User talk:NDKilla/moving on

Okay so I'm going to create a discussion page here that I would like people to stay respectful on, and it will cover several different areas. It is not an RfC yet per-say, but if people comment here that they think an official RfC is appropriate then it will be actioned on.

Please try to follow talk page / discussion ettiquete. Each unrelated comment in a section below should be a level 1 bullet point, replies to that comment should be indented, and all comments on a comment should be indented one more level, unless that would exceed 6 or so indentations, in which case the author may choose to reset the indent all the way to the left margin (no indentation, to avoid confusion with other comments).

I invite the following pinged users to comment on any of the sections below. @DeltaQuad, Labster, LulzKiller, GethN7, and Revi:

Regarding the use of open proxies

• Several people have been using at least one open proxy that I'm aware of, and I think (haven't CU'd) that two of them just requested Stewardship, as such I think that there should be an official policy along the lines of 'no open proxies' and people using them will be required to appeal to staff (via email) to get global IP block exempt. Account creation on open proxies should be disabled as soon as their use is discovered, and all users using said proxies should be hardblocked IMO. -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 21:51, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
  • This seems fair enough. GethN7 (talk) 22:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Agreed. The only use I can see for open proxies is in making oneself anonymous. A reasonable use of anonymity is to read or post information that needs to be accessed but someone in a position of authority does not want made public - however, Miraheze is not WikiLeaks and (as far as I know) anonymity is not beneficial for accessing or editing the information hosted here. The damage done by the use of anonymity in spamming or trolling far outweighs the benefit of the use of anonymity in sharing information (at a wiki that is not WikiLeaks). I would support a ban of going through an open proxy to edit any public Miraheze wiki. --Robkelk (talk) 00:23, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I think that the open proxy is not always bad. It was good for the country's security. I apologize for not invited H1 (talk) 03:16, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Open proxies are (at 90% certainty) used for spamming, LTA's stupid actions, destructive actions. (Experience from Wikimedia.) These are to be bloced by default and granted under circumstances (Chinese Great Firewall, etc.) — revi 03:30, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the use of shared accounts

• Personally I think shared accounts should be allowed, although this should be noted on all wikis where the user has a local account, and it will be up to local staff to determine whether it is appropriate to give rights to the account based on whether or not everyone with access to the account should be able to have the rights. For this same reason, shared accounts should never be given global permissions, and users not disclosing this information should be blocked indef/locked -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 21:51, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Again, this seems fair enough. GethN7 (talk) 22:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I believe shared accounts should NOT be allowed, this seem to be fair compromise to leave local stuff to local. — revi 03:32, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the use of multiple accounts

• Again, I think the use of multiple accounts should be allowed, however vote rigging and anything remotely similar should be expressly forbidden. Users may be able to use multiple accounts for any reason whatsoever, and are under no obligation to link accounts publicly, however the users themselves will be responsible for following a policy of not abusing multiple accounts, and failure to do so, or suspected failure to do so, should result in checkusers and locks/global blocks.
  • Yet again, fair enough. GethN7 (talk) 22:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I think that in the case of anyone who is on Miraheze staff (Stewards, Admins, etc) if they are using multiple accounts; should publicly account for any of them for transparency purposes. Also anyone who is applying for such a role should make any such accounts public. LulzKiller (talk) 22:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Agreed on this. GethN7 (talk) 22:11, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@LulzKiller and GethN7: I voluntarily keep a list of all my alternate accounts but I'm not sure how much should be required by policy.. Should staff have to list every account they've ever created or accessed, including test accounts? Or what about alternate accounts that are not used abusively (per above) and are not used in a staff (using staff vageuly) role? For example, I planned on using the account User:Pup only to edit a private wiki and not disclose it. This has since changed obviously, but still, I don't think that users should be required to link themselves to things they don't want too, as long as they are not actively trying to hide things from the community that are related to their role as staff. -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 22:16, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. I think that in an extreme case of safety/protecting personal info/etc then ofc it would be reasonable to keep an account private. I understand your points. I think test accounts are an obvious exception as long as they remain test accounts. I think that a rule of thumb that might be a potential possibility is any account with 100+ or so edits globally (the exact figure is very negotiable). I only made this suggestion for the interest of transparency and I was not aware of your current efforts at being it. Shared accounts only came to my mind as a result of this section. LulzKiller (talk)

• • I respectfully disagree here; my opinion is that the use of multiple accounts should not be allowed. I admit that the only use I've ever knowingly seen of multiple accounts is sockpuppetry in the service of trolling, and thus my attitude is biased. If this was to go to RfC, my objection would be a "weakly oppose". --Robkelk (talk) 00:23, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - create an alternative account is not a problem. Maybe if in WMF is a bit is not allowed for the same reasons account abuse. And I do not mind if everyone has an alternative account, which is still in scope or not abuse it. H1 (talk) 03:22, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• My account (Revi) has powerful permissions (sysadmin and admin@meta) and some times I believe even 2FA is not enough on some places. (And until late 2016 there was no 2FA) So I use Revi-alt for that purpose (logging in on unsecure environment). I also have a bot, but it's not working due to technical problems (and it's low priority). Use cases like this might be acceptable but I believe obvious sock is socking. — revi 03:24, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Regarding @DeltaQuad:

• I have no real objection to most of what has been going on with DQ but I would like to clarify a few things so this section is mostly directed towards them.

Depending on what people say in the sections above, your alternate accounts may/may not be unlocked. Staff may ask you to prove that you and Amanda are two different individuals in real life (technically, we have no way on-wiki to determine this).

Your requests will probably be granted assuming they only affect your wiki, although I'd like to point out most of the changes you've requested aren't actually doing anything, as Stewards can still bypass all of the technical restrictions you've tried to place (they can grant themselves 'userrights' globally and then revoke your ability to remove their local groups, if need be).

Please understand that this is not meant to interfere with you or the operation of your wiki. Everything you, your sister, and MatthewPW have been doing since day one is, whether you agree or not, an attempt to bypass our few official policies and established procedures. The Steward toolset is as large as it can reasonably be to assure Stewards have everything they might need to do anything inside of their scope of responsibilities. An extremely large majority of the permissions inside the Steward user groups (local and global) have never been used. Like I said on the closed RfC (didn't realize it was closed until now), these tools aren't meant to be abused, and they shouldn't be. If these rights are ever abused, the permissions existing is not the problem, the user abusing them is. Please honestly consider this in all of your future actions, as I honestly think that you should not really be trying to do most of the things you are trying to do. -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 21:51, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I concur with all these points. GethN7 (talk) 22:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@NDKilla: Regarding the first point, how in the world are we supposed to do that? We are not going to physically meet up with someone whom we do not know. The signature differences between our edits should be enough to distinguish. Regarding the second point, stewards must follow both this and this when performing CU, OS and/or Steward actions locally. Therefore, I need to have the technical ability to remove these rights locally should they ever be assigned in an unauthorized manner. Also, our entire point all along has been that stewards should not be able to bypass local technical restrictions. Local communities need to be allowed to limit what stewards can do on that paticular wiki. I acknowledge the third point, although I still disagree with it. Seriously, will a no-confidence vote to de-steward a user who violated local policy ever pass? --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 22:18, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@DeltaQuad: Honestly the only way I can think of is phone call to staff, but I totally understand why many people would not want to do that. If you can think of a way to convince people (mainly everyone besides me) that you're seperate people, feel free to. Onto the next point, yes, Stewards will try to follow local policies (on your wiki and others) when reasonable, but we will never allow technical restrictions that allow users to violate the Terms of Use consequence free. As it stands it is the be-all-end-all of policies, and it overrides everything. Again, we try to follow local policies (and other global policies) when possible, but sometimes emergencies come up and technical restrictions that non-sysadmin stewards can't bypass is unacceptable. Moving on, why specifically do you agree with the third point? You're trying to place technical restrictions that shouldn't be needed. -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 22:30, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Another way of accomplishing it would be to mail us a copy of your government issued ID cards, as Facebook does it. This is obviously personally identifying information, so it would be handled according to our privacy policy. --Labster (talk) 22:55, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@Labster: Except that would disclose my real name, which I decline to do (obviously DQ is a pen name/stage name, and I do that for a reason). --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 03:18, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

@NDKilla: On most wikis, stewards have the "userrights" permission locally anyway, unless it has been removed and replaced with individual 'WgAddGroups' and 'WgRemoveGroups' in the case of my wiki. Therefore, if an emergency (and I do emphasize emergency) arises, stewards can temporarily assign any local right that they need to themselves. This way, they are just regular users on non-Meta wikis 95% of the time, which they should be. --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 22:34, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

(reset indent) @DeltaQuad: I'm not entirely sure you understand how local/global groups work, and how the Steward body works. The 'steward' local group has 'userrights' which assigns adding and removing any rights on that wiki, but Stewards aren't in the local group on every wiki, they assign it as needed by using userrights-interwiki on meta for a centralized log, then do whatever actions are needed on the wiki in question. The global group doesn't have 'userrights' or 'userrights-interwiki' because we only assign these rights as needed, and they are all logged in one place. Honestly the changes you make are still bypassable but it makes it harder and it's logged in a different location, which actually hinders the fact that all stewards try to be transparent about the use of their rights. -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 22:37, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm tired of repeating myself over and over again. So I will leave it at this:

• The current technical restrictions on stewards in effect on my wiki will not change, but no new restrictions will be implemented unless they are clearly needed to prevent abuse.

• If a steward performs a technical action on my wiki in violation of the consensus is required policy, that steward will be subject to local sanctions.

• That steward shall not undo those sanctions, and if they do, I will call a no-confidence vote to remove the rights.

• Except for creating wikis, I will no longer be involved in Miraheze Meta. Basically, my global activities will be limited to my local wiki and wiki creator duties only. --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 00:17, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

• If this page does go to RfC, this section should be removed; in my opinion, policies should not identify specific people.

With that said, I have to wonder whether DeltaQuad understands the role of Stewards on Miraheze. Comments made by DQ in her Requests for Stewardship about Stewardship being a technical role indicate to me that either (the first reasonable possibility) DQ has not read Stewards#Scope of responsibilities, or (the second reasonable possibility) DQ is using a meaning of "technical" different from the one used in IT support, or (the paranoid possibility) DQ is trolling Miraheze. I sincerely hope the paranoid possibility is incorrect. Given the comment above "my global activities will be limited to my local wiki and wiki creator duties only", it appears to me that DQ simply does not understand English at a post-secondary level (which is not her fault).

I know that there is a trend in certain areas to distrust authority - any authority - simply because it is authority, no matter how powerful or inconsequental that authority might be. I do not understand this attitude, but I acknowledge its existence. I also do not know whether this attitude is a factor here (although it appears to me to be at least a contributing factor to the actions shown). In my opinion, this attitude is counter-productive when interacting with a wiki hosting service (or any other Internet hosting service): either one trusts the people in charge, in which case removing their rights is nonsensical, or one doesn't, in which case one should be looking elsewhere for wiki hosting. --Robkelk (talk) 00:23, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

22:29, 6 January 2017 DeltaQuad (talk | contribs | block) blocked Southparkfan (talk | contribs) with an expiration time of 3 days (account creation disabled) (Temporarily blocked in response to https://meta.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_Comment/Global_user_rights&diff=17406&oldid=17401)

Can I even say something without being blocked? Southparkfan (talk) 15:12, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Was that in elements? Because then I go on there it says I can't even see anything because I'm not part of any groups even as a registered member. LulzKiller (talk) 15:42, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

@LulzKiller: I think you were 'banned' for 3 months because DQ doesn't like you. This revokes your ability to read while logged into this account. -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 15:53, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

In response to LulzKiller/NDKilla, indeed. In response to SPF, you can say things all you want. However, all users who speak out against me will not be allowed to contribute to my wiki. I don't care if they are a steward or if they are the man in the moon. Users who do not support me do not get the right to contribute to the project. --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 16:17, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

It's less about contributing, it's that I can't even read anything, apparently I have several notifications and messages on my talk page there that I can't even access. LulzKiller (talk) 17:09, 7 January 2017 (UTC

"Users who do not support me do not get the right to contribute to the project." This is the attitude that caused All The Tropes to fork from TVTropes. It is an attitude that shows the person who holds it should never, ever be trusted with enhanced rights. Because of this statement, I will oppose any attempt by you to gain enhanced rights on Miraheze until such time as you publicly change your mind. (And I'm starting to be personally annoyed by all this - so I'm out. Unsubscribing from this page.) --Robkelk (talk) 17:25, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

And I'm back because I was alerted that DeltaQuad edited my comment without permission. (You dragged be back in, DQ; don't be surprised if I actively oppose you now.) The part that was removed has been replaced. The indentation has been restored so that my reply lines up properly with the comment that it refers to. --Robkelk (talk) 20:26, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

(reset indent) @LulzKiller: I have removed your reading ban, but you will remain blocked for three months. --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 17:20, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate that you let me read the notifications. However the fact that you even have it so people can be blocked from merely reading a wiki is something that is very concerning. Even at Encyclopedia Dramatica we don't do that, TV Tropes doesn't do that. You can block whoever you want from editing but reading is a bit concerning especially relating to the wiki concept. LulzKiller (talk) 17:28, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I have the right to ban users from the wiki altogether. Of course, blocking will always be done first, but it is still my right to prevent users whom are either disruptive and/or do not get along well with me from accessing the project. If I didn't, block evasion could become even higher of a threat then it is already with CentralAuth allowing automatic account creation. Honestly, if I had CheckUser rights, it would be less of an issue because I could personally verify that users were not evading blocks. However, because I don't, banning users from reading the wiki is the next best alternative. --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 17:37, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

While you do have the right to ban users from your wikis on Miraheze, you do agree to give the staff full access to your wikis, correct? --Labster (talk) 22:33, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Labster: Staff will have full read access to my wikis 100% of the time. However, if staff violate local polices for reasons other than legal or other unforeseen circumstances, staff can and will be technically sanctioned from editing locally, either via blocks and/or abuse filters. If this happens, staff shall not undo those sanctions unless there is a legal reason to, and if they undo sanctions without authorization, that will be considered abuse of global userrights. --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 22:44, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

You do not appear to trust Miraheze staff. Perhaps you would be happier at a different wiki host, that is run more to your liking. --Robkelk (talk) 01:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

It's not that I don't trust Miraheze staff - it's that I strongly dislike the attitude of "Miraheze staff are the supreme dictators who can do anything they want on any local wiki without explaining their actions, including taking actions that violate local polices and being immune to local sanctions for doing such". This is what I am trying actively to stop. Miraheze staff should simply be responsible for keeping the website running and for enforcing legal polices. Nothing more, nothing less. If this was the case, I would be happy. --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 02:08, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

(Reset indent) You have to realize several different groups are considered staff. Stewards are a communal staff role who assist in removing legal liability from Miraheze, but outside of that their appointment, removal, and responsibilities should be up to the community. Secondly, system administrators are outside of the purview of community decisions. Their role is only to keep miraheze operating technically smoothly. This will not change unless you want them to stop technically supporting. Thirdly, if and when Miraheze is incorporated, the corp, it's directors, and it's officers will be outside of community purview, but will usually only intervene when legally or technically required, or to enforce Miraheze's long term goals and ideals. This will not change (the officers will not suddenly be chosen by users or be obligated to follow consensus). -- Cheers, NDKilla ^{( Talk • Contribs )} 02:26, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

My opinion will not change. You are free to say whatever you want - I will retain my beliefs and opinions, and will continue to stand up for them whenever and wherever possible. --- DeltaQuad (talk contribs email), 02:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)