Commons:Bureaucrats

Bureaucrats as of May 2013 [+/−]

Number of bureaucrats: 8 99of9, en Cecil, de, en-3, fr-2, es-1, fi-1 Dschwen, de, en-3, fr-1 EugeneZelenko, ru, be, en-2, bg-1, pl-1 Juliancolton, en Jusjih, zh, en-3, fr-1 (steward) Kanonkas, no, en-4, nn-3, da-2, sv-2, de-1 Russavia, en, ru-3

This page explains the role of bureaucrats (sometimes called "crats") on Wikimedia Commons. Note that details of the role, and the way in which bureaucrats are appointed, may differ from other sites.

If you want to request bureaucrat help, please post at Commons:Bureaucrats' noticeboard.

What is a bureaucrat?

Commons bureaucrat icon

Technical

Bureaucrats are administrators with the technical ability on Wikimedia Commons to:

• Promote other users to administrator or bureaucrat (following consensus on requests for adminship),
• Grant and revoke a user's bot flag (following consensus on Commons:Bots/Requests), and
• Rename a user

These are collectively known as the bureaucrat tools.

Community role

Bureaucrats are experienced and trusted administrators who have agreed to take on additional tasks and have been entrusted with the bureaucrat tools by public consensus/vote.

Different bureaucrats have different areas of interest and expertise, but typical bureaucrat tasks include determining and closing:

• requests for admin rights, bureaucrat rights, checkuser rights and oversight rights,
• requests for permission to run a bot on Commons (including granting a bot flag where necessary),
• requests for a change of username, and
• ad hoc discussions/votes/polls relating to the operation of any of the above.

Bureaucrats are expected be capable of leading where necessary and of guiding (but not imposing their will on) policy discussions and other major community issues. They also have to be able to deal sensitively with confidential information (occasionally disclosed to the bureaucrats as a group), and to be able to judge what is and is not appropriate to discuss publicly on wiki.

Apart from roles which require use of the bureaucrat tools, bureaucrats have no special editorial authority by virtue of their position, and in discussions and public votes their contributions are treated in the same way as any ordinary editor. Any influence they may have is derived from their standing in the community. It is not that they gain special status by virtue of being a bureaucrat; rather, it is because bureaucrats are chosen from a pool of highly respected users, and highly respected users typically have some influence in the community anyway.

A bureaucrat closing a discussion or vote will do so on the basis of policy and if appropriate on the basis of consensus. Bureaucrats are trusted with a measure of discretion in all cases, and discussions/votes are never closed simply on the basis of a vote count. Bureaucrats may give more weight to well-argued opinions than unargued votes, and they may discount or partly discount votes and opinions of users who have made only a few contributions to Commons. Bureaucrats also have discretion to extend the period of a discussion or vote where they feel that would lead to a clearer consensus or otherwise improve the outcome.

It is allowed for a bureaucrat to close a discussion or vote on which they have previously expressed an opinion, but in such a case the closing bureaucrat should take care to close based on policy and overall consensus, and not on his/her own views. The bureaucrat's opinion/vote should be taken into account in the same way as that of the other voters, but with no special weight given to it. If the issue is particularly contentious, or the bureaucrat has become closely identified with one side of the argument, he or she may wish to ask another bureaucrat do the closing.

Mailing list

The Bureaucrat mailing list (bureaucrats-commons) is intended as a convenient way to notify bureaucrats about urgent matters, and on rare occasions to discuss private matters. To contact the bureaucrat mailing list, please e-mail bureaucrats-commons@lists.wikimedia.org. If you wish to notify the bureaucrats of an urgent matter, please include a link to any relevant on-wiki discussion. If you have a private request, please explain why it must remain private. If you prefer to contact an individual bureaucrat directly, you do not have to contact the mailing list.

How do I become a bureaucrat?

First, read Commons:Bureaucrats/Howto.

When you are ready, make your request using the box below, replacing Username with your own user name.

For greater visibility, all requests made here are transcluded onto the central Commons:Requests and votes page.

Voting

Please note any registered user may vote here although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted. It is preferable if you give reasons both for  Support votes or  Oppose ones as this will help the closing bureaucrat in their decision. Greater weight is given to argument, with supporting evidence if needed, than to a simple vote.

 Neutral comments are not counted in the vote totals for the purposes of calculating pass/fail percentages. However such comments are part of the discussion, may persuade others, and contribute to the closing bureaucrat's understanding of community consensus.

Purge the cache Use the edit link below to edit the transcluded page.

Requests for bureaucratship

watch

When complete, pages listed here should be archived to Commons:Bureaucrats/Archive.

• Please read Commons:Bureaucrats before voting here. Any logged in user may vote, although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted.

MichaelMaggs

Vote

Links for candidate: MichaelMaggs (talk · contributions · deleted user contributions · recent activity · logs · block log · global contribs · SULinfo)

• Previous RfB: Commons:Bureaucrats/Requests/MichaelMaggs
• Previous RfA: Commons:Requests and votes/MichaelMaggs

Nominator's statement: MichaelMaggs is an ex-bureaucrat who has recently returned to Commons after a long break. He was and is still in good standing with the community. His admin bit was restored a month ago, and he has taken the role up actively. He is also interested in returning to work as a bureaucrat, but because of the length of the break we thought it best to go through an RfB. As far as I'm concerned, he's got all the experience and trust required. I'm also not worried that he's been left behind - the role of Bureaucrat doesn't change very fast! 99of9 (talk) 15:04, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

The candidate has accepted this nomination.

Yes, confirmed. Thanks very much for the re-nom! --MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Votes

•  Support as nom. --99of9 (talk) 15:04, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support --Foroa (talk) 15:38, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Abstain I don't know him; as I'm not so older here. JKadavoor Jee 15:40, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support nom'd by me last time and I've never had any cause to regret that. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:44, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support, per the prior discussions linked above. -- Cirt (talk) 15:47, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support, do not expect problems.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:08, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support of course. Lycaon 16:41, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support --A.Savin 17:51, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Neutral per Jkadavoor, but judged by the other votes he'll probably be a good bureaucrat again. Trijnstel_talk 17:57, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

  PS. The role of a bureaucrat may not change fast, but soon (from August 2013) they'll not be able to rename accounts anymore, see m:Single User Login finalisation announcement.

•  Oppose - was Bureaucrat, long time away, recently a Comeback - why so fast again Bureaucrat? And - why we need more? Marcus Cyron (talk) 19:49, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support, if WMF legal decides that we can host an image of the FOP Academy Awards we have in the UK and he gets a decent picture of one to replace the fair use one we have at en:wp. Kidding aside, he is working on our copyright issues at commons. Being a crat, his decisions on copyright may carry more weight than others.--Canoe1967 (talk) 13:30, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support--KTo288 (talk) 14:25, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Neutral per Jkadavoor and Trijnstel. --Alan ^(talk) 01:33, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Neutral Still a little doubt. Neutral for now. --Steinsplitter (talk) 11:05, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support - I trust 99of9's and Herby's judgment here. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:34, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support --Walter Siegmund (talk) 00:55, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support --cyrfaw (talk) 04:05, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
•  Support My impression of Michael is very, very good. I perceive him as trustworthy, mellow, level-headed, mature, with very good judgement. He is easy to work with, respected, balanced and hard working. --Slaunger (talk) 06:32, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Comments

•  Question Looking at your logs, it seems that you have mainly used your former bureaucrat status for renaming users: 20 renamed accounts, 1 sysop flag and 5 bot flag. Are you aware that your main task (renaming accounts) will be handed over to the stewards in August? Knowing that you soon won't be able to rename accounts, do you still feel that you need to be a bureaucrat? Sorry if I'm asking something unnecessary; I wasn't active on Commons when you got your bureaucrat flag, and neither the RfA nor previous RfB tell why you needed it. --Stefan4 (talk) 22:45, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I think we need a trusted and not too small group of crats to handle cases that admins can't settle and are indeed involved in themselves at times. Michael surely has my full support when it comes to trustworthiness, mellowness and levelheadedness.  B.p. 06:59, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Stefan, thanks for the question. Yes, I am aware of the forthcoming changes on renaming, but that will not significantly alter my workload nor that of any crat on Commons. Apart perhaps from EugeneZelenko, who has historically tackled much of the renaming and issuance of bot flags, using the technical tools represents only a very tiny proportion of the work the crats do. Much more relates not to the use of any formal powers but to issues where the the crat is trusted to act on behalf of the community, such as exercising judgement in closing user discussions, closing RFAs, and providing a leading and guiding role particularly in areas where we have conflicts between admins: see Commons:Bureaucrats#Community role. Crats also have access to the Bureaucrats' mailing list which I recall being used at least twice during my time to notify the crats of some potential issues of personal disclosure, thereby allowing us to keep an eye out for anything untoward. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:06, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that reply. I was only able to see how you have used the tools associated with the bureaucrat flag but not how you have acted in discussions as the discussions are hidden amongst 20,000 other contributions. --Stefan4 (talk) 15:41, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

See also

• Commons:User access levels
• Category:Bureaucrat tools 101