Wikiversity talk:Curators

Please see /Archive 1 for prior discussions.

Curator Role
Initial Curator role discussions were based on:
 * 1) Wikiversity talk:Custodianship/Archive 4
 * 2) Colloquium/archives/May 2015
 * 3) Colloquium/archives/November 2015
 * 4) Wikiversity talk:User access levels

Also potentially related: Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:25, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) Colloquium/archives/September 2013

Clarification of Role, Membership, and Staff Listing
I'm starting this discussion here, but it relates to the historical Probationary custodians, some of the initial discussion of this role as assistant custodians / teachers (linked at the top of the page), some of the recent additions to the Curators group, a pending Curator nomination, and perhaps other pages.

When the role was initially proposed, probationary custodians were added not by community support, but by lack of community objection. We were ultimately told by WMF that this was not acceptable. Anyone with access to deleted content was required to have community support. The Probationary Custodian role is, therefore, obsolete and historical.

Part of the early discussions regarding Curator were from a perspective that it was (and is) a relatively low-risk role. Curators can't block users. They can't protect or delete anything that can't just as easily be unprotected or undeleted. And, so far, we've never had anyone we had to remove rights from. It has been used well and appropriately in support of Wikiversity. The idea, among some of us at least, was that someone could be added to the Curators group relatively easily. Any teacher wanting to support their students or their content more effectively could be added, etc. A vote wasn't necessary, just a custodian willing to mentor/monitor and make sure they were acting consistent with the community's wishes.

Since then, some curators have been added by vote, and some added by administrative decision. There are a number of global users with appropriate tools elsewhere (stewards, global sysops, small wiki monitoring team, others?) who have a long history of helping support Wikiversity, but are often reluctant to delete content because they don't have explicit rights to do so. Examples include User:DannyS712, User:Green Giant, User:Koavf, User:Praxidicae, and User:Tegel. When there has been a user clearly trusted elsewhere who has repeatedly tagged content for deletion that they could just as well delete themselves if they had explicit rights, I have added them to the Curators group, but not listed them on the Support staff page, as support staff wasn't something they had requested.

Recently, we have been drawing both more global support and more interest in support staff. At the same time, we are apparently now hitting a limit that we have enough staff to support ourselves and don't need global assistance. This is far from true, as most people listed as staff don't do any day-to-day cleanup work.

So, sorry for the long introduction, but here are the questions raised that we should address. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:04, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Must Curators be voted on by the community or may they be appointed by a custodian or bureaucrat?

 * Dave Braunschweig - I would like to see both aspects. There are local community members who would like to be recognized by the community and provide community support. It provides a mechanism for probationary custodianship and a way for users to build trust within the community. There are also global community members who have already demonstrated trustworthiness both globally and here at Wikiversity. Giving them curator status without a lot of overhead required first makes their work and ours easier. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:07, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I concur. This is pretty much the de facto process that we've been using and I've seen no objections. It's time to officially retire the probationary custodian idea, update the ccustodian and curator pages to reflect current practice, and then adopt this as an official policy after discussion. --mikeu talk 20:08, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I am fine with a custodian or bureaucrat giving the rights. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:36, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I am also fine with bureaucrats and custodians granting the rights, but I would suggest some discussion and agreement between several sysops for a consensus decision on this. Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 03:26, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

If Curators may be appointed, are there minimum qualifications that the community would support to bypass the voting process?

 * Dave Braunschweig - As originally envisioned, one of the uses of Curator was for someone who had a favorite project who wanted to be sure they could manage and protect it from vandalism. User:Mikael Häggström was such as user, wanting to protect WikiJournal. I, personally, am fine with granting someone Curator status if they are supervising a learning project large enough to require content oversight with multiple users, and an understanding that they will limit use of the tools primarily to that project. I would also like to see someone who already has earned similar rights elsewhere, and shows a repeated interest in supporting Wikiversity (vandalism monitoring, undo, tagging for deletion, etc.) over a period of time be able to be given explicit permissions as a Curator here. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:14, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I think this is a matter of trusting that person's judgement. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:36, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

If Curators are appointed, should they or must they be listed on the Wikiversity:Support staff page?

 * Dave Braunschweig - I think that only users who explicitly are nominated and supported by the community should be listed on the Wikiversity:Support staff page. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:16, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * That sounds reasonable. Also, those who are following cross-wiki vandalism to rollback or delete here aren't as likely to be available to respond to local help requests. Requests to staff tend to require more familiarity with our project than merely undoing obvious unwanted activity. --mikeu talk 20:13, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, the goal is that someone can find the help he needs and directing them to more persons makes it more likely that the questioner will get help. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:37, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Should the Curator role be removed from anyone who doesn't use the underlying rights?

 * Dave Braunschweig - I'm inclined to remove Curator status, without prejudice, from anyone who doesn't use or no longer demonstrates need to use the rights. There's no particular advantage to having someone listed as a Curator if they aren't supporting the community. I think anyone who hasn't protected, deleted, imported, or rolled back content within the past year doesn't need Curator status. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:27, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The removal of the curator bit should be described as a routine administrative action - flipped off when obviously not needed and regranted when maintenance activity resumes. One year is a decent amount of time. --mikeu talk 20:32, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, after [x] months of not using the tools and with a heads-up post to the user's talk page. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:38, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 * A number of wikis these days do have inactivity as a part of the admin review process. In general it is 6 months with no administrative actions. They are given a warning note on their talk page they have 30 days to respond, if that does not help they loose the rights. But yes I do agree with removal of rights from inactive users with higher rights, unless they have clearly stated they are taking a break for some reason so we know what is going on. Though on those occasions it may be better to remove the tools while they are away. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 03:20, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Global rights usage here

 * I also want to bring up the subject of those who already have the ability to intervene with vandalism here: Stewards, Global Sysops, and Global Rollbackers. It appears that there is some hesitancy or reluctance to use the tools that they already have on our site due to the number of active custodians here. (They consider a project outside their scope if there are 10+ of which 3+ are active.) I don't see a need to flag them as curator; it is redundant and maintaing the list would be tedious. Perhaps we could address this by posting a public statement on their message boards saying that we welcome and encourage them to take action if they follow cross-wiki activity here. I understand that they are cautious out of respect for the autonomy of our site. However, I would prefer that they were a bit less shy about stopping and removing activity that is clearly unwelcome. When I've seen them act locally it is clearly in the best interest of our community. --mikeu talk 20:58, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Participants on the Small Wiki Monitoring Team who lack global rights could be granted curator status based on activity and intent to help out here, as described above. --mikeu talk 21:09, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * from memory the global sysops are actually restricted by meta policy from using the tools on sites with more than 10 sysops. Another reason for the one above, inactive admins can prevent the global sysops from assisting. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 03:22, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 * That is the default but Global sysops describes that a project can opt-in or opt-out. We chose to opt-in a number of years ago. --mikeu talk 03:27, 4 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I'll read through this more thoroughly in a bit but I just wanted to note something before I forget. I've been more cautious to use the right here because it is also all available to me as a global sysop (since you're opted in) but by GS scope, you have too many "active" admins. Would it be possible to establish a consensus that it is also okay for us to deal with blatant spam and vandalism? See two examples here: vandalism, spambot. These are non-controversial actions but I try to err on the side of caution when using the GS tool set. Praxidicae (discuss • contribs) 16:20, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I consider this to be a case where there is long standing and strong consensus. I generally welcome GS participation in anti-vandalism efforts. This has also been recently discussed at User_talk:Vermont. I wasn't even aware that there was an admin limit for when GS should not act. I had assumed that our opt-in was the only criteria needed. If we need to have a !vote to formalize this, we can start a discussion page. One of our 'crats could also post to a meta:gs noticeboard to inform them of our preference. Let us know what kind of message we need to send to grant our consent. --mikeu talk 20:49, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree that there is already strong consensus welcoming global sysop efforts. There's also an important reason associated with this. Global sysops are mostly anonymous (not identifiable in the real world by their username). Almost all Wikiversity admins are directly identifiable by their user profiles and subject to intense off-wiki harassment for our anti-vandalism efforts. We either need to clarify that global support is welcome and necessary, or we need to thin the ranks of local admins who aren't assisting in anti-vandalism efforts so that we qualify for global support. This is a Trust and Safety issue. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:21, 26 November 2019 (UTC)


 * While we're on the topic: I also consider use of Small Wiki Monitoring Team/Tools including those with global rollback rights to be welcome here. Not allowed but explicitly welcome. I was very surprised to learn about the hesitancy to act here because I was unaware of the admin number GS rule. For six years Dave and I have been interpreting the opt-in as applying regardless of the number of local admins. I just looked at Special:Undelete/People_who_really_pisses_me_off. Wow, you reverted 10 times without blocking even though you could! I consider that a waste of time. If you really want to be cautious block for a few days and ping us at a noticeboard. That case was too obvious and wouldn't be considered WV:BOLD here. Also, we wouldn't have granted you Curator if we didn't trust you with the tools. (not suggesting that a GS needs local Curator to act here.)  who also asked similar questions about this. Are there any other global rules that prevent action here that we should know about and grant you permission perform? --mikeu talk 05:28, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
 * In regard to making Global Sysop actions, no, the only limiting factor is the restricted scope. As consensus is evidently to permit Global Sysops to make antivandalism actions here, and you have already explicitly opted in, the listed scope on meta can be disregarded in favor of local rules. (if/when you make a written policy/rule about it) Vermont (discuss • contribs) 10:21, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Summary

 * I'm going to tag Probationary custodians as historical. It is clearly deprecated. --mikeu talk 21:13, 3 November 2019 (UTC)