I was going to post this as a reply to another posting, but my thoughts have become somewhat general, and so I'm posting this as a new entry.
I have come to realise that our current process of requesting adminship is at a sharp contrast to the wiki model in general. I have come to believe that we are not following our own principles that we so highly value.
Why do we let anyone edit? Because we believe that assuming good faith is a good thing. We let people edit because they can't do any lasting damage anyway; if they turn out to be editing in bad faith, we can still revert their edits and block them later. No permanent damage done. We also let people edit because we believe that they are innocent until they show themselves guilty.
Incidentally, with admin powers, we handle it quite differently. Not only does becoming an admin require majority support, but it is even the case that many people vote "oppose" on the grounds of lack of dedication, lack of a minimum number of edits, or lack of involvement in community issues. They can apparently get away with an argument that essentially amounts to saying "we can't really be sure they're innocent, so we'll have to assume they're guilty for now". As a result, there are people who are not admins even though they would never be doing anything wrong if they were. Those people should be admins.
If we disregard for a moment that admins can delete images permanently, which surely can be rectified in a future software update, admins cannot do any lasting damage, just like editors. As such, their situation is a quite close analogy to the case of the editors. If we applied the current request-for-adminship philosophy to editing, we would have to vote on everybody's right to edit before allowing them to edit!
Suppose for a moment that users were to start out as admins, and only lose the admin powers when they abuse them. (No, I'm not suggesting this, but let's explore this hypothetical scenario.) Suppose also that if admin powers are removed from an account, all accounts that are editing from the same IP also lose admin powers. Of course many of you will object to this model, because users could just open a new account from another IP to re-gain the administrative privileges. But if you think about it, editors are in exactly the same position: If they're blocked, they only need to edit from another IP to evade the block. We already have the societal mechanics (policies and procedures) in place to deal with this. The situation is exactly analogous.
However, I am not suggesting such a radical change.
As a first step, I would like to suggest to make it policy that "oppose" votes must be accompanied by reasoning indicating the nominee's past wrongdoing or potential for wrongdoing. It should not be permitted to vote "oppose" just because someone has "only a few hundred edits", as this is neither a crime nor a sign of bad faith. As a safeguard against crackpots nominating themselves straight after their first edit, however, I suggest that candidates must be nominated by an existing admin.
In the long-term, my suggestion is to abolish the requirement for majority vote. Anyone who is already an admin is trusted; I think someone nominated by an existing admin should therefore be given a certain "initial trust" too. Thus, admins should be able to just appoint other admins. As for removing adminship, ideally I would like to see the process closely resemble that for blocking users. The things we have collected at [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy]] have evolved over time; a similar "deadminning policy", containing various behaviours that warrant deadminning without a vote, is surely conceivable. In particular, I can imagine the 3RR apply to page-protection, deletion/undeletion, or blocking/unblocking other users. Having more admins, and therefore more sensible admins ;-), makes this much easier to keep under control by the community.
What if tens of people gang up, all become admins and then do lots of bad stuff? Well, it is already possible for people to gang up -- and indeed, gangs of web forum users have done so in the past.
Please discuss! :) Timwi
Timwi (timwi@gmx.net) [050701 09:43]:
Indeed. The present RFA procedure is horribly topheavy and instruction-crept.
As a first step, I would like to suggest to make it policy that "oppose" votes must be accompanied by reasoning indicating the nominee's past wrongdoing or potential for wrongdoing. It should not be permitted to vote "oppose" just because someone has "only a few hundred edits", as this is neither a crime nor a sign of bad faith. As a safeguard against crackpots nominating themselves straight after their first edit, however, I suggest that candidates must be nominated by an existing admin.
Sounds good to me.
In the long-term, my suggestion is to abolish the requirement for majority vote. Anyone who is already an admin is trusted; I think someone nominated by an existing admin should therefore be given a certain "initial trust" too. Thus, admins should be able to just appoint other admins.
I'd like to work our way to that stage slowly ;-)
As for removing adminship, ideally I would like to see the process closely resemble that for blocking users. The things we have collected at [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy]] have evolved over time; a similar "deadminning policy", containing various behaviours that warrant deadminning without a vote, is surely conceivable. In particular, I can imagine the 3RR apply to page-protection, deletion/undeletion, or blocking/unblocking other users. Having more admins, and therefore more sensible admins ;-), makes this much easier to keep under control by the community.
Temp deadminning in the software? Hmm ...
- d.
On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, David Gerard wrote:
Timwi (timwi@gmx.net) [050701 09:43]:
Indeed. The present RFA procedure is horribly topheavy and instruction-crept.
As a first step, I would like to suggest to make it policy that "oppose" votes must be accompanied by reasoning indicating the nominee's past wrongdoing or potential for wrongdoing. It should not be permitted to vote "oppose" just because someone has "only a few hundred edits", as this is neither a crime nor a sign of bad faith. As a safeguard against crackpots nominating themselves straight after their first edit, however, I suggest that candidates must be nominated by an existing admin.
Sounds good to me.
I was unaware that one could oppose a nomination without providing a reason. Doing so seems to me an act of bad faith, or stirring up trouble for no reason.
I believe that self-nominations should still be permitted. It's very easy to contribute to Wikipedia & not know more than a few Wikipedians; some folks deserving of our trust can get overlooked quite easily.
In the long-term, my suggestion is to abolish the requirement for majority vote. Anyone who is already an admin is trusted; I think someone nominated by an existing admin should therefore be given a certain "initial trust" too. Thus, admins should be able to just appoint other admins.
I'd like to work our way to that stage slowly ;-)
I had assumed that adminship was by consensus: get enough endorsements, & you became an admin. If a nominee was controversial (e.g., a history of "POV-pushing" over [[Lower Elbonia]]), then those opposed -- no matter how fewin number -- would have to persuade the others that this was a bad choice.
I've been uninvolved in the RFA process for a long time now, assuming that anyone who's been on Wikipedia for a couple of months & has made a few hundred edits gets adminship -- unless there's a good reason not to grant it. I've been more concerned in spending my time on making contributions, not in meeting new Wikipedians or the politics of Wikipedia; & since I haven't gotten to know the latest nominees, & feel that adding "support" to them is an endorsement of character for people I don't know, I've assumed that other Wikipedians have been doing the job correctly. If this part of Wikipedia has become the province of a group or clique of members who are not doing the work correctly, then that information should be made public.
As for de-adminning, the only thing I have to add is that admins who leave Wikipedia, & fail to make prior arrangements, should lose their admin rights after 3-6 months. I see this as just a janitorial action, intended to help keep things simpler; & if you leave Wikipedia without saying "good-by" or letting anyone know that you'll be back, then I feel that person doesn't deserve our trust.
Geoff
On 7/1/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
As for de-adminning, the only thing I have to add is that admins who leave Wikipedia, & fail to make prior arrangements, should lose their admin rights after 3-6 months. I see this as just a janitorial action, intended to help keep things simpler; & if you leave Wikipedia without saying "good-by" or letting anyone know that you'll be back, then I feel that person doesn't deserve our trust.
Eh, you don't have to put it like that.. Sometimes duty calls elsewhere in life.. We're not paid to be here.. However, in active admin accounts are a bad thing... someone who cracks a few admin accounts could cause enough damage to keep the developers busy for days. So we should revoke admin powers on such accounts, but only for that reason.. not due to a lack of trust.. And we should be liberal in returning the powers if the user becomes active again.
On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 7/1/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
As for de-adminning, the only thing I have to add is that admins who leave Wikipedia, & fail to make prior arrangements, should lose their admin rights after 3-6 months. I see this as just a janitorial action, intended to help keep things simpler; & if you leave Wikipedia without saying "good-by" or letting anyone know that you'll be back, then I feel that person doesn't deserve our trust.
Eh, you don't have to put it like that.. Sometimes duty calls elsewhere in life..
True, my phrasing was a bit harsh. But still, how much effort does it take to let someone know that one is in the hospital/dealing with a family crisis/moving somewhere without internet connectivity, & won't be contributing to Wikipedia for a long while?
Then again, if this *did* happen to one of us, who would we send notice to? Frankly, if I got an email allegedly from another admin (& the headers checked out), who said she/he was leaving Wikipedia for a while, *I'm* not sure how I would act on it, beyond posting a copy of the email on the admin's user page.
We're not paid to be here.. However, in active admin accounts are a bad thing... someone who cracks a few admin accounts could cause enough damage to keep the developers busy for days. So we should revoke admin powers on such accounts, but only for that reason.. not due to a lack of trust..
That's why I compared this to a janitorial activity. However, the case I was thinking about applies only if the admin leaves *without* offering any notice: just stops editting one day & does not return for 3-6 months.
And we should be liberal in returning the powers if the user becomes active again.
Well, I guess this is where we disagree: if an admin gives notice of a temporary absence -- that is, she/he'll intends to return -- then they get to keep adminship -- or have it restored upon return. If they just vanish (or leave in anger over some issue), then it should be removed, & if they return that Wikipedian has to go through the approval process once again.
Geoff
I suggest that candidates must be nominated by an existing admin.
hell does not appear to be frozen over
Having more admins, and therefore more sensible admins ;-), makes this much easier to keep under control by the community.
It is the percentage not the absolute numbers that matter. We are very close to 500 admins they are some of the most active members of the comunity. Can you show me where the views of admins have been that different from those of the community?
geni wrote:
I suggest that candidates must be nominated by an existing admin.
hell does not appear to be frozen over
English please?
Having more admins, and therefore more sensible admins ;-), makes this much easier to keep under control by the community.
It is the percentage not the absolute numbers that matter. We are very close to 500 admins they are some of the most active members of the comunity. Can you show me where the views of admins have been that different from those of the community?
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was just trying to say that if there are more admins, then it will be easier to keep problem users with administrative privileges under control, just like it is easier to keep problem users with regular editing privileges under control when there are more sensible users with regular editing privileges.
Timwi
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was just trying to say that if there are more admins, then it will be easier to keep problem users with administrative privileges under control,
But that's never been a problem, has it? And that's because there's a process that ensures that admins are not "problem users". What you're proposing is to do away with the process, make just about everyone admins, and then fix the inevitable problem of "problem users with administrative privileges" by creating even more admins to deal with them.
It makes more sense just to not create the problem in the first place.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was just trying to say that if there are more admins, then it will be easier to keep problem users with administrative privileges under control,
But that's never been a problem, has it? And that's because there's a process that ensures that admins are not "problem users". What you're proposing is to do away with the process, make just about everyone admins, and then fix the inevitable problem of "problem users with administrative privileges" by creating even more admins to deal with them.
That is entirely correct - but you're making it sound worse than it is. We are *already* allowing just about everyone to edit, and then we fix the inevitable problem of "problem users" simply by having enough "sensible" editors to deal with them. We have already shown that this process works well!
My proposal is to fix a completely different problem -- namely the fact that the current "process that ensures that admins are not problem users" excludes a load of users who wouldn't be problem users, but people oppose their adminship because they have some vague fear that they may somehow turn bad.
(I find it amazing that I have to argue for the wiki principle here; the only arguments I am using are extensions of all the arguments all of you use when you tell normal people about wiki and they are sceptical that it would work.)
Timwi
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
JAY JG wrote:
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was just trying to say that if there are more admins, then it will be easier to keep problem users with administrative privileges under control,
But that's never been a problem, has it? And that's because there's a process that ensures that admins are not "problem users". What you're proposing is to do away with the process, make just about everyone admins, and then fix the inevitable problem of "problem users with administrative privileges" by creating even more admins to deal with them.
That is entirely correct - but you're making it sound worse than it is. We are *already* allowing just about everyone to edit, and then we fix the inevitable problem of "problem users" simply by having enough "sensible" editors to deal with them. We have already shown that this process works well!
My proposal is to fix a completely different problem -- namely the fact that the current "process that ensures that admins are not problem users" excludes a load of users who wouldn't be problem users, but people oppose their adminship because they have some vague fear that they may somehow turn bad.
We allow editors great latitude because the whole point of Wikipedia is to allow editors to edit, in order to create a great encyclopedia. However, the point of Wikipedia is not to create admins; therefore the latitude allowed in that area is significantly less, though we still have over 500 admins, which I suspect is perhaps 10 times as many as any other online community/project.
(I find it amazing that I have to argue for the wiki principle here; the only arguments I am using are extensions of all the arguments all of you use when you tell normal people about wiki and they are sceptical that it would work.)
I find it amazing that people still keep thinking the goal of Wikipedia is to create a giant online Wikipedia community which personifies Wikipedia principles. In fact, that is a means to the goal, which is creating an encyclopedia. To the extent that the principles help further the goal, they are worth implementing, regardless of the inevitable negative side effects they cause. However, when enforcement of these principles in other areas will inevitable add even more headaches, with no perceivable improvement to the process of creating an encyclopedia, then we have to prioritize.
Wikipedia is about creating an encyclopedia, not promulgating an ideology.
Jay.
On 7/3/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia is about creating an encyclopedia, not promulgating an ideology.
I agree with your point about not focusing on admins, although I think that end is best served by making many people admins as it dillutes any unintended power of adminship.
I wanted to make a comment specifically to what I quoted above. Please pardon me for taking you out of context.
There were already a number of good encyclopedias before Wikipedia came about. You can not separate Wikipedia the encyclopedia from Wikipedia the ideology. I do not think this is a bad idea.
Even as a non-editor you can not be completely ignorant of the Wikipedia ideology if you are to effectively use our resources, since the results of vandalism and POV pushers will always end up visible once in a while and because the inner workings of the project are so useful by themselves (it's very handy to have some ability to ask questions of the person who wrote the text you are reading).
From: Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com
On 7/3/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia is about creating an encyclopedia, not promulgating an
ideology.
I agree with your point about not focusing on admins, although I think that end is best served by making many people admins as it dillutes any unintended power of adminship.
I agree with this to an extent as well. I just (continually argue) that 500 existing admins, with hundreds more coming on board each year, effectively does that, moreso than in any other online community I have heard of.
There were already a number of good encyclopedias before Wikipedia came about. You can not separate Wikipedia the encyclopedia from Wikipedia the ideology. I do not think this is a bad idea.
Even as a non-editor you can not be completely ignorant of the Wikipedia ideology if you are to effectively use our resources, since the results of vandalism and POV pushers will always end up visible once in a while and because the inner workings of the project are so useful by themselves (it's very handy to have some ability to ask questions of the person who wrote the text you are reading).
There are lots of great things about the ideology, which are useful in creating a great encyclopedia. There are also inherent problems with the ideology, which mitigate against that (particularly the issue of assuring high standards, which we are struggling with). To the extent that the promoting ideology supports the goal, I'm all for it. In areas where promoting the ideology works against supporting the goal, I think the latter must take priority.
Jay.
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Timwi wrote:
[...]
Please discuss! :) Timwi
I am broadly in favour of your proposal, its really what I've been trying to say with the two proposals I have made recently.
There's some interesting discussion about opposing votes with good points raised on both sides of the argument: --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Remove_bl...
Chris
- -- Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
I was going to post this as a reply to another posting, but my thoughts have become somewhat general, and so I'm posting this as a new entry.
I have come to realise that our current process of requesting adminship is at a sharp contrast to the wiki model in general. I have come to believe that we are not following our own principles that we so highly value.
What tangible (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better encyclopedia would these changes provide?
Why do we let anyone edit? Because we believe that assuming good faith is a good thing. We let people edit because they can't do any lasting damage anyway; if they turn out to be editing in bad faith, we can still revert their edits and block them later. No permanent damage done. We also let people edit because we believe that they are innocent until they show themselves guilty.
Incidentally, with admin powers, we handle it quite differently. Not only does becoming an admin require majority support, but it is even the case that many people vote "oppose" on the grounds of lack of dedication, lack of a minimum number of edits, or lack of involvement in community issues. They can apparently get away with an argument that essentially amounts to saying "we can't really be sure they're innocent, so we'll have to assume they're guilty for now". As a result, there are people who are not admins even though they would never be doing anything wrong if they were. Those people should be admins.
Disagree. Admin is a position of increased responsibility and trust; trust must be earned.
If we disregard for a moment that admins can delete images permanently, which surely can be rectified in a future software update, admins cannot do any lasting damage, just like editors. As such, their situation is a quite close analogy to the case of the editors.
Why not have everyone made bureaucrats while you're at it? They can't do much harm either, nothing that can't be undone.
If we applied the current request-for-adminship philosophy to editing, we would have to vote on everybody's right to edit before allowing them to edit!
The analogy is poor; admins have only a small number of additional powers; a few more or fewer would have little impact on the workings of Wikipedia. Having to vote on edits, on the other hands, would radically change an impeded Wikipedia's function.
As a first step, I would like to suggest to make it policy that "oppose" votes must be accompanied by reasoning indicating the nominee's past wrongdoing or potential for wrongdoing. It should not be permitted to vote "oppose" just because someone has "only a few hundred edits", as this is neither a crime nor a sign of bad faith. As a safeguard against crackpots nominating themselves straight after their first edit, however, I suggest that candidates must be nominated by an existing admin.
Not only is this easily gamed, but only having a few hundred edits means that other people evaluating the editor have little to go on when trying to assess whether or not they will abuse being an admin.
In the long-term, my suggestion is to abolish the requirement for majority vote. Anyone who is already an admin is trusted; I think someone nominated by an existing admin should therefore be given a certain "initial trust" too. Thus, admins should be able to just appoint other admins. As for removing adminship, ideally I would like to see the process closely resemble that for blocking users. The things we have collected at [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy]] have evolved over time; a similar "deadminning policy", containing various behaviours that warrant deadminning without a vote, is surely conceivable. In particular, I can imagine the 3RR apply to page-protection, deletion/undeletion, or blocking/unblocking other users. Having more admins, and therefore more sensible admins ;-), makes this much easier to keep under control by the community.
As has been pointed out, there are already plenty of admins, 500 and growing, more than enough, and there is a process of voting them in which ensures that they are generally quite sensible. This is simply another attempt to fix a non-existent problem.
What if tens of people gang up, all become admins and then do lots of bad stuff? Well, it is already possible for people to gang up -- and indeed, gangs of web forum users have done so in the past.
The ones who did so in the past were rather stupid, which was inevitable, given their beliefs. In the future this would be a much more serious problem, and could severely disable Wikipedia. Imagine a bunch of page-move/pelican-shit vandals admins working together.
Though some people seem to keep forgetting this, the primary purpose of Wikipedia is to create an encyclopedia, not experiment with anarcho-democracy, or create an on-line trust community or online group therapy for internet trolls. Changes to current processes which are currently working well make no sense, particularly as these changes do not seem to be at all for the purpose of making a better encyclopedia.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
What tangible (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better encyclopedia would these changes provide?
What tanglble (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better encyclopedia would being able to edit freely provide? Well, duh, you have more freedom and therefore are better able to help.
Disagree. Admin is a position of increased responsibility and trust; trust must be earned.
This is exactly the "we have to assume everyone's guilty" argument I already refuted. Trust must be earned, I agree; but distrust must be earned too. We are currently requiring too much trust for people to become admins, and we are distrusting new users undeservedly.
As a first step, I would like to suggest to make it policy that "oppose" votes must be accompanied by reasoning indicating the nominee's past wrongdoing or potential for wrongdoing. It should not be permitted to vote "oppose" just because someone has "only a few hundred edits", as this is neither a crime nor a sign of bad faith. As a safeguard against crackpots nominating themselves straight after their first edit, however, I suggest that candidates must be nominated by an existing admin.
Not only is this easily gamed,
It's no more easily gamed than normal editing privileges are. You just get them! If you do bad things, you lose your editing privileges.
but only having a few hundred edits means that other people evaluating the editor have little to go on when trying to assess whether or not they will abuse being an admin.
Again, the "guilty until proven innocent" mentality. You have no reason to believe that anyone (who hasn't even nominated themselves) is going to abuse anything, especially not if they haven't abused their already-present editing privileges already.
As has been pointed out, there are already plenty of admins, 500 and growing, more than enough,
I'm afraid "we already have 500 admins, more than enough" is an even worse reason to vote "oppose" than "this user doesn't have enough edits". Why should we deny anyone adminship just because we already have 500 of them?
and there is a process of voting them in which ensures that they are generally quite sensible.
Again, so you're assuming that people are "unsensible" until you're convinced otherwise.
This is simply another attempt to fix a non-existent problem.
I do have my reasons for posting this proposal; I believe that there *is* a problem. Of course most current admins won't see the problem because they're already admins. If it's too hard for a new user to become admin, current admins wouldn't have to care, but it means there *is* a problem.
Imagine a bunch of page-move/pelican-shit vandals admins working together.
We've already had page-move vandals working together. We've dealt with them.
Changes to current processes which are currently working well make no sense,
If a user with >600 edits, >1.5 edits per day, nominated by an existing admin, and absolutely no history of trouble or ill-behaving for over a year, cannot become admin, the current process is clearly *not* working well.
particularly as these changes do not seem to be at all for the purpose of making a better encyclopedia.
See above.
Timwi
JAY JG wrote:
What tangible (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better encyclopedia would these changes provide?
What tanglble (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better encyclopedia would being able to edit freely provide? Well, duh, you have more freedom and therefore are better able to help.
So, nothing specific comes to mind then?
Disagree. Admin is a position of increased responsibility and trust; trust must be earned.
This is exactly the "we have to assume everyone's guilty" argument I already refuted.
It's easy to refute strawman arguments; that's the reason people make them in the first place.
Trust must be earned, I agree; but distrust must be earned too. We are currently requiring too much trust for people to become admins, and we are distrusting new users undeservedly.
Your opinion is interesting; I see no evidence that it reflects reality. New users are, in fact, able to completely modify just about any part of Wikipedia they want. This is a huge amount of trust that already creates huge vandalism problems. What you are asking for is for them to be given special powers to do things like easily reverting pages and blocking users. Of course, this would simply give them abilities to act against other users that they distrust, but wouldn't help them (for example) WRITE BETTER ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES!
As a first step, I would like to suggest to make it policy that "oppose" votes must be accompanied by reasoning indicating the nominee's past wrongdoing or potential for wrongdoing. It should not be permitted to vote "oppose" just because someone has "only a few hundred edits", as this is neither a crime nor a sign of bad faith. As a safeguard against crackpots nominating themselves straight after their first edit, however, I suggest that candidates must be nominated by an existing admin.
Not only is this easily gamed,
It's no more easily gamed than normal editing privileges are. You just get them! If you do bad things, you lose your editing privileges.
Huh? This is nothing like normal editing privileges. Even you admit as much, since you specify that people must be nominated by an existing admin. If you think these powers should be no different than other editing abilities, why not simply argue that they beome part of the "basic package"?
but only having a few hundred edits means that other people evaluating the editor have little to go on when trying to assess whether or not they will abuse being an admin.
Again, the "guilty until proven innocent" mentality. You have no reason to believe that anyone (who hasn't even nominated themselves) is going to abuse anything, especially not if they haven't abused their already-present editing privileges already.
No, not "guilty until proven innocent". Rather "reserve judgement, because the jury is still out". That's simply prudent commonsense.
As has been pointed out, there are already plenty of admins, 500 and growing, more than enough,
I'm afraid "we already have 500 admins, more than enough" is an even worse reason to vote "oppose" than "this user doesn't have enough edits". Why should we deny anyone adminship just because we already have 500 of them?
No-one has voted oppose on those grounds; but you are proposing that way more people be made admins, without any sort of consensus process for making them so, because we somehow need even more people with these powers than already have them.
and there is a process of voting them in which ensures that they are generally quite sensible.
Again, so you're assuming that people are "unsensible" until you're convinced otherwise.
No, I simply don't know if they're sensible. I do know that the majority of new editors are "not sensible" in that they are not familiar with Wikipedia policies and norms, and therefore regularly violate them. Some editors learn the ropes quickly; others never do, even after tens of thousands of edits, either because they are unable to learn them, or unwilling to do so.
This is simply another attempt to fix a non-existent problem.
I do have my reasons for posting this proposal; I believe that there *is* a problem. Of course most current admins won't see the problem because they're already admins. If it's too hard for a new user to become admin, current admins wouldn't have to care, but it means there *is* a problem.
Huh? The problem is it's too hard for new users to become admin, therefore it *is* a problem? That's entirely circular. What on earth makes you think it is "too hard"? Exactly how did you measure that, on the [[Mohs scale]]?
Imagine a bunch of page-move/pelican-shit vandals admins working together.
We've already had page-move vandals working together. We've dealt with them.
Not ones with admin powers.
Changes to current processes which are currently working well make no sense,
If a user with >600 edits, >1.5 edits per day, nominated by an existing admin, and absolutely no history of trouble or ill-behaving for over a year, cannot become admin, the current process is clearly *not* working well.
Why not? Please note that assertions and proofs are entirely different things.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
What tanglble (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better encyclopedia would being able to edit freely provide? Well, duh, you have more freedom and therefore are better able to help.
So, nothing specific comes to mind then?
I think I've been specific enough, but fine, I'll be more specific. Fighting vandalism using the rollback button, using "delete" to be able to move page to where a lonely redirect is sitting, protecting pages where other people are having an edit war, blocking users with obvious violations of 3RR, ... That enough yet?
Disagree. Admin is a position of increased responsibility and trust; trust must be earned.
This is exactly the "we have to assume everyone's guilty" argument I already refuted.
It's easy to refute strawman arguments; that's the reason people make them in the first place.
From what you wrote later in the e-mail, I assume you think this is a strawman argument because you are supposedly not actually assuming anyone's guilty. But then my other argument kicks in that you have no reason to lock someone out of something that would be useful to them for helping Wikipedia if you don't even believe they're guilty of anything.
Trust must be earned, I agree; but distrust must be earned too. We are currently requiring too much trust for people to become admins, and we are distrusting new users undeservedly.
Your opinion is interesting; I see no evidence that it reflects reality.
I have given evidence of this further down in my posting.
New users are, in fact, able to completely modify just about any part of Wikipedia they want. This is a huge amount of trust that already creates huge vandalism problems. What you are asking for is for them to be given special powers to do things like easily reverting pages and blocking users.
No, I am not asking for that. My proposal does not include anyone gaining administrative privileges without trust from any existing admin (quite in contrast to the editing privileges, which you get without anyone's trust).
Not only is this easily gamed,
It's no more easily gamed than normal editing privileges are. You just get them! If you do bad things, you lose your editing privileges.
Huh? This is nothing like normal editing privileges. Even you admit as much, since you specify that people must be nominated by an existing admin. If you think these powers should be no different than other editing abilities, why not simply argue that they beome part of the "basic package"?
I guess it's my turn to call this a strawman argument. You said "this is easily gamed", I responded to that argument. Now you're responding with an argument that is attacking a perceived inconsistency in my approach.
The reason we can't make them part of the "basic package" is that there always needs to be a level "above" which isn't part of the "basic package". That doesn't mean that we need to treat the "top level" as such an elitist position as we do. (Yes, I know, there's also the level of "developer", but it doesn't count because it has powers to do irreversible things.)
but only having a few hundred edits means that other people evaluating the editor have little to go on when trying to assess whether or not they will abuse being an admin.
Again, the "guilty until proven innocent" mentality. You have no reason to believe that anyone (who hasn't even nominated themselves) is going to abuse anything, especially not if they haven't abused their already-present editing privileges already.
No, not "guilty until proven innocent". Rather "reserve judgement, because the jury is still out". That's simply prudent commonsense.
It's the same "prudent common sense" that makes people who don't know about wikis sceptical that such a system would work. There is no need to "reserve judgement" if you can just test the person, by giving them the privileges and seeing if they abuse them or not. Then you can pass judgement based on actual facts rather than guessing. Reserving judgement about granting the privileges makes sense only if the privileges allow you to do something irreversible.
As has been pointed out, there are already plenty of admins, 500 and growing, more than enough,
I'm afraid "we already have 500 admins, more than enough" is an even worse reason to vote "oppose" than "this user doesn't have enough edits". Why should we deny anyone adminship just because we already have 500 of them?
No-one has voted oppose on those grounds; but you are proposing that way more people be made admins, without any sort of consensus process for making them so, because we somehow need even more people with these powers than already have them.
You are repeating the same argument that you made above: "We shouldn't make more people admins because we already have enough." But not only have I refuted this argument already (it doesn't hurt to have more if they don't abuse it), it is also a strawman argument because it is not refuting any argument I made (I never said we "need" more of them).
and there is a process of voting them in which ensures that they are generally quite sensible.
Again, so you're assuming that people are "unsensible" until you're convinced otherwise.
No, I simply don't know if they're sensible.
Right, but you're also denying them the chance to show you that they are.
I do know that the majority of new editors are "not sensible" in that they are not familiar with Wikipedia policies and norms, and therefore regularly violate them. Some editors learn the ropes quickly; others never do, even after tens of thousands of edits, either because they are unable to learn them, or unwilling to do so.
Right, so just because some of these people exist, others should be denied adminship because there is a vague chance they might be one of them. Is that what you're saying?
There is nothing wrong with violating a policy in good faith as long as you learn your mistake and don't do it again.
I do have my reasons for posting this proposal; I believe that there *is* a problem. Of course most current admins won't see the problem because they're already admins. If it's too hard for a new user to become admin, current admins wouldn't have to care, but it means there *is* a problem.
Huh? The problem is it's too hard for new users to become admin, therefore it *is* a problem? That's entirely circular.
You're making it sound circular, but it isn't. As soon as someone who deserves admin powers (because they know the policies, they won't abuse any powers, they always act in good faith, etc.) cannot get them (because people vote "oppose -- not enough edits"), there is a problem.
Changes to current processes which are currently working well make no sense,
If a user with >600 edits, >1.5 edits per day, nominated by an existing admin, and absolutely no history of trouble or ill-behaving for over a year, cannot become admin, the current process is clearly *not* working well.
Why not?
Because this user should be an admin.
It seems to me (please correct me if I'm wrong) that most of your argumentation is to oppose the idea of abolishing the adminship votes altogether. But what do you think about my first proposal, to just make it so that you cannot vote "oppose" based on number of edits or any other criterion that isn't indicative of bad faith or other problematic behaviour?
Timwi
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
JAY JG wrote:
What tanglble (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better encyclopedia would being able to edit freely provide? Well, duh, you have more freedom and therefore are better able to help.
So, nothing specific comes to mind then?
I think I've been specific enough, but fine, I'll be more specific. Fighting vandalism using the rollback button, using "delete" to be able to move page to where a lonely redirect is sitting, protecting pages where other people are having an edit war, blocking users with obvious violations of 3RR, ... That enough yet?
None of that actually helps write an encyclopedia, but rather, it helps administer it (or in the words of one list member "dominate other editors").
It's easy to refute strawman arguments; that's the reason people make them in the first place.
From what you wrote later in the e-mail, I assume you think this is a strawman argument because you are supposedly not actually assuming anyone's guilty. But then my other argument kicks in that you have no reason to lock someone out of something that would be useful to them for helping Wikipedia if you don't even believe they're guilty of anything.
They're not locked out of anything that helps them create or edit encyclopedia articles. They simply don't have access to admin functions. To use a rather extreme analogy, there's a reason most countries have fairly strict gun ownership restrictions, even though they don't consider most citizens guilty of anything, or likely to go on shooting sprees.
New users are, in fact, able to completely modify just about any part of Wikipedia they want. This is a huge amount of trust that already creates huge vandalism problems. What you are asking for is for them to be given special powers to do things like easily reverting pages and blocking users.
No, I am not asking for that. My proposal does not include anyone gaining administrative privileges without trust from any existing admin (quite in contrast to the editing privileges, which you get without anyone's trust).
Since, under your proposal, adminship will be open to just about anyone, it amounts to the same thing.
The reason we can't make them part of the "basic package" is that there always needs to be a level "above" which isn't part of the "basic package".
A level above? Whatever happened to "assume good faith"? Why, that's positively un-wiki!
As soon as you argue that there is *any* reason to restrict these powers, all your arguments about Wikipedia "assume good faith" principles fly out the window. Now what you're really arguing is not that these restrictions violate Wikipedia principles, but that in your opinion the bar for admins is set too high; that's an entirely different argument. And once you start talking about principles, "Assume good faith" is just one. "Consensus" is another.
That doesn't mean that we need to treat the "top level" as such an elitist position as we do.
Right. Your argument is about the bar being set too high. As I have pointed out many times, with over 500 admins already, the bar clearly isn't set all that high.
(Yes, I know, there's also the level of "developer", but it doesn't count because it has powers to do irreversible things.)
There's a level above admin and below developer as well, bureaucracts, who have the ability to create and (I believe) uncreate admins. Since that's also "reversible", shouldn't that be added to the abilities?
No, not "guilty until proven innocent". Rather "reserve judgement, because the jury is still out". That's simply prudent commonsense.
It's the same "prudent common sense" that makes people who don't know about wikis sceptical that such a system would work. There is no need to "reserve judgement" if you can just test the person, by giving them the privileges and seeing if they abuse them or not. Then you can pass judgement based on actual facts rather than guessing. Reserving judgement about granting the privileges makes sense only if the privileges allow you to do something irreversible.
No, it also makes sense if the abilities are not ones needed to create or write articles, but rather merely needed to administer the project. Very little is truly irreversible, but the amount of effort it takes to repair damage goes up exponentially with each power added; prudence balances the damage that can be done with the benefit the power adds. Adding admin powers to hundreds of new editors, who have gone through almost no vetting process, will inevitably create all sorts of damage which will almost certainly outweigh any tangible benefits to the project.
You are repeating the same argument that you made above: "We shouldn't make more people admins because we already have enough."
Nonsense. I'm saying we don't need to change the process for making admins, because we have enough for now, and we are making lots more all the time. A year from now we will have well over 600 admins, in two years likely well over 800. We're making people admins all the time.
But not only have I refuted this argument already (it doesn't hurt to have more if they don't abuse it),
You can't "refute" an argument by inserting a huge (and likely erroneous) conditional statement in your "refutation". Yes, it doesn't hurt to have more IF they don't abuse it; but the whole process of creating admins is geared towards ensuring that new admins will not be the ones likely to abuse admin powers, and that's just the process you want to remove.
and there is a process of voting them in which ensures that they are generally quite sensible.
Again, so you're assuming that people are "unsensible" until you're convinced otherwise.
No, I simply don't know if they're sensible.
Right, but you're also denying them the chance to show you that they are.
Nonsense. They can edit productively and comment sensibly, and in so doing build a track record that indicates they are likely to be a sensible admin as well.
I do know that the majority of new editors are "not sensible" in that they are not familiar with Wikipedia policies and norms, and therefore regularly violate them. Some editors learn the ropes quickly; others never do, even after tens of thousands of edits, either because they are unable to learn them, or unwilling to do so.
Right, so just because some of these people exist, others should be denied adminship because there is a vague chance they might be one of them. Is that what you're saying?
What is this "denied adminship"? You say it as if its a fundamental right. As for "vague chance", try "high likelihood if we relax they requirements in the way you suggest".
I do have my reasons for posting this proposal; I believe that there *is* a problem. Of course most current admins won't see the problem because they're already admins. If it's too hard for a new user to become admin, current admins wouldn't have to care, but it means there *is* a problem.
Huh? The problem is it's too hard for new users to become admin, therefore it *is* a problem? That's entirely circular.
You're making it sound circular, but it isn't. As soon as someone who deserves admin powers (because they know the policies, they won't abuse any powers, they always act in good faith, etc.) cannot get them (because people vote "oppose -- not enough edits"), there is a problem.
Nonsense. No-one "deserves" admin powers; this is some sort of spillover from modern Western society's culture of entitlement, and sounds uncomfortably like those editors who get on Wiken-l and complain that their "right" to edit Wikipedia and rights to free speech on Wikipedia are being suppressed. And if editors haven't edited very much, then we can't tell if they "know the policies, "won't abuse any powers", and "always act in good faith," because we haven't seen them in enough situations to be able to make an informed decision on that.
How far would you take this argument? Would you say that someone who has made 20 edits, none of them policy violations, deserves admin powers? How about 1 edit? But no, you're not saying that, because you've already said that new editors should not automatically get them. Again, it becomes apparent that your argument is not that any fundamental principles are being violated at all, but rather that the bar is being set too high for your liking.
Changes to current processes which are currently working well make no sense,
If a user with >600 edits, >1.5 edits per day, nominated by an existing admin, and absolutely no history of trouble or ill-behaving for over a year, cannot become admin, the current process is clearly *not* working well.
Why not?
Because this user should be an admin.
Again, I remind you that assertions are neither arguments nor proofs.
It seems to me (please correct me if I'm wrong) that most of your argumentation is to oppose the idea of abolishing the adminship votes altogether.
Yes. That, and breaking up admin functions and adding them to the basic package.
But what do you think about my first proposal, to just make it so that you cannot vote "oppose" based on number of edits or any other criterion that isn't indicative of bad faith or other problematic behaviour?
As stated above, the former is shorthand for "I don't know enough about this editor yet to trust him with admin powers", and the latter is highly subjective and easily gamed. I would only support this if "support" votes were subject to the same restrictions.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
As soon as you argue that there is *any* reason to restrict these powers, all your arguments about Wikipedia "assume good faith" principles fly out the window. Now what you're really arguing is not that these restrictions violate Wikipedia principles, but that in your opinion the bar for admins is set too high; that's an entirely different argument.
I don't agree that it's an entirely different argument. I think people are acting in an un-wiki way precisely because the bar is set too high. Having a low bar to entry is precisely the wiki principle.
No, it also makes sense if the abilities are not ones needed to create or write articles, but rather merely needed to administer the project.
You are essentially saying that some people should not be allowed to help Wikipedia in ways other than writing articles. Paradoxical? I find that distinction of yours between "writing articles" and "administering the project" to be arbitrary. Both are examples of helping Wikipedia. I probably do way more of the latter one. It seems that you have chosen that distinction only to support your own argument.
Very little is truly irreversible, but the amount of effort it takes to repair damage goes up exponentially with each power added;
This may or may not apply to the current software situation, but need not necessarily be universally true. The original idea in wiki was to make it easier to repair damage than to cause damage. I don't see why this can't be made to apply to any administrative function too. If a rogue admin goes on a deletion/blocking/protecting/whatever spree, ideally there should be a button for another admin to revert all those changes en masse. That en-masse reversion button wouldn't be useful for causing damage by undoing legitimate actions because legitimate actions do not tend to come in bursts.
prudence balances the damage that can be done with the benefit the power adds.
Yes, but what makes you so sure you're striking the right balance? If there is someone who (assuming this for a second) would use a lot of administrative functions for a lot of good, but is denied adminship out of prudence, then clearly the balance is too far towards the prudence.
Adding admin powers to hundreds of new editors, who have gone through almost no vetting process, will inevitably create all sorts of damage which will almost certainly outweigh any tangible benefits to the project.
As I already said, this is the thinking that leads people to believing that Wikipedia can't work if everyone can edit.
But not only have I refuted this argument already (it doesn't hurt to have more if they don't abuse it),
You can't "refute" an argument by inserting a huge (and likely erroneous) conditional statement in your "refutation".
It is quite a bold assertion of yours that the statement is "likely erroneous". I am no-where near proposing anything that runs the risk of making any substantial number of potential abusers admins. You, like most of the regulars in the adminship votes it seems, think that almost everyone is a potential abuser if they haven't shown otherwise with hundreds of edits every day over several months.
Yes, it doesn't hurt to have more IF they don't abuse it; but the whole process of creating admins is geared towards ensuring that new admins will not be the ones likely to abuse admin powers, and that's just the process you want to remove.
I've said this before -- the current process DOES NOT ensure that anyone won't abuse any powers. It ONLY ensures that the new admins have support in the community. Which is all the worse, because it means that IF they end up abusing their powers, they will even have other admins back them up. It also happens to mean that not abusing any powers is not enough for becoming admin -- rather, you have to fulfill everyone's arbitrary and irrelevant criteria such as submitting more than XYZ edits per day or something. Under the current system, it would even be possible to vote ''oppose'' based on physical appearance, nationality, or any other irrelevant criterion -- the only reason people don't do it is because it's considered politically incorrect.
No, I simply don't know if they're sensible.
Right, but you're also denying them the chance to show you that they are.
They can edit productively and comment sensibly, and in so doing build a track record that indicates they are likely to be a sensible admin as well.
And that is exactly what I would like to be the case, but clearly it isn't -- users (well, at least the one I've nominated) who have done exactly that, are still not admins.
Right, so just because some of these people exist, others should be denied adminship because there is a vague chance they might be one of them. Is that what you're saying?
What is this "denied adminship"? You say it as if its a fundamental right. As for "vague chance", try "high likelihood if we relax they requirements in the way you suggest".
Obviously, I don't think it should be a fundamental right to be admin. But I still think it is a fundamental right to be treated somewhat fairly and sensibly.
Your "high likelihood" assertion is dubious at best. By that logic, most editors should be abusive. In reality, however, a small percentage of potential editors are potential editors-in-bad-faith.
No-one "deserves" admin powers
Right, so we deny it to anyone we please, regardless if we have any reasonable grounds or not?
Here's a bit of an extreme analogy. No-one "deserves" a highly-paid job at our company that requires technical skills. So let's deny it to homosexuals! Don't care how skilled and qualified they are...
If a user with >600 edits, >1.5 edits per day, nominated by an existing admin, and absolutely no history of trouble or ill-behaving for over a year, cannot become admin, the current process is clearly *not* working well.
Why not?
Because this user should be an admin.
Again, I remind you that assertions are neither arguments nor proofs.
Just because you can't see my argument doesn't mean it isn't one.
But what do you think about my first proposal, to just make it so that you cannot vote "oppose" based on number of edits or any other criterion that isn't indicative of bad faith or other problematic behaviour?
As stated above, the former is shorthand for "I don't know enough about this editor yet to trust him with admin powers", and the latter is highly subjective and easily gamed. I would only support this if "support" votes were subject to the same restrictions.
Such as?
Timwi
On 7/6/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
JAY JG wrote:
As soon as you argue that there is *any* reason to restrict these powers, all your arguments about Wikipedia "assume good faith" principles fly out the window. Now what you're really arguing is not that these restrictions violate Wikipedia principles, but that in your opinion the bar for admins is set too high; that's an entirely different argument.
I don't agree that it's an entirely different argument. I think people are acting in an un-wiki way precisely because the bar is set too high. Having a low bar to entry is precisely the wiki principle.
I just wanted to interject a thought here: if Wikipedia adminship is a virtuous circle, where admins continuously encourage each other to more and more polite behavior, more welcoming, and more civility, rather than excusing occasional hostility, anger, and newbie biting, I wouldn't care if the bar was just barely above the floor. As it is now, we have some improvements to make, only because, like it or not, admins are the "official face" of Wikipedia to the general editing public.
We already have the 'edit bar' on the floor, anyone can step right over. It works pretty well that way. The 'admin bar' can be right next to it as far as I'm concerned, if people really embrace the "good attitude" concept behind the project.
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
JAY JG wrote:
What tanglble (not philosophical) benefits in terms of creating a better encyclopedia would being able to edit freely provide? Well, duh, you have more freedom and therefore are better able to help.
So, nothing specific comes to mind then?
I think I've been specific enough, but fine, I'll be more specific. Fighting vandalism using the rollback button, using "delete" to be able to move page to where a lonely redirect is sitting, protecting pages where other people are having an edit war, blocking users with obvious violations of 3RR, ... That enough yet?
None of that actually helps write an encyclopedia, but rather, it helps administer it (or in the words of one list member "dominate other editors").
It's easy to refute strawman arguments; that's the reason people make them in the first place.
From what you wrote later in the e-mail, I assume you think this is a strawman argument because you are supposedly not actually assuming anyone's guilty. But then my other argument kicks in that you have no reason to lock someone out of something that would be useful to them for helping Wikipedia if you don't even believe they're guilty of anything.
They're not locked out of anything that helps them create or edit encyclopedia articles. They simply don't have access to admin functions. To use a rather extreme analogy, there's a reason most countries have fairly strict gun ownership restrictions, even though they don't consider most citizens guilty of anything, or likely to go on shooting sprees.
New users are, in fact, able to completely modify just about any part of Wikipedia they want. This is a huge amount of trust that already creates huge vandalism problems. What you are asking for is for them to be given special powers to do things like easily reverting pages and blocking users.
No, I am not asking for that. My proposal does not include anyone gaining administrative privileges without trust from any existing admin (quite in contrast to the editing privileges, which you get without anyone's trust).
Since, under your proposal, adminship will be open to just about anyone, it amounts to the same thing.
The reason we can't make them part of the "basic package" is that there always needs to be a level "above" which isn't part of the "basic package".
A level above? Whatever happened to "assume good faith"? Why, that's positively un-wiki!
As soon as you argue that there is *any* reason to restrict these powers, all your arguments about Wikipedia "assume good faith" principles fly out the window. Now what you're really arguing is not that these restrictions violate Wikipedia principles, but that in your opinion the bar for admins is set too high; that's an entirely different argument. And once you start talking about principles, "Assume good faith" is just one. "Consensus" is another.
That doesn't mean that we need to treat the "top level" as such an elitist position as we do.
Right. Your argument is about the bar being set too high. As I have pointed out many times, with over 500 admins already, the bar clearly isn't set all that high.
(Yes, I know, there's also the level of "developer", but it doesn't count because it has powers to do irreversible things.)
There's a level above admin and below developer as well, bureaucracts, who have the ability to create and (I believe) uncreate admins. Since that's also "reversible", shouldn't that be added to the abilities?
No, not "guilty until proven innocent". Rather "reserve judgement, because the jury is still out". That's simply prudent commonsense.
It's the same "prudent common sense" that makes people who don't know about wikis sceptical that such a system would work. There is no need to "reserve judgement" if you can just test the person, by giving them the privileges and seeing if they abuse them or not. Then you can pass judgement based on actual facts rather than guessing. Reserving judgement about granting the privileges makes sense only if the privileges allow you to do something irreversible.
No, it also makes sense if the abilities are not ones needed to create or write articles, but rather merely needed to administer the project. Very little is truly irreversible, but the amount of effort it takes to repair damage goes up exponentially with each power added; prudence balances the damage that can be done with the benefit the power adds. Adding admin powers to hundreds of new editors, who have gone through almost no vetting process, will inevitably create all sorts of damage which will almost certainly outweigh any tangible benefits to the project.
You are repeating the same argument that you made above: "We shouldn't make more people admins because we already have enough."
Nonsense. I'm saying we don't need to change the process for making admins, because we have enough for now, and we are making lots more all the time. A year from now we will have well over 600 admins, in two years likely well over 800. We're making people admins all the time.
But not only have I refuted this argument already (it doesn't hurt to have more if they don't abuse it),
You can't "refute" an argument by inserting a huge (and likely erroneous) conditional statement in your "refutation". Yes, it doesn't hurt to have more IF they don't abuse it; but the whole process of creating admins is geared towards ensuring that new admins will not be the ones likely to abuse admin powers, and that's just the process you want to remove.
and there is a process of voting them in which ensures that they are generally quite sensible.
Again, so you're assuming that people are "unsensible" until you're convinced otherwise.
No, I simply don't know if they're sensible.
Right, but you're also denying them the chance to show you that they are.
Nonsense. They can edit productively and comment sensibly, and in so doing build a track record that indicates they are likely to be a sensible admin as well.
I do know that the majority of new editors are "not sensible" in that they are not familiar with Wikipedia policies and norms, and therefore regularly violate them. Some editors learn the ropes quickly; others never do, even after tens of thousands of edits, either because they are unable to learn them, or unwilling to do so.
Right, so just because some of these people exist, others should be denied adminship because there is a vague chance they might be one of them. Is that what you're saying?
What is this "denied adminship"? You say it as if its a fundamental right. As for "vague chance", try "high likelihood if we relax they requirements in the way you suggest".
I do have my reasons for posting this proposal; I believe that there *is* a problem. Of course most current admins won't see the problem because they're already admins. If it's too hard for a new user to become admin, current admins wouldn't have to care, but it means there *is* a problem.
Huh? The problem is it's too hard for new users to become admin, therefore it *is* a problem? That's entirely circular.
You're making it sound circular, but it isn't. As soon as someone who deserves admin powers (because they know the policies, they won't abuse any powers, they always act in good faith, etc.) cannot get them (because people vote "oppose -- not enough edits"), there is a problem.
Nonsense. No-one "deserves" admin powers; this is some sort of spillover from modern Western society's culture of entitlement, and sounds uncomfortably like those editors who get on Wiken-l and complain that their "right" to edit Wikipedia and rights to free speech on Wikipedia are being suppressed. And if editors haven't edited very much, then we can't tell if they "know the policies, "won't abuse any powers", and "always act in good faith," because we haven't seen them in enough situations to be able to make an informed decision on that.
How far would you take this argument? Would you say that someone who has made 20 edits, none of them policy violations, deserves admin powers? How about 1 edit? But no, you're not saying that, because you've already said that new editors should not automatically get them. Again, it becomes apparent that your argument is not that any fundamental principles are being violated at all, but rather that the bar is being set too high for your liking.
Changes to current processes which are currently working well make no sense,
If a user with >600 edits, >1.5 edits per day, nominated by an existing admin, and absolutely no history of trouble or ill-behaving for over a year, cannot become admin, the current process is clearly *not* working well.
Why not?
Because this user should be an admin.
Again, I remind you that assertions are neither arguments nor proofs.
It seems to me (please correct me if I'm wrong) that most of your argumentation is to oppose the idea of abolishing the adminship votes altogether.
Yes. That, and breaking up admin functions and adding them to the basic package.
But what do you think about my first proposal, to just make it so that you cannot vote "oppose" based on number of edits or any other criterion that isn't indicative of bad faith or other problematic behaviour?
As stated above, the former is shorthand for "I don't know enough about this editor yet to trust him with admin powers", and the latter is highly subjective and easily gamed. I would only support this if "support" votes were subject to the same restrictions.
Jay.
While frequenting Wikipedia, web forums and IRC channels I have noticed a strange correlation between the number of administrator users and the strictness of that communitys behavioural guidelines. Take IRC, for example. In IRC channels there are between 20 to 800 users, a number of them are supervisor users who are able to kick and ban other users.
Enter a channel with 50 users whereof 10 are administrators. Say "fuck". Enter a channel with 50 users whereof 5 are administrators. Say "fuck" and observe what happens.
Assuming both channels are English language channels, in which channel are you more likely to get kicked/banned from? That's right - the one with 10 administrators!
Remember when the most important rule was "ignore all rules"? I agree that the Request for Adminship procedure is cumbersome but not sure that bringing more admins in will make Wikipedia better. Or that it will solve the real dilemma of an exclusive group in an open community.
Sorry if this is not entierly relevant, but you said _please_ discuss. :)
I think admin is a position of trust and we should be careful who to hand this to because revoking adminship is something only a few people could do. As of now, I think there's enough administrators to fufill the jobs we have, so I don't see how having more is going to help the project. It's only going to side-track administrators into blocking problem users that gained admin status.
--Mgm
On 7/1/05, BJörn Lindqvist bjourne@gmail.com wrote:
While frequenting Wikipedia, web forums and IRC channels I have noticed a strange correlation between the number of administrator users and the strictness of that communitys behavioural guidelines. Take IRC, for example. In IRC channels there are between 20 to 800 users, a number of them are supervisor users who are able to kick and ban other users.
Enter a channel with 50 users whereof 10 are administrators. Say "fuck". Enter a channel with 50 users whereof 5 are administrators. Say "fuck" and observe what happens.
Assuming both channels are English language channels, in which channel are you more likely to get kicked/banned from? That's right - the one with 10 administrators!
Remember when the most important rule was "ignore all rules"? I agree that the Request for Adminship procedure is cumbersome but not sure that bringing more admins in will make Wikipedia better. Or that it will solve the real dilemma of an exclusive group in an open community.
Sorry if this is not entierly relevant, but you said _please_ discuss. :)
-- mvh Björn _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
Enter a channel with 50 users whereof 10 are administrators. Say "fuck". Enter a channel with 50 users whereof 5 are administrators. Say "fuck" and observe what happens.
Assuming both channels are English language channels, in which channel are you more likely to get kicked/banned from? That's right - the one with 10 administrators!
Have you tested this empirically? I would have thought otherwise. I would have thought that if there are 10 ops in the channel, the channel is generally more liberal than if there are only 5. How else did the 10 people become op?
According to your logic, en-Wikipedia (with 500 admins) should be a lot more strict.
Personally, I think the correlation is exactly the other way than you are suggesting, but other than my intuition and experience, I have no empirical data to base this on.
Timwi
On 6/30/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
I have come to realise that our current process of requesting adminship is at a sharp contrast to the wiki model in general. I have come to believe that we are not following our own principles that we so highly value.
This was a lovely essay, Timwi.
There is no fundamental reason not to apply soft security to adminship. A few technical changes which should be made to allow this:
1) Prevent permanent image deletion. 2) Provide much better (and more visible) feedback mechanisms for the whole community to see what has been deleted - both revisions of articles and revisions of images. These things should show up on watchlists, for instance, with links to their deleted histories. 2.1) Those SPECIAL cases in which there is some deleted personal information that the whole wide world shouldn't see, should be dealt with specially. They should not prevent active users from browsing or commenting on the bulk of deleted revisions/images. 2.2) There should be additional feedback mechanisms highlighting anything that /is/ deleted permanently; with meta-information visible to all.
And a few social changes : If you reduce hard security, you do have to increase soft security. * It would become normal for admins who crossed a line to be admonished and forced to stop using admin powers for a short while, just as good users are sometimes blocked for a short while. * There would be a page for people to discuss users who shouldn't be admins. * If an admin were admonished, the person who nominated that admin should be also; people should take responsibility for their sponsorships
One final thing I would like to stress : we take in all manner of people who *can't write* and, by allowing them to try for weeks and months, in the presence of good models, we teach them. People who have never been good writers become skilled at writing crisp, neutral, encyclopedic prose... even if they still can't write a decent letter to their parents. Ond of the advantages of making adminship more open would be that more people would learn to be skillful, neutral administrators.
On 7/3/05, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
There is no fundamental reason not to apply soft security to adminship. A few technical changes which should be made to allow this:
That it's unnecessary, for starters. What we have now works fine. Changing that creates a whole lot of security problems that we just don't need - particularly with no compelling reason to change in the first place.
And a few social changes : If you reduce hard security, you do have to increase soft security.
- It would become normal for admins who crossed a line to be
admonished and forced to stop using admin powers for a short while, just as good users are sometimes blocked for a short while.
- There would be a page for people to discuss users who shouldn't be admins.
- If an admin were admonished, the person who nominated that admin
should be also; people should take responsibility for their sponsorships
What purpose does this serve? It builds adminship up into some sort of huge thing that it isn't. If you generally behave yourself and make a few good edits, you become an admin. It really isn't very hard. It also isn't very helpful to continually hang an axe over the head of good users, in regard to their adminship in this case. People make mistakes. The Open Directory Project continually hung an axe over people - and they left as a result, in droves. Let us not make the same mistake. If someone isn't doing something *seriously* wrong, their only *need* to have anything to do with meta stuff at all is to request adminship.
One final thing I would like to stress : we take in all manner of people who *can't write* and, by allowing them to try for weeks and months, in the presence of good models, we teach them. People who have never been good writers become skilled at writing crisp, neutral, encyclopedic prose... even if they still can't write a decent letter to their parents.
Somehow I suspect this would be a lot more trouble than it's worth. If someone is that antisocial that they're not trusted enough to become an admin, then perhaps they should look to themselves. Wikipedia is not group therapy.
Ond of the advantages of making adminship more open would be that more people would learn to be skillful, neutral administrators.
Where is the problem that would warrant this?
-- ambi
On 7/2/05, Rebecca misfitgirl@gmail.com wrote:
What purpose does this serve? It builds adminship up into some sort of huge thing that it isn't. If you generally behave yourself and make a few good edits, you become an admin. It really isn't very hard.
[snip]
No. Doing the proposed would make adminship less of a big deal, becuause it would cause adminship to eventually include all trustworthy users.
Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not abusing the tools long ago...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Uncle_G http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Eequor_%282nd%... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/ScudLee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Pedant
On 03/07/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not abusing the tools long ago...
There's a difference?
Dan
Dan Grey wrote:
On 03/07/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not abusing the tools long ago...
There's a difference?
I think you misunderstood. I think he meant: adminship stopped being about X long ago, where X is a well-behaved editor who doesn't abuse the administrative tools.
And I quite agree. Adminship is primarily about getting more Support votes than Oppose votes. Currently there is little relation between an "oppose" vote and an indication of ill behaviour or abuse of the tools.
Timwi
From: Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com
No. Doing the proposed would make adminship less of a big deal, becuause it would cause adminship to eventually include all trustworthy users.
Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not abusing the tools long ago...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Uncle_G http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Eequor_%282nd%... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/ScudLee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Pedant
Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy; someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so. And consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.
Jay.
Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy; someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so. And consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.
How is a majority vote NOT consensus?
---------------------------------------------- Nathan J. Yoder http://www.gummibears.nu/ http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key ----------------------------------------------
Nathan J. Yoder (njyoder@energon.org) [050704 06:09]:
Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy; someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so. And consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.
How is a majority vote NOT consensus?
The idea is that an overwhelming majority may *indicate* consensus. For RFA, that's taken to mean >80%; 75-80% is at bureaucrat discretion.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
The idea is that an overwhelming majority may *indicate* consensus. For RFA, that's taken to mean >80%; 75-80% is at bureaucrat discretion.
- d.
Hopefully we have to have trust in the bureacrats when it comes to RFA's that are 75-80% because those are the ones that are normally controversial and pose a real challenge on the decision of whether they should be approved or not. For the most part I trust the bureacrats to make the decision but would have no problem letting them know if I ever disagreed with their decision.
-Jtkiefer
Jtkiefer (jtkiefer@wordzen.net) [050704 06:43]:
David Gerard wrote:
The idea is that an overwhelming majority may *indicate* consensus. For RFA, that's taken to mean >80%; 75-80% is at bureaucrat discretion.
Hopefully we have to have trust in the bureacrats when it comes to RFA's that are 75-80% because those are the ones that are normally controversial and pose a real challenge on the decision of whether they should be approved or not. For the most part I trust the bureacrats to make the decision but would have no problem letting them know if I ever disagreed with their decision.
And in practice, this is precisely what happens ;-)
- d.
On 7/3/05, Nathan J. Yoder njyoder@energon.org wrote:
How is a majority vote NOT consensus?
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/consensus
A majority is not consensus. True consensus requires a unanimous decision.
As the community size becomes large the probability of a unanimous decision becomes infinitesimal and the ability of one member to block a decision becomes a target for disruption. Because of this it is often advantageous to use a near-consensus system in place of a true consensuses system. A correctly working near consensus system achieves the most of the ethical grant of power of a true consensus system, but with a reduced vulnerability to obstruction.
For many of our votes in the community, Wikipedia uses a two stage near-consensus process which is highly effective. For example, VFD: Members of the community state both their 'vote' and their position and have an ability to discuss their votes and change their votes in an open environment that is free of true coercion. Once the vote is complete, a trusted and experienced member of the community studies the votes and looks for a highly substantial majority one way or another, attempts to exclude votes which were probably made in bad faith or are really voting about something unrelated to the issue. If this person fails to find a clear consensus they take the action which is the least harming and most reversible. The result of that decision and who made it is visible to the entire community who are entitled to ask reasonable questions about the decision, and furthermore the decision can be unilateral undone by any other member in the trusted subset, after which another stage of near-consensus decision making may take place.
This process works beautifully as long as a few simple criteria are met.
One is that we don't worry too much about lone objectors, because by paying too much attention to them grant we would grant them a fantastic disruptive power... and that in a large open community the probability of a true lone objector actually having a valid complaint is fairly low because at least one other person is usually willing to carry the flag of the oppressed.
The second requirement is that there clearly be a safe way to fail... Consensus decision making fails when inaction is potentially worse than action. I think in general the community realizes this, so you see the nearness of required consensus vary from subject to subject.
As the community size becomes large the probability of a unanimous decision becomes infinitesimal and the ability of one member to block a decision becomes a target for disruption.
That's very true, which is why it seems silly to call it a 'consensus' rather than a super majority. There should be official policy somewhere outlining exactly what percentage of votes is needed to pass a given thing (e.g. "four-fifths majority is required to appoint an admin").
For many of our votes in the community, Wikipedia uses a two stage near-consensus process which is highly effective. For example, VFD: Members of the community state both their 'vote' and their position and have an ability to discuss their votes and change their votes in an open environment that is free of true coercion.
What about cases where people are being recruited to vote on something like that? I've seen at least one VfD where people were recruited from another source of like-minded people to skew the vote. I'm not sure there is something that can be done about that without potential for abuse, but it's a shady thing to do.
Once the vote is complete, a trusted and experienced member of the community studies the votes and looks for a highly substantial majority one way or another, attempts to exclude votes which were probably made in bad faith or are really voting about something unrelated to the issue. If this person fails to find a clear consensus they take the action which is the least harming and most reversible.
So a simple majority on VfD is not enough? As I explained above, there's a problem with POV pushers grouping together and recruiting to vote. The problem is that often POV pushers are willing to put more effort into getting their way than the non-POV pushers, thus while you will get disinterested "third party" votes, they can easily become overwhelmed since your average person doesn't care as much to vote as your POV pusher does.
---------------------------------------------- Nathan J. Yoder http://www.gummibears.nu/ http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key ----------------------------------------------
On 04/07/05, Nathan J. Yoder njyoder@energon.org wrote:
As the community size becomes large the probability of a unanimous decision becomes infinitesimal and the ability of one member to block a decision becomes a target for disruption.
That's very true, which is why it seems silly to call it a 'consensus' rather than a super majority. There should be official policy somewhere outlining exactly what percentage of votes is needed to pass a given thing (e.g. "four-fifths majority is required to appoint an admin").
I'm not sure if there's a single list (never looked too closely at policy pages), but from WP:RFA > About RFA > Nomination Process - "Nominations usually remain for seven days, for votes and comments. Bureaucrats may at their discretion extend this when consensus is unclear; the threshold for consensus on this page is roughly 80 percent support."
For many of our votes in the community, Wikipedia uses a two stage near-consensus process which is highly effective. For example, VFD: Members of the community state both their 'vote' and their position and have an ability to discuss their votes and change their votes in an open environment that is free of true coercion.
What about cases where people are being recruited to vote on something like that? I've seen at least one VfD where people were recruited from another source of like-minded people to skew the vote. I'm not sure there is something that can be done about that without potential for abuse, but it's a shady thing to do.
From the deletion guidelines: "For example, administrators can
disregard votes and comments if they feel that there is strong evidence that they were not made in good faith. Such "bad faith" votes include those being made by sock puppets, being made anonymously, or being made using a new userid whose only edits are to the article in question and the voting on that article."
It depends. Again, I haven't paid much attention to VfD lately, other than pages I brought there - I simply don't have the time - but used to trawl it daily. From my recollection... Lots of articles, usually vanity ones about an individual or organisation (*especially* ones involving some kind of internet forum) got placed on VfD and hit by a lot of new users, anons, &c voting keep. [pokes around] Here's an example:
Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Charles_Mason_(Revolutionary)
Thirteen keep, nine delete; not a "clear consensus" Decision to delete. Why? Every one of the keep votes was a new or anon. user, often with inspired arguments (I particularly like one which summarised as "Wikipedia should keep this because it was supressed by the capitalist media so they can't verify it"), versus every delete vote was by an established user (I recognised six of the nine names, offhand). So you have a community consensus - delete - and a background noise.
Is it right to do this? Yes, I suspect. It's an infinitely gamable system, otherwise; the potential for abuse by ignoring such users is less than the potential for abuse through sockpuppetry.
It's worth noting that floods of anonymous and new users very rarely show up to vote "keep" on articles which get established during VfD as being borderline notable - usually this is limited only to articles which are otherwise reasonably indefensible. What that may be construed as, of course, is for the reader.
(Incidentally, going through old VfDs, I found Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Race_and_intelligence - does anyone else get a weird problem displaying that page? I think there's an unmatched <s></s> tag somewhere, and as a result it doesn't even display an edit tab...)
On 7/3/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
No. Doing the proposed would make adminship less of a big deal, becuause it would cause adminship to eventually include all trustworthy users.
Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not abusing the tools long ago...
Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy; someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so. And consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.
Consensus is a fantastic method for governance when the decision is something with directly effects everyone... it is perhaps the only method for governance where it is possible to act without ethical compromises.
However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction is less harmful than action.
In the case of those adminships, there was no consensus to admin but there was also no consensus to fail to admin. Because adminship is no big deal, and because the natural state of a longtime and trustworthy user should be as an admin, it would be reasonable to argue that the correct result of a no consensus adminship should be adminning.
The adminships I cited were not just random failures: In each of the cited the reasons given by the oppose were cited by a fair number of the supporters as not reasons to oppose. In each of the cases the support community contained a group of wikipedians at least as well respected and as experienced as users in the opposed camp.
By failing to act on these adminships we have done a great disservice to the Wikipedia community. Short of actually being adminned, these users will have no way of proving themselves. (that much is clear, at least one of them had a failed prior adminship due to real issues and put in an additional year of hard work before someone renominated).
The complex popularity game that it takes to become an admin turns adminship into something it should not be, a big deal... and it is our duty to tack action to fix that.
From: Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com
Consensus is a fantastic method for governance when the decision is something with directly effects everyone... it is perhaps the only method for governance where it is possible to act without ethical compromises.
However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction is less harmful than action.
Which is clearly the case, given that there are no real problems with the existing situation, and 500 admins and growing to take care of admin duties.
In the case of those adminships, there was no consensus to admin but there was also no consensus to fail to admin. Because adminship is no big deal, and because the natural state of a longtime and trustworthy user should be as an admin, it would be reasonable to argue that the correct result of a no consensus adminship should be adminning.
Exactly. And the people who are denied adminship are generally either not longterm or not trustworthy. Of course there will be exceptions to this, but these are few and far between. If we radically re-vamp existing processes with very low error rates in an attempt to achieve perfection, we are fooling ourselves; no process is perfect, none will ever be, and the likelihood that a new process will achieve fewer errors is low.
The adminships I cited were not just random failures:
There's no evidence they were "failures" at all.
In each of the cited the reasons given by the oppose were cited by a fair number of the supporters as not reasons to oppose. In each of the cases the support community contained a group of wikipedians at least as well respected and as experienced as users in the opposed camp.
i.e. There was no consensus.
By failing to act on these adminships we have done a great disservice to the Wikipedia community.
This is simply hyperbole.
Short of actually being adminned, these users will have no way of proving themselves. (that much is clear, at least one of them had a failed prior adminship due to real issues and put in an additional year of hard work before someone renominated).
The community changes and evolves; there are many cases of people who failed at amin nominations the first time, only to be accepted the second time, so there is clearly no systemic issue here. Rather, these individual cases raised specific and individual concerns that had not been adequately dealt with at the time of nomination.
The complex popularity game that it takes to become an admin turns adminship into something it should not be, a big deal... and it is our duty to tack action to fix that.
No, it turns it into what it should be; a process for ensuring that admins are trusted by the community and created by consensus. There is no duty to take action to fix something that it not broken; on the contrary, it is our duty to ensure that working processes are not damaged by those seeking solutions to non-existent problems which will not improve Wikipedia as an encyclopedia.
Jay.
On 7/4/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction is less harmful than action.
Which is clearly the case, given that there are no real problems with the existing situation, and 500 admins and growing to take care of admin duties.
There are many axis to consider harm. For example, after making 2000+ edits, failing to abuse procedure, no vandalism, etc.. A user goes up for adminship and is denied. We have 500 admins, why not one more? *Most* people would feel hurt by that.
I'd call that harm.
Obviously we can't just make everyone admins because their feelings would be hurt otherwise... but I think that in cases where a user is likely to abuse the tools after they've been around long enough for 2k edits that it is abundantly clear. In these cases we see unanimous or near unanimous opposition.
In other cases, I think we should give the user a chance to prove themselves as an admin. That the risk of a vandal becoming an admin is infinitesimal at that point, and the the risk of bruising a valuable editors ego is more important.
Exactly. And the people who are denied adminship are generally either not longterm or not trustworthy. Of course there will be exceptions to this, but these are few and far between. If we radically re-vamp existing processes with very low error rates in an attempt to achieve perfection, we are fooling ourselves; no process is perfect, none will ever be, and the likelihood that a new process will achieve fewer errors is low.
I think the people which are unilatterly or near unilaterly denied adminship are potentially not trustworthy. Many of the no consensus users eventually become admins on the second go around, they aren't different people... Usually they just used the time to get to know a few more admins to help their support base. That isn't a bad thing, but it isn't how we should decide adminship. How much good will did we lose from them by denying them once?
Like I said above, I think you are measuring error incorrectly. Our current adminship probably detects all vandals, but it also misidentifies many good potential admins.
To make a more clear example: If the security at the airport simply shot all the passengers we would successfully stop all hijackers pretending to be passengers.
In any system of classification we must weigh both the false positives and the false negative to know the accuracy of the system.
The adminships I cited were not just random failures:
There's no evidence they were "failures" at all.
I meant failures in the sense that they failed adminship. I think it's pretty clear they were not made admins. :)
i.e. There was no consensus.
Yes. It appeared that you understood the point my message started with, that I think that we should accept in the case of no consensus not reject. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point out that there was no consensus when that's what I'm obviously talking about.
By failing to act on these adminships we have done a great disservice to the Wikipedia community.
This is simply hyperbole.
Well it certainly isn't intended to be... I do go on to provide an argument supporting that position.
The community changes and evolves; there are many cases of people who failed at amin nominations the first time, only to be accepted the second time, so there is clearly no systemic issue here. Rather, these individual cases raised specific and individual concerns that had not been adequately dealt with at the time of nomination.
As you point out, many of the no consensus people become admins eventually (the long term trend appears to be all of them). These are perfect examples of where the system has failed once, but worked on the second pass.
How much good will did that first rejection cause us?
No, it turns it into what it should be; a process for ensuring that admins are trusted by the community and created by consensus. There is no duty to take action to fix something that it not broken; on the contrary, it is our duty to ensure that working processes are not damaged by those seeking solutions to non-existent problems which will not improve Wikipedia as an encyclopedia.
or you can say that it is a process they denies a bunch of 'no big deal' permissions to people without any consensus to deny them, and one which insults the integrity of some of our most trustworthy contributors. (Clearly if they eventually pass it they are a trustworthy contributor, so that the process failed them the first time is not a success).
I think you are spending too much effort here defending the preexisting 'working process'. The goal of wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia, not a set of unchanging processes. I do not believe you have demonstrated how it will harm our goal of making an encyclopedia to grant adminship to people without near-consensus opposition.
From: Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com
On 7/4/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction is less harmful than action.
Which is clearly the case, given that there are no real problems with
the
existing situation, and 500 admins and growing to take care of admin
duties.
There are many axis to consider harm. For example, after making 2000+ edits, failing to abuse procedure, no vandalism, etc.. A user goes up for adminship and is denied. We have 500 admins, why not one more? *Most* people would feel hurt by that.
Can we deal with one specific case here?
Obviously we can't just make everyone admins because their feelings would be hurt otherwise... but I think that in cases where a user is likely to abuse the tools after they've been around long enough for 2k edits that it is abundantly clear. In these cases we see unanimous or near unanimous opposition.
In many cases, I've seen rather mixed reviews, with significant numbers on both sides, and those who oppose (often on purely policy related concerns) being treated rather harshly by supporters.
In other cases, I think we should give the user a chance to prove themselves as an admin. That the risk of a vandal becoming an admin is infinitesimal at that point, and the the risk of bruising a valuable editors ego is more important.
They have a chance to prove themselves as an editor, and again, I see a bizarre imbalance here. We rarely show this much concern about bruising the egos of valuable admins, who have *already proved themselves*; instead, we accept with equanimity baseless accusations of "abuse" and cliques", or bend over backwards tut-tutting about admins possibly slipping from impossibly high standards at one point or another. But let one controversial "valuable editor"'s ego become bruised because they *weren't* accepted as an admin, and suddenly we have a HUGE problem which must be fixed by overturning all the rules by which and admin is created, and letting everyone become an admin.
Exactly. And the people who are denied adminship are generally either
not
longterm or not trustworthy. Of course there will be exceptions to
this,
but these are few and far between. If we radically re-vamp existing processes with very low error rates in an attempt to achieve perfection,
we
are fooling ourselves; no process is perfect, none will ever be, and the likelihood that a new process will achieve fewer errors is low.
I think the people which are unilatterly or near unilaterly denied adminship are potentially not trustworthy. Many of the no consensus users eventually become admins on the second go around, they aren't different people... Usually they just used the time to get to know a few more admins to help their support base. That isn't a bad thing, but it isn't how we should decide adminship. How much good will did we lose from them by denying them once?
No, they don't get to know a few more admins; rather, they make a quite a few more edits demonstrating their trustworthiness, or even improve their editing ways, removing previous objections.
Like I said above, I think you are measuring error incorrectly. Our current adminship probably detects all vandals, but it also misidentifies many good potential admins.
Again, this is just an opinion. With any screening system there is a risk of false positives; I argue that the the number of "good potential admins" who are screened out are small, as opposed to the suggested new system, where huge numbers of negatives will come flooding in.
To make a more clear example: If the security at the airport simply shot all the passengers we would successfully stop all hijackers pretending to be passengers.
Um, maybe that's clear, but it's not a relevant analogy. A more relevant one would be that you are suggesting that we shouldn't subject airplane passengers to security checks at all, because the vast majority of people screened are not hijackers at all, and we risk bruising all their egos.
i.e. There was no consensus.
Yes. It appeared that you understood the point my message started with, that I think that we should accept in the case of no consensus not reject. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point out that there was no consensus when that's what I'm obviously talking about.
Consensus is required for change; that's pretty standard in Wikipedia.
As you point out, many of the no consensus people become admins eventually (the long term trend appears to be all of them). These are perfect examples of where the system has failed once, but worked on the second pass.
No it's a perfect example of the system working; the people do whatever is required to gain trust, and in so doing become more trustworthy.
How much good will did that first rejection cause us?
How many positive changes to editing patterns did it engender in those candidates who were rejected?
(Clearly if they eventually pass it they are a trustworthy contributor, so that the process failed them the first time is not a success).
Nothing clear about that at all; more likely they cleaned up their act.
I do not believe you have demonstrated how it will harm our goal of making an encyclopedia to grant adminship to people without near-consensus opposition.
I belive I have demonstrated the *potential* for huge harm. And I do not believe you have demonstrated how it will help our goal of making an encyclopedia to grant adminship to people without near-consensus opposition. In fact, the arguments I hear are all about philosophy and feelings, not about how article content will improve.
Jay.
On 7/4/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
There are many axis to consider harm. For example, after making 2000+ edits, failing to abuse procedure, no vandalism, etc.. A user goes up for adminship and is denied. We have 500 admins, why not one more? *Most* people would feel hurt by that.
I'd call that harm.
Obviously we can't just make everyone admins because their feelings would be hurt otherwise... but I think that in cases where a user is likely to abuse the tools after they've been around long enough for 2k edits that it is abundantly clear. In these cases we see unanimous or near unanimous opposition.
In other cases, I think we should give the user a chance to prove themselves as an admin. That the risk of a vandal becoming an admin is infinitesimal at that point, and the the risk of bruising a valuable editors ego is more important.
If an editor's ego is bruised by failing their first RfA, then I'd say that either their ego is too fragile for them to be a good admin, or they bring too much ego to the project in the first place.
Reaction to a failed admin bid is probably the best indicator of who's likely to be a good or bad admin. Too bad we can't see that reaction before selecting admins. ;-)
From: Rebecca misfitgirl@gmail.com
Ond of the advantages of making adminship more open would be that more people would learn to be skillful, neutral administrators.
Where is the problem that would warrant this?
And in my view, more importantly, why do people keep forgetting why Wikipedia exists? It's not intended to be a training ground for "skillfull, neutral administrators", but rather, an Encyclopedia. The philosophical underpinnings are a method of producing that goal, but they are not the goal itself. Changes which are purely for philosophical reasons, do not solve any apparent problems, and do not relate to achieving that goal, are simply not warranted.
Jay.
Rebecca wrote:
There is no fundamental reason not to apply soft security to adminship.
That it's unnecessary, for starters. What we have now works fine. Changing that creates a whole lot of security problems that we just don't need - particularly with no compelling reason to change in the first place.
You are asserting that "what we have now works fine" even though I have already mentioned numerous times why I think it does *not* work fine. I have provided what I think is a compelling reason to change in the first place.
What purpose does this serve? It builds adminship up into some sort of huge thing that it isn't.
I think you misunderstood the proposal then. Imagine you're a writer for a proprietary encyclopedia, let's say Encarta. This is a prestigious position, because they use strict criteria to select their editors. To be an editor on Wikipedia is less of a "thing" because anyone can come in and edit. Consequently, lowering the bar for entry to adminship will make adminship into less of a "thing".
(Incidentally I also think the concept of "adminship" should be renamed to something less prestigious-sounding, perhaps "priv" (after LiveJournal) or "high-ID" (after eMule), or perhaps an entirely made-up initially-meaningless name, but that's food for another discussion some other time.)
If you generally behave yourself and make a few good edits, you become an admin.
No, you don't -- that's what I've been saying all the time. You need a ridiculous amount of edits to become an admin (apparently more than 642 and more than 1.7 per day), no matter how well you generally behave yourself throughout a whole year.
It also isn't very helpful to continually hang an axe over the head of good users, in regard to their adminship in this case.
I don't think my proposal is advocating anything of the sort, unless you would refer to the current threat of being blocked for inappropriate behaviour as "hanging an axe over their head" too.
The Open Directory Project continually hung an axe over people - and they left as a result, in droves. Let us not make the same mistake.
I suppose we're doing the other extreme (high bar for entry to adminship and even higher bar for getting "axed out" of adminship) - and we have rather few good admins as a result (500 out of 25500, less than 2%, isn't very much for something that's supposedly "no big deal"). That's the mistake on the other side of the spectrum...
If someone isn't doing something *seriously* wrong, their only *need* to have anything to do with meta stuff at all is to request adminship.
So according to that, having "only" 600 edits is "doing something seriously wrong"...
Somehow I suspect this would be a lot more trouble than it's worth. If someone is that antisocial that they're not trusted enough to become an admin, then perhaps they should look to themselves. Wikipedia is not group therapy.
Here, for once, I agree with you. People should not be admins unless they're willing to learn what it takes to be a good admin. But if someone already *has* the qualification to be a good admin, simply by being a normal average rational sensible reasonable common-sense human being with no history of any wrongdoing, they should be an admin.
One of the advantages of making adminship more open would be that more people would learn to be skillful, neutral administrators.
Where is the problem that would warrant this?
Agree here too. But this is not an argument against my proposal. :)
Greetings, Timwi
It also isn't very helpful to continually hang an axe over the head of good users, in regard to their adminship in this case.
I don't think my proposal is advocating anything of the sort, unless you would refer to the current threat of being blocked for inappropriate behaviour as "hanging an axe over their head" too.
She considers any threat to her adminship extreme, even if it's perfectly justified. If adminship really isn't that big of a deal, then a hanging axe shouldn't be a big deal either since they'd only be losing something that doesn't matter much. Her own logic works against her. Admins are a dime a dozen really and Wikipedia isn't going to fall apart even if Wikipedia suddenly lost half its admins.
I agree with the approach of making the admin position even less of a big deal, since that would make it less abuse prone due to the psychological aspect of having 'special powers' being lessened and it would allow for more accountability since being on equal grounding means people are more likely to report and follow through with abuse.
The Open Directory Project continually hung an axe over people - and they left as a result, in droves. Let us not make the same mistake.
I suppose we're doing the other extreme (high bar for entry to adminship and even higher bar for getting "axed out" of adminship) - and we have rather few good admins as a result (500 out of 25500, less than 2%, isn't very much for something that's supposedly "no big deal"). That's the mistake on the other side of the spectrum...
Yeah and the opposite action is horrible. The bar for getting removed most certainly should not be lower than what it took to get in and it shouldn't be held to a lower standard than users. It really doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to do that and only serves to remove accountability for admins.
I have to wonder, why does ambi think that admins are so valuable that it will matter if we lose some (aside from the obvious hidden motive)? No one will care and Wikipedia will continue functioning as normal because Wikipedia thrives mostly because of what non-admins do.
Her analogy to ODP is completely false. With ODP, you need special privileges just to edit. That was the issue, that the editors themselves were held to high standards. In this case, it's just the admins.
Even with admin status removed, you're still fully capable of edits, which is the primary purpose of Wikipedia. Really, if you're judging your importance in terms of being an admin instead of being a normal editor, then you really shouldn't be on Wikipedia as you're obviously viewing it in terms of power [tripping] rather than useful contributions. What's worse is that they'll try to rack up tons of minor edits in attempt to make themselves seem valuable, when it's really more of an image thing than anything else.
And yeah, being only 2% does make it a big deal.
Remove the importantance and emphasis on the power aspect of being an admin and you can only help Wikipedia.
---------------------------------------------- Nathan J. Yoder http://www.gummibears.nu/ http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key ----------------------------------------------
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
Rebecca wrote:
There is no fundamental reason not to apply soft security to adminship.
That it's unnecessary, for starters. What we have now works fine. Changing that creates a whole lot of security problems that we just don't need - particularly with no compelling reason to change in the first place.
You are asserting that "what we have now works fine" even though I have already mentioned numerous times why I think it does *not* work fine. I have provided what I think is a compelling reason to change in the first place.
Your argument boils down to this; it's not working fine because I think the bar is set too high.
The Open Directory Project continually hung an axe over people - and they left as a result, in droves. Let us not make the same mistake.
I suppose we're doing the other extreme (high bar for entry to adminship and even higher bar for getting "axed out" of adminship) - and we have rather few good admins as a result (500 out of 25500, less than 2%, isn't very much for something that's supposedly "no big deal"). That's the mistake on the other side of the spectrum...
Ah, but how many regularly active editors? Probably no more than 1000.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
You are asserting that "what we have now works fine" even though I have already mentioned numerous times why I think it does *not* work fine. I have provided what I think is a compelling reason to change in the first place.
Your argument boils down to this; it's not working fine because I think the bar is set too high.
Not quite. I don't just "think the bar is set too high". I think that there are many people who should be admins, but aren't BECAUSE the bar is set too high. The high bar is the cause of the problem; the resultant problem is having good folks not be admins.
and we have rather few good admins as a result (500 out of 25500, less than 2%).
Ah, but how many regularly active editors? Probably no more than 1000.
Ah, but how many regularly active admins? Probably no more than 20.
Timwi
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
JAY JG wrote:
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net
and we have rather few good admins as a result (500 out of 25500, less than 2%).
Ah, but how many regularly active editors? Probably no more than 1000.
Ah, but how many regularly active admins? Probably no more than 20.
According to the [[Wikipedia:List of administrators]], 390 are active, and 72 are "semi-active". Not surprisingly, a high percentage of Wikipedia's active editors are admins.
Jay.
I have reformulated this email, since it was censorred previously.
When asked why he blocked me, David Gerard responded by saying that he saw no community support for not blocking me. I suggest that this could be because of a chilling effect of blocking people who criticise admins.
I do not know how to make this point in a way which is more acceptable to the list. I hypothesis that if people are blocked for trying to hold admins accountable, the number of people trying to hold admins accountable will fall.
Norrath
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"When asked why he blocked me, David Gerard responded by saying that he saw no community support for not blocking me. I suggest that this could be because of a chilling effect of blocking people who criticise admins.
I do not know how to make this point in a way which is more acceptable to the list. I hypothesis that if people are blocked for trying to hold admins accountable, the number of people trying to hold admins accountable will fall.
Norrath"
I disagree, I see users question of admin's actions all the time, if you want proof just go to any one of the active admins' user talk pages and look, you'll see that even though they may not be the majority of discussions there will still be topics about their decisions whether it be blocking a user or reverts or protections on a page. I would show you diffs but I do not feel that it would be polite to post links to other users' pages in this situation.
-Jtkiefer
Norath Norath wrote:
I hypothesise that if people are blocked for trying to hold admins accountable, the number of people trying to hold admins accountable will fall.
This hypothesis is obviously true, because "If A then B" is always true whenever A is false.
In other words: People DO NOT get blocked for trying to hold admins accountable. Your hypothesis is working from this false assumption.
Although it is indeed the case that many people do find themselves blocked when they try to hold admins accountable for something, it is never directly the reason for the block. It is usually because the attempt to hold admins accountable is phrased in a way that many admins or other users find condescending or otherwise offensive.
And it's usually admins who decide at what place someone oversteps the bounds. And they usually feel that it's common sense where the bounds are...
Timwi