Wikipedia talk:Requests for permissions/Rollback/Administrator instructions

Entry level

• Have at least 200 edits in the mainspace.

This is strictly incorrect and a unilateral interpretation. For years the threshold has been expected to be significantly higher than that for reviewer and the recommendation has been that 200 mainspace edits first qualifies a user to enroll at the WP:CVUA and graduates from there, or can already demonstrate a significant number of accurate reverts. See Template:RFPR. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:07, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Ah I see! I had always wondered why the RFPR template was worded like that. I'm not particularly opposed to this approach, but I think we should seek broader consensus as I believe admins (and the bot) are looking for 200 mainspace edits alone as a prerequisite for rollback. For the admin instructions I just went off of WP:ROLLBACK, which doesn't make note of CVUA at all. I see now that WP:CVUA states you need 200 mainspace edits before you enroll, but that is in fine print and I don't think people are adhering to that in practice. The other concern I have is that there's only a handful of active trainers, yet we regularly send applicants there. We should probably promote more participation from senior editors in this program.

As for pending changes reviewer, I don't think there is any established prerequisites, though we've talked about it many times and should probably at least put it on par with rollback. — MusikAnimal ^talk 19:00, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

When the reviewer right was introduced, tens of thousands of users were accorded the right by a bot. The threshold was deliberately set very low. Rollbacker, in contrast, was unbundled from adminship, which I interpret as meaning that it's still not supposed to be handed out willy-nilly. There's nothing wrong with change to systems, policies, guidelines, etc.as long as they are agreed upon by the community, but consensus isn't obtained by a handful of admins and users going into a huddle on an obscure talk page and pretending that 6:10 is representative. RfCs for changes to user rights however, are of course inherently flawed because if they concern lowering the bar to something, numerical consensus will almost certainly be assured by the the hat collectors.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:31, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

@Kudpung: I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I don't think anyone is intentionally going against consensus. It took me a while to track it down but the earliest mention of 200 mainspace edits I found was added by you here. The wording supports what we have outlined in the admin instructions, and what is currently at Wikipedia:Rollback. That is, the 200 figure pertains to the bare minimum required for rollback, but not necessarily an assurance that it will be granted. It also does not seem to insinuate that 200 mainspace edits are needed for CVUA, rather if you have under 200 we should point you to CVUA. I believe that is what admins are doing in practice, as Template:RFPR and the fine print at WP:CVUA aren't very visible for admins who want to work at PERM, myself included, and that's why I (or we) did not know better. I went by the more visible edit notice. We should instead clearly denote qualifications at Wikipedia:Rollback and on the WP:PERM/R page itself, along with the newly introduced admin instructions (FYI the 200 figure is refactored at Wikipedia:Rollback/Mainspace count, so it only needs to be changed in one place). However I'd argue at this point we should talk about any change to the system, given we've been going by the 200 mainspace edit minimum for some time now, with many success stories.

Back to pending changes reviewer, going by Wikipedia:Reviewing pending changes#Becoming a reviewer, it seems qualifications include a fair understanding of content guidelines, which we do not necessarily need for rollback. Blatant vandalism is easy to identify, whereas spotting neutrality and original research issues (for which rollback should not be used) may not be as straightforward. I still however agree that the bar for PCR (pending changes reviewer, going by the new name) is lower than rollback. Despite it being an easier job, there's more potential for misuse of rollback as it gives you access to powerful semi-automated tools which can cause substantial damage if not used responsibly. This is obviously not the case when reviewing pending changes.

Hopefully this clears up the confusion, at least on my part! :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:41, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I mqke some sweeping statements soetimes (especially on stats) for effect, but I have never made upanything I utter on policies. If I daid 200 edits, I heard that somweher before I even restructured te CVUA some years ago. The reviewer right is most definitely the esaist to obtain and the guideline was that we should accord it if tere is no specific reason not to. Rollbacker is not so.

Note re PC

I've unilaterally removed what appears to me to be a particularly pointless instruction. There are less than 2500 PC pages on the entire project and by definition the edit patterns on them are atypical; demanding reviewing admins inspect the PC logs of every applicant is a pointless timesink. (If someone's activity level is so low that one needs to view the PC logs to discern a pattern, nobody should remotely be considering granting any kind of advanced permissions.) ‑ Iridescent 09:29, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Iridescent, Your statement: "demanding reviewing admins inspect the PC logs of every applicant is a pointless timesink" is perhaps wrong. The requirement of inspecting pc logs is only when reviewers apply for rollback rights, and not for every applicant. Second, the review of the PC logs provides evidence of mistaken approvals of pending changes by an editor; making an administrator understand whether an editor is able to discern vandal edits from non-vandal edits. An administrator is expected to analyse all relevant contributions of an applying editor without ignoring relevant portions. To ignore the pending review log of an applying editor, claiming that it is a timesink, is strange and might be read as refusal to put in the required discretion expected of an administrator. One should not be granting rollback rights to an editor who has made evident mistakes in his or her pending changes reviews; and in my opinion, if an administrator does not have time to review pc logs of reviewers applying for rollback rights, then the administrator should not be taking a faulty call and should recuse. For your point of "If someone's activity level is so low..." the fact is, it is editors with high activity levels whose pc review log should be necessarily analysed by administrators as mistakes on a large scale in the pending review log of an applying editor would provide immediate basis to reject a rollback application of an editor. In good faith, I am reverting your change. In case you feel strongly about this, please discuss here. Thanks. Xender Lourdes (talk) 11:18, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not going to editwar over it, since your addition to the instructions of this non-existent policy you've made up is going to be routinely ignored by all admins clerking WP:PERM/R so it's irrelevant, but I guarantee you that unless there's a specific reason to do so, nobody is ever going to check a pending changes log to determine eligibility for rollback, since there's no relationship between the two. The whole point of unbundling rollback was to make it easy-come, easy-go as regards this extremely trivial and largely symbolic permission, not to duplicate RFA by creating an edifice of bureaucratic and irrelevant instructions. If you won't believe it from me, paging HJ Mitchell, Acalamari, Kudpung, MusikAnimal, Nakon, Beeblebrox, Salvio giuliano, Swarm, Reaper Eternal, Coffee, the 10 most active admins at PERM/R, to see if you'll believe it from them. ‑ Iridescent 14:55, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Iridescent, although I disagree with your viewpoint that there is no relationship between pending changes and rollback (rejected pending changes are particularly associated with rollback facets too and I am absolutely surprised that being an administrator you don't have a clarity on this), I think this response of yours is much more logically and congenially placed than the earlier one, where it came out otherwise. Leave your insistence on the lack of connection between pending changes and rollback, I am satisfied with your points. I shall revert myself. Thanks. Xender Lourdes (talk) 15:02, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I've never checked pending changes reviewed when assessing a user for rollback, since the two rights are unrelated. Rollback is purely a convenience tool for countering vandalism, and the bar for assigning it is not particularly high. Contributions generally make it obvious whether or not assigning rollback would be beneficial. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:47, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Reaper Eternal, understood. Xender Lourdes (talk) 15:59, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Reaper Eternal and as Iridescent said above, rollback is supposed to easily giveable and removable; its handing out doesn't need an excess of rules attached to it - individual admin judgment has worked fine here since rollback for non-admins was introduced over eight years ago. It's not RfA-lite. Acalamari 16:20, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I concur with Reaper Eternal and Acalamari. There is often too much importance attached to the obtention of these minor rights - that's why we often refer to it as 'hat collecting'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:24, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

It's probably a tad pointless to edit only to concur with my colleagues, but, well, +1 to what they've said. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 17:36, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Xender Lourdes: All I can say is that I'm glad you had the intelligence to revert your own actions on this page, otherwise I would have done it for you. I don't think a single administrator has ever checked the PC log before assigning rollback, and I doubt they ever will. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 18:12, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Sure. I can understand that Coffee. As an evolving project, I am sure administrative processes are also not static and may evolve over time. If a rollbacker is shown to have made repetitive mistakes while clearing pending changes reviews, I am sure no administrator would forcefully look away. I do agree with you that administrators currently don't check the PC log before assigning rollback. My personal opinion is that they may, if they wish to apply appropriate discretion. Yet, I agree again, it may add a further layer of checks, which may be unrequired. Xender Lourdes (talk) 19:14, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I think I'm flogging a dead horse here, but for the umpteenth time pending changes logs have nothing to do with rollback. Yes, of course admins may check the PC log, in the same way that admins may check an applicant's contribution history on Aromanian Wikipedia, but the net benefit of either action would be similar. I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding what both pending changes and rollback are; PC is an almost totally deprecated (still in place on less than 0.04% of articles) relic of the largely forgotten Flagged revisions plan and is typically totally ignored by editors and admins alike (by its nature it's only used on high-traffic pages, and any unapproved edits will be autoconfirmed or autorejected the next time somebody edits the page; there's no benefit to manually accepting or rejecting PC edits), while the rollback flag is in practice a permission to allow editors access to a couple of high-speed mass-editing tools, and is given out to anyone who can demonstrate that they have a use for the tools in question. The entire point of unbundling rollback was to avoid people who wanted a simple permission having to jump through bureaucratic hoops; no proposal to make either applicants or admins go through a time-consuming process is ever going to be accepted

Iridescent thank you for the explanation (Btw I didn't even know there was an Armenian Wikipedia). The other editors have also given their viewpoints, which are very similar to yours and reinforce what you've originally written, and provide me with enough inputs (and chiding, if you may). Thanks for the effort taken to clarify. Xender Lourdes (talk) 11:17, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Hmm I actually find reviewing the PC log to be helpful. Since PC is often applied to pages that receive persistent vandalism, you could more easily identify good faith reverts versus vandalism from this log, which is something I look for. I was happy to see this tip added to the admin instructions as I had never thought to check it. However it certainly is no hard requirement, nor are any of the other admin instructions regarding prerequisites. They're just there as a guideline for admins new to the area. Whether we're being too strict about granting rollback is subject to debate and individual admin discretion, but I see nothing wrong with including this nifty detail of checking PC log here in the admin instructions -- simply don't imply it is something we are required to do — MusikAnimal ^talk 13:11, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you MusikAnimal. I was beginning to wonder whether I had it all wrong since the start :) Coffee may be pleased to meet you, as you might be the first administrator who could be checking the PC log :) But no, you're right. The instruction shouldn't imply that it is something that is required. But after the sound off from Iridescent, I'm not touching the edit button on the procedure page again for a long time :) Xender Lourdes (talk) 15:00, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

• The standard for granting rollback should be "vaguely competent and not likely to make a huge mess". Every admin will have their own subjective ways of determining when that standard is met, but I don't imagine most include checking PC logs. To paraphrase Iridescent, if you can't tell what you need to know from somebody's contributions, you shouldn't be granting them permissions. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:22, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

• What satisfies me HJ Mitchell is that while I am a relatively lesser experienced editor than any of you, my addition to the administrative instructions page resulted in (seeing all your contributions) some of the best, most helpful and most supportive of experienced administrators commenting here (including specially you, Kudpung, Salvio giuliano, Acalamari, Reaper Eternal, and MusikAnimal). I thank Iridescent for expanding the discussion to include you all as it gave me a lot of learning on this part of administrative procedures. Gives me confidence that my thoughts and additions, despite being new here, can lead to intelligent and supportive discussions rather than just a threat of "glad you're intelligent enough to revert, otherwise.." or a revert with a "ridiculous..." written in the edit summary or even an accusation that one revert of mine constituted edit warring along with other confronting statements on the rollback permissions page. The concluding statements by other administrators has been so much more amicable and guiding. Thanks all. I finish my discussions here. Xender Lourdes (talk) 02:03, 31 May 2016 (UTC)