Wikibooks:Requests for permissions

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All rights available on Wikibooks are handled here, including rollback, editor, reviewer, administrator, bureaucrat, CheckUser, and bot flags. A nomination must demonstrate how the project will benefit from granting the rights.

Nominations

To nominate a user (including yourself), add their username to the appropriate section below. Please explain why you feel the nominated user would be a good choice. All registered Wikibookians may comment, and provide arguments in support or opposition. For the bot flag, technical information about the bot may be requested. See the specific requirements for each type of access on their respective pages.

Editor flag

Note that the FlaggedRevs extension automatically grants users the +editor flag once they meet the criteria. Feel free to request the flag here if you cannot meet the requirements (for example, you have been blocked in the past). Otherwise, please consider waiting until the criteria are modified and the system takes care of this automatically.

Outcome

Consensus does not need to be demonstrated in granting editor and rollback flags. Administrators may use their best judgement in granting those. All other tools require community consensus and can only be granted by bureaucrats. Access to CheckUser is governed by meta:CheckUser policy. After about one week, if there is consensus to grant access, then a bureaucrat will make it so and record the fact here. If not, a bureaucrat may refuse to grant the rights and the request will remain until a consensus is reached.

Contents 1 Requests for permissions 1.1 IgnorantGuru ( talk |  email |  contribs | logs) (Editor) 1.2 keithonearth ( talk |  email |  contribs | logs) (Editor) 1.3 CarsracBot ( talk |  email |  contribs | logs) (Bot) 1.4 MerlLinkBot ( talk |  email |  contribs | logs) (Bot) 2 Removal of access

[edit] Requests for permissions

Note: When adding nominations, please use the format ==={{user3|Username}} (Right requested)=== followed by the nomination.

[edit] IgnorantGuru ( talk |  email |  contribs | logs) (Editor)

I now can no longer edit the book I wrote on Wikibooks - not a very brilliant system IMO. You could at least give the editor flag to authors of their own books. Otherwise I will take my material elsewhere.

I therefore obviously request permission to edit my own book at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Backup_Operating_Systems There are few if any other editors who will have knowledge in this area and will know whether edits are valuable or not. So the book will just become static, while in fact it needs to be updated regularly.

I thought the whole point of wikibooks is that others can contribute. Now you've made it so that people who have something to add have to jump over hurdles to do so and beg for permission, such that most of them probably won't bother. Sounds like I should take my material to another wiki where participation is encouraged rather than discouraged. I put it here expressly so that others could contribute their knowledge easily. It's one thing to lock a book when there is an abuse problem, but to do so by default, and beyond the control of the original author, is preposterous.

Your reply is most appreciated.

Comment While I can understand this users' dismay, I have to say that the tone "grant me this right or else" seems overly combative, and his assumption of ownership ("few if any other editors who will have knowledge") seems a bit excessive and against the whole idea of Wikibooks. Additionally, I doubt that his "right" to edit has been revoked; I think that if he investigates, his edits will be present but not yet published. Chazz (talk) 19:08, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment Also, perhaps we would be more likely to grant this right if the last couple of edits on said book were not, in fact, pointers to your own blog, IG. Chazz (talk) 19:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment Thank you for demonstrating the kind of bureaucratic and ego games that result from this kind of censoring/editing policy. Some people are more interested in getting in the way of others accomplishing things than accomplishing things themselves, and that's how bureaucracy kills the usefulness of any endeavor. And the script on my blog is no less valid a resource than any other - especially since I wrote the script there specifically to complement the wikibook and help readers. IgnorantGuru

All sighted revisions of the page in question have been de-sighted and edits by anyone will show up immediately at this point. Problem solved. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 22:15, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment Thank you for making this change. IgnorantGuru

[edit] keithonearth ( talk |  email |  contribs | logs) (Editor)

I'd like to have editor permission. I will not be granted it automatically because I am not very active on wikibooks, I spend most of my time over on wikipedia, where I go by the same name. Despite limited activity here, I don't want to feel like a 2nd rate contributor. See my User, Talk and Contribs over there for an idea of my work. Thanks! --64.180.148.245 (talk) 18:32, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you aware that you weren't logged in? :) Arlen22 (talk) 18:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Please post a confirmation of your request logged in and consideration can proceed. Additionally, anything on Wikipedia will not be taken into consideration; this is Wikibooks. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 19:12, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

oops. :P yes, it was really me asking. --Keithonearth (talk) 20:10, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

With respect, I'm not sure I can see the point of giving you the Editor flag. You've made about 15 contributions this year and about 20 last year and you said you can't be autopromoted because you won't be active here. If you aren't going to contribute, why have the flag? You shouldn't feel like a "second rate contributor" - that's not the purpose of the flag. Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 08:14, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say I wasn't going to contribute. I said I'm not very active, I don't see myself being active enough here get to the 100 edits in a month min. Of course I could just make a point to do that, intentionally make lots of little edits, but that seems like a poor way to go about it. I've made a couple edits and my edits were overall accepted but not without minor rewording. Now I don't feel the rewording was necessary or even positive, but in any discussion with the editor with an editor flag I will always be in the position of needing to get agreement from her/him, the opposite is not true. I find this dispiriting. I thought the point of flagged revisions was to stop vandalism and raise standards. How is not giving me the flag going to get those goals? Telling me how I should feel sure doesn't help.--Keithonearth (talk) 07:12, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree with this vision, and in fact think that it is the root of many issues on Wikibooks. Flags whatever they are can't be used to get an upper hand in any discussion, All Wikibookians are and should be treated as equals.

Having said that I understand your view point as over the time I've encountered several instances were rank was used and even claimed to have a special level of trust even granting an higher level of importance to one's opinion. This types of arguments are false. A Wikibookian is recognized only on how he operates and for what he contributes to the project.

For this reason and because the project has been evolving to augment the experience level, availability and establishing a minimum of tasks to almost all flagged positions across the board (with very few and temporary exceptions), I don't think you should be promoted, the requirements are the same for all, put it simply it wouldn't be fair, unless you had a valid reason...

If you can manage to increase your contributions to get auto-promoted then do it, we all will appreciate the work, over time similar actions can even be used to establish an higher requirement to the flag.

As someone said above your status on Wikipedia doesn't have an influence to this project, and I assure you that the number of edits you make a day, week, month or even year doesn't have a direct relation as how the community rates your, you are only rated on the "quality/effort", not the number of your edits.

BeBold actions are common but by policy consensus is the default way to resolve any conflict, if a Wikibookian has a valid argument to object to any action and can't manage to resolve the dispute consensually (and have put an effort into it first), it is proper to block the change as a last resource, if it is seen as the most beneficial result to the issue and project. --Panic (talk) 07:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the autopromotion criteria don't require 100 edits in one month; they require 100 edits, and at least 10 of those have to be recent (here). --Pi zero (talk) 13:05, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

"Registered users who have contributed at least 100 edits to 10 different pages over the course of a month...should be automatically promoted to editor" is the bit that confused me (at the link given above). Maybe it could be made more clear... I'm new the the Flagged Revisions thing and don't want to edit a page talking about policy either.--Keithonearth (talk) 07:21, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] CarsracBot ( talk |  email |  contribs | logs) (Bot)

Hello, I've a bot. I ask you the permission to use it on this Wikibooks. It's running on dutch Wikibooks and other projects. The bot has already the global bot flag. It's a interwiki bot. Excuse my bad English. Carsrac (talk) 13:07, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Did you look into our policy proposals for Bots ?

What does the bot do? (this should be included on this request and not inferred from actions on other projects) Is the source available ? --Panic (talk) 01:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Info is now on the bot user page. --Panic (talk) 23:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Interwiki linking isn't done as much on English Wikibooks because books even on the same subject can be drastically different across language projects. For this reason bots that provide this functionality are not useful on English Wikibooks. --darklama 14:26, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I see from the bot's userpage that it is an interwiki bot using pywikipedia. I don't think we need that, since automating the interwiki linking system doesn't really make sense on Wikibooks projects. I'd welcome input from the rest of the community on that point.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Some books have been translated into multiple languages, either to or from English Wikibooks. For those, though, people often add the interwikis themselves. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 17:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Interlink is very useful for wikibooks. I gave the bot flag to CarsracBot on fr.wikibooks.org --DavidL (talk) 18:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Useful yes, but not very useful and the remarks made above are valid, books do not relate well across projects, at least the ones I'm familiar with a better idea would be moving all Interlinking to the subjects area. I would support such proposal. Interlinking of books should be reduced to translations efforts... --Panic (talk) 20:40, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree what interwiki work here is not as much as for the other project, but still there some work too be done here. I link the books about the same subject. So the books about chess in english is linked to the books about chess in the german. But if needed I can let my bot also do other bot work. For example add interwiki in other namespaces as the main namespace. My bot also removes interwiki links. It added and removes the links from the recepts in wikicookbook. Carsrac (talk) 12:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

English Wikibooks allows two or more books on the same subject to exist. I think appropriately determining which books should be interwiki linked isn't something that can be automated. English Wikibooks has 4 books on Chess for example. I believe this to be true also for the Cookbook, Wikijunior, Help, Wikibooks, Transwiki, Subject and Category namespaces. --darklama 12:36, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Possible other scripts/bots are

• add_text.py Adds text at the top or end of pages
• category.py Manages categories
• imagecopy.py Copies images from a wikimedia wiki to Commons
• redirect.py Fixes double redirects, and deletes broken redirects
• replace.py Replaces text
• solve_disambiguation.py Fixes disambiguation pages
• table2wiki.py Converts HTML-tables to MediaWiki's language
• template.py Replaces a template with another
• upload.py Uploads images to wiki
• weblinkchecker.py Finds broken external links

I'm willing to run all of those scripts here. Carsrac (talk) 12:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure finding bots to run without a reason to do so is a great idea. If you think you can make interwiki.py work appropriately for Wikibooks that is fine by me - let's see some test edits.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:41, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that normally there is not much to do for interwiki bots, but on es.wikibooks.org they did a massive rename so the bot did some edits in the Ada Programming book and flooded the RC. The rest of the work can better by done with a botflag, because there is a lot of iw links that needed to repaired. Carsrac (talk) 17:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Problem is (maybe) the bot doesn't have the Editor flag so all the pages that are flagged are now being reset and will require manual sighting again. Not great? Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 19:53, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

In the german wikipedia there was the same problem and there they gave all the trusted bots the bot flag and the editor flag. Carsrac (talk) 16:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

@Carsrac That was only because of a bug in MediaWiki. The autoreview right was removed from the bot group and the new autopromote module (which should take care that bots do not unreview or unvalidate pages) was not working correct. The bug was fixed months ago and the bot group got the autoreview right again as a precaution. Nearly all bots on dewiki havn't this right any more (only my bot needs it there because of a special task). (Special:ListGroupRights lists a group called autoreviewers - if that helps). Merlissimo (talk) 03:20, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks clearing that up. Carsrac (talk) 09:27, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Oppose I strongly oppose flagging this bot, as the potential for damage is too great. Geoff Plourde (talk) 07:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Why do you say "the potential for damage is too great"? interwiki.py is quite safe, the question I raised is whether it makes sense for Wikibooks (interwiki.py as well as the entire interwiki system was really written for Wikipedia). I don't know the answer to that question, which is why I've asked others for input on that.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 18:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

What I'd really like to see is a bot that runs regularly adding {{BookCat}} to subpages listed at Special:UncategorizedPages in order to maintain the category system and book indexes. Nearly all new pages added aren't being categorized by their contributors unless they use a template that already contains {{BookCat}}. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Support We need more interwiki links not fewer! The ability to quickly move between articles and books in different languages is the thing that I love most about Wikipedia and Wikibooks. That's why I use Wikipedia for articles because I can quickly see similar versions in other languages. Books may be different but there should be links between languages whereever possible. I regularly follow the few existing interwiki links between books which have such links.--ЗAНИA ^talk 14:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] MerlLinkBot ( talk |  email |  contribs | logs) (Bot)

• Function Overview:
  • main task: changes external links which are outdated and can be successfully replaced by a new one.
  • side job: interwikis, but only supervised on single sites (done by py)
• Already has a bot flag on: dewiki(home), dewikibooks, enwiki, enwikinews, commons and on 30+ wikipedias (see all flags)
• Function Details:

The bot replaces urls that have to be changed. This can be only a domain change or a more complex page structure change on a website. Links are dectected with the help of the api (and not with regex) and are only replaced if the webserver of the new url returns a 200-status-response for that new resource. “Link text” is not changed. (own framework written in java - used by all of my bots) Merlissimo (talk) 13:53, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• Is sourcecode free & open source?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 15:52, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

  At the moment not, because its not well documented. And most functions of the framework still don't check for unexpected values and i don't now what would happen if they are used wrong.

  But my intention is making it available some day. At the moment its an high performance framework which could also easily misused for crosswiki-vandalism. I think it should be made a bit more save before publishing the code. Merlissimo (talk) 20:47, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose The source code is not readily available which means that it can't be scrutinized. Geoff Plourde (talk) 07:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

  Does your vote mean that you are only against bot flag or that i should not run the bot? My bot isn't flooding RC. I only thought autoreview might be helpful. Merlissimo (talk) 16:30, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

  There is no requirement for code to be public, though I'd much prefer that. Merlissimo has said he intends to make it so in the future, so I see no problem. Some code isn't fit to be published, even if it works. I'm not sure I see the problem here. Nevertheless, if the bot isn't making edits rapidly, there's no need for a bot flag. Merlissimo, are you planning on running the bot faster in the future?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 18:50, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

  The bot policy says that the Wikibooks community may ask to see the source code, which IMO implies that the code would need to be made public if requested. Other then that I agree Merlissimo has by there own admission demonstrated that there is no need for the bot flag. I don't think we need the side job either per other requests to have the bot flag. Interwiki linking isn't something that bots can reliably do correctly. --darklama 19:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

  At the moment there is no job pending. I am correcting links globally and i know how many pages are being edited before my bot starts on a project. On projects being unflagged the bot normally does only ten edits at once. I requested flag only because of autoreview. Most communities don't like it if pages get unreviewed by bots. There are some other project (e.g. wiktionary) where my bot is apprvoed but has no flag, too. Merlissimo (talk) 23:41, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

  I'd be comfortable with that task running as needed. If you want to run faster, I'll flag the bot, but at present speeds it isn't necessary.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 15:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of access

Note: You may request removal of your own rights at meta:Steward requests/Permissions. Requests to remove others' rights should be placed here, whether due to inactivity, or abuse.