G'day Chris,
Gallagher Mark George wrote:
To be fair, it's not exactly poor judgment from admins --- well, it is, but not entirely. In my experience dealing with speedies, the vast majority of improper speedies are articles that some CVUer incorrectly tagged and the admin just speedied without looking, trusting the CVUer's judgment. Where an admin commits an improper speedy off his own bat, it's usually something along the lines of he judged that he didn't need to follow process in this case. Incompetence vs IAR, in other words.
I usually do a fair bit of research before speedying anything. Google it, look at the page history, etc. I delete far more than I remove tags -- in fact I rarely remove tags, unless the cited CSD clearly doesn't apply.
You should *always* look at the page history, "what links here", and the talkpage, to see if the speedy tag was added as a result of vandalism, is vandalism itself, or is simply a silly dispute (e.g. the fan of a rock band angry that an article about another rock band by the same name exists on Wikipedia).
Why? Because sometimes I half-agree with the tag, but don't think that the cited CSD is fully met by the article. Maybe in spirit but not in letter. So I just leave the article as it is, hoping another admin can come to a decision.
The fact is that C:CSD is full of BS pretty much all the time. Any admin will tell you that clearing out CSD is pretty much hell. For some reason this is not the case with WP:AIV. There's usually a small backlog there, but it's a lot more fun to clean up, probably because there are fewer entries. But I digress.
I know very well what CAT:CSD is like, thank you. As I hinted in my other posts on the topic, a great deal of my work as an admin (as opposed to a concerned wikicitizen or whatever) was clearing out CSD backlogs. Much of CAT:CSD is utter crap, but not nearly as much as should be. The category *should be* "full of BS pretty much all the time". If it's got worthwhile, or at the very least non-speediable, articles contained, then someone, somewhere, is fucking up badly. And admins who delete such articles instead of removing the tag (maybe rebuking the CVUer who tagged it if a repeat offender) are doing the 'pedia a disservice.
I don't think I ever left an article alone because I didn't want to be the one to make the decision to delete/not delete. I *did* do this sometimes for articles that would have been too much work to deal with (e.g. copyvios with a note on the talkpage saying "I give permission for it to be used"), not because I was afraid of taking responsibility (not that there's anything wrong with that; as Tom said, someone else will happily pick up the slack), but because I had 200 more tagged articles to get through and I didn't want to waste half an hour checking the veracity of the user's assertion.
But when it came to a simple case of "is this speediable?", the way was clear. As David Gerard and Tony Sideway have said (I paraphrase here): "If it's crap, kill it. If it's not crap, don't." Towards the end of my time as a regular editor (and hence, admin), at least half the articles tagged were either good in themselves, or easily salvageable with thirty seconds' work. The other half I deleted.
I didn't agonise over, "is this technically a CSD?" --- if it obviously wasn't, then I removed the tag with a note in the page history. If it was borderline but the article didn't suck completely, I'd remove the tag and say "take it to AfD". If the article sucked, whether it met CSD exactly or not, bang it went. Anyone who spotted a problem was free to ask me to review, or ask another admin the same, or take it to DRV (Tony Sideway, as I recall, got me to undelete a couple of articles where I'd acted too hastily), but these were quite rare, especially compared to some of my more modern colleagues.
Of course, once I became comfortable with Wikipedia, my philosophy became: "Do what seems Right, take a stand. If you're wrong, then admit it and back down. If you're right, keep on truckin'." This is not something that everyone will, or should, follow comfortably.
The fact is that admins clearing C:CSD are going to be more willing to push the button than remove the tag, because, well, pushing the button is less effort, and I would speculate (with no evidence at all) that the majority of CSD patrollers are deletionist, myself included. I like to think that I have a clue, but sometimes I can't bring myself to push the button or remove the tag. I know it's drivel but we don't have a CSD for drivel that looks like it might make a shred of sense.
Pushing the button (delete the page, enter deletion reason, remove redlinks, remove talkpage) is less effort than removing the tag (remove tag, note talkpage if necessary)?
And deciding to abstain from admin action is not evidence of cluelessness: it's quite appropriate, even praiseworthy, behaviour. If you can't make up your mind, feel free to pass on this one. It's when you're out of your depth but act anyway that people get irritated, and quite rightly, too.
<snip />
Many admins told me before my self-nom that admin work was mostly thankless grunt work. In my limited experience, C:CSD is exactly what they were referring to. You spend hours there to get almost nothing done, then get pissed on by both the authors and taggers of the articles you touched.
Oh, yes. In my experience, the taggers were more abusive than the authors: "Excuse me, sir, why wasn't my article accepted on Wikipedia?" vs "Hey fuckwit, I'm a career vandal fighter, and you're not doing your job properly!"
The major source of stress when emptying CAT:CSD came from taggers, not authors. The authors might be vandals, in which case they can be easily blocked; or drive-by, in which case they never even notice; or genuinely upset people who don't know what was wrong with their article, in which case I'm happy to explain; or genuinely upset people whose article I deleted mistakenly, in which case I'm happy to undo and apologise.
Taggers, on the other hand, tended to be fairly self-righteous. "I'm a vandal-whacker, me! And you're standing in the way of my whacking. Move aside, peasant!" (I mean, of course, those who incorrectly tag worthwhile articles; I rarely correspond, for obvious reasons, with those who tag crap and get it deleted).
Some admins may be reckless, but the majority are trying to sort the wheat from the chaff and make the occasional slip-up. The more articles an admin deals with in this context the more mistakes he or she will make. I'm not saying they should be given a free pass, but a little respect for all the BS they have to put up with wouldn't hurt.
Yeah, ah, *no*. I was an admin. If I get the time and inclination, I may apply to be one again. I've seen first-hand the BS. I've seen first-hand how much of the BS is part of the job (several metric truckloads), and how much is the result of simple incompetence (more than you'd think).
It wouldn't be accurate to say that there is a Right Way and a Wrong Way to be an administrator. There are several Right Ways, several Wrong Ways, and it's not fair to criticise someone for following your (or my) particular favourite Right Way. That said, an admin who chooses one of the Wrong Ways is in for a bollocking, and anyone who stands up and shouts, "Get a fucking clue!" before it gets any worse is doing him a favour. He should realise this and adjust his behaviour accordingly, and not complain about the "BS" that bad admins cop, because baby, they've earned it.
But where's the line between pointing out bad behaviours (good), criticising good but ideologically incorrect behaviours (bad), and mindless abuse (very bad)? If I knew that, you'd have to start calling me "Jimbo".
Cheers,