Discussion Wikipédia:RAW/2013-04-14

On FR.WP sysops

Since April 2012, we elected eleven sysops [1]. The head count is at around 180 [2], a smaller proportion than on the German Wikipedia, for instance. There is a feeling that we do not have enough sysops, feeling coming mainly from the sysops community, but to get what we call here a balai , you must not have many casseroles , meaning you did not participate to any edit war or anything else that could tarnish your reputation. You should have a long and good track record. 10,000 edits in the main namespace is a good start, but I saw editors receive a broom with less than 4,000 edits. If you, on a regular basis, fight vandalism or do RC patrolling, this will help.

Once a contributor gets a broom, anyone with enough "rights" may challenge the status [3]. Some challenges are futile, while others are well documented. A year ago, a challenge was received with some openness. Today, any challenge receives its share of criticisms, and not only from the sysop under fire (see [4] and [5] for instance). Many sysops resigned or quit since the procedure was established. Thus, what we worried about some years ago, that many challenges would lie on shaky grounds in order to pin someone, seems a thing of the past. If a sysop is inactive for as long a year, its status is automatically lost. He thus needs to apply again. Some bots, used for maintenance, are sysops (see [6], for instance).

A sysop may (un)protect a page, remove pages, rename pages (if a user cannot do it for a technical reason), see the logs of removed pages and the pages themselves, hide page histories (copyvios) , (un)block users, and edit the interface messages. He has other advantages, that most of us do not need, like contributing through open proxies [7]. From what I saw, many sysops go along without being scrutinized every time they edit, even on sensible cases. The reasons ? I would say some openness, readiness to exchange on what they did and why, no desire to hide anything, easiness to write in good French, and forgiveness (in the sense that they will not try to get a revenge if someone wins over them). For the others, a wikiday can be like a rollercoaster.