Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam(a)vyznev.net>
wrote:
Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism
spree was hyperbole. It's
more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin
povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for
ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best
thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them
carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
And we are going to detect such users by ensuring we only select
admins who use edit summaries 95% of the time and have made at least
1500 distinct edits in the minimum 6 months they have had an account
at en?
Not really, though there probably is _some_ correlation. For example,
edit summaries exist for explaining one's actions, something that is
desirable for admins in general. People who assume that others will
know why they did what they did without an explanation may often not
make very good admins.
Similarly, someone whose only edits are to user pages and templates is
obviously not likely to be a viable admin candidate. Whereas someone
who's only been around for a month is simply a wild card: we know
they're sensible now, but will they continue to act sensibly when they
get caught in an edit war, or someone insults their mother, or they go
off their meds? Waiting three, or six, or twelve months improves the odds.
Of course, voting solely on the basis of numeric metrics like edit
counts and account age is not only silly, but also easily gamed.
Fortunately few people do so, except as minimum criteria to filter out
the most unlikely candiates, and in any case the fact that everyone uses
different criteria tends to balance things out.
I think I'd rather that each RfA required a
neutral person to review
the person's entire edit history, noting the number of edit wars,
whether edit summaries were accurate, their apparent stance on
controversial topics like userboxes etc, then publishing those facts
for everyone to decide on. Rather than (incorrectly) assuming that
each person voting does such a review for themselves.
Now there's a suggestion I would certainly support, if we could only
figure out who this poor fellow would be. For non-selfnoms we might
consider putting the obligation to provide detailed information about
the nominee on the nominator; while not impartial, they are at least
likely to be somewhat less biased than the nominee.
Of course, the way it currently works is that people provide reasons for
their votes, and others may comment on them. While this system is far
from perfect, and tends to weight memorable isolated incidents over
long-term trends, it still generally results in at least some amount of
public background review being done.
--
Ilmari Karonen