ikiroid wrote: I confess that when somebody offered to nominate me for adminship, I declined. It was partly that I didn't feel quite up to the have-you-done-everything-a-lot filter in RfA voting, and partly because it looked like a major time commitment, with a lot of hair-pulling involved.

I don't know if it's correct, but my impression was that ten hours a week was about a minimum to do it right. I felt like staying an editor let me keep the ability to put in time as schedule and stress level allow.

Now that I think about it, though, maybe I got that impression from watching the busy ones burn out.

challenged, and I'm not sure how bad his image deletions were within that context, or any others. What do we need to do right? Maybe elect more admins who can do things right so they don't get challenged, stressed, and then bail? -Jeff

People who edit articles simply are not valued on this project anymore.

I had been around for six months, seemed to know what was going on and hand't done anything stupid, and so of course I was given adminship upon request. Why don't we do that now? It's still not hard to take back adminship if someone badly misuses it, so IMO all RfA candidates should get adminship by default, with the burden of proof being upon anyone who thinks they should be denied it to argue why. More concretely, any unexplained "no" votes should not be counted.

Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped. So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.

On 2/9/07, Rich Holton <richholton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Userboxes. Take admin powers out of that fight and things would have been a lot less ah dramatic. Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those involved are still admins.

Given that the issue was unimportant one way or the other, I don't see where the massive damage comes from.

I work on WP for a hour or so every day, and this is the first I've heard of a "Bobby Boulders". Are you sure it was that big of a deal?

This whole overdramatization of admin activity is the root cause underlying burnout, I'd say. All admin actions are reversible, so no permanent damage is possible,

but POV-pushers and other miscreants have learned that they can get their way by blowing everything way out of proportion, accusing admins of tyranny and cabals and bla bla bla, so that the reasonable people get tired of it all and walk away.

It's kind of a clever way for POV-pushers to get control of WP actually; raise the bar for new admins, drying up the supply, and drive the old ones away with continual harassment.

Bleah. I couldn't even read the whole thing, it's so sordid and petty.

There are many hurts in life. I know Mr. Linkspam-Cabo-every-day is bummed that I revert him over and over, he's even said so, but his goal is to make a buck no matter what it does to WP. I'm sure if he was smarter, he could find editors to testify to the arbcom that I'm being a mean and nasty admin by not reverting him with an individually-composed, sensitive, and caring message each time, and should be desysopped as an example to the others. So, are you on his side, or on mine?

If I'm not going to be supported by other editors, admin or not, then I don't want to be an admin any longer.

geni wrote: hurts. Think about this a bit more. Being blocked hurts. Is it so much of a stretch of imagination to realise that (for some if not most people) being excluded from adminship also hurts? It is, after all, functionally the same as being "blocked" from the extra features. People probably don't realise this readily because it's a qualitatively different kind of hurting -- it's not a singular event like being blocked or a page being deleted, which is like a stab in the chest which may (or may not) heal. This is different; it's more like a nagging headache that doesn't go away. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

<snip> The close-knit community of yesterday is gone, and I want it back. Less bitching, more supporting.

Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.

On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote: Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal. Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and nothing happens.

On 2/9/07, Timwi &lt;timwi(a)gmx.net&gt; wrote: Other newusers, when they get blocked for doing exactly what an adminisrator and long-time user do, get angry that Wikipedia policies are biased to favor established users and administrators over newbies. After all, when the established user and adminsitrator do something and get away with it, what right does any administartor have to expect that a newbie shouldn't act exactly how they were shown to act? Wikipedia has a lot of unwritten rules, number one of which seems to be post more than humanly possible for anyone who knows any subject outside of Wikipedia. The trick to getting administrators to stay is to stop proliferating the exact same type of administrators who already own all of Wikipedia, namely editors who have endless time to do nothing but edit Wikipedia. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit is a brilliant idea, one of the leading ones of the Cyberspace era. But an encyclopedia created and edited and administrated entirely by folks who live in Cyberspace 24 hours a day is a prescription for a crappy encyclopedia. A variety of administrators, limited time as an admin before you have to get revoted (make it a year, it's no big deal, after all, so why should it be dictatorship for life?), and limited admins with limited hoops to jump to gain it, like admins with ISP blocking powers, again for one year. Again, if it's no big deal, why is it such an exclusive club for only those welded to cyberspace? If it's no big deal, why is it granted for life? If it's no big deal, why can't anyone get it? Especially anyones who don't edit 24/7/365? Thanks to God (insert diety of choice or remove as necessary) for leap years. \ia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 09/02/07, Rich Holton &lt;richholton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: EXCELLENT idea. If Jimbo and the ArbCom like it (I'm picking the AC as sanity checkers here) then the experiment should be declared.

I propose an experiment: Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.

On 2/9/07, Rich Holton &lt;richholton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: So we increase the number of paper admins in return for what? Risk benefit analysis doesn't look good.

If you don't want to be involved, then don't be.

on 2/9/07 3:44 PM, geni at geniice(a)gmail.com wrote: After reading all of the posts on the provocatively-named subject "Admin Burnout", I am hard pressed to see anything "lucky" about being "chosen" as one. How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on? The whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are enough masochists out there to fill the positions?

Do I WANT to be an administrator? No, not really, for all the reasons people describe - it's largely thankless, it leaves you wide open for even more criticism, and it's not "fun" in the way writing about an 18th century chess hoax is. Could I BE a greater asset to the project as an administrator? Without question.

On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell &lt;michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net&gt; wrote: as The enough You can see deleted edits you can speedy stuff without tagging and you can block without going through AIV. You can edit protected templates without messing around. reverting is less effort. Certian types of page moves are only posible for admins On the less official side people tend to think twice before attacking you and you tend to get a free pass when it comes to being trusted. On the against policy but can be done anyway if you are smart. You can: Speedy rather than prod Block new users who are being anoying

Then, of course, there's the damage an admin can do. Willy on Wheels can sit tight for 50 edits. Fifty edits with a sleeper account and you can put all the penises you want on the main page. A dozen sleeper accounts and a dynamics IP, and you could really have fun. And while I won't go into details per WP:BEANS, there are a lot of ways that an admin can do effectively irreversible damage.

Out of 100 randomly chosen admins, how many would actually engage in legitimate admin actions? Is there any evidence for such a number? It's not a matter of calculating risk, it's a matter of calculating the risk/reward ratio. Does the gain from these 100 admins outweigh the loss of a couple of them possibly going rogue? I agree the risk is very small, but I think the gain could also be very small.

on 2/9/07 3:44 PM, geni at geniice(a)gmail.com wrote: After reading all of the posts on the provocatively-named subject "Admin Burnout", I am hard pressed to see anything "lucky" about being "chosen" as one. How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on? The whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are enough masochists out there to fill the positions? Marc Riddell

Well, in your last point you're wrong. I'm one of those "paper admins" that you seem to hate so much.

As far as "hitting users who stay just below the level of blocking with 1 second blocks", it sounds to me like "gaming the system".

What is your *real* objection to this suggestion, Geni? You seem to simultaneously complaining about any added work, and bashing good faith suggestions for improving the situation. -Rich

On 10/02/07, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I must say I hadn't heard of that one. Do you have any pointers to somewhere I can read up on this?

I still aspire to an English Wikipedia where any editor can become admin unless unsuitable - rather than the present utterly broken RFA process. Meh!

Geni, What do you see as the current issues in dealing with problem admins? Is it that it's necessary to go through a lengthy ArbCom process? Do you have any thoughts on how to improve? -Rich

On 10/02/07, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I must say I hadn't heard of that one. Do you have any pointers to somewhere I can read up on this? I still aspire to an English Wikipedia where any editor can become admin unless unsuitable - rather than the present utterly broken RFA process. Meh!

geni wrote: This is indeed true, and no text generation system or bot is necessary. 150 small, useful, constructive edits, done manually, should take about half an hour, on a slow day. -Gurch

geni wrote: Geni, You're welcome to your opinions, and I appreciate your more thought-out response. However, I do believe that you're missing the largest benefit of the proposal: the de-politicizing of RfA. The de-emphasizing of the status of being an admin. Perhaps you don't see these a benefits.

sort of "messiah complex" -- the belief that without them (or in this case, others like them) the project will fail. As others have pointed out, Wikipedia is built on a premise that open editing can produce a quality encyclopedia. This is a premise that many (most?) traditional encyclopedia editors can't believe will work, because they passionately believe that without people like them, it cannot possibly work. So I ask you to think carefully about your own motives and beliefs about admins on Wikipedia. No one else knows what those are. It's very possible that my proposed experiment has real problems and is unworkable. But, may I suggest that you offer alternate suggestions for improvements, instead of just criticizing those of others? -Rich _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

I have better things to do with my time than babysit admins. So do most people.

We have spare admin resources? We have backog of over 1000 images needing deletion (see [[CAT:CSD]]) could you ask these people to help doing something about it?

OK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:0008811297923.jpg An album cover, with a fair use rationale, used in the right place, but tagged for speedy as "no source" - do I delete it or not?

Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the rationale is nonsense.

I agree with this, of course. But en: treats unfree content as deserving of many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at Deletion Review.

The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.

Should we really expect everybody to check on everything they care about every 24 hours? The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.

I guess the articles I tend to edit must be unusually low traffic if you feel 24 hours is sufficient to conclusively determine consensus on some editorial question. Sorry for butting in.

So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.

And for those 7 days we are breaking the law.

Copyright violation is illegal, and having an unlicensed image on Wikipedia without it being acceptable under fair use (and if it isn't used on any pages, then it isn't acceptable under fair use) is copyright violation. IANAL,

but I think we can justify 24 hours of violation while we work out what we should do, I don't think we can justify 7 days. Not when it is so easy to undo a deletion.

The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.

If you're a long time WP admin, you have access to the undelete option on the image page. No need to rescan anything, even if you didn't have local copies.

It's irrelevant, then, isn't it?

Your example does indeed show that it's a good thing to wait before deleting, but only because it's difficult to undelete. It is now easy to undelete, so your example is irrelevant. I know you think otherwise - that doesn't make you right.

Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much. Could you tell me more about what's motivating you here?

I was thinking your motivation was to reduce some real-world harm. E.g., images sitting for a week causes difficulty X to person Y. I gather you're saying it's a more abstract thing, an aesthetic preference?

The real world harm is that of copyright violations. IANAL, so I don't know if it is actually illegal for us to have unfree images on the site for a week without them being fair use, but it has to be quite close to that fine line.

Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much.

> >Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very > >reluctant to explain why it matters so much.

> Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin. And > probably an arbitrator. And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.

You view not assuming good faith as a good thing?

I'm not sure why we give people so long - they can upload the image again if they find a use for it. I would suggest reducing it to 24 hours (enough to account for images being removed from articles without consensus, any longer is unnecessary), but I'm not really involved in the image side of things, so I'll leave it to someone else.

On a tangential note, I proposed last month that all the "waiting periods" in the image criteria be removed, since they were only added in the first place because image undeletion didn't exist at the time. The only good argument I heard against the proposal was that bots like OrphanBot need some waiting period in which to do their business. I don't see why images can't simply be put into a pool for bots like OrphanBot to work on, then put into another pool to be deleted immediately - with no further delays - once the bots are done.

The waiting periods were indeed introduced for images to allow for human review. But none were introduced for articles, templates, portals etc. The reason was that those pages could be reviewed after they were deleted, whereas images couldn't. But since June, images can also be undeleted. There is no other factor that makes images special. Either waiting periods should be introduced for all types speedy deletion, or they should be removed for images.

Quoting Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: I agree with this, of course. But en: treats unfree content as deserving of many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at Deletion Review.

On 2/10/07, Timwi &lt;timwi(a)gmx.net&gt; wrote: We have spare admin resources? We have backog of over 1000 images needing deletion (see [[CAT:CSD]]) could you ask these people to help doing something about it?

Rich Holton wrote: Within no time, you'll have people impose ridiculous criteria on what a probationary admin needs to do in order to "pass the test". Before you know it, people will be demoted simply for being on holiday and not showing up in a month.

The flaw in that logic is in thinking that there is anything different between a "normal admin" and a "provisional admin" besides the name. There isn't. Adminship is a bit in a database, either you have that bit and are able to do enormous damage to Wikipedia, or you don't. There is no need to sleep for 6 months when you can do the damage immediately. It would take a few minutes at the very best to desysop a provisional admin that started vandalising - how much damage do you think an AdminVandalBot could do in that time? I imagine it would be hours normal-admin time to cleanup.

On 2/10/07, William Pietri &lt;william(a)scissor.com&gt; wrote: Nope. Firstly the damage you can do through editing is less. Secondly the software, tools and our social structures are built around being ready to undo editing vandalism. We have very little in the way of methods of taking down problem admins fast.

As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a regular editor. Is that right?

As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period. If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being under the benefit of X? William

If there are things that admins can do NOW that could cause us to have to roll-back two weeks, then there is an immediate problem NOW,

not connected to any change in our selection procedure for admins. No selection procedure will be 99.98% effective, and the damage of attempting to achieve that is just too great.

Sleepers are certainly possible through the current RfA process. You don't think someone determined enough to want to damage Wikipedia in the way you're describing couldn't jump through the RfA hoops?

So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how to cause such damage?

Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so such damage is impossible?

So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so such damage is impossible?

You're misunderstanding the nature of risk. Our aim is not to remove all risk, that's impossible. Our aim is to reduce risk to the minimum possible while stilling being able to make our encyclopaedia as well as possible.

Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward.

> And the values of both are culturally constructed (i.e. arbitrary) as > is the balance between them. I know one of the more prominent risk > theorists, he has a hard time getting people to accept the validity of > the concept of plain bad luck.

Exactly - that cultural construction is what people are talking about when they say someone is more or less risk-averse than someone else.

You're absolutely right, I oversimplified things.

"Plain bad luck" in our context means that there may be instances where we will be sued no matter what we do.

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: IOW getting sued is not the thing to worry about. Getting sued successfully is. Ec

Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward. How risk-averse you are determines where you put that balance (in other words, how much reward you require to make the risk worthwhile), but you have to put the balance somewhere. It's never wise to take a risk that offers no reward. Being not at all averse to risk is never a good idea.

No-one. I phrased that wrong, sorry. I meant a negative expectation, ie. less reward than risk, which is how I assess the expectation of this proposal, rather than no reward at all. I agree, we have to take significant risks for Wikipedia to work. Allowing everyone to edit is an enormous risk, and we frequently lose time because of it (ie. we have to fix vandalism). However, the gain in terms of good contributions is even more enormous, so we consider it an acceptable risk. The risk of allowing large numbers of people access to admin tools without the strict standards we employ at the moment is extremely high, and the reward is very small, so (in my opinion, according to the values I've placed on the risk and reward and the balance between them that I've determined) it's not an acceptable risk.

You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage". Why is it that those admins, let in under much less strict processes, have not resulted in all the nastiness that are predicted if we somehow relax the process again?

You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage".

Rich Holton wrote: <snip> So, you know the history of Oversight then?

Bryan Derksen wrote: If the servers were being exceptionally responsive, you might just manage 40 edits/actions before you were stopped, assuming someone using IRC noticed your first action (which, if they are intended to have the effect you suggest, is pretty likely).

About the worst you could do is try to do history merges on pages with long edit histories (which are still reversible, just tedious to do), but the amount of time they take you'd be lucky if you finished *one* in three minutes. Also, attempting this on a page with a very long history will likely just return a database timeout error (as does attempting to clear a very large watchlist, for example), inconveniencing nobody but yourself.

When I left, the delay between me hitting the "save" button to post my de-adminship request on Meta and the sysop bit being removed was about 150 seconds. That included time spent indicating to the steward handling the request, via IRC, that I really did want to be de-adminned. So I fail to see where this inability to block comes in. That's a lot quicker than the response time for the average AIV request, for example. The stewards know what to do; in an emergency, they would be able to act just as fast, if not faster.

It would take a few minutes at the very best to desysop a provisional admin that started vandalising - how much damage do you think an AdminVandalBot could do in that time? I imagine it would be hours normal-admin time to cleanup.

Of course, when making this assessment you are assuming the current MediaWiki software. Unfortunately, the current software is inefficient at undoing large amounts of activity. For example, the User Contributions page should have an "undo all of this user's contributions" button, especially if it isn't many. At the same time, this undoing of all contributions should also be undoable with a single command. There should also be a selective feature, e.g. undo only all image uploads or undo only the article edits that involve adding an external link. All of these are non-trivial to code, which is why no-one has done it yet, but it would make cleaning up after vandalism much more efficient, even if the vandal is himself an admin. Timwi

On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 14:06:46 +0000, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: We don't require people to be infallible, only to acknowledge when they are wrong.

On 2/9/07, James Forrester &lt;jdforrester(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped. So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.

compensate it, and we need those who will focus on handling admin issues, not waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use. So lets not look at a new admin based on his edit count, but his contributions and WILLINGNESS.

On 2/9/07, Timwi &lt;timwi(a)gmx.net&gt; wrote: Out of everything I posted, how did you draw the conclusion that I said anything to the effect that, those who "wave the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use" were worthless? I simply stated that we need more admins who were willing to stick it out for the long haul.

Ultimately the only way to fix this is probably to be more willing to chuck out people who resolutely refuse to follow policy. Look at the crap Carnildo got simply because he was bot-tagging images which violate our copyright policies. A lot of Alkivar's problem is that there are quite a few editors who flatly refuse to accept that an image scraped off the net somewhere is not an inherently legitimate illustration for any vaguely related article. That's probably the biggest cause of friction. The second major cause of admin burnout in my opinion is trying to keep insidious POV pushers and off-wiki warriors apart. As soon as you step in and prevent one action, you are immediately seen as "involved" and are no longer trusted by the other side - the best that can happen is when both sides decide you are biased against them. Wikipedia is the number 1 destination for people seeking to fix problems without he outside world, and the editors who come here to pursue these agendas have endless time to pursue them. Caring even slightly about the neutrality of the project means that you *will* get stress. The third biggest cause of friction is groups who believe they "deserve" a Wikipedia article because they are so great, even though there are no reliable secondary sources. I am getting crap at the moment about the General Mayhem forum, which is of surpassing significance to its members and (as far as I can tell) nobody else.

The problem I find with this analysis is that it's too one sideed. You outline three broad problems that do indeed happen, and take up a lot of admin time. Still another huge problem is the tendency of some admins to zealotry, or assuming that a small error by a newbie is a precursor to vandalism. The most desirable skill in an admin is patience, and we don't see much of that.

Whe the expression, "I'll kill you," is used in a TV comedy nobody seems to get upset or take it seriously. Often some of our editors interpret much less explicit statements as death threats or otherwise seriously offensive without recourse to any kind of reality check. Sometimes it seems that there are people who thrive on being offended.

Do you know exactly how many admins that would encompass?

This sounded like a good idea to me before, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm hounded down as a cabalist: how about if any X number of admins think someone should have the mop, then that person gets the mop on a trial basis for Y amount of time, perhaps with a regular RFA at the end of the trial period. Adjust X and Y to taste.

Others who should have been promoted but were not for ridiculous reasons include Stephen B Streater and Georgewilliamherbert.

some of the RFA crowd almost seemed to think that rewriting crap articles on good subjects so we had instead pretty good articles on good subjects is somehow not playing the game. Go figure.

Look, some of us have this thing called "real life" (you may have heard of it) which sometimes gets in the way of things; and unbelievable though it may sound, it is more important to us than this stupid little website, and we just have to call it quits. Like adminship itself, this should be no big deal.

The way to deal with this is to stop imposing such preposterous requirements at RfA. Most (not many, MOST) of the current admins don't measure up to the standards being imposed on new candidates.

On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:48:21 +0000, Gurch &lt;matthew.britton(a)btinternet.com&gt; wrote: What is this real life of which you speak, and where can I download it?

I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests; you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.

In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin, one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted their page,

trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers pissed that one has protected their page,

users insistent that one is just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust

and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that one is abusing one's powers,

and "valued contributors" insistent that one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.

On 2/9/07, Keitei &lt;nihthraefn(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

> I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests; > you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.

Never really run across that one.

In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time.

In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin, one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted their page, trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers pissed that one has protected their page, users insistent that one is just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that one is abusing one's powers, and "valued contributors" insistent that one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.

And from my experience as an admin at other wikis, it's not the newbies or the vandals that get you down. It's the bitter resentment from invested users targeted at you over and over and over again. As if because the admins have such unspeakable power, they have to be abused to keep them down, so they won't take over in power-mad fits. It just gets to the point where one is like, "Fine! If you don't want me around so much, I'll leave. Have fun."

On 2/8/07, George Herbert &lt;george.herbert(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Why assume we're doing anything wrong? Some degree of churn is, I think, healthy.

The Cunctator wrote: I can't speak for George (the OP), but I don't think I'm working from the assumption that we're doing anything wrong. I come to the conclusion that we do.

who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.

On 09/02/07, Rob &lt;gamaliel8(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: The ArbCom does this now.

On 2/9/07, Timwi &lt;timwi(a)gmx.net&gt; wrote: The _right_ way would be to demote the ones And who would be empowered to de-admin people? Those people would become the cabal with the "special" "privilieges" instead of admins.

Oh, I agree with that.

I just was saying I don't think admins getting burned out and taking a wikibreak is necessarily a huge problem.

I think you got this backwards. If the RfA process is so strict and everyone then "trusts" the people who are made admins, surely that makes it much easier for those admins to wreak havoc (whether intentional or not). Surely *that* makes the whole project more unworkable.

Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all. Adminship should be synonymous with innocence. Not being allowed the admin tools should be a penalty, and a penalty should only be applied when someone does something wrong, no sooner.

What evidence do you have of this. Speculation is not evidence

I'm glad to see that you are finally moving out of Utopia (=Nowhere) into the real world. Your conversion to logic would be welcome.

"Utopia (from Greek i.e. "no place" or "place that does not exist")" I think maybe it was a joke? A continuation of the original punning? I didn't see it as an attack, at the least.

I can't see how anything I've said could be taken to be nieve, which is the only interpretation I can come up with for your first sentence, and I have no idea what you think I've been basing my arguments on if it isn't logic. To convert to something, you have to convert from something.

In what way does a sarcastic comment about my spelling make a useful contribution to this conversation? It was obvious what I meant. Language exists to transfer meaning from one person to another, as long as that aim is achieved does the spelling really make any difference?

Moderators, please consider putting this person on moderation. I do not see how posts such as the one quoted improve the level of conversation in this forum.

It's definitely not our job to fix injured sensibilities. I strongly suggest you both play nicer.

On 2/19/07, Earle Martin &lt;wikipedia(a)downlode.org&gt; wrote:

> As you're the second person to use the phrase "you both" when replying > to me, I should point out that... oh, forget it.

Heh, sorry, point taken. I meant Ray and Thomas. See what happens when you stray into the crossfire?

You have no choice: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&… There is nop humane way to check to see if all those deleations were correct and within policy.

I thought the theory was that editors check that work, yes? We trust editors to check each other, and I had assumed that the same mechanism was the main check on administrative error and malfeasance.

Having read with great interest much of the discussion, I'd like to offer another proposal for reforming the way we get admins. This isn't really something I'm championing; I'm just throwing it out in hopes of advancing the discussion. Many of the elements are borrowed, and if this goes anywhere, I'll gladly go back and cite them. The spirit of this is that there is a lot of relatively uncontroversial admin work that needs to be done, so that we should let a wider set responsible people do some of the basic mop-and-bucket stuff. For controversial stuff, that would effectively stay in the hands of current admins. It's more "I guess it's my turn to clean the bathroom" than "I run this place." The basics: * We introduce the status of "deputy admin" (other possible names: provisional, temporary, transient, acting, probationary). * Deputies have all the powers of a regular admin. * If stepping into something controversial or difficult, they are expected to get help from a permanent admin. * The term is limited to, say, 3 months. * Application is similar, but the bar is lower: o they should have a modest history as a useful contributor; o they should have demonstrated reasonable knowledge of how Wikipedia works; o they shouldn't be obviously dangerous; o no serious objections means they pass. * They can be more easily be de-admined. Possible mechanisms: o their request stays open, and a serious objection means they lose the bit; o any N (1? 2? 3?) admins can agree to de-admin them with cause; or o any serious, validated complaint of admin power abuse ends their term. * After their term is up, there is a mandatory break of say, 6 weeks, during which they are just another editor. * After the break, they can: o carry on editing, without prejudice or pressure, o apply for another term as a deputy, or o apply for administrator-for-life status through the RfA process. So that's the basic notion. Like a lot of what goes on here, I think there will be a lot of useful social convention that grows up around the core mechanism. Why do it? Here's my thinking: Pros: * Many hands make light work. * Experienced admins can focus on the hard stuff. * Gives deputies a track record for future full RfA. * Helps de-emphasizes adminship as status item. * Limited scope and term will make it less appealing to those seeking admin-hood for the power. * Helps identify responsible people. * Wider distribution of power means less us-vs-them divide. * Requires no code changes. Cons: * More admins to keep track of. * The process of deciding who gets in and who doesn't is more work, and possibly more drama than the current setup. * More work blessing and de-blessing deputy admins. Naturally, I don't think this would solve all of the problems that have come up, but do folks think it would be a step forward? Thanks, William _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l