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.