Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Proposal: Superadmin, redux, now in the right category!

Cannot be Enacted without CoV (1-7).
Failed by Hix.

Adminned at 04 Jul 2006 13:38:02 UTC

Delete the following paragraph from Rule 1.2: 

Some Travellers are Admin Staff, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Travellers who wish to become Admins shall sign up with a username for the Ruleset Wiki, and submit a Proposal to make themselves Admins. Existing Admins may be removed from their posts by Proposal, CfJ, or voluntary resignation.

And create a new rule, entitled “Administration”, immediately after Rule 1.2. As this will re-number the current rules 1.3-1.9, correct all references to those rules by number in the ruleset.  Give the new rule the following text:

Some Travellers are Administrators (Admins), and are denoted as such in the sidebar. Admins shall have the ‘Administrator’ flag set for them in Expression Engine, and have duties detailed elsewhere in the ruleset, but which include administration of proposals and adding of new Travellers. Any Traveller wishing to become an Admin shall make a Motion—a post in the Motion category—to become so, no more than once per calendar month, and only via Motion may a Traveller become an Administrator. All active Travellers, as well as all Idle Admins, save the Traveller wishing to become an Admin, may vote for or against (using the appropriate icons) the motion, with later vote superceding earlier ones, and if at least two thirds of votes recieved after 48 hours are FOR, that Traveller becomes an Admin. A Traveller’s administrator status may be removed by voluntary resignation, Proposal, or Call for Judgment. All Admins are requested, on their honour, to avoid using a power that Admin status grants to gain in-game advantage.

Furthermore, some Administrators are Superadministrators (Superadmins), who have all permissions in the blognomic backend, and shell access the Blognomic.com server. Extreme care should be taken when creating new superadministrators. A superadmin is, in addition to the duties of an Administrator, responsible for care of the weblog’s backend, impelementation of new programs and widgets for the blognomic game, and otherwise ensuring the . They may also grant Admins access to the shell at their discretion. Any Administrator may become a Superadmin if and only if a Motion to that effect passes. Any Administrator may make a Motion that E become a Superadmin up to once per calendar month. All active and idle administrators are eligible to vote on this Motion, save the one attempting to become a Superadmin. When all current, active, Superadmins have voted, and at least 48 hours have passed since the Motion was made, the Motion is resolved; at which time if at least two-thirds of the votes are FOR, and no current Superadmin voted against, that Traveller becomes a Superadministrator. A Traveller can lose their superadmin status by proposal, Call for Judgment, or voluntary resignation.

The text of this rule may be altered at any time by the unanamous consent of all active Superadmins, and may not otherwise be altered; save by changing the word Traveller via Ascension Address.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

04-07-2006 09:06:10 UTC

against Sorry, but I still don’t like this: making server access a part of the gamestate is needlessly risky and restrictive, the current Admin-promotion and back-end-permission system has worked fine for years, and this bloats a 59-word rule into a 389-word one, making it the biggest rule in the core ruleset when it’s also the least frequently used one.

I agree that it’d be useful to clarify who exactly has server access, and to formalise the system for giving people that access, but this can just as easily be done on a separate wiki page - bringing it into the game ruleset just clutters things up and opens the server up to scamming. (As I’ve said on IRC, we’d currently ignore a scammed proposal of “Give me the root password for the server, lol, pwnd” because it’s trying to regulate something outside of the game, but we’d have to honour “This player becomes a Superadmin, lol, pwnd” if we made Superadminity a recognised part of the gameplay.)

Hix:

04-07-2006 09:25:56 UTC

against

Purplebeard:

04-07-2006 09:30:29 UTC

against

Shadowclaw:

04-07-2006 10:52:58 UTC

against

TAE:

04-07-2006 12:06:22 UTC

against
I know I voted for a previous incarnation of this proposal, but I am increasingly swayed by Kevan’s logic about how we should deal with the gamestate/severstate dichotomy.  Perhaps a comment to this effect should go in the glossary?

Thelonious:

04-07-2006 13:11:12 UTC

against

I’m with Kevan.  There should be a clear separation between

a) things that are in-game and therefore covered by the ruleset.

b) things that aren’t and therefore are covered by procedures outside the ruleset.

To my mind, server administration quite clearly falls in the latter category.

There’s also part of the proposal missing.  “and otherwise ensuring the [...]. They may

Rodney:

04-07-2006 18:50:50 UTC

against