[Wikipedia-l] Re: Streamline the sysop recruiting process

[Daniel Mayer]

On Monday 07 April 2003 02:43 pm, Poor Edmund wrote:
> How about creating a Button that sysops can use to promote
> other sysops? I'm getting tired of writing and checking SQL queries. Also,
> I don't want to become a gatekeeper :-(

This is how it was in phase II. I liked it since I could promote somebody soon 
after they posted a request for Adminhood on the mailing list. Right now 
there is a bottleneck at the developer level that IMO simply should not exist 
and is limiting the growth of the Admin ranks. 

> We could (maybe?) hash out some rules, like:
>
> 1. Must be nominated and seconded (i.e., takes N votes where N >= 2? or N
> >= 3?). 2. Can't nominate or second anyone till you've been a sysop
> for N days (N > 30 days? N > 90 days? N > 12 months?)

I don't think we need hard and fast rules on this yet - our informal process 
of people asking for the upgrade on the language-specific mailing lists to 
ask for the upgrade seems to work. Most requests are accepted without worry 
but some are rejected (like TMC or a ultra green newbie that nobody knows). 

We just need to get rid of the bottleneck at the developer level. IMO there is 
no need to leave people in suspense after asking to be an Admin - this gives 
the impression that Adminship is something special and tightly restricted to 
a very select few. I can only imagine that such a perception would tend to 
make people think twice before asking. The only non-newbie users who should 
think twice before asking are users who tend to get into more than their fair 
share of edit wars and POV disputes or who are otherwise not viewed as being 
trustworthy.  

Oh and automatically sysoping users based on some computational criteria such 
as age of user account and/or number of edits made would be like handing out 
hand guns to everybody on their 18th birthday. Cry havoc! 

At one time I was an advocate of auto-sysoping but my views on this have 
changed. I now think that human judgment should be filter at this level. 
Otherwise we might find ourselves with TMC, Clutch and Two16-like Admins. 
True these users are now banned and would also have been banned if they were 
Admins, but as Admins they would have done far more damage before getting 
banned.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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