Fred's mail server and Wikimedia's mail server aren't talking.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net

David, please forward this to wikien-l@Wikipedia.org

Fred

On Oct 6, 2006, at 4:00 AM, David Gerard wrote:

Adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", as pretty much all admin actions are reversible; the idea is that if you're not going to go batshit with the tools, there's no reason for you not to have them. (I've actually lowered my personal bar for adminship after a couple of cases where people I had severe qualms about got their admin bit and proceeded to do okay with a bit of peer pressure the collegial advice of others.) The social and technical skills required are about those of a message board moderator, and whereas there are adults you'd never want to have that job, the skills are easily acquired by e.g. a sensible teenager.

And particularly this year, the ArbCom has had no compunction in removing the admin bit from those who need it removed. Removal is a big deal, but the AC is there for the social decisions that are big deals.

So the ever-expanding lists of requirements don't make sense. The lists above appear to be marks of the ideal admin, who is a bit like the ideal editor with added technical powers (and similarly doesn't exist). And this stuff really doesn't have a lot of bearing on whether they are likely to go batshit with the admin tools. They make adminship into a much bigger deal than it should be.

I personally think most people need three months' experience to get a feel for the place. But beyond that, in an ideal world every Wikipedia editor who's been around enough to get a feel for the place would have admin powers.

Please enlighten me as to why it is good for adminship to be a big-deal artificially scarce commodity.

The practice the Arbitration Committee has adopted of using "administrators" as administrators of mechanisms such as probation is probably part of the problem. Considerable maturity and discretion is required. These mechanism were adopted to give us some alternative to banning, but have the effect of transferring day to day responsibility to administrators. With more power comes the concern that those who exercise it are responsible.

Fred