Hi Swaroop Rao,
[Sorry you are getting this twice]
Your comments are very apt. What I should make explicit is that we will
probably address only those issues that we currently confront and formulate
policies on them. For the unformulated parts, we will cross the bridge
when we get to it, deferring to the English Wikipedia policies (more in
spirit than in letter). Right now we have reached a bridge.
The rotating admin is a very good idea for us, I think.
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Swaroop Rao <raul.swaroop(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello all,
My name is Swaroop Rao, and as a bureaucrat/admin on the Sanskrit
Wikipedia, and admin on the English Wikipedia, I'd like to offer my views.
1) Adminship is no big deal, and this has to be made very clear to the
editors. Administrators hold absolutely no special say in discussions; in
fact, for smaller wikis, admin actions will be rare. Blocking of users is
extremely rare, a deletion occasionally, and that's basically it.
2) English Wikipedia is not the best thing to follow, especially with
respect to admin policies. If you are on Enwiki, you'll know this; people
usually say that "RfA is a broken process", and we wouldn't want our
communities to be affected by bad methodologies. enwiki policies are better
suited for wikis with large communities. Our wikis are still growing, and
following enwiki policies to the word might just reverse all the good work
you guys have done.
3) Have a look at other wikis like frwiki (French Wikipedia), and others,
which have more flexible admin policies; some wikis have fixed terms for
admins (like 1 or 1.5 years)
4) Don't waste too much time on formulating admin policies; that's what
happened in Sanskrit Wikipedia, and all that was not needed; its too much
artificial bureaucracy for such a small community.
5) Adminship is not the "next step" after being an editor: In enwiki,
most of the good editors are not admins. That speaks a lot.
5) At the end of the day, remember and relish the fact that our
communities are more closely knit and friendly than many many other
communities; the small community is like a family! Let's get rid of any
sense of seniority or superiority!
Godspeed.
Swaroop Rao
(MikeLynch <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch>)
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 23:18, W Chaipau <wikichaipau(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi AS-Wikipedians,
A few recent incidents have shaken our fledgling community like never
before. Most of these involved questions on adminship, and the role admins
play in a Wikipedia. Therefore, I take this opportunity to point out a few
things.
First, an admin is not an award or a position of power but a position of
responsibility. But all it comes down to is this: an admin is a sweeper.
Look at the English Wikipedia article (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators) and the first
graphic. As an admin on Assamese Wikipedia I spend most of my time:
making sure the Bengali ro has been replaced by the Assamese one and the
pipes are replaced by a dari; checking links to articles marked for
deletion (and deleting them); correcting mistakes in protected pages when
Wikipedians points them out; listening to irate Wikipedians when things
don't get fixed fast enough, etc. One might be forgiven if one thought
being an admin was glamorous, but really it is more like a sweeper, a
plumber, a firefighter etc rolled into one. Admins are at the community's
beck and call to render service. And I must admit there is great pleasure
in being able to do this.
Second, we need to move forward on this. The community has to figure out
how best to put the rancour behind and get back to blissful Wikipedia-ing
(admins have the power to verbalise nouns in emails---with the permission
of the community). We should discuss among ourselves what the powers of an
admin should be by setting down a set of policies and procedures. We
should also work towards implementing the necessary templates and
categories to facilitate these. The place to do this is this:
https://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/ৱিকিপিডিয়া:ৰাইজৰ_চ'ৰা
https://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/ৱিকিপিডিয়া:ৰাইজৰ_চ'ৰা_(নীতি)
While formulating policies we should follow the English Wikipedia
examples as much as possible. We should strive for consensus rather than
votes which are devisive. Please go through the section on expectations of
adminship (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators#Expectations_of_admin…)
which governs the behaviour of admins both within Wikipedia as well as
outside. Please read the section on how to engage an admin and how to
resolve conflicts. It is better to resolve conflicts quickly than to avoid
them and letting them fester.
What has happened is painful, yes. But I suspect they are nothing but
growing pains. We have done great stuff in recent months, and we should
continue doing it.
--
Chaipau
Wikipedia
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