[WikiEN-l] Worthy admins? (was "The userbox fad")

[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

charles matthews wrote:
> "jayjg" wrote
> 
>> I think the problem is
> 
> that we are creating administrators who are not part of the community, not
> familiar with its policies and norms, and not particularly interested in
> Wikipedia's goals.
> 
> The first point is how older generations always talk, of course.  I.e.
> it is the postulation of a 'generation gap'.
> 

I for one am interested in knowing what the community feels are the
different "generations" of Wikipedians, where the cutoffs are and what
defines each group. I should have been a sociologist...

> Second point might be factually true.  How many of us would like to take
> an exam on policy?  Is it any longer possible to be familiar with enough
> of the key policy pages?  Why is there no 'Dummies' guide?  (Well, maybe
> there is and I just don't come across it.)  Norms - well, yes, community
> norms are what actually matter.
> 

There /is/ a dummies guide - the admins reading list - know the
deletion, protection and blocking policies, how to apply them, when to
apply them, how to talk with other people.

> Not interested in WP's goals.  Possible, though I wonder just how many
> people are interested in my current goals (this week, 1911 EB reference
> wikification and blue-linking, sort out and develop William Blake
> mythology, [[Category:Category theory]]).
> 

Between answering email and my talk page, if I can manage to get to my
watchlist I maybe check half of the IP edits or those from users I don't
 know or haven't left an edit summary.

> There is a kind of progression: encourage people to have user accounts
> when they were happy as IPs; user pages too tribal or full of 'This
> Wikipedian drinks coffee' user boxes; RfA votes for people with too high
> a proportion of edits on User Talk pages, or vandal chasing, and not
> enough good name-space edits.
> 

I thought that one of the stated roles of admins /was/ to track down
vandals; why else do they have the power to instantly rollback edits
(which should *never* be used for non-vandalism), block users (which
should only be used for vandals and 3RR violations; "annoying users"
should be RFCed to try and get some sense into them, and if that doesn't
work, ArbCom was formed to deal with it) and protect pages (which should
be used for vandalism and 3RR, but *never* when the admin is involved in
a content dispute)?

> We have to live with all of this, by the way.  Admin status is the major
> form of recognition open to everyone that means something (barnstars
> have long been debased currency, Featured Articles I can no longer be
> bothered with, as slanted to certain kinds of writing.)
> 

Like any gift, a barnstar is only as valuable as the person who awards it.

> Potential solutions:
> 
> - Stop talking about a gap in terms that can only accentuate it

The bomber gap only existed in the minds of those who feared it and
those who gained power from that fear.

> - Do something about a policy guide for non-veterans

We have the welcoming committee and (hopefully) well-thought welcome
messages.

> - New recognition mechanisms, raise the bar for admin creation for
> newcomers, more active research of committed content-oriented RfA
> candidates from those who quietly get on with it.
> 

Once upon a time (certainly in late 2004) it was pretty much a
"requirement" for admin candidates to "have" a Featured Article. Then
someone decided that editcountitis was a much better metric, so people
started using that. Then it changed to how many edit summaries you use,
and now it's probably whether you have an ass[1] on your user page. Who
knows what it will be in six months time. Stop the Wiki, I want to get
off...

[1] A donkey in a Democrats userbox, that is. An arse on your userpage
is probably goatse left by some thoughtful vandal.

-- 
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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