Wikipedia talk:Requests for permissions/Rollback/Administrator instructions

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• 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 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)[reply

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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)[reply]

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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)[reply

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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.

I've unilaterally removed what appears to me to be a particularly pointless instruction. There are

talk) 11:18, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply

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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

Iridescent 14:55, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply

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talk) 15:02, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply

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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)[reply]

Thank you

talk) 15:59, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Sure. I can understand that

talk) 19:14, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply

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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

talk) 11:17, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply

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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)[reply]

Thank you

talk) 15:00, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply

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• 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)[reply]

• What satisfies me
  talk) 02:03, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply
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