; talk to me) 03:08, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 2) Yes, this is the reason for my inactivity.  Total demotivation anything to do.  I will provide some diffs etc.  later today. Also there is always only one true, his. Also, if a steward does what he wants (for example Report extension), he should not be a steward. There are few stewards, we need them, but I believe there will be someone else who will run.  Being active cannot be the main argument for keeping of rights.--MrJaroslavik (talk) 03:42, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 3) I agree with everything Zppix has here written. BenPlenty (talk) 08:00, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1)  First of all, I'd like to start with the main issue with this request, not even regarding the claims being made. The main issue I have is that there have not, in my view, been sufficient attempts to discuss your concerns with Dmehus. I concede that there have been some but for the most part at least they were not very civil and were heated arguments rather than sensible discussions which could have occurred on a talk page (as to be visible to any interested user). After that, if that didn't work I feel the next step would've been to speak with another Steward and ask them what they think and if they could have a word with Dmehus if they agree that he has done something wrong. Second of all, revoking a Steward is a major and serious step (and has never been done before) so I would have expected more proof and links to be provided rather than just one IRC log from yesterday, at least for users who do not actively monitor everything and cannot be expected to know what Dmehus does on a daily/regular basis. That's why I feel that regardless of the accusations, revocation is really the final option and alternatives should be explored before going to this extreme. Thirdly, I agree that there have been some mistakes, everyone makes mistakes but that these missteps are not enough to amount to a revocation and in my opinion the benefits of Dmehus being Steward and the good things he has done still far outweigh the few things that he has done wrong. I also can't really agree with the fact that the drama started after Dmehus was steward, the drama that is being referred to was alive before. Finally, the main premise seems to be the fact that you believe that Dmehus doesn't listen to your concerns and thinks that he's always right. If you believe that is the case I must go back to my original point which is: contact other Stewards and ask for a second opinion. Maybe attempts have been made privately, I don't know, but I'm not aware of any attempts made to discuss with other Stewards and get their opinion on any specific actions taken by Dmehus. I'd also like to point out that a lot of the issues with Dmehus seem to be centered around IRC and Discord, perhaps the proposals made in User:Void/Discord will alleviate some of those concerns. P.S.: As a minor note, this revocation request should've been done at either RfS or SN, as Community noticeboard isn't really meant for these type of requests. Reception123 (talk) ( C ) 08:00, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 2)  my main concerns are based off-wiki, on platform moderation (IRC and Discord). I talked to dmehus, and addressed these concerns, which we came to a reasonable understanding, which in the long-term will hopefully resolve any and all concerns from the community. I would also like to add, off-wiki conduct should not result in on-wiki revocation. To expand on the off wiki concerns I also have, Dmehus does often pre-communicate platform changes to myself, Reception123, or other platform moderators, often pending a formal community discussion, however I still have the concerns mainly because we are not solely the community at large. There should not be changes, which I now realize, to platforms without a community discussion first. All-in-all Dmehus is not solely at fault here and is kind of taking the full blast of community displeasure in the undiscussed moderation actions.. Finally, I feel Zppix should have privately talked with Dmehus beforehand and attempted to resolve these issues. It's ironic that Zppix mentions drama on Miraheze, yet this very act is itself continuing the drama of which he complains about, and I personally don't like that one bit.
 * P.S. Dmehus' on-wiki steward work has been outstanding, and it'd be a loss to see him loose stewardship over a little bit of off-wiki conduct and drama. 08:13, 21 February 2021 (UTC) ］ |
 * 1)  It saddens me greatly that Zppix would propose such a request to revoke someone's Steward rights, despite having made no attempt to resolve any concerns with me privately. As I've demonstrated, my Discord, IRC, and user talk page remain open. Platform moderation responsibilities that come with the Steward or even the Site Reliability Engineering by convention have been a main area of focus for me, and I will just reiterate what I have said before, multiple times, on Discord and in  on IRC, which is that I've always favoured some sort of community-appointed or -elected platform moderation role, not inherited by past conventions based on one's wiki groups. Any changes to platform moderation I've proposed with a limited number of platform moderators have always been designed to be interim measures pending a formal, full community discussion, which User:Void/Discord aims to do (it's still not ready to go live as there's still some additional amendments needed, but I do very much look forward to that discussion). Nevertheless, since the Discord and IRC platform moderation roles have never been key to me, and to be honest, I'm usually so busy on-wiki that others end up having to deal with "Music Troll" and the like, I'm actually going to request that John remove my   flags in  tomorrow, and once the Discord RfC goes live, I will not continue as a platform moderator. Dmehus (talk) 08:26, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 2)  While Doug does have his faults, everyone does and he's learning. I'm not going to repeat what's being said too much by my colleagues above but I don't think revoking Steward is appropiate as I don't see any serious issues. My advice to Doug is to ensure he listens to feedback people give and not be too eager to put things in place if it might be appropiate to ask for feedback. Overall, I think Doug is doing fairly well though at a challenging role with a lot of responsibility.  ~ RhinosF1 - (chat)· acc· c -  09:03, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Commments

 * 1) It has been mentioned a lack of evidence, part of the reasoning behind that is that the evidence I would have are from private channels that are covered by NDA or some other non-public understanding between its members. I would like to address the claims of me not trying to talk to Doug first, this is simply false, I have on numerous occasions have had to ask Doug, to make sure he discusses when he makes a change to something (I.E when he reverts an administrative action on wiki), then he continues to later make changes once again without discussing it. While he may discuss somethings, he fails to discuss things, sometimes major things, such as enabling the Report ext on Meta without community consensus. I would like to also make it clear that this request is not sole-ly based on the reason for my resignation from Sysadmin, this is based on my observations from his appointment to current time. To further add evidence, he excessively pings users on IRC/discord because his refusal to use pastes, after being asked to please do so. (Evidence will be posted ASAP). When determining consensus, he seems to also assume silence means support, which on the first piece of evidence will demonstrate 1 instance of such. Don’t get me wrong, Doug is helpful, but I just think steward may of been too soon. Zppix (Meta &#124; talk to me) 10:10, 21 February 2021 (UTC)