Talk:Role account/Archive 1

Latest comment: 16 years ago by Fishal in topic New role account

Why are role accounts required? edit

Why are role accounts required? Leaving The Mediator out of this for the moment (because talk is happening at en:User:Mediator and subpages, the other proposed role accounts are for housekeeping jobs. Why would someone wish to hide behind the User:Votes for deletion cleaner-upper account rather than just using their own account. Seems to be an ideal way to lessen accountability to me - if someone screws up whilst role-playing they could just blame a previous incumbent and the user population at large would have no way of knowing who made the mistake (if it really mattered, developers could do IP lookups but that would be a waste of precious developers time). Pete 13:31, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well, here are a few reasons:
A lot of people resent the housekeeping and cleaning and mediation functions, and would spend a lot of time harassing those who performed those functions - paranoids for instance might start to track and dog important contributors thinking they are being "persecuted".
If mistakes are made in a role account, presumably, there is a group of "candidates" (like en:User:Mediator/candidates) who are aware of this, and agree to deal with it *as* a group, rather than just point fingers at a particular user. The mistake is most likely a result of poor policy, e.g. en:User:Mediator/policy, and discussion about whether the tactic is any good should take place at en:User:Mediator/tactics, not spread around on many user talk pages.
Most role accounts focus on housekeeping activity, which is innocuous. Those tracking the edits of a particular person should see only those they made "on their own account". If there are lots of spelling corrections, standard tag additions, etc., it's harder to see what they're doing on their own.
One can always have a process of 'outing' the role account holder if what they do with it is really abusive.

If a role account is a passive entity that is used to identify a role that anyone can fulfil that seems to be something that has a useful function. User:Mediator is not a good example. Why? Well there are all kinds of issues that have appeared there. Is the Mediator really going to mediate or is it someone who sees their role as dealing with all the disputes on Wikipedia?

Debate en:User:Mediator/strategy and en:User:Mediator/tactics there, not here. That question could be answered reasonably by any of the en:User:Mediator/candidates.

A mediator should be neutral, User:Mediator is hardly neutral in its opinions.

It's because "neutral" is itself not enough to mediate disputes that the role is needed. The opinions of the incumbent Mediator don't or shouldn't matter. If they do, change him or her. Wasn't en:User:Mediator/benefit_of_the_doubt supposed to come to a consensus on what neutrality for the mediator means? Also after the User:Mediator/handoff the role of the Mediator will be up to the new person taking it over. So these comments simply fail to address the point.

Several suggest that mediators should be anonymous. Well, by definition they are, you do not need to create an account to make them anonymous. Those willing to server as mediators are listed on a page (this is the famous en:Wikipedia:Mediation Committee. Someone needs a mediator, contact them by email. Then contact the person or persons you want to mediate with and have them contact the mediator too (unless they object to that person being a mediator).

This process won't work - too high overhead. It is precisely to get away from the problems with email, mailing lists, selective contacting, invisible dialogues and cliques that an in-band process using such means as "/mediator" subpages is absolutely required. It doesn't really matter how the "Committee" is recruited or created, it matters how they contact others. Not everyone provides an email address.

When everyone is really they figure out some way to have their private mediation (no one knows who the mediator is except those involved). There is no record of the mediation and the result is the only thing that is known to the community. Alex756 19:07, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

As a result, the mediation articles don't improve, the mediators gain secret knowlege, and status quo gets worse... why don't YOU add a status quo report, Alex756?
I will just mention that once I called someone to mediate. And am still waiting. Important point perhaps : you contact someone, and this person is not willing, perhaps not even answer at all. So, you perhaps contact a second person, and the same thing happens. So, what do you do then ? This is particularly the case when one of the protagonist is somebody difficult to deal with (do I really need to cite the name ?), to such a point no mediator really feel like meeting with him and mediating a conflict where he is involved, as he knows this will be tough, he will perhaps be insulted, and left in the mud. This is where anonymity may help.
I have less experience with en. But my experience with fr is this one. In a conflict where 2 of the users are rather old hands and respected, there is always possibility to find a mediator. When 1 of the users in the conflict is a rather new one, or 1 who does not follow main stream view, the whole community stack against him very quickly. And most of time, no one is willing to help mediate. Most of the discussion quickly turns to "let's ban him". I usually try to pick up the role. The first months, I have been called more than once a racist, or an extremist, because I was seemingly defending a "racist" or an "extremist" against a crowd. Now, some people just think I have a liking for weird and non acceptable people, and sometimes am responsible for degrading the quality of wikipedia by encouraging wrong people to stay. It does not matter to me very much, but I can only see that very few people are ready to meet the opprobrium of the crowd to do that mediation role. Because they will be seen as those supporting the problematic elements.
I care little of being seen that way. But I know many do. And they are little willing to hold that role, as long as they think their reputation could suffer from it. Anonymity might be a help to them. Currently, most people do not take anonymity to help Wikipedia, but rather to hurt it; for example an hold hand who needs to say something not very popular, but does not have the guts to say so aloud, so hide himself behind an ip or another name to do so. Role accounts might help that either. Perhaps identifying the devil advocate behind an anonymous account will make it easier for some people to speak up their mind.
The only problems with role account is that they will tend to have less legitimacy than others. But once their role is clear, I do not see where the problem is. But yes, that implies the role must be cristal clear. It should not matter who says something. The think that is said is the most important. Anthere 07:12, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

There should be no role accounts. Each account should belong to a separate individual, so that we know who is doing what. People should be willing to take the credit or the blame for their own edits. -- Oliver P. 04:06, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

unfortunately, many people choose not to do anything at all, if there is risk for them to damage their reputation. Anthere 07:12, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The situation Oliver P. is describing does not exist. Not everyone is forced to log in with the same name as their body bears. Therefore those that do are exposing themselves to some greater degree than those that do not. This can lead to a lot of hysteria including so far 1. invented "death threats" which seem more credible if a named person says that an un-named person is making them, even if no such threat exists or has been invented by extension 2. idiotic "hard ban" procedures that literally never work. 3. credit and blame are not allocated by any kind of fair or due process, they are allocated by rumor, politics as usual, and power games that have nothing to do with creating a good encyclopedia. So until all three of those are fixed, Oliver P. is just wrong.

I think it's important to remember that this article is about "role accounts" in general, and not about the specific account of User:Mediator. A role account emphasizes the office rather than the person in the office. To use an analogy from the U.S. political structure it maintains the reputation and dignity of the Office of President without reference to moron or panmixian who may currently hold that office.

That being said, I believe that the role must be clearly defined to the extent that action beyond the confines of that role could jeopardize the occupant's ability to continue in that function.

Anonymity: Not all role accounts need to be anonymous. There are strong arguments for making the User:Mediator anonymous, but for perhaps User:Treasurer the account would simply be a means of separating his work on Wikipedia accounts from his other contributions.

Role accounts should be transferable. Of course, transfer circumstances need to be defined. In the case of User:Treasurer (who may need to be elected each year) it could serve like an on-line transfer of financial records.

There may often be a need to keep some parts of role account information confidential In a disputed situation it could make it easier to have communications disturbed by gratuitous inflammatory comments from people who are not parties to the dispute. The level of confidentiality would vary from role to role, and would need to be defined for each role. Eclecticology 18:41, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Removed from content page:

A Wikipedia role account is an account that is not associated with a particular person, but with a task. Those doing the task use the account only to do the task. They have other accounts for other work. This helps keep personality issues and the associated identity and political issues out of the task, which is something important to Wikipedia Itself.

Some have also proposed that role accounts could ease en:Wikipedia:cleaning department tasks as well, if those can be made non-controversial and only advisory (subject to reversion by any user who disagrees, as the Mediator's tasks are).

en:User:Mediator was the first role account, established in October 2003. Its procedures were being worked out soon after its creation: dealing with multiple people playing one role can sometimes be confusing. This was a unilateral creation of a single anonymous user, and the common reaction seems to be irritation mixed with amusement. Some think that the role is misplaced it is not a mediator but a registrar of disputes that appoints mediators. There were suggestions that the mediator has taken on too many roles and confused commenting on policy with the conciliation of disputes between users and the community at large.

A en:User:User Advocate role account was also established soon after. It seems to have been intended to function something like an "attorney for the defence".

The User:Mediator role account helped lay the groundwork for the en:Mediation Committee and the en:Arbitration Committee, and User:User_Advocate role account did the same for the en:Association of Members Advocates.

clarify of the definition of role account edit

To me the discription of role accounts seems a little unclear. Does it apply only to roles within the wiki, or to any role/office anywhere? Until the addition of text about User:Schwartz_PR, the examples given in the talk page and in the article history are all roles within the Wiki (moderator, cleanup, mediator, etc), as far as I can tell. It seems plausible to me that accounts for existing external independent agencies are philosophically different from roles within wikimedia projects.

As an example, in the english wikipedia, there is currently a user named USSTRATCOM_PAO, which is the handle for the United States Strategic Command public affairs office. In the talk page for that user, it's indicated that only one person currently uses the account, but it seems clear that the intent would be for the account to be transferrable if he/she is ever reassigned.

Personally, I think that's okay, and does not run afoul of the objections that folks have had towards role accounts in the past. Can someone with more experience in this area update the Role account content page to remove the ambiguity? Risacher 16:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

New role account edit

There is a new user on en called en:User:Freedompress who seems to be a role account. I am not sure whether this is the place to report that. Fishal 15:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

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