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Revision as of 16:08, 22 April 2026
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Justarandomamerican (Steward)
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Hello! I'm Justarandomamerican, and I am filing a request for stewardship, because the board has abolished the staff role, and for staff members to keep their permissions, they must stand for election. I've been here since 2024, when the farm was founded. I hope the community trusts me. Thank you for your time! Justarandomamerican (talk) 21:10, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
- This candidate has signed an NDA with the WikiOasis Foundation, as is required for stewardship. Justarandomamerican (talk) 01:23, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Questions
In the interests of making this more of an interesting process than a formality, I have a few questions which more or less mirror to all candidates. Some I admit are bundled questions, feel free to answer to the extent applicable.
- Based on your request, what do you currently do that requires Steward capabilities?
- Do you believe you have made mistakes in your official capacity on this platform so far? If so, what did you do to improve from those mistakes? You could elaborate on just one if you like, or a couple.
- What is your vision of what a steward is, and what they do for the community?
- Two users appear in the CheckUser interface who both appear to be using Tor who are regular editors on a large wiki, which is also being attacked seemingly out of nowhere by an assailant who is using Tor and free VPNs. Is this a slam dunk connection, if your review of edits suggest their editing styles are similar (but no major stylistic tells)? Why/why not, and if not, what's the next step to find out?
- How would you close a vote proposing a change in which seven people essentially say support and maybe a few words, nothing really in depth, and three people have articulated major concerns with the proposal at the level of detail of these questions? Would that process change if it was only one oppose like this to seven support, and if that oppose appeared just before you were going to close the RfC?
Thank you, --raidarr (📡) 22:45, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- Hello! Sorry I was unable to respond; I have other things going on.
- CheckUser and Oversight, definitely; I need those to help with abuse and help our wikis out.
- Oh yes, definitely. I have made mistakes, including unauthorized usage of Foundation funds. I have been working on impulse control, and will be in therapy for the foreseeable future. Thank you for asking.
- A steward is, fundamentally, a community representative. I represent the community, even though I might have some control over it, I shouldn't use it in an authoritarian manner.
- This does not seem to be a slam dunk connection. I would keep watching their contribs to find out.
- First one, would close as unsuccessful, it is not a consensus to have several support votes with no words, and a few major concerns articulated in detail. Second one, would relist. All opinions should have a chance to be considered, no matter how late they appeared.
- Justarandomamerican (talk) 15:27, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
A few questions targeted towards individual candidates across the process:
- How do you see your history as president of the WikiOasis Foundation fits into this role, and the trust that the community will be placing in you that may not yet have been rebuilt?
- What do you think that you would bring to the steward team that other candidates may not?
- Can you discuss what your reasoning behind this was, as there were local administrators at the time who could've handled this apparent one off incident?
- How do you feel that team discussion fits into the handling of appeals by banned and locked users, do you think that an appeal should be solely handled by one person without discussion?
Best, --zippybonzo (c • ca) 00:14, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
- Honestly, I see it fitting into this role somewhat. It was a major breach of trust, and I have worked on myself since then. I just hope it never happens again, with anybody.
- There are numerous experienced candidates, so nothing new there. I might just bring my track record of good behavior since the Foundation incident.
- That was clear and obvious vandalism, which can be handled by anyone with rights to delete, including GPs and GAs.
- I think there should be team discussion around appeals. One person handling it doesn't seem good, as they may be biased.
- Justarandomamerican (talk) 15:32, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Discussion
Support, has a clue, not a jerk --zippybonzo (c • ca) 01:14, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Support SleepingElephant2145 (talk) 01:20, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- I have noticed Justarandomamerican around testwiki.wiki (where they serve as system admin/steward) and can
Support this request. Tester (ᴛ•ᴄ) 01:40, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Strongest support ~ Dream Indigo ✩ 01:49, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- No brainer
Support. Globe (talk) 01:53, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- Ex-Board Member and is trusted within the WikiOasis Volunteers. No brainer
Support. Fearless (talk) 10:22, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Support --PinkPugPrincess (talk) 13:36, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Strongest support AlPaD (talk) 14:52, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Support No Concerns --Cocopuff2018 (talk) 16:36, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Fearless (Steward)
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Hi, some of you may know me in the Discord Server as I had been moderating it. Today I'm running for Steward due to Zippy's suggestion as I have already signed an NDA with the Foundation and having 1 Steward as backup is good in case of heavy loads as we have recently accepted the Italian Brainrot Wiki into WikiOasis. While I am quite vastly inexperienced (even tho I'm a little bit active at Miraheze), I would like to have an opportunity to be able to learn from having this position, I plan to help out with CU investigations and dealing with other tasks that other Global Roles like Global Sysops cannot. While I am inexperienced, I do know my way around (somewhat) and know obvious signs of abuse.
I'll also answer any questions that you may have as well. I hope you'll vote for me as with others as well, thank you for your consideration! Fearless (talk) 10:12, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- This candidate has signed an NDA with the WikiOasis Foundation, as is required for stewardship. Justarandomamerican (talk) 12:15, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Questions
In the interests of making this more of an interesting process than a formality, I have a few questions which more or less mirror to all candidates.
- Based on your request, how much do you know about the CheckUser and Investigate interface?
- Do you believe you have made mistakes in your official capacity on this platform so far? If so, what did you do to improve from those mistakes? You could elaborate on just one if you like, or a couple.
- What is your vision of what a steward is, and what they do for the community?
- Two users appear in the CheckUser interface. Both are Google Chrome user agents and both have many IPs that appear within a residential /64 ipv6 range. Is this a slam dunk connection, if your review of edits suggest 'maybe'? Why/why not, and if not, what's the next step to find out?
- If you have takes on some of the CU-related questions for the other candidates feel free to chew on them if you like also, relative to your professed interest in investigations.
- A user requested a wiki say a year ago, made a very large number of edits for say six months, and for the last six months has completely disappeared. A new user comes in and successfully manages to be appointed bureaucrat by a peer. This user also makes many contributions but is running things very differently then how they were originally. A few weeks later the original bureaucrat returns and is absolutely irate about the new guy. The two have a massive pissing match and block each other which goes as well as you expect and it comes to your table. What is your approach to this situation?
Thank you, --raidarr (📡) 22:45, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- Admittedly, not much, however I know you need to assign yourself the Steward's hat on a wiki locally then assign yourself the CheckUser hat to be able to see CU logs and perform CU. Then I can deduce that you can find the CU logs/tools at Special:SpecialPages and to CU 1 user specifically you can go to their talk page/user page and it'll have the option to do that.
- I have definitely made some mistakes on this platform before, and not just here, but many other places as well, here is some of my mistakes I've made on WikiOasis Discord before such as over-punishing or under-punishing users then necessary. For example, someone requested for help while the request was improper and called the WikiOasis Stewards Nazis, I've only punished them for 3 days when I believe they should probably have been banned due to throwing an baseless accusation/defamation and annoying stewards. (I've also forgotten other mistakes I've made due to my forgetful memory, but this isn't the only mistake I've done on WikiOasis)
- My vision of what a Steward is simply an trusted volunteer by the community to assist in operating the farm, ensuring global policies are being met and helping local wiki communities with their toolset such as investigating cross-wiki abuse, assisting in elections for crats by CUing potential users who may be a sockpuppet, etc.
- While I don't know much about IPs, after a quick search, I've seen that if two users have different IPs but both appear within a residential /64 ipv6 range, it probably means both of these users came from the same network, they could be different persons that have the same interest in the platform or they are siblings. If my review of their edits suggest it could possibly be an slam dunk connection, then they are either: Probably the same person, or they are still different persons, but they are probably twins, receiving the same education and knowledge so that's why they'd act similarly (I know the probability of this happening is low, but AFG should be assumed at all times). So depending how similarly both users edit, like 60% or less, and there are no vandalism/harm done I would just wait if there is anything else to go on and report it to the rest of the Stewards to see what do they think.
- Unblock both and tell them to stop actioning on each other, review their edits and local wiki policies as running a wiki differently doesn't mean the scope has changed, and depending on the type of wiki and community I would take more actions such as:
- Assuming it's your regular game wiki and there is only 2 contributors without any other activity from other users and both of their edits contributed positively to the wiki (by about equal to each other, 40-60% of the wiki), then they both stay as crats and they are both free to discuss how do they want to run the wiki. However they cannot block or remove each other without solid evidence either of them abused their permissions on-wiki.
- However, if a community exists and it is community governed, even if a small one, then I would create an RfC within the wiki with the following options: revoke founder crat or appointed crat their permissions, let them keep both of them, or remove both of them and let someone else be the crat. This ensures that if either of them have abused their permissions negatively they will be removed according to the will of the community
- I'll also use Miraheze's policies as a "baseline" to move forward if no similar policies exists in WikiOasis as we're quite similar to Miraheze or discuss with the rest of the Stewards if something is unclear. There is tons of variables for some questions so I cannot account for every possibility, but I hope I have addressed most of the most important ones here. After taking action I'll report it to the team as well so they'll able to receive the information and take action if something else happens while I am offline.
Thank you very much for the questions, I hope I was able to sufficiently demonstrate how capable I can be. Fearless (talk) 13:26, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
A few questions targeted towards individual candidates across the process:
- Do you believe you may be better suited for a different global role (probably patroller), given your limited experience in such a position?
- What is your opinion on how to handle sensitive checkuser and suppression data?
Best, --zippybonzo (c • ca) 00:14, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
- I am definitely better suited for a lower-trusted role as I don't have any experience like Crystalite. However I have one singular advantage that I have already signed an Non-Disclosure Agreement with WikiOasis back when I moved from the SkyWiki incident, allowing me to handle sensitive data that others may not able, or may not want to do so. And I believe having a +1 to the Steward team would be to WikiOasis's benefit as we have recently accepted an very high risk wiki (Italian Brainrot Wiki). Additionally I will taking sort of a backstage position as a Steward to gain more experience from others as I notably lack experience and time to do so (I'll be more available once I graduate 12th grade) so I can improve myself for the platform. However, it is still reasonable if you believe I should make an request for an lower trusted role such as Global Patroller as well.
- I believe to handle sensitive data such as CU and Suppression, you should have an secure account first (like enabling 2FA) and never use your Steward account to access WikiOasis on an public computer (if you have to do that, make sure the cookies are cleared before leaving or reset your password) as some people may be very much at risk if such data is leaked. Additionally you should only need to view these data when it is necessary, such as cross-wiki abuse as this is not a tool you should play with, if you need help on on how to handle situations that may or may not need an CU/OS as a steward, you can also contact your fellow peers for help as they are authorized and NDAed as well. Another thing you shouldn't do while handling NDAed data is that you shouldn't save it to your computer, taking a quick note to compare should be fine but it has to be nuked after you're done with it. The reason why these safeguard should be the base standard when handing PII is because it is a massive risk if an Steward account is compromised as they have access to CheckUser, meaning they can collect data (such as IP or User Agent) from other people and put them at risk if the compromiser knows what are they doing.
Thank you for the questions, --Fearless (talk) 13:26, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Discussion
Support, while you're definitely not the most experienced, your heart is in the right place, and I'd love to see you become more involved in the project helping with global enforcement and other activities, even if it involves some learning during the beginning --zippybonzo (c • ca) 13:50, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Weak support per ZB. Justarandomamerican (talk) 13:54, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Oppose. While you've no doubt been very helpful in monitoring our Discord community, and that is much appreciated, I don't really have any way to know how you'll handle the tools of stewardship. Your first meta edit was today, which isn't 100% a dealbreaker with experience on other projects, but that wasn't mentioned in the request. I would personally encourage you to start out at a lower-level role to help build MediaWiki knowledge. A role like meta admin or wiki creator might suit your strengths better? Anyways, best of luck and thank you for running! Edit: Some of the responses to Raidarr’s questions are concerning to me, specifically with the lack of familiarity with CU, especially when that is something Fearless mentioned as a priority (cu investigations) in their request. And when asked about why they wouldn’t apply for a lower position first the response was that they had already signed the NDA, which didn’t make much sense to me. Globe (talk) 14:01, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Support AlPaD (talk) 14:57, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Oppose per above --Cocopuff2018 (talk) 16:40, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- My position is mostly
Abstain but I wish you well, and I believe global admin would be a fair position alongside Crystalite because I think you are in a similar place as far as needing growth but being coachable, and the role 'one step down' would help you ease into being a platform-facing figure. This is purely based on my personal assessment of both of you and what I've seen you handle. You have the deeper investment in the platform although it is exclusively on Discord so far. Either role would help you grow, stewardship as something of a trial by fire as far as how you would handle things being on fire on the field. Would you need training regarding tools like CU? Absolutely. Can you be trained? I think you can, and could do some good if some more senior volunteers took you under their wing. Projects like IBW offer relatively easy and plentiful opportunities to build investigation skills, which ultimately can start even as a GS since a lot of the job involves information already in the open. I encourage asking questions and working with peers closely, especially if you are entrusted with the Steward kit. --raidarr (📡) 14:24, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Bosco (Global sysop)
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Hi, I am Bosco (aka PB2008 on Miraheze) and I am requesting for global sysop here. I joined WikiOasis for 17 months and would like to help dealing with LTAs, especially for wikis using Chinese. I am a global patroller on Miraheze for nearly two months and was a steward before SkyWiki was merged to here in March. I am sure that I have the experience to this permission. Thank you. Bosco (talk) 13:08, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Discussion
Weak support for Global Patroller, not Global sysop.
Neutral for global sysop. I haven't seen you around much. Justarandomamerican (talk) 13:51, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Support AlPaD (talk) 14:58, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
After reflecting on the above comments, I have decided to withdraw this request. Bosco (talk) 15:35, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.