From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com>
On 7/4/05, JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
However
consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction
is less harmful than action.
Which is clearly the case, given that there are no real problems with
the
existing situation, and 500 admins and growing to
take care of admin
duties.
There are many axis to consider harm.
For example, after making 2000+ edits, failing to abuse procedure, no
vandalism, etc.. A user goes up for adminship and is denied. We have
500 admins, why not one more?
*Most* people would feel hurt by that.
Can we deal with one specific case here?
Obviously we can't just make everyone admins
because their feelings
would be hurt otherwise... but I think that in cases where a user is
likely to abuse the tools after they've been around long enough for 2k
edits that it is abundantly clear. In these cases we see unanimous or
near unanimous opposition.
In many cases, I've seen rather mixed reviews, with significant numbers on
both sides, and those who oppose (often on purely policy related concerns)
being treated rather harshly by supporters.
In other cases, I think we should give the user a
chance to prove
themselves as an admin. That the risk of a vandal becoming an admin is
infinitesimal at that point, and the the risk of bruising a valuable
editors ego is more important.
They have a chance to prove themselves as an editor, and again, I see a
bizarre imbalance here. We rarely show this much concern about bruising the
egos of valuable admins, who have *already proved themselves*; instead, we
accept with equanimity baseless accusations of "abuse" and cliques", or
bend
over backwards tut-tutting about admins possibly slipping from impossibly
high standards at one point or another. But let one controversial "valuable
editor"'s ego become bruised because they *weren't* accepted as an admin,
and suddenly we have a HUGE problem which must be fixed by overturning all
the rules by which and admin is created, and letting everyone become an
admin.
Exactly. And
the people who are denied adminship are generally either
not
longterm or not trustworthy. Of course there
will be exceptions to
this,
but these are few and far between. If we
radically re-vamp existing
processes with very low error rates in an attempt to achieve perfection,
we
are fooling ourselves; no process is perfect,
none will ever be, and the
likelihood that a new process will achieve fewer errors is low.
I think the people which are unilatterly or near unilaterly denied
adminship are potentially not trustworthy. Many of the no consensus
users eventually become admins on the second go around, they aren't
different people... Usually they just used the time to get to know a
few more admins to help their support base. That isn't a bad thing,
but it isn't how we should decide adminship. How much good will did we
lose from them by denying them once?
No, they don't get to know a few more admins; rather, they make a quite a
few more edits demonstrating their trustworthiness, or even improve their
editing ways, removing previous objections.
Like I said above, I think you are measuring error
incorrectly. Our
current adminship probably detects all vandals, but it also
misidentifies many good potential admins.
Again, this is just an opinion. With any screening system there is a risk
of false positives; I argue that the the number of "good potential admins"
who are screened out are small, as opposed to the suggested new system,
where huge numbers of negatives will come flooding in.
To make a more clear example: If the security at the
airport simply
shot all the passengers we would successfully stop all hijackers
pretending to be passengers.
Um, maybe that's clear, but it's not a relevant analogy. A more relevant
one would be that you are suggesting that we shouldn't subject airplane
passengers to security checks at all, because the vast majority of people
screened are not hijackers at all, and we risk bruising all their egos.
i.e. There was
no consensus.
Yes. It appeared that you understood the point my message started
with, that I think that we should accept in the case of no consensus
not reject. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point out that there
was no consensus when that's what I'm obviously talking about.
Consensus is required for change; that's pretty standard in Wikipedia.
As you point out, many of the no consensus people
become admins
eventually (the long term trend appears to be all of them). These are
perfect examples of where the system has failed once, but worked on
the second pass.
No it's a perfect example of the system working; the people do whatever is
required to gain trust, and in so doing become more trustworthy.
How much good will did that first rejection cause us?
How many positive changes to editing patterns did it engender in those
candidates who were rejected?
(Clearly if they eventually pass it they are a
trustworthy contributor, so that the process failed them the first
time is not a success).
Nothing clear about that at all; more likely they cleaned up their act.
I do not believe
you have demonstrated how it will harm our goal of making an
encyclopedia to grant adminship to people without near-consensus
opposition.
I belive I have demonstrated the *potential* for huge harm. And I do not
believe you have demonstrated how it will help our goal of making an
encyclopedia to grant adminship to people without near-consensus opposition.
In fact, the arguments I hear are all about philosophy and feelings, not
about how article content will improve.
Jay.