On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Not really, though there probably is _some_ correlation. For example, edit summaries exist for explaining one's actions, something that is desirable for admins in general. People who assume that others will know why they did what they did without an explanation may often not make very good admins.
Sure, but the difference between 90% and 100% does not seem significant to me.
Similarly, someone whose only edits are to user pages and templates is obviously not likely to be a viable admin candidate. Whereas someone who's only been around for a month is simply a wild card: we know they're sensible now, but will they continue to act sensibly when they get caught in an edit war, or someone insults their mother, or they go off their meds? Waiting three, or six, or twelve months improves the odds.
I'm not sure that your correlation there should be against time, rather than against edits (or better, articles edited). That is, waiting for 3000 edits improves odds over 1000 odds. But 3000 odds over a year rather than over 3 months does not seem to improve the odds that they have really demonstrated ability to avoid edit wars, does it?
Of course, voting solely on the basis of numeric metrics like edit counts and account age is not only silly, but also easily gamed.
Yes. Very. 150 edits with summaries is not difficult to achieve, and looks impressive. It's also not terribly useful. And who is most likely to game the system? Someone who would really make a good admin?
Fortunately few people do so, except as minimum criteria to filter out the most unlikely candiates, and in any case the fact that everyone uses different criteria tends to balance things out.
Except in my brief glance I saw a lot of "as per everyone else".
Now there's a suggestion I would certainly support, if we could only figure out who this poor fellow would be. For non-selfnoms we might consider putting the obligation to provide detailed information about the nominee on the nominator; while not impartial, they are at least likely to be somewhat less biased than the nominee.
Random selection? Any admin that the would be admin can find to do the job? It would be an interesting step in the process - first you have to pass muster by an existing admin. It would also avoid people (like me) getting blown up by making a newbie mistake in the application process.
In case anyone misreads this, I'm suggesting that you have to find one admin to sponsor your application by reviewing your entire history. Not that one admin could singlehandedly block your application :)
Of course, the way it currently works is that people provide reasons for their votes, and others may comment on them. While this system is far from perfect, and tends to weight memorable isolated incidents over long-term trends, it still generally results in at least some amount of public background review being done.
Yeah, I saw one poor chap getting torn to shreds for a single instance of removing a comment that apparently had nothing to do with him from his talk page a long time ago.
Steve