This is similar to the system we have on Wikiversity, actually. Anyone can nominate themselves for custodianship (our term for sysop), but a present custodian has to accept them for mentoring, and then they undergo a mentoring period for a number of weeks, after which the community can comment on their performance and decide if they can become a full sysop or not. Their actions generally come under further scrutiny during their mentorship period, and its assumed that they'll learn not to do anything stupid (of course, tests are acceptable and encouraged, I blocked myself for 10 minutes during my probation period to familiarise myself with it). It is, in essence, quite an effective system considering Wikiversity is just coming up.
On 10/7/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Really? I don't see how it's prone to confusing rules. They simply won't see the option - or they'll get an error - if they try to do something they don't have the power to do.
Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that one day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the next day being able to do all these amazing things. Imagine if you one day woke up with x-ray vision: your first thought would probably be to use it on your hot next-door neighbor, wouldn't it?
I'd consider my proposal sort of a "training wheels" time for new admins, so they can work with the tools and get used to it without being able to cause too much havoc. It wouldn't stop those who deliberately gamed the system to get admin power, if they are determined, but it might stop some of those who are simply in over their heads or prone to having 'bad days'.
And it might help people lower their expectations, and get more candidates, if they weren't pushing them instantly to so heavy of a position.
Parker
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
The example you listed is particularly prone to confusing rules and stuff. It's best to determine whether to give someone a specific power without any artificial restrictions. That way the editor can apply for some powers and explain why they need them and show their expertise in that particular field.
Does anyone know why the proposal failed? I seem to remember it did. If nominations are drying up, the current system isn't scaling and if WP is growing we need more admins to do housekeeping.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Mgm,
I could agree with that. I think that maybe there ought to be multiple grades of admin, who have specific abilities. Part of the problem right now is that so many admins wield what might as well be "absolute power" when compared to a normal user.
For instance, why not have a "first grade" admin who have the power only to semiprotect articles (to protect from systemic anon-ip/newuser
vandalism),
not to lock talk pages at all (including user talk pages) and to impose blocks up to 48 hours but no longer? Make them ask for help if they see anything that needs anything longer or appears to be a problem?
You could have a lot more of those less-powerful admins handling many of the issues without worry about whether they went nuts, because even if they went nuts, there's be a lot less permanent damage they could do.
Parker
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar
in
a
specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give
people
the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to
say
something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want
to
defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will
be
(have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is
irrelevant,
because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the
number
12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone,
we
have
close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have
over
2.4
million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know
how many
edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume
that
it
is a very substantial number.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to
something
this big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies.
Yet
we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it
is
assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a
different
story). Of these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some
can
be
found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others
pop
in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much
that
needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative
structure,
and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only
natural
that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks,
whether
they
are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is
especially
onerous when every action is going to be viewed by people who will
challenge
it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid
decisions
that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some
bad
decisions will inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or
do
you
experiment with something new and untested? If there is to be
change,
what are the priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what
point
do we end the talking and decide to act?
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising.
Note
that
they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no
right
answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet,
decisions
have to be made.
Danny
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