Requests for comment/Yonidebest sysop flag on he.wikinews
The following request for comments is closed. The request was eventually archived as inactive.
On July 3rd I had fulfilled this request [1], granting back to he:n:User:Yonidebest the sysop access he had lost after long inactivity [2].
Not knowing the he.'pedia and he.'news community (I cannot anyway read Hebrew) I assumed this was the case of a sysop-in-pause whose rights are restored on request, so I had no particular concerns in processing the request. Two days later I've been contacted via IRC by users Rotemdazing and Havelock (the latter is sysop on he.wikinews), who asked me to rollback my action.
They complained lack of collaborative attitude from Yonidebest, although when I explicitly asked whether Yonidebest was causing any harm to the project in terms of vandalism, the answer has been negative. They just complained that he was acting on the site without any coordination with them. Considering that Yonidebest got his sysop rights before an actual community existed, I temporarily froze his sysop flag asking him to get an explicit support from the local community.
Yonidebest complains that no real community exists and the project is mastered by Rotemdazing and Havelock, who discourage others' partecipation and asked me several times to reinstate his sysop rights back.
I'm stuck in indecision. I'm asking the opinion of the other stewards about what to do, although my opinion is that Yonidebest should approach the (small, but existing) community with goodwill and the (small, but existing) community should reciprocate with same goodwill. This would lead to a real constructive approach. Re-instate his sysop rights now would mean to have a conflictual situation between the sysops, ceratinly not useful for the project.
Thank you for your comments. --Paginazero - Ø 18:38, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- If there are enough people editing, in my opinion there is a community. If there is a community, he can ask that community for sysop status. I am not familiar with the procedure, but when a user asked himself for removal of rights, in my opinion, some extreme cases excluded maybe, the user has to go through the normal local procedure again. A steward can decide whether a user makes a ligitimate request on the removing of his own rights, but stewards cannot decide whether he should be sysop again when there is a community. Only the community can do that. (temp sysops excluded) Effeietsanders 18:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yoni's allegation that Rotemdanzig and Havelock discourage others' participation is false. Havelock has tried to get a lot of people to join the project, and is basically the only active editor at the moment. It's ridiculous to even theoretically suggest that what Yoni has said is true, as both users are sysops in good standing on the Hebrew Wikipedia. Yoni's sysop privileges were removed on the Hebrew Wikipedia due to his constant incivility, personal attacks and lack of ability to cooperate, as was the case on commons, where he had 3 failed RFA's and drew large antagonism from the community. Yoni does good work, whether it's deleting non-free images or adding new javascripts, but his lack of ability to engage in [civil] discussion is his downfall. In the interests of full disclosure I need to say that I am not too fond of Yoni and voted for the removal of his rights on the Hebrew Wikipedia, but I believe I have a more than justified reason to feel that way. The reasons for his desysopping on the Hebrew Wikipedia apply just as well for any other project he would seek adminship on and as long as they aren't rectified (ie. he shows an understanding that his behavior is at times problematic and a willingness to resolve this problem), I don't think he should be a sysop, not on wikinews or anywhere else. Yonatanh 19:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I'm concerned, all sysops on wikis with no communities are temporary. Once a community is established, the temporary sysop must go through the community process to retain his/her sysop status. Bastique demandez 19:03, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- And since there is no community, there is no reason not to give me the tools I need to help the site, and my contribs prove I am not a problem. Yonidebest 13:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a regular participant on he.wikipedia but I used to remove or disable links there as several of us routinely do as a courtesy across multiple projects when a cross-wiki spam domain is listed here on the spam blacklist. My edit summaries always included a link back to the relevant Talk:Spam blacklist discussion. Yonidebest did not like the way I did this and, with no prior attempts at discussion, he threatened, out of the blue, to block me; see: he:שיחת_משתמש:A. B. 10#warning.
I don't claim that what I was doing was the best way to handle things but the threat was startling, unpleasant and totally disproportionate to any good faith editing disagreement.
Likewise the tone of some of his remarks at User talk:Paginazero#Adminship on he.wikinews is consistent with what others have written about his approach to others. I'm not surprised that he was de-sysoped on he.wikipedia.
I don't think Yonidebest is ready to sysop any Wikimedia project, especially a fledgling wikinews project struggling to get going and build a community. Hopefully, Yonidebest will do some growing up but in the meantime, all our projects have big things to accomplish and none of them needs to get bogged down with morale-busting civility problems. --A. B. (talk) 04:35, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]