In an effort to start some serious discussion on this, I present herewith some pros and cons of granting some form of commons adminship to wikipedia admins (including en, de, fr, and possibly other large wikipedis).
Pros
1. The wikipedias would benefit from better handling of commons vandalism that affects them. In particular, prominent non-main page vandalism could be addressed more quickly. 2. Commons would benefit from an influx of editors. Wikipedia editors would be more willing to become involved in commons knowing that they need not spend some weeks or months "paying their dues" as a non-admin editor. 3. The process of transfering suitable images to commons may go faster, benefitting all projects, due to an atmosphere of increased trust. 4. Wikipedia editors would become more aware of other languages and sister projects by virtue of working with their peers from these projects at commons. 5. I believe that there would be more rapid growth at commons, which I believe would be a good thing.
Cons
1. Some care would have to be taken to be sure that wikipedia admins are familiar with the differences between their wikipedia and commons, particularly the multilingual environment and the more restrictive copyright policy. A page on the differences between commons and each of the major wikipedias could be written to address this, much as was once done for h2g2 an Everything2 authors joining Wikipedia. 2. Some existing commons admins don't support the idea. 3. The "small wiki" culture at commons would change, and some people who moved to commons due to frustration with the size of their home Wikipedia may find that discouraging.
uc
On 9/14/05, uninvited@nerstrand.net uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
In an effort to start some serious discussion on this, I present herewith some pros and cons of granting some form of commons adminship to wikipedia admins (including en, de, fr, and possibly other large wikipedis).
Being granted administrator access is a sign of community respect, earned within the community. If you want the respect of other related project communities, participate in those other communities. I expect members of other Wikimedia communities to establish themselves at Wikipedia-EN before they get admin access.
If you don't like the requirements that each of the other communities establishes, don't try to short circuit their processes through discussion on the "parent project". Go there, and convince them it is in their best interest to grant common adminship. Don't start here and say "Hey, they should grant me adminship upon arrival". Here, I think the only appropriate discussion is whether Wikipedia-EN grants other projects' admins immediate access to our admin toolbox upon arrival. Just as they have no business telling us who to grant adminship to, we have no business telling them.
Even though adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", I'm opposed to any form of automatic common adminship on Wikipedia-EN for other project admins. If it truly is no big deal, then it should be no big deal to establish yourself anywhere you'd like to have admin tools. I just don't like the idea of getting additional access by peerage. It doesn't recognize the will of the individual communities involved.
The exception I see is for those who are personally chosen by Jimbo or a quorum of the Board for any reason they see fit.
On 9/14/05, Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
Being granted administrator access is a sign of community respect, earned within the community. If you want the respect of other related project communities, participate in those other communities. I expect members of other Wikimedia communities to establish themselves at Wikipedia-EN before they get admin access.
Why? I don't see what is accomplished by this. Right now, someone who has made 5,000 edits and is a well-known and trustworthy user on en.wiki, has to jump through all those hoops again on other projects just to prove "establishment" in the community or whatever. Admins are supposed to be trustworthy folks. If you already know that the person is trustworthy and uses the tools properly, what is accomplished by forcing them to "participate in those other communities" while vandalism is going unchecked?
If you don't like the requirements that each of the other communities
establishes, don't try to short circuit their processes through discussion on the "parent project". Go there, and convince them it is in their best interest to grant common adminship. Don't start here and say "Hey, they should grant me adminship upon arrival". Here, I think the only appropriate discussion is whether Wikipedia-EN grants other projects' admins immediate access to our admin toolbox upon arrival. Just as they have no business telling us who to grant adminship to, we have no business telling them.
I don't think anyone is trying to order anyone to do anything. He's just opening up the discussion. Besides, it would be nice if we could at least say that en.wiki has a general consensus in favor of this issue before we bring it to them. If we don't even agree, it won't make much sense to involve the commons.
Even though adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", I'm opposed to
any form of automatic common adminship on Wikipedia-EN for other project admins. If it truly is no big deal, then it should be no big deal to establish yourself anywhere you'd like to have admin tools.
When Jimbo said "This should be no big deal" he did *not* mean that it should be no big deal to go through some lengthly, arbitrarily defined, and legalistic procedures *multiple times* in order to get the power to revert project-wide vandalism. I think he meant that giving admin power to people who deserve it should be easy and noncontroversial. Wikipedia is not a federalist democracy, and as such, we are not a subdivided set of communities existing in a political arena trying to gain dominance over each other. In my view, a user who gets admin rights on Commons by virtue of his or her outstanding record on as an administrator of en.wiki would be one more user who can do vitally important work for the project *as a whole*, not someone who is there to enforce the views of en.wiki on this "other" community. Optimally, such a person would at least be familiar with the differing procedures on Commons, but as it stands, the security risks that The Uninvited Co brought up seem to justify some movement in this direction, imo. - Ryan
I think Ryan makes good points, but I think the real problem is that becoming an admin is too difficult in the first place. Whether it's making 5000 edits on EN or 500 edits on the commons, these are unnecessary requirements. Adminship should be granted to anyone who can be trusted not to screw things up, and the number of edits has no direct relevance on that point.
The fact that "adminship should be no big deal" should be a Wikimedia rule, at the foundation level. While the individual projects should have some leeway in enacting this rule (at least until the projects are better merged), I find it hard to see how someone who is an admin on the EN project could be denied adminship in the commons project. The reverse is probably also true, but I don't know enough about how hard/easy it is to get adminship on the commons.
That said, I think this thread is somewhat misdirected. This is really a Foundation issue. I suppose the Foundation isn't well enough organized to deal with it, though.
Anthony
On 9/15/05, Anthony DiPierro wikispam@inbox.org wrote:
That said, I think this thread is somewhat misdirected. This is really a Foundation issue. I suppose the Foundation isn't well enough organized to deal with it, though.
I don't think the ease of obtaining adminship needs to a core policy which the Foundation would ever have any reason to impose upon the projects. We don't even have globally agreed on written down cross-wiki policies for many of the things which could be regarded as core principles (policies like free licensing, NPOV, etc have been developed on the English Wikipedia, and many others, but not all Wikimedia projects, and it's increasingly becoming clear that not all projects recognise these as being policies outside of the English Wikipedia). I see this as an issue the global communities need to work out, not something people should be waiting for the Board to impose.
Angela.
G'day Anthony,
I think Ryan makes good points, but I think the real problem is that becoming an admin is too difficult in the first place. Whether it's making 5000 edits on EN or 500 edits on the commons, these are unnecessary requirements. Adminship should be granted to anyone who can be trusted not to screw things up, and the number of edits has no direct relevance on that point.
The fact that "adminship should be no big deal" should be a Wikimedia rule, at the foundation level. While the individual projects should have some leeway in enacting this rule (at least until the projects are better merged), I find it hard to see how someone who is an admin on the EN project could be denied adminship in the commons project. The reverse is probably also true, but I don't know enough about how hard/easy it is to get adminship on the commons.
I think if people could be de-adminned for obvious abuses (say, unblocking themselves) without going through ArbComm, we'd see the bar lowered significantly for adminship. Nobody wants to risk creating a rogue (or even rouge) admin.
<snip />
On 9/14/05, Anthony DiPierro wikispam@inbox.org wrote:
I think Ryan makes good points, but I think the real problem is that becoming an admin is too difficult in the first place. Whether it's making 5000 edits on EN or 500 edits on the commons, these are unnecessary requirements. Adminship should be granted to anyone who can be trusted not to screw things up, and the number of edits has no direct relevance on that point.
I got adminship with 3 months and 1070 edits (at the start) on english. I finished the rfa with around 1158. That really isn't as much as alot of people would lead you to believe. And yes, I did have several opposers for the edit count, and one or two ones that i feel had a good reason, not that I agreed with any of them, of course!
uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
In an effort to start some serious discussion on this, I present herewith some pros and cons of granting some form of commons adminship to wikipedia admins (including en, de, fr, and possibly other large wikipedis).
<snip>
Cons
<snip>
- The "small wiki" culture at commons would change, and some people
who moved to commons due to frustration with the size of their home Wikipedia may find that discouraging.
It was the "small wiki" culture at Commons (especially wrt. the number of administrators) that prompted the following exchange on #wikipedia (I'm ommitting as much as possible, and I have permission from the other party to do this):
Me:
One of the front page templates has been goatsed or something
crap, it's on commons
Them:
commons admin around?
block http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Mutant_Pig
goatseing the weather image on wikinews
ARGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Patoo.jpg NSFW
I just find it annoying that we are told to upload our images to commons if we can, and then this sort of thing happens
and there is no one available to sort it out
Given that there are a grand total of *77* admins on commons, a few more (in different timezones, from different projects) couldn't hurt. Commons is the one place where vandalism can occur that propgates through to other places, and the "native" admins are powerless to stop it.
On 14/09/05, uninvited@nerstrand.net uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
In an effort to start some serious discussion on this, I present herewith some pros and cons of granting some form of commons adminship to wikipedia admins (including en, de, fr, and possibly other large wikipedis).
No-one on this list has any influence over how adminship is awarded on the Commons. You're best bet is taking these issues up on the Commons Village pump.
Dan