Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@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?
I wouldn't attach much importance to en editor's use of edit summaries, unless it is part of a bigger pattern of hiding hostile edits.
False metrics are worse than no metrics :(
Very much!
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.
As a Wiktionary bureaucrat I make a point of recusing myself from voting on any admin requests. When it appears that the candidate has more than trivial support I do look at the kind of things that you mention before acting. Usually the result will be to support the community, but I reserve the right to act contrarily. If I want to override the community I better have a good reason without being too stubborn about it.
Ec