Wikipedia talk:Rollback for non-administrators proposal

message: This allows just about any editor to get the rollback tools. Once they get the tools, there is no easy way to get them removed. --Rschen7754 (T C) 21:09, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's easy for them to get them removed - any admin can remove them, all that's needed is a consensus on WP:AN. Also, not everyone would get them, there's minimum standards that are needed before you can get them. an edit warring block would almost certainly disqualify anyone from getting them. Ryan Postlethwaite 21:26, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's much safer to just allow the user scripts to continue - any Wikipedia users who are intelligent enough to find and operate the scripts should be intelligent enough to use them properly. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 12:22, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Installing a script takes much less effort than making thousands of contributions over several months. So any user able to find this page, request rollback and have it accepted is intelligent enough to use rollback properly too? – Gurch 16:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Disagree

message: Will it be easy for the bit about limitations (non-minor, usage limit) to be actually implemented? Do we really want these marked as major edits? Are these restrictions necessary with the fairly high entrance requirements? GDonato (talk) 00:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I'm aware, the non-minor edits and usage limits bit is already coded out and just needs to be given the green light, but I do agree that maybe we don't need the limitations with the fairly high entrance requirements - they could most probably be removed. Ryan Postlethwaite 00:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Usage limits I would support, but since the primary use for this is vandalism reversions, I would suggest removing the non-minor edit part. Mr.Z-man 00:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nice but... 

message: While I agree with the general idea, I think it is too strict. I would definitely ease up on the requirements. 2000 edits and 6 months of experience is on the low threshold for passing RFA. Since this would  grant the most minor admin tool and the only one that can be replicated with scripts, I feel the requirements should be easier. Perhaps more like the requirements for Vandalproof. I would suggest:
#Editing for at least 2 months
#250+ mainspace edits
#No edit wars in the past 2 months
#No recent blocks
:OR Be an approved (or approved for trial) bot that needs rollback
The primary use for this is recent-changes patrol - I really don't think it takes 6 months to get used to that. Removal of the tool needs to be a bit easier as well. I would suggest that it be removed after discussion an AN or ANI or if it is being used in a content dispute that results in the disputed page being protected or the user being blocked. Mr.Z-man 00:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, those limitations look a little better to be honest - the ones I put in were just off the top of my head, and with the possibility to remove the feature if there's abuse, we shouldn't set them too high. It's important that the users understand the use of rollback in mainspace, so I don't think we need to look at totals for other editing areas - all in all, I like those thresholds. Ryan Postlethwaite 00:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So one could make 250 AWB edits, then wait 2 months, then get rollback? --Rschen7754 (T C) 00:23, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's better than autoconfirmed users only and it allows admins to  take a thorough look at the users contribs before giving them it. As I've already stated, it can very easily be removed if there's any misuse (bear in mind that users wouldn't have AWB if they'd made less than 250 edits. Ryan Postlethwaite 00:27, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The only requirement for Twinkle is a browser that supports it and even if it is removed from a user's JS file, it will still work until their cache clears. Mr.Z-man 00:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't mean we should make the problem worse, however. So somebody makes 250 typo edits, maybe even to the same page, then wait 2 months and then ask for rollback. Do you see the problem with this? --Rschen7754 (T C) 00:51, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think if admins exercise a little discretion and don't just act as process bots, that won't be a problem. Note that they need to state a reason for the request. If they only fix typos, I'm not sure what that reason would be. Mr.Z-man 00:54, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is, in real life, they won't. And the problem with this proposal is that once rollback rights are given, they are hard to revoke. --Rschen7754 (T C) 00:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How are they hard to revoke? No harder than stripping someone of twinkle (which I've done a couple of times). Ryan Postlethwaite 00:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not with the required ANI consensus... there are administrators who will let anything go (and I've been through SRNC and seen it happen...) --Rschen7754 (T C) 00:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

text: If any administrator can summarily revoke it, I suppose. But if there's a lot of damage done... --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:17, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: (From original proposal) If we were to go ahead, we wouldn't want to see editors start utilizing it for edit wars ala Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Guanaco, MarkSweep, et al, and should have strong disincentives for those who use it for such a purpose. The way rollback is given must not give out a lot more heat than light as well, and heat is generated through unilateralism and arbitrariness. - Mailer Diablo 08:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two Points 

message: As noted at the previous discussion, I oppose administrators granting access to admin tools. I think the giving of the rollback tool should be done by bureaucrats. We require it for the bot flag, and for promoting admins (among other things), we should require it for this. - jc37 13:29, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But why bureaucrats? It will put a burden on an alreayd limited number of people when administrators a fully able to complete this task. Ryan Postlethwaite 13:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Honestly, Administrators could be considered "fully able" to do a lot of things on Wikipedia. But that's not how things are broken up here. ROllback is part of the "admin package" of userrights, which requires at least a bureaucrat to assign. I don't think we should suddenly say that administrators can give out the separate tools, but not the whole package. And noting the various bureaucracy that's being put in place for this (seems rather similar to bot approval, to me), I don't see that this is in anyway not just an admin tool that's just being scaled down for non-admin use. - jc37 14:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But rollback is the only admin tool that can be replicated with scripts, its hardly an admin tool at all. If it weren't for the risk of sleeper socks and the unwillingness to raise the autoconfirm threshold, I would support giving this out automatically. IIRC, the only reason it wasn't given more liberally before was the absence of rate limiting, which is completed now. It's basically just a faster way to do a certain type of edit, and the edit can be reversed by anyone - deletion, protection, and blocking need an admin to reverse. Mr.Z-man 18:25, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that there more concerns than that. For example, marking the use as "minor", which means it won't show up on recent changes. And until this is done, it will require an admin to rollback a rollback. So no, I still don't see a difference. I see your perspective on this, I just also see the concerns, and I think going "slow" (as suggested in WP:SOP), is probably a good thing in this case. - jc37 12:13, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, I really don't understand your argument. Special:Recentchanges shows minor edits by default. Nobody actually reads it, however, because there is too much there. Anyone can revert an edit whether it shows up there or not, because all edits are listed in the page history. They do not have to be an administrator, or even logged in. They are also all listed on the user's contributions page. All logged-in in users can and do mark edits as minor, especially reversions, without any issues. People do not watch established users on Recent Changes ready to criticise their edits if they do anything wrong. They watch for vandalism – Gurch 12:34, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I was repeating (from memory, which may be foggy) some concerns that I saw that others had. Personally, my main two concerns are that admins shouldn't be granting/removing; and that there should be a process for granting. My comparison is bots, and adminship (and from what I understand, tools, as well). - jc37 01:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bureaucrats, not administrators 

message: :"The user will be limited to five rollbacks a minute."
Why? While patrolling recent changes, especially during busy periods, it is frequently necessary to revert more than five edits per minute; indeed, I've done twice that many times – Gurch 14:44, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well...... that's what would happen if all autoconfirmed users got rollback, but I certainly think it's a good idea to remove that limitation if users have to request rollback like with this proposal. Ryan Postlethwaite 14:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Then I will do so. – Gurch 15:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  5 rollbacks per minute? WTF? 

message: This tool is simply a convenience.  It doesn't enable one to do anything that even an anonymous editor can't do. There's no need to create a new tier of users and the bureaucracy and elitism that goes with it.  Let's just give it to all autoconfirmed users, like we do with pagemove.  If someone's abusing the privilege, it can be dealt with through the same channels as any abusive editing. Toohool (talk) 20:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you ever used rollback? You'll understand why it's not just a normal tool - it's far far quicker than any other reversion tool. Ryan Postlethwaite 20:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No I haven't, as I'm not an admin.  Someone who wants to be disruptive is going to be disruptive, this would just make it a bit quicker for them.  I don't think that justifies the departure from the Wiki spirit that this proposal represents. Toohool (talk) 20:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can't people get rollback from Twinkle and VandalProof? Marlith T/C 05:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No. – Gurch 09:40, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Huh? What "trust and responsibilities" do you have if you have a button that says "rollback", that you don't have if you have a button that says "revert" that does exactly the same thing but more slowly and less efficiently? – Gurch 10:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Read my response to the thread below this one. (But yes, from what I understand, there's a difference.) - jc37 12:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rollback is no big deal 

message: Note Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges, which was rejected in September 2006. I would actually be in favor of automatic granting of all admin privileges in the absence of explicit opposition, but I might be part of the lunatic fringe on that. - BanyanTree 21:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What's different now than a year ago? Is there any reason why the proposal should be accepted now, rather than rejected for the same reasons as last time? ~MDD4696 21:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because consensus can change. Mr.Z-man 01:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes it can, but in looking over the recent RfC, it doesn't look as if it has. The only difference now is that developers have some concerns about scripting tool usage in regards to server load.  If the current scripting tools are slowed down, or eliminated, then those who use them are hoping for an "easy" replacement.  - jc37 02:01, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So you're basically saying that from now on people should do everything manually, and thus take five times as long over it, just because despite making thousands of good edits you don't trust them to use a different, much faster interface? – Gurch 10:31, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I don't recall saying that or that. The conflation here is that there are technical concerns as well. It's not entirely my concern, but from what I was reading in the RfC, it's the "how" of how rollback works that is concerning people. Else it wouldn't be an admin userright. Though I think that that would be a good topic for discussion. Let's start a new thread describing exactly what rollback is and isn't. (Maybe even as a sub-page of this?). Maybe if we can deal with the concerns one-by-one, that would help? - jc37 12:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any concerns at all, other than paranoia that if rollback was given to someone they might somehow abuse it in a way that wouldn't be noticed, and that somehow being able to block anyone who does abuse it isn't enough to stop them – Gurch 15:40, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then perhaps you're missing some concerns. Are you interested in discussing them or no? - jc37 23:41, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All of us, including Gurch, are interested in that discussion. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. -- Pepve (talk) 23:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  previous proposal 

message: Hello,
I am a sysop in the French language wikipedia. I think it would be interesting to give this function to sysops in other languages even if they don't have the minimum of 2000 edits. We have been around wikipedia for a long time (more than 2 years, 21,000 edits on fr, around 1,900 here) and know how to use the rollback function. It's annoying to revert vandalism on this wikipedia due to the lack of this function. Thanks in advance. Poppy (talk) 09:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that on other projects it's hard for me to revert vandalism - more so than if I never had rollback and this is certainly something we should consider, especially if the user can prove they are an admin on another project. Ryan Postlethwaite 13:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I updated the requirements with ideas from one of the above discussions and this one. I worded so that a sysop on another English Wikimedia project (English any Wikinews, English any Wiktionary, etc.) would also be eligible. FunPika 20:06, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sysop in other languages 

message: Can't non-admin do most of the rollback features via scripts that are available such as Twinkle? GtstrickyTalk or C 22:10, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but at a performance cost. See . When I did this reversion, I sent the server 72 KB of data, and the server sent me 178 KB of compressed data (uncompressed, that would be 315 KB). With the rollback permission, the server would send 35 KB (142 uncompressed), and I would sent it 2 KB. (This is without any script, although a rollback request can be made with a script.) With script rollback, the server sends approximately 500% more data, and I send it 3600% more. This is slower for both me and the server. Nearly all of Twinkle's requests are backend, as they are API. The rollback permission minimizes this, a lot. I understand that we shouldn't worry about performance, and that none of my analysis takes into account how scripts like Twinkle affect things server-side. However, giving users rollback is something the community can do, and I certainly wouldn't mind sending 3% of what I send now just to revert some vandalism. GracenotesT § 23:50, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The amount of data sent is not the only issue. Bandwidth is not usually a problem, at least for those of us with fast connections. Speed, however, is – it may be slightly so when reverting vandalism and every second counts, but more importantly, it is very much so at the other end, where thousands of requests are being handled every second and unnecessary milliseconds really do add up. Page views are cached, and cached requests are relatively fast, because the page can be served directly or with minimal processing. To revert an edit, however, it is necessary to make two requests neither of which are cached: bring up an edit form, and submit the edit. To revert multiple edits, the page history has to be requested too, and that sometimes isn't cached either. To roll back an edit, only one request (the 'submit' one) needs to be made, even for most cases where multiple edits need reverting, since it reverts all edits by the last contributor, and while the request that does have to be made is the slowest (though as Gracenotes points out, still far smaller), the speed benefits of cutting the number of requests in half or by two thirds are very real – Gurch 23:57, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

text: For those of you who like looking at pictures, look at this one. This is a graph showing the number of requests per second to Wikimedia projects. This peaks at around 45,000 requests per second. The blue, green and orange areas of the graph represent requests made to the US, European and Asian clusters, respectively. Virtually all of these requests are anonymous users viewing pages – in such cases, the rendered page is cached; once one person has viewed it, it can be served very quickly the next time it is requested. When a logged-in user views the page, a small amount of processing is necessary to, for example, add their username to the user 'portlet'. However, the content area of the page – i.e. everything underneath the page title – is still cached and can be displayed very quickly. (To see roughly what is cached, view a page and then add "?action=render" to the URL. This is an oversimplification of the real situation and ignores things like user preferences, but is enough to give the general idea). A very small fraction of requests are for advanced things like requesting an edit page, saving an edit, viewing a special page, moving a page and so on. These requests are represented by the little black line at the bottom of the graph: as you can see, they account for only a tiny fraction of all requests. However, most of the Wikimedia servers' processing time is expended dealing with these requests, as they require the relatively slow PHP scripts that form MediaWiki to be executed, in order to render a page that nobody has asked for before, or which has gone out of date since it was last asked for. These scripts will assemble the HTML of the page and then serve it to you, usually retrieving information from the database and sometimes parsing some wiki-markup as well. All of these things are very slow compared to just pulling a pre-rendered page out of memory and sending it. So you can see how it is better do only do it once (rollback) than twice or even three times (anything else) – Gurch 00:15, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Gurch and Gracenotes, that makes sense. So we (us non-admin type) can do it now with a handicap. However, currently you need to know HOW to do it (find the script and put it to use). I think those steps create some current safeguards that need to be carried over. WP:AWB has similar requirements. Humbly I submit that there could be a blanket user right that would grant you advanced editing tools, WP:AWB and the new Rollback feature. Again my thought is that the tools are available now anyway, I think it would give admins more control over users using the rollback features not less.  Cheers. GtstrickyTalk or C 00:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think you're being just a little paranoid there. To use rollback you would also need to know how to use it. You would furthermore need to know how to find the request page and make a request there, and you would also need to have sufficient experience that administrators would not reject your request. This is, to be honest, far more complex than the knowledge needed to use a script (all you have to do is see it in use, follow the link it advertises itself with in every edit summary, and follow the easily-understandable instructions on the page you are sent to which involve copying one line of code into a page that is linked for you and therefore basically reduces to knowing how to edit a page. – Gurch 00:15, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I might not be communicating it well but I think we are saying the same thing. GtstrickyTalk or C 01:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

text: In simple terms, when you use a script, you edit the version you are reverting to, and then the page is automatically saved. With admin rollback, you completely miss the editing screen, so you go via one screen instead of 2. It's only possible with the wikimedia rollback function that administrators currently have. In a nutshell, it's far quicker than any other method (even with the best script). Ryan Postlethwaite 00:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newbie Question 

message: I don't understand why this has even been made into a proposal. It looked to me like there was pretty clear consensus against this in the discussion here: Wikipedia:Rollback for non-administrators. At the very least I'd say there was no consensus to go ahead with it. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 06:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are aware that this proposal is quite different from what was originally planned? Mr.Z-man 07:09, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Due to the nature of the rollback button, access cannot simply be granted to everyone, but will instead be assigned by administrators, on request. Administrators should evaluate requests for rollback on individual merit and review the users contributors edit history before granting them the permission.
When my impression is that a significant number of editors in the discussion did not want admins to be handling this. I think the discussion there was a better way of handling this. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 07:54, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia talk:Rollback for non-administrators#Random thought. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Forget what you think others want for the moment: why do you not want administrators handling it? Do you trust them to block users, delete pages, protect pages, edit the Main Page and sitewide JavaScript and yet not give out what is merely a much more efficient version of something that can be done with scripts, and revoke it (along with a block) the moment something goes wrong? Or do you not trust administrators at all? Given that our ability to edit pages is, through blocking, already at the mercy of this group of people, adding what is merely a specific type of editing that wasn't previously available to the mix doesn't seem like a huge leap. As I have explained above at length, the benefit is real, the possibility for abuse is minimal (anyone seeking to use this for abuse would be better off saving themselves the months it would take to get approval and just reverting edits normally) and I really don't see why it would require bureaurat approval, RfA-esque voting nonsense or anything else like that. It's not going to be given out to all autoconfirmed users, in fact the way things are going the standard will (unfortunately) be so high you could have got adminship with less a couple of years ago – so just what is your concern? – Gurch 11:14, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps I'm not totally clear on how the approval process will go. Will the requests just go to a board like AIV or similar, with whatever admins who are willing to handle it giving approval?  I'm mostly concerned about adding to the backlog of tasks we have to handle as admins. I don't think the world will end if we have to add approving rollback users to the backlog, and I do think it's preferable to having mini-RfAs. I'm just surprised this has become a proposal at all because I think there was no consensus to give non-admins the rollback. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 21:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is obviously no consensus for all logged-in users to immediately be able to access rollback without any approval process at all whatsoever. Or is the same applying to an approval process filled with editcountitis and timeitis? FunPika 21:43, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I find it extremely unlikely that there will be a backlog of more than a day or so. After an initial rush, the number of users requesting this is probably going to be not that much greater than the number of users requesting adminship, if that – Gurch 23:48, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Also, if you're worried about the number of tasks administrators have to handle, persuade people to drop the "vandal fighters don't need to be administrators" attitude at RfA – then you'll have more administrators and this proposal will become unnecessary – Gurch 23:51, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: By contrast, though, won't enabling this increase standards at RFA? GracenotesT § 22:50, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought the same in this section, but after more thought, as Mr.Z-man said, giving/revoking rollback would be less of a big deal than performing blocks. Some people may increase their standards, but I don't think this will be too problematic. Acalamari 23:11, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure why it would increase standards at RfA, unless people decide that a certain candidate can be trusted to take away people's editing ability completely but not to merely modify it slightly. Though of course given the sort of RfA stupidity that made this proposal necessary it may well happen anyway – Gurch 23:51, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My original concern was that some people may see it as "another admin ability", and increase their standards accordingly; but yes, I do agree strongly that blocking is a bigger deal than this. Acalamari 00:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

text: That's a possibility, but don't forget, anyone arguing "Oppose - user already has admin rollback rights" can be countered with the following responses: (1): full-admin rollback would be unlimited in the amount of reverts, unlike non-admins with the rollback permission, who would be limited to a few reverts a minute. (2): being an admin would mean being able to block users as well as have unlimited reverts, therefore making a more efficient vandal-fighter. Acalamari 01:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm hoping argument (1) won't be implemented because it would make this feature pointless and, yes, (2) is logically true but that doesn't stop people ignoring that face and persisting with the "RC patrollers don't need adminship" attitude. And Gracenotes, what you're basically saying is that RfA will continue doing exactly what it is doing now - refusing to give RC patrollers adminship unless they've done significant other work elsewhere. This proposal is only here to work around that – Gurch 11:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  In some ways it may reduce standards as it will have been proven that users are competent with one, however small, part of adminship. Tiddly-Tom 13:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Oh Gods, No.

message: I think we should really consider giving this a go. The major concerns here so far are misconceptions about this proposal - some people look like they haven't even read it. We're not giving every user the tool, just people that have shown to have a need for it and can be trusted. I don't suspect there to be huge backlogs, and it's not the end of the world if someone has to wait a couple of days to get it. I would suggest we ask the developers to implement it for a two week trial, don't advertise it and see who comes to request it. If there's huge problems, we can take it from there - but I really can't see the potential for harm given that proposed users will be vetted first. Ryan Postlethwaite 11:42, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I agree with you. I'm one of those people who completely misunderstood it. I've read it carefully now, and, after reflection on the times I spent RC Patrolling before becoming an admin, I am in big support of the proposal. Lradrama 11:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. Redrocketboy 12:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

text:  Agree, what is the worst that can happen? If there are still doubts you could limit it to a few [hundred?] users for a few weeks and see how it goes. I doubt you even need to do that because if it really does not work, the developers can remove it for everyone to whom it was granted in one sweep. Tiddly-Tom 14:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't think more than a few hundred users are going to ask in the first few weeks, or possibly even months. As I mentioned above, I expect the request rate to quickly settle down to roughly the same rate as adminship requests – Gurch 14:34, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree with a trial to test this out. Acalamari 17:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

text: One thing that isn't clear at the moment: is this going to be rate-limited? I took out the sentence in the proposal that said it would be because, as I have mentioned above, the rate that was given is somewhat below that which RC patrollers generally have to maintain during busy periods, and would thus be rather annoying to the very group of people for whom it is intended while providing little benefit. If someone went crazy with the rollback tool, it would only be a matter of minutes before they were noticed, reverted, blocked and permanently stripped of the ability to use it, which means that it's unlikely anyone will even try; the sort of people who currently vandalize with throwaway sockpuppet accounts are unlikely to suddenly start spending months making useful contributions with each account to get it rollback-approved only to then start reverting everything. The only potential abuse would seem to come from its use in edit wars, which as I have also explained above would happen at a slow speed and would still result in a block just like any other sort of edit warring, so I don't see how a rate limiter would help. It might also be abused if administrators start giving it out to just anyone, but my experience of this project suggests that generosity is not a concept most administrators are familiar with (if anything, I feel they're likely to go too far the other way, and block/de-rollback RC patrollers for making a single mistake) – Gurch 14:34, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: By default, it would still be rate limited, but there is a configuration variable that can be changed to exclude people in the rollback group from the limit. Mr.Z-man 20:49, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well that's no good, unless we want another bureaucratic process to decide who to exclude. Can the limit not just be removed, or at least raised to a more tolerable number like 10/minute? That would still prevent RC patrollers from using rollback for one of its intended purposes -- rolling back the edits of a high-speed vandalbot by going down its contribs pagfe clicking rollback links -- but would at least mean they wouldn't keep getting error messages during busy periods and having to go and revert manually. That would seriously begin to annoy RC patrollers after a few minutes – Gurch 11:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I would say I would submit a Bugzilla bug if no objections were raised to a trial within 24-48 hours, but there is one thing I want to figure out. Are we going to use Userrights or Giverollback? If we are going to use Userrights the bcrats should be aware before their Makebot/Makesysop pages are suddenly replaced with a limited version of Userrights. Because it appears no one has a problem with switching to Userrights in this discussion, I will post a message on the bcrat noticeboard about this. FunPika 20:14, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah we would use userrights I think - it seems the simplest way to go. The coding that you've put on WP:BN is the idea we need (I think!). Ryan Postlethwaite 22:45, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Realistically if the feature is added it wouldn't be a trial, it would be permanent: what would be the incentive of those who supported it ever to come back to discuss whether it was successful or not? Christopher Parham (talk) 01:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: None, unless it turned out not to work as well as they thought and they decided it would be better off removed. Similarly, no incentive for anyone else to come back here unless they thought there was a problem with it. So if people do come back, then there may be a problem; if not, there is no problem and it can be kept. Isn't that the whole point? – Gurch 11:34, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Are you sure the reason why the bug hasn't been resolved is that until now it would have added no new features and thus really only been a code change? If we announce that we need to be able to give out rollback separately the developers have the option of resolving the bug or adding another extension; they've already said they won't add another extension and since the code needed to resolve the bug has mostly already been written anyway resolving the bug would presumably be far less effort – Gurch 22:33, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

text: The proposal you link to suggests that all users be given rollback. Several people have raised objections to that here in the mistaken assumption that this proposal was suggesting the same thing, and consensus seems to be against it – Gurch 22:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I doubt that is the reason. See bugzilla:10727. That is an attempt to get addgroups/removegroups enabled to create a "test-admin" group on the Wikimedia Incubator. FunPika 23:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, until 7 days ago nobody seemed to have come up with a way for that to function correctly, but in the most recent comments it seems they have. Perhaps the developers haven't noticed yet? You should try giving them a nudge and they might fix it – Gurch 23:49, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let's give this a go 

message: *Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard#Special:Userrights
User:Redux just left a comment which I think is worth investigating. (And, as you may surmise from my comments above, I agree with his comments concerning limitations in who can "grant".) - jc37 11:50, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bureaucrat noticeboard comments 

message: I've read that it was once possible to rollback while blocked, and this has since been fixed. Since this indicates an underlying weirdness in the implementation of rollback, I'd just like to put this out there to make sure that the devs check to make sure that it's not possible for an ordinary user to rollback a protected page. —Random832 16:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it was blocks that were dodgy. Admins could in effect do anything while blocked, except for edit. Gradually, all the abilities were removed except the ability to unblock themselves, and some other things, such as viewing deleted revisions and viewing Special:Unwatched page, the blocking interface etc - not too sure on those though. Redrocketboy 17:00, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just tested it on my wiki, non-admins get a permission error when trying to rollback on a full protected page. Mr.Z-man 01:01, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page protection 

message: I am not an expert on the topic so don't shoot me down ;) I don't know if they already do or not, but this may be a good way of reducing server load by anti-vandal bots. I can't myself think of any reason why they would not be allowed it. Comments? Tiddly-Tom 23:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Whether bot accounts are granted access to the tool or not is for administrators to decide if the proposal is actually implemented. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't, provided the account had been in use for sufficient time that they were satisfied there would be no problems – Gurch 19:53, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bots 

message: My response to reading this proposal is: This adds another layer of bureaucracy to Wikipedia, without sufficient return-on-investment.  As everyone and their brother has already pointed out, tools like WP:TWINKLE and WP:POPUPS already enable the apparent functionality for the user.  If we want to allow more people to rollback in the name of server efficiency, then just give it to all named users, or some other auto-determined status (by number of edits, age of account, phase of the moon, whatever).  Again, everyone already has the same apparent functionality, just via methods which are inefficient for the servers. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 08:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much bureaucracy