At 09:07 AM 6/1/2010, David Gerard wrote:
>On 1 June 2010 05:56, Durova <nadezhda.durova(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> [...] It is hardly surprising that, in this weak economy, wise
>> editors have been > declining offers of nomination.
>This is IMO asymptom of there being insufficient admins.
Yes.
>And again, this is because of ridiculously ratcheted-up requirements
>by serial objectors at RFA that have no reasonable threat model attached.
I just opposed a call for adminship that I would not have opposed if
it were easier to modify the behavior of abusive administrators. The
editor might make a fine administrator and was merely naive about
blocking policy and how free of abuse it is.
>The way it's done at RationalWiki is that sysophood is inflicted on
>almost all regular editors without their asking. The criterion is
>"mostly harmless." That way, it really is "no big deal."
Yes. The power gap between editors and administrators on Wikipedia is
too great. It was, perhaps, a decent first attempt at addressing the
problem of how to manage the project, but it became frozen.
>Of course, that's a wiki with 1/1000 of the activity of en:wp. (Some
>powers that sysops have on en:wp, such as editing interface text,
>are reserved to bureaucrats. I realise this just puts the problem
>off another level.
Levels are good.
>But then again, the cycle of heavily active participation is 18
>months anyway, so changing everything every couple of years keeps
>the system fresh.)
In my view, that cycle should be building a large body of
editors-in-reserve, people who may only occasionally edit but who
will contribute great value when they do. That would require some
kind of superstructure that connects inactive editors and brings them
in when they are needed. Part of the proxy concept is that proxies
would serve as links to those they represent, would understand and
know their special interests and expertise, and would, say, email
them when it was needed. "Proxy" is a bit misleading. There has been
no proposal that proxies would exercise actual voting power, for
example, but only that it might be possible to estimate consensus
more efficiently if we have some designations of personal trust.
The proxy is really a node in a communications network, in delegable
proxy systems. It works, I've seen that. Value is gained from even a
single proxy designation, for the proxy and client.
On 31 May 2010 19:46, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd(a)lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> These are issues that I've been thinking about for almost thirty
> years, and with Wikipedia, intensively, for almost three years
> specifically (and as to on-line process, for over twenty years). So
> my comments get long. If that's a problem for you, don't read it.
... Has it really not occurred to you that *you're* trying to convince
*us* of something? In which case, conciseness is likely more useful
than defiant logorrhea ... Oh, never mind.
- d.
At 12:56 AM 6/1/2010, Durova wrote:
>Let's not mince words: Wikipedia administratorship can be a serious
>liability. The 'reward' for volunteering for this educational nonprofit can
>include getting one's real name Googlebombed, getting late night phone calls
>to one's home, and worse. The Wikimedia Foundation has never sent a cease
>and desist demand to the people who have made a years-long hobby of driving
>its administrators away.
Durova's history is a classic example. She was hounded by a screaming
mob when she made a mistake, even though she recognized the error and
undid it within an hour. She might have been desysopped had she not
resigned, but that would have been a miscarriage of wikijustice. She
should have been defended, but was not. And why? I've never really
studied that.
While I've studied and have dealt with administrative abuse, the
people who are most abused by the Wikipedia system are
administrators, and that is probably a major source of abusive adminship.
I've argued for clear and strong rules for admin recusal, but what's
often been missed is that this *protects* administrators from
becoming over-involved in the mudslinging contests.
I've been a meeting chair, and a good chair rigorously stays away
from involvement. So the chair is obligated to rule on matters of
procedure, and perhaps a member stands up and starts shouting about
how stupid a ruling was and how the chair is biased. What does the
chair do? Argue?
No, the chair puts the ruling to a vote, immediately (that's the
substance, there are details I won't go into). The chair is not
actually in charge, the membership is, at all times. The chair is
just a servant. A chair who doesn't understand that and who becomes
attached to control can make quite a mess, and the belief of some
that Robert's Rules of Order is some kind of oppressive document have
probably experienced a chair like that. But even a few members in an
organization who understand the rules and know how to use them to
guarantee that decisions are adequately deliberated and that
democratic decision-making is maintained efficiently can handle even
a poor chair.
But there is no power that can avail against a stupid and active
majority, and when that happens, it's time to consider leaving.
At 12:45 AM 6/1/2010, David Goodman wrote:
>Neither they nor anyone else knows how to do this at our scale in as
>open a structure as ours.
While I understand the opinion, how do you know that? Isn't it a tad
limiting to believe that nobody knows how to deal with our problem?
Perhaps the expertise exists, but we haven't been looking for it or
connecting with it, or, worse, rejecting it when it's suggested, out
of a *belief* that it couldn't work, but without actual experience.
The model I know that worked, and spectacularly, was Alcoholics
Anonymous. Grew rapidly. The scale became *very* large, particularly
in terms of active members, most registered accounts on Wikipedia, I
suspect, are inactive. Now, AA certainly is also different.
I merely suggest that, with AA, some specific organizational concepts
were developed, from the study of the history of organizations, and
were expressed and became solidly accepted traditions that are
actually practiced, and the result was a highly unified organization
without central control. Branfman et al call these "starfish
organizations," because you can cut them up and they re-form from the
pieces, and he distinguishes them from "spider organizations," where
if you cut off the head, the organization dies.
Most of the recent thinking in this area looks to hybrid
organizations. AA, as an example, has a central office, which is
operated by a nonprofit corporation with a board that is partly
elected by the World Service Conference and partly self-appointed.
The analogy here would be the WMF, Inc. However, to take this analogy
further, Wikipedia would be a collection of independent "meetings"
that voluntarily associate, and membership in each meeting would be
open, self-selected. The resemblance stops when people who are *not*
members of a meeting impose control over the meeting. That isn't done
with AA. Period. Yet, without any central control, people can go to
an AA meeting almost anywhere and will *mostly* find the same
consensus, but it's not an oppressive consensus (usually! AA members
are still human). Members are welcome to disagree, and express the
disagreement, and they won't be kicked out. Unless they actually
disrupt the meeting directly, and I've not heard of it. I'm not an
alcoholic, though, so I've only been to open meetings, not to closed
ones, only open to alcoholics.
>Most ideas tend to retreat towards one form
>or another of centralized control over content or to division of the
>project to reduce the scale.
My own work suggests continuing the ad hoc local organization that
does, in fact, work very well, but moving away from centralized
control imposed coercively, distributing control, perhaps to a series
of "Volumes" that are organized by topic area. But what I really
propose is that process be established for the development and
discovery of consensus with efficiency. It does require that
discussion be reduced in scale, and there are lots of traditional
ways to do that, known to work. I.e, discussion takes place in a
hierarchy of discussions. Classically, a committee system. The
committees merely collect evidence and argument, organizing it and
making recommendations, they do not control. But if they do their
work well, their reports will be adopted centrally by whatever
process exists there, or, if something was overlooked, it will be
sent back to committee for further work in the light of what happened
"higher up."
The ad hoc Wikipedia process does this, but with informality, for the
most part, and the structure that it would fit into has not been
completed. Probably the "top level" would be an elected
representative body, and for that to function to maximize consensus,
it needs to be thoroughly representative, and my work with voting
systems leads me to understand how to do that efficiently and
thoroughly. It could be amazingly simple.
From the AA analogy, this body is actually only advisory, not
exercising sovereign control. It would advise the community and the
WMF. The WMF has legal control over the servers and the name
"Wikipedia." But advice developed through consensus process is
probably more powerful than centralized control.
> That it is possible to organize well
>enough to do what we've done on our scale, is proven by the
>result--an enormously useful product for the world in general. That we
>could do better is probable, since the current structure is almost
>entirely ad hoc, but there is no evidence as to what will work better.
I would not say "no evidence," but I'll certainly acknowledge that
there is no proof. One of the problems is that the current structure
has become so entrenched and so self-preserving that experiments,
even conducted in ways that could not do damage (other than perhaps
wasting the time of those who choose to participate in them), are
crushed. WP:PRX was simply an experiment, it consisted only of a file
structure, and established no control at all, no change in policy or
guidelines. It did not establish voting, much less proxy voting as
was claimed. It would not have given power to puppet masters, most
notably because the last thing a puppet master wants to do is call
attention directly to the connection.
>Intensely democratic structures have one characteristic form of
>repression of individuality, and controlled structures another.
And then there are hybrids.
>The
>virtue of division is to provide smaller structures adapted to
>different methods, so that individuals can find one that is tolerable,
>but this loses the key excitment of working together on something
>really large.
Unless the individual structures have a voluntary coordinating superstructure.
>My own view is that we should treat this as an experiment, and pursue
>it on its own lines as far as it takes us.
Sure. But, of course, there is WP:NOT. Which sometimes might be
equivalent to WP:IS. Since, generally, Wikipedia is *also* many of
the things that it supposedly is not.
>On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
><abd(a)lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> > if the
> > structure were functional. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the
> > founders of Wikipedia did not know how to put together a project that
> > could maintain unity and consensus when the scale became large.
>
>
>
>--
>David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 1 June 2010 14:30, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd(a)lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> Therefore, instead of only needing to skip one mail, you'll need to
> skip two. This is part one.
Abd, have you ever considered opening a blog? :)
You could write the lengthy version of your comments on various topics
in a post there, and post a summary comment here on WikiEN-l (with a
link to the concurrent blog post)? Just a thought.
AGK
On 31 May 2010 20:00, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd(a)lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> Interesting, AGK. Are the ideas important, or the personalities?
> Here, you just demonstrated my concern even further.
Now I understand why you are able to write at such length. Rather than
make your arguments based on facts, you run with guesswork and
assumptions. Instead of stating what my position and opinion is and
then outlining why thinking so makes me a terrible administrator, try
actually asking me a question?
I won't comment any more on your remarks against my history as a
contributor, because they are largely irrelevant to the main topic of
this thread. But needless to say, yes, the manner in which a point is
made does count; in this instance, you acting like an insufferable
jerk turns people off and makes your e-mails increasingly less
appealing to read.
Derailing meta-discussion with criticism of specific users stinks of
axe-grinding.
AGK
(continuation from Part 1, preceding.)
I never sought the desysopping of JzG, as an example, and didn't
argue for it for WMC. I argued for *suspension* until the admin
assured ArbComm that he would not repeat the use of tools while
involved. JzG's actions had been egregious, and still ArbComm was
unwilling to ask for assurances. Behind this, I'm sure, was an
impression that JzG would have considered it an insult. But it should
be routine. Indeed, ArbComm bans editors all the time when it could
simply ask for *voluntary assurances.* And even more are community
banned under a similar failure. Voluntary compliance, negotiated with
respect, is far less likely to build up sustained resentments, than
bullying and blocking.
These are all really obvious principles, but it's been amazing to see
what oppositino they aroused when they were brought up before
ArbComm. ArbComm remained silent on them, and on what was said in
response. ArbComm mostly functions as a passive body, but then it
does something different and becomes very active. It depends on whose
ox is being gored.
> The problem, as I have defined it, is of negative voting. The
>sheer suspicion of those who apparently want the mop-and-bucket. (And
>anyway, I obviously was using "well-adjusted" in the sense of "round peg
>in a round hole", not as a comment on anything else.)
If it's easy to revoke, it would obviously be easier to grant.
Indeed, the supermajority standard is a problem. You propose that an
administrator might avoid being "shot at" if the admin avoids
controversial areas. So, to become an admin, avoid controversial
areas! But, then, we don't know how the admin will behave when
involved in controversy.
The same arguments that are applied to, say, required reconfirmation
of administrators, should apply to granting adminship in the first
place. If an editor has tacked difficulties, the issue should be how
the editor did it, not how many people were offended. If the editor
needlessly inflamed the topic, that's a problem, for sure, and could
betray that there could be problems as an administrator. But if the
editor calmed the conflict, with only a few die-hards then resenting
the intervention or involvement, it should be a positive mark. There
is no substitute for actually examining the record, if the record matters.
In fact, it shouldn't matter much, and here is why: adminship should
routinely be granted based on an agreed-upon mentorship, with an
active administrator. I'd suggest, in fact, that any admin who
approves of the adminship would be allowed to do what a mentor could
do, but an agreed-upon mentor would be taking on the responsibility.
So if anyone has a complaint about the admin's actions, they have
someone to go to for review, without going to a noticeboard and some
possible flame war there. They can even do it privately, by email.
That's how WP DR structure is supposed to work, it's supposed to
start small. I've been amazed to see how few understand this!
Given administrative supervision, with any supervising admin being
able to go directly to a bureaucrat or steward and request removal of
the tools, if necessary, there is no reason to disapprove of almost
anyone, and a discussion would only take place to the extent that it
would be an opportunity to express objections. The closing bureaucrat
might, indeed, review those, but numbers would not matter. What would
matter would be (1) no sign of *likely* abuse, and (2) the presence
of effective supervision.
At Wikiversity, this is apparently done, though I don't know all the
details. There is then, after a time on probation, a "full adminship"
discussion. (There is no difference in the tool settings between the
two, an admin on probation has full tools, the only difference is a
responsible mentor.) But with a more detailed structure, there might
not be the need for "full adminship." I'd say that every
administrator should have a "recall committee," a set of editors who
are both trusted by the admin and by the community to correct the
admin if he or she veers off-course. Only when this process fails,
perhaps because of too-close alignment of the admin and the recall
committee, would it be necessary to escalate to broader discussions.
Ultimately, we should go back and set this up for existing
administrators. This should, in reality, only be a problem for
administrators who believe that they should have no supervision at
all. That's a problem in itself. And I'm leaving the details of how
such a committee would be formed, and how admins who have become part
of it are replaced as they vanish, as many do, to a later discussion
and, of course, ultimately, to the community if it ever starts to go
here. I'm just proposing ideas to show that there might be some
possible solution, and with no pretense that my ideas are the last
word. I really do believe in the power of informed consensus, and the
only kind of consensus that I have a problem with is when it is
inadequately informed and is (quite likely as a linked condition) too
narrow, with too few participants. But fully informed consensus that
is real consensus with only a relatively small number is unlikely to
be reversed by broader discussion.
This is why thorough discussion at the lowest possible level, seeing
true consensus, is actually efficient, and only seems otherwise to
someone who doesn't know how to (1) maximize its effeciency by using
the debate to create a FAQ so that the same issues don't get debated
over and over and over, and/or (2) doesn't want to discuss, but also
doesn't trust what will happen if he or she stands aside and, say,
simply raises the issue in Talk and then lets go or also raises it on
a WikiProject. Instead, what tends to happen is that someone who
isn't willing to actually discuss goes to a noticeboard and claims
that an opposing editor is being "tendentious." It works, too often!
Noticeboards aren't supposed to resolve content issues, at least not
AN and AN/I, and admins are not supposed to resolve content disputes
with the use of tools, but you cannot judge tendentiousness and
distinguish it from, say, an expert patiently explaining an issue
over and over and then perhaps becoming angry at meeting ignorant
insistance for an editor or two, accompanied by revert warring by
them. The expert is, of course, very likely an SPA, and is actually,
often, COI, and so is easily seen as someone to be excluded. And thus
one more expert joins the ranks of blocked or banned experts, I've
seen it happen many times. Sometimes it gets fixed, but often not.
And that damage accumulates, unless admins take an active role in
actually resolving disputes instead of judging them. The power of
judgment is not a police power! Discretion is, but that's distinct.
Good police officers, when they encounter people fighting or about to
fight, will separate them and normally only arrest someone if there
has been injury, or the person resists separation and won't stop. If
it's neighborhood police, they may sometimes help people to resolve
their dispute, not by judging it, but by pointing to resources and by
perhaps saying some kind words to both sides, encouraging them to
work out the problem.
And the rest of this is about personal history, and is an aside.
On Wikipedia, I was able to to this a few times, it was quite
successful, and it avoided one or both of the parties from being
blocked, they were headed for that, and they turned into cooperating
editors. And this is the work that was directly prohibited by ArbComm
in my MYOB ban. I was never able to figure out the sense of this ban,
because there were no allegations of improper behavior related to
it.... I think that the reality was that many simply wanted me to
shut up. But they didn't make that clear, and what they did was
something different that turned out to be quite unclear. It was
eventually made clear enough that I simply stopped editing Wikipedia,
for the most part, but the later "clear" interpretation was very
different from the original sanction.
And ArbComm's last reponse wasn't really an interpretation, it was
more in the nature of advice that I should stop doing anything
controversial, whether or not it was covered by the ban, and ArbComm
only began, haltingly, to address the fact that I was being hauled
before Arbitration Enforcement, again and again, by the same editors,
two of them parties to the original arbitration, for stuff that
wasn't actually found to be a ban violation when ArbComm was asked,
and without any showing at all of *actual harm.* I'd made comments,
for example, that either were or became the consensus in a poll, and
supposedly I was allowed to comment in polls. ArbComm, however, and
many editors and administrators, tend to assume that if there are a
number of editors and administrators yelling at one editor, that one
editor *must* be doing something wrong. It's an assumption that is
often efficient, it's probably right more often than not, but when it
fails, there goes any ability to benefit from a whistleblower. And so
serious problems can continue for years.... as they did in the cases
where I was involved. I was confronting what I called a "cabal," by
which I meant exactly what Lar has been asserting recently about the
same general group of editors, a "mutually-involved faction." I made
my meaning clear, but, somehow, some arbitrators actually asserted
that I *really* meant something else, and then I was sanctioned for
not backing up what I didn't mean and did not assert.... go figure!
And all this was considered so hot that all the Evidence and the
Workship was blanked. Mostly the Evidence that I put up was just edit
histories showing involvement in a field. Almost none of it showed
actually reprehensible conduct, because I wasn't attempting to get
anyone sanctioned, and only WMC confronted for long-term use of tools
while involved. But I had to explain, I believed, why there were a
dozen editors filling up the RfAr with Abd did this and Abd did that,
which was actually irrelevant to the filed case, but the "mutual
involvement" showed why these editors would care so much. They were
not neutral. And then, of course, if I tried to respond to evidence
presented against me, my responses became voluminous. ArbComm, quite
simply, had not, and probably still has not, developed methods to
deal efficiently with factional conflict. I was, I believe, standing
up for community consensus (and that's becoming apparent as more
people become aware of what had been happening), but when the
community is mostly not paying attention in a field, someone who does
that can seem to be an isolated pov-pusher or tendentious in other
ways, if faced with a faction. I had beeen quite careful. I didn't
drag people to noticeboards, I simply discussed edits in Talk, and
was being successful in shifting article consensus, being opposed by
revert warring from about only one editor, for the most part. (In the
last incident, I had 0RR, he had 3 and then self-reverted, added a
pile of blatantly POV material to the lede, then went to RfPP and
requested protection because of edit warring, when he was the
principal edit warrior. And succeeded. And that's what had just
happened when I was banned by WMC. For? He didn't say! Positions that
went to mediation, of mine, were confirmed. In spite of serious
opposition from the same set of editors, whitelistings I requested
were granted. I wasn't getting anyone blocked or banned, and wasn't
asking for it, but they sure wanted me out of there! And that, alone,
should have been a clue. But it takes time and effort to understand
these complex situations, it's much easier to make a quick judgment,
decide whom to ban, and be done with it. But that tendency, then,
preserves conflict and prevents genuine consensus from forming.
I personally don't care, the Wikipedia articles, even on subjects
very dear to me, aren't that important, and Wikipedia is not a safe
place to put content that requires work to create. I'm actually
grateful to be rid of any idea that I have a responsibility to edit.
(I'm not banned or blocked anywhere, by the way, just en.wiki topic
banned on Cold fusion, where I've become an expert and COI, I'm
actually in business selling research materials, and there is this
weird MYOB ban in place, which was allowing a few editors to
constantly harass me by claiming I was "commenting on disputes" even
if I didn't make any comments at all, but just an ordinary edit that
reflected apparent consensus... and anything that could be
wikilawyered into a ban violation was, so... given that there was no
initiative to address the real source of the disruption (once upon a
time there would have been, but those editors had all disappeared), I
just stopped editing entirely.
I was much more interested in Wikipedia process and the principles of
consensus and neutrality, and how to facilitate them, toward the goal
of the overall project. Until that goal becomes more important than
whatever it is that occupies the active core, I don't see much hope.
People like Lar and others do see some of the problem, but they,
sooner or later, burn out and leave. I had, at one point, three
arbitrators who did understand, for the most part, my goals. But, of
course, they always recused, and one rather promptly resigned. My
original MYOB ban provided for a mentor to allow me to participate in
discussion. Fritzpoll had volunteered to be my mentor, during the
case. Denied as not needed since there was no mentorship requirement.
But, in fact, there was! Then, later, Fritzpoll ran for and was
elected to ArbComm. Because the issue of mentorship had come up,
because it was mentioned in the ban, he again volunteered, privately,
to ArbComm. It was denied, he was told that arbitrators could not be
mentors. That was odd, since he and two other arbitrators were
already recusing when anything involving me came up! This was the
reality: there were many who simply wanted me, as I wrote before, me
to shut up. Many arbitrators. A majority? Maybe. But would that
majority have insisted on it if it became obvious what was going on?
My organizational theory says, no, not likely. But as long as this
kind of motive could take cover under some other seemingly reasonable
excuse, it would be maintained. Arbitrators have always been
administrators and are, quite understandably, uncomfortable with an
editor who has been a primary party in two ArbComm cases and which
have resulted in censure or desysopping. It's instinctive, protect-our-own.
I was disappointed that the arbitrators who recused (a total of
three, I think) didn't then present arguments and evidence. I know
what they knew. I know more about the situation that I'm not
disclosing, because of personal confidences revealed to me that I
don't have permission to reveal. My general position on ArbComm is
that necessary support structure has not been created, so arbitrators
are faced with a much more difficult task than is necessary. They
don't have time to do the research necessary to uncover what evidence
is good and what isn't. So decisions tend to become matters of quick
impressions, and that's a setup for bad decisions, and I've seen some
doozies. Not involving me.
Again, this gets long. If allergic to Abd Thought, or to lengthy
comments, please don't read. Nobody is required to read this, it's
voluntary, and you won't hear a complaint from me if you don't read it.
Actually, the mail triggered moderation, the list is set to 20 KB
max, which is low in my experience, and it was rejected as too long.
Therefore, instead of only needing to skip one mail, you'll need to
skip two. This is part one.
At 03:14 PM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
>Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> > At 01:35 PM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
> >
> >> Actually, most people who don't apply as an admin just don't apply.
> >
> > With ten million registered editors and a handful of RfAs, that's
> > obvious.
> >
> >> They
> >> don't generate "evidence" one way or another. It is a perfectly sensible
> >> attitude for a well-adjusted Wikipedian getting on with article work not
> >> to want to be involved in admin work.
> >
> > Sure. However, there is a minority who are *not* "well-adjusted" who
> > would seek adminship for personal power.
>Yes, and the first required quality for being given such power is not to
>want it. Etc. But you were the one talking about getting painted into a
>corner.
Sure. "You were the one" implies some argument being applied to one
side and not the other. What was that?
Barging ahead anwyay, I'd say that anyone sane would not want to be a
Wikipedia editor unless (1) they have some axe to grind, or (2) they
are neutral and simply want to help an obviously desirable cause.
However, when people become highly involved, they naturally develop
attachments, which is how it comes to be that even a quite neutral
editor can become an abusive administrator, and this will be quite
invisbile, for many, when they don't have the tools. The more boring
grunt work you do, the more natural it is to think you own the
project. After all, if not for you....
I remember reviewing the contributions of an administrator, known to
all of us here, because of some suspicion that an sock puppeteer was
really, from the beginning, a bad-hand account of someone, and this
admin was a possible suspect. What I saw, reviewing edit timing, was
thousands upon thousands of edits, for hours upon hours, a few edits
a minute, doing repetitive tasks. The admin was running a tool that
assisted him by feeding him proposed edits, so what he was doing, for
many hours, was a few button pushes a minute to accept the edits. I
was both in awe (at the dedicated work) and in wonder at how this
could be done without losing one's sanity....
In fact, it might have been better if that work had been replaced by
fully automated bot work, with processes and procedures for reviewing
it and fixing problems. If he could do that for hours on end without
error, probably a bot could as well, with only a little error,
perhaps. But, of course, for quite good reasons, most fully automated
bot editing has been prohibited. That's changing, to be sure, there
is now, for example, a spambot that reverts IP additions of spam web
sites, an intermediate position to blacklisting that allows possibly
useful but often abused sites to be used by registered editors, and
edits by the IPs become "suggested edits" easy to review if anyone is
willing. And the IP could actually ask any registered user to do it,
or register and get autoconfirmed....
Overall, editorial efficiency has been seriously neglected, because
editorial labor was not valued. Admin labor has been valued somewhat,
and some of the disparity between the real rights of administrators
and those of ordinary editors comes out of assumptions about this.
So, Charles agrees that wanting power is a disqualification, and I
agree. (You might look at RfA/Abd 2, where I addressed this, I didn't
want to be an admin, I was merely responding to a suggestion that I
help clean up the place, and I was quite clear that anything that I
wanted to do, personally, wouldn't be helped by being an admin, I'd
just be tempted to use the tools while involved. I'm pretty sure that
I'd not have aroused serious controversy over the use of admin tools,
but, of course, those who later were offended by me as an editor seem
to have assumed that I'd simply have blocked anyone who disagreed
with me. That would have been really silly!)
But if it's a disqualification at the beginning, then, we must see,
it should remain a disqualification. If an administrator is
personally attached to being an administrator, it's a problem. Which
then exposes the contradiction of the picture being presented:
supposedly people would not apply to be administrators, or perhaps
would quit, if they saw that allegedly abusive administrators would
lose their tools. The fact is that when controversy arises over tool
use, the best administrators back up and back off, and hardly ever
get taken to ArbComm, because they don't allow themselves to be the
focus of the controversy. Rather, say, they blocked an editor, and
the editor is complaining about bias. If the admin backs off and
doesn't touch that editor again, but limits activity to presentation
(at the beginning!) of the evidence behind the block, letting and
encouraging independent review of that, the dispute becomes a dispute
between the editor and the community, or it is resolved. A good
administrator might even go out of his way to later do a favor for that editor.
But if the administrator starts to think of the community as divided
into warring factions, with himself on one side and the editor on the
other, and the admin *must* act or "they" will win, neutrality has
been lost. As soon as you think you are personally the bulwark
against "them," you have some kind of belief that consensus is the
other way, or is at least not going to back you up by taking your place.
There is a kind of war going on, but we are each called upon only to
take a position actively, maybe *once.* I'll revert a change to an
article, with explanation, almost never more than once. As an admin I
might block someone once, almost never more than that. If I were to
see some problem beyond that, I'd almost certainly go to a
noticeboard like any other editor. In an emergency, sure, but then I
*really* need to go to that noticeboard, note that I've previously
blocked and might be biased, and asking for review. One of the worst
abuses I've seen of the abuse of an administrator was a desysopping
where an admin made an unwise block, that he should have left for the
judgment of someone else. But he had immediately gone to a
noticeboard to ask for review! Effectively, he was punished for an
error. That's abusive, and only if he did this again and again should
desysopping have been on the table. All that was needed was to tell
him that he shouldn't have blocked, and ask him to agree not to do
it, or something like it, again. But, politics! Sometimes there is
mob screaming for blood, wanting someone to *suffer* for this mistake.
As to the dispute involved, between the blocking admin and the editor
blocked, I was on the other side. As hinted, I believe the block was
an error. So? The issue should always be, is this going to be
repeated? Even if one finds that the admin did it before, that's not
enough to establish that the admin would repeat it after being
troutslapped for it. And even troutslapping should be done with
assumption of good faith and gentleness. "Just don't do it again!"
That is, if we want to operate a volunteer project and retain wide
participation.
(continued in Part 2, following.)
Let's not mince words: Wikipedia administratorship can be a serious
liability. The 'reward' for volunteering for this educational nonprofit can
include getting one's real name Googlebombed, getting late night phone calls
to one's home, and worse. The Wikimedia Foundation has never sent a cease
and desist demand to the people who have made a years-long hobby of driving
its administrators away.
It is hardly surprising that, in this weak economy, wise editors have been
declining offers of nomination.
--
http://durova.blogspot.com/
Neither they nor anyone else knows how to do this at our scale in as
open a structure as ours. Most ideas tend to retreat towards one form
or another of centralized control over content or to division of the
project to reduce the scale. That it is possible to organize well
enough to do what we've done on our scale, is proven by the
result--an enormously useful product for the world in general. That we
could do better is probable, since the current structure is almost
entirely ad hoc, but there is no evidence as to what will work better.
Intensely democratic structures have one characteristic form of
repression of individuality, and controlled structures another. The
virtue of division is to provide smaller structures adapted to
different methods, so that individuals can find one that is tolerable,
but this loses the key excitment of working together on something
really large.
My own view is that we should treat this as an experiment, and pursue
it on its own lines as far as it takes us.
On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
<abd(a)lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> if the
> structure were functional. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the
> founders of Wikipedia did not know how to put together a project that
> could maintain unity and consensus when the scale became large.
--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG