Wikisource:News/2019-09/Administrator confirmations

English administrator confirmations for September 2019
Five administrators are having their confirmation discussions in September 2019:


 * — Bureaucrat reconfirmation as well
 * — Bureaucrat reconfirmation as well
 * — Bureaucrat reconfirmation as well
 * — Bureaucrat reconfirmation as well
 * — Bureaucrat reconfirmation as well

The first three are active highly valued contributors who are very likely to be reconfirmed. The last three (which still includes Jusjih), consist of the three remaining admins of the original five-person admincorps. Though activity is not as it once was, Yann occasionally pops up around the site a few times a year and thus is also more likely than not to be reconfirmed.

In the case of Zhaladshar, the closest thing to a founder that English Wikisource has. the first user, admin, and bureaucrat on the site and kept the whole thing active in its early days. However in 2019, Zhaladshar has not edited the English language project for almost two years. During last reconfirmation in 2018, the official vote count was two in favor and one (Jusjih) weakly against for this reason. As Zhaladshar is also a bureaucrat, confirmation discussions have the unique ability to remove the bureaucrat role but separately letting Zhaladshar keep  administrative rights. It remains to be seen whether the community will return its historic founder and if so in what role.

A previous version of this story claimed Zhaladshar was still active on Multilingual Wikisource. That was actually. Zhaladshar's last edit there was in 2008. 06:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Bengali Wikisource
Having recently had administrative rights automatically removed, last month  put  up for reconfirmation on Bengali Wikisource (permalink). The discussion ended with unanimous support in favor of re-adding Mahir as an admin. In total, the project has a total of four administrators including local English Wikisource sysop. Mahir256's admin rights were restored but set to expire on 23 August 2020.

Bengali Wikisource was recently represented at the best practices discussion at wikimania this year. Wikisource:News reached out to Mahir for comment on what as the best future for  wiki. "I'd say that the biggest challenge for all of us at bnwikisource is contributor and readership retention; we try as much as we can to increase the growth of and traffic to our collection, not just by promotions elsewhere but by also encouraging authors to donate works; in any case, though, only time can really tell if these efforts have paid off."

According to the statistics website wikiscan.org, bnwikisource has since 2016 been relying heavily on automated editing tools. Mahir256, in much the same way many admins may relate to, finds it rewarding to clean things up; "I've personally found a number of other matters also worth surmounting, such as the conversion of previously mass-imported texts to use scans, metadata improvement for previously mass-imported scans, and (if possible) rescanning volumes to repair them if necessary, since those ultimately lead to a cleaner collection, which in my opinion is just as important as having a larger collection."

This story was updated on 05:51, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Basque Wikisource
An administrative mix up on Basque Wikisource has left the project without any admins (permalink). Users voted in 2018 to make, , and administrators presumably for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, this access was only granted until 10:50, 5 June 2019. The request to restore previous administrative permissions is still ongoing at meta and has not been closed yet by the Stewards.

Smaller Wikisource wikis should generally be encouraged to draft their administrative retention policy before conducting admin elections. Whether the local community chooses to have administrator and bureaucrat positions for life or if they choose to have temporary only appointments with continuous oversight from the Stewards; it should be made clear in advance to avoid such issues.

Punjabi Wikisource
On pa.wikisource requested access to interface administrative rights (permalink). Just a few days ago, on August 28, Satdeep Gill was granted them without any issue.

Turkish Wikisource
has put in their third request to become an admin on Turkish Wikisource (permalink). While previous dicussions were closed unimously with five in favor to make 𐰇𐱅𐰚𐰤 an admin, this will likely not be the case with the latest request. Citing conduct that occurred on Turkish Wikipedia, cast a vote to oppose. It is unknown what effect, if any, this will have on 𐰇𐱅𐰚𐰤's confirmation.