http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ame=Jimbo+Wales

I noticed he no longer has CheckUser. He had that for a while.

Look at the other names. There's debates like his penis size. One person tried to solve the debate with "Jimbo Wales has a 1mm long penis that becomes 100000m when erect"

Jimbo Wales saves bread til it stales

I never knew he had checkuser. Is there anything on the meta logs?

He has Founder status, which gives him the powers of a steward without the accountability, so he could give himself CheckUser if he wanted. But why would he bother?

The rights that were removed were Steward & Developer, according to the logs he never had CheckUser.

As of now, it's all speculation as I don't have access to the config files, but there as the flag is used by him only, it could very well include the CU prerogatives easily (technically speaking).

I believe however that there was already a discussion here on the subject at the time.

My technical inexperience may be showing, but I was under the impression that the developers were people who could make changes to the site's source code and so on. Jimbo Wales may be a lot of things, but I don't think he's a programmer of any sort and it seems like him have developer rights is just more potential trouble than good.

The term developer refers to several groups of people. I believe the actual on-wiki "developer" user right that used to exist carried with it the ability to directly run SQL queries.

What I've heard is that the "Founder" flag is actually the same exact flag as "steward", there's just a hack to display it differently for Jimbo personally.

Why do threads about Jimbo's user rights get opened every two months?

I do clearly remember Jimbo with checkuser. Maybe it was removed without logs.

Maybe because something fishy and non-transparent happens with Jimbo's user rights every two months?

OMG, I didn't even notice that he had a "FOUNDER" flag now. What a self-important jackass!

Why oh WHY do people fawn over him so? The more I read about Jimbo the more I find him personally repulsive. Screw the COI, the hypocrisy, the unrealistic optimism, the lack of empathy for BLP victims... Jimbo is just a straight-up douchebag.

The developer as mediawiki user right doesn't grant the ability to run SQL queries, that I'm pretty sure. I'm not sure that it does something at all.
As for the founder, it could be anything. It's only speculation.
I doubt that it is a hack like you say, as:
a) I don't see any point in it, a normal user right would be fine
b) it wouldn't show up as a different user group, wouldn't it?

IMO it's just a right like any other, but...


Do you remember around which time you recall he had checkuser? I've never heard of this.

People fawn over him because

(i) they are sychophantic arseholes

(ii) they think fawning might help them get into one of the sooper seekrit lists

(iii) they are attention seekers, or

(iv) they think that Jimbo Wales might actually have something useful to say (v. unlikely)

There's a recent ANI thread where some random Joe makes a userpage claiming to be wikipedia's founder. The userpage gets deleted and guy gets banned.

At the end of the thread an IP comes in and talks about how the "I founded wikipedia" shouldn't just be removed from that userpage but also from Jimbo Wales's because Jimbo is just cofounder (the IP's used the word "cofounder").

Well the IP didn't notice that Jimbo has founder as a user class.

Anyhoo. The developer user class in mediawiki I read is depreciated and only lets you lock and unlock the database. Running SQL queries can be done without an account if you get access to whatever they use to run SQL, which I'm guessing isn't phpMyAdmin as I heard that uses lots of resources.

I think it used to. I think there used to be a special page for it.



The reason I think it is a hack is because it does not appear on the list of groups that is allowed to access Special:Userrights. I've also been told it's a hack. At the end of the day, it's not really important, except that it lends credence to the belief that it does not come with any access that Stewards don't have.

Since when are the abilities granted with a permission level not disclosed?

Since the day Jimbo demanded his Founder rights.

Seriously, are these the toughest questions you've got, Root?

Checkusers are nerds, Jimbo doesn't like that image!

You're thinking of special:asksql which was available to any sysop, not only developers. The developer permission let you access special:lockdb and special:unlockdb. That's about it.

While Jimbo isn't a "developer" as in programmer, he has shell access to the servers and can read the database directly (see the Meta page about developers ), which means he can run a SQL query which gives him the abilities of checkuser without the accountability of showing up in the checkuser log. Even the "checkuser ombudsman commission" can't tell if he's abused this right.

Frankly, with his database access, he needs no assigned permissions at all. It doesn't take more than a passing familiarity with SQL to assign whatever permissions you'd like to whoever you'd like to have them.

There is a list, I think User:NoSeptember kept it upto date until the last Arbcom of the "top of the tree" user rights - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:NoSeptember/Functionaries

It seems to be correct, having been updated by Newyorkbrad and others.

Kim Bruning also has a subpage of some (unfortunately few) former functions of user groups were, so you can cross-reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kim_Brun...functionalities

It's largely former social conventions that are no longer in effect, former ideals that were stamped out by the mighty herd of Wikipedians and such, but there are a few technical notes.