On 10/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Do we want to lower the requirements, though? We have 1,000 admins, most of whom aren't that active and don't need to be. The requirements need to be *right*, but that needn't mean lower. We're still promoting people who don't know the policies several months after promotion, and I'm talking about the basic ones e.g. don't block when you're involved in a content dispute. Against that, I saw someone lose an RfA (or he was losing the last time I looked), because he wasn't putting the correct tags on vandals' pages when he reverted them, which was absurd. So it's a question of drawing up sensible criteria. I don't like the "no big deal" thing, because it's prescriptive; the reality is that adminship *is* regarded as a big deal. Sarah

Based on some recent RFAr cases involving admins and that post about whoever leaving as a result of admin action, I think we should have some safeguard in place. If multiple admins go crazy with their tools people who need to take action won't be able to keep up. Arbitration cases usually take too long to conclude. We should have some well established central de-adminship procedure that is transparent to allow every sensible editor to contribute and not just make it an admin only event. That should take some heat off arbcom in the most stringent cases. Mgm

David Gerard wrote: It's an interesting aspect of human nature. Those requirements *always* tend to creep. When you have people whose job it is to set and enforce policy, and once they've set and enforced a given level of policy, they *have* to raise the bar or invent new policies, to give themselves something to do. It's what they do. If everything's humming along smoothly with the bar at a given level, and everyone is so used to it that there's hardly any enforcement to do, it's remarkably difficult to sit back and say, "Wow, everything's working so well, I guess we can go home early." It's hard to let a system just "sit there and work". There's an overwhelming urge to say, "Okay, what more can we do?" Somehow, these proclivities are no less present when the regulators and monitors are volunteers whose available time for the task is limited and precious. And if anything, it's the self-appointed regulators and monitors who have the greatest tendency to get overly passionate about the job and go overboard with the requirements. As I believe H.G. Wells once wrote, "The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own."

On 10/6/06, Sarah <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote: Heh, I remember that. Understanding of policy is far more important (but difficult to determine) than the stupid things many votes are based on: edit summary use, range of articles edited, distribution of edits, occasional uncivil or poorly thought out talk page messages... Here's an idea: dramatically lower the bar, put the admin on 1 month probation, and hold the real RfA to see whether he keeps his admin rights. If he didn't do much good during his month, strip him of the rights and let him try again later. If he did bad, strip him and don't let him try later. Steve