Wikiversity:Community Review/Inactive bureaucrats

This is a draft review, please comment only on the talk page, do not list this as an active community review, until and unless this is formally opened.

The function of bureaucrats
Bureaucrats, as the most highly privileged users on Wikiversity (as to the present situation) have only a few extra user rights:
 * Rename users (renameuser)
 * Add groups: Custodians, Bureaucrats and Bots
 * Remove group: Bots

As to removing custodian and bureaucrat rights, that is handled at meta. A bureaucrat may have additional respect there over a removal request from an ordinary user. Normally, though, stewards expect a local discussion with consensus supporting removal.

The rename users right disappears September 15, per announcement. All accounts will become global, and account renaming is going to a new global user group. It will no longer be a local function.

Is there harm in having inactive bureaucrats?
With custodians, there is little harm in a custodian being inactive, as long as there are a few active, a minimum of one, with a few others who may be contacted if there is a need.

However, adding rights, particularly bureaucrat and custodian rights, while this can be done by stewards, will normally be refused by stewards if there is a local bureaucrat. Thus inactive bureaucrats can cause harm through delay. Bureaucrats are not needed for normal operation of the wiki, particularly with the disappearance of the renaming right.

The thinking behind the steward refusal is that sometimes assessing a discussion is difficult if it is in a language other than the languages of fluency of the steward; further, there can be other local considerations. It is superior, then, to have local bureaucrats for the purpose of promoting users.

However, if they are all inactive, it is worse than having none.

Current bureaucrats and status
(as of Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:25, 12 September 2014 (UTC), last logged action is other than marking as patrolled)
 * Cormaggio last edit: 19 November 2010, last normal logged action: 18 November 2009
 * Jtneill last edit: 11 September 2014, last normal logged action: 10 September 2014
 * SB Johnny last edit: 29 March 2014, last logged action: 30 June 2012
 * Sebmol last edit: 15 March 2011, last logged action: 21 June 2011

meta policy on inactive administrators
Admin activity review is a global policy and provides for a periodic review by stewards of inactive administrators. The policy specifically does not override local policy. We have no policy on inactivity, however, so the global policy applies. By this policy, there are two inactive bureaucrats.

They have not been notified per the policy because the activity review is an unfunded mandate, it provides that stewards will do something, but no steward is specifically responsible, and a substantial amount of work is involved. There has been no review since one that began July, 2013, and it was never completed, see Admin_activity_review/2013

The data from en.wikiversity.