Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to say something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want to defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will be (have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is irrelevant, because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the number 12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone, we have close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have over 2.4 million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know how many edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume that it is a very substantial number.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to something this big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies. Yet we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it is assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a different story). Of these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some can be found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others pop in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much that needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative structure, and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only natural that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks, whether they are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is especially onerous when every action is going to be viewed by people who will challenge it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid decisions that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some bad decisions will inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do you experiment with something new and untested? If there is to be change, what are the priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what point do we end the talking and decide to act?
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note that they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no right answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet, decisions have to be made.
Danny
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to say something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want to defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will be (have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is irrelevant, because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the number 12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone, we have close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have over 2.4 million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know how many edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume that it is a very substantial number.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to something this big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies. Yet we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it is assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a different story). Of these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some can be found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others pop in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much that needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative structure, and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only natural that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks, whether they are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is especially onerous when every action is going to be viewed by people who will challenge it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid decisions that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some bad decisions will inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do you experiment with something new and untested? If there is to be change, what are the priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what point do we end the talking and decide to act?
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note that they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no right answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet, decisions have to be made.
Danny
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
I think it's somewhat ridiculous to oppose an admin candidate for not showing obvious familiarity with some aspect of admin work that s/he may not even be interested in. (Opposing for showing that someone has repeatedly gone about it all wrong is a different matter.) I expect that anyone who has acted reasonably and responsibly in whatever they have done to that point will not suddenly go crazy when approaching a new task, and whatever beginners' mistakes may be made by someone who is generally acting like a reasonable person are probably easy to fix. No one should *have* to know everything before becoming an admin, just show themselves willing and able to find out how to do something before doing it.
-Kat who would be content to have adminship only for deleting and viewing deleted pages, really
Mgm,
I could agree with that. I think that maybe there ought to be multiple grades of admin, who have specific abilities. Part of the problem right now is that so many admins wield what might as well be "absolute power" when compared to a normal user.
For instance, why not have a "first grade" admin who have the power only to semiprotect articles (to protect from systemic anon-ip/newuser vandalism), not to lock talk pages at all (including user talk pages) and to impose blocks up to 48 hours but no longer? Make them ask for help if they see anything that needs anything longer or appears to be a problem?
You could have a lot more of those less-powerful admins handling many of the issues without worry about whether they went nuts, because even if they went nuts, there's be a lot less permanent damage they could do.
Parker
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to say something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want to defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will be (have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is
irrelevant,
because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the
number
12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone, we
have
close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have over
2.4
million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know how many edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume that
it
is a very substantial number.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to something this big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies. Yet we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it is assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a different story). Of these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some can
be
found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others pop in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much
that
needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative structure, and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only
natural
that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks, whether
they
are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is especially onerous when every action is going to be viewed by people who will challenge it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid decisions that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some bad decisions will inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do
you
experiment with something new and untested? If there is to be change, what are the priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what
point
do we end the talking and decide to act?
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note
that
they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no right answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet, decisions have to be made.
Danny
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The example you listed is particularly prone to confusing rules and stuff. It's best to determine whether to give someone a specific power without any artificial restrictions. That way the editor can apply for some powers and explain why they need them and show their expertise in that particular field.
Does anyone know why the proposal failed? I seem to remember it did. If nominations are drying up, the current system isn't scaling and if WP is growing we need more admins to do housekeeping.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Mgm,
I could agree with that. I think that maybe there ought to be multiple grades of admin, who have specific abilities. Part of the problem right now is that so many admins wield what might as well be "absolute power" when compared to a normal user.
For instance, why not have a "first grade" admin who have the power only to semiprotect articles (to protect from systemic anon-ip/newuser vandalism), not to lock talk pages at all (including user talk pages) and to impose blocks up to 48 hours but no longer? Make them ask for help if they see anything that needs anything longer or appears to be a problem?
You could have a lot more of those less-powerful admins handling many of the issues without worry about whether they went nuts, because even if they went nuts, there's be a lot less permanent damage they could do.
Parker
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in
a
specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give
people
the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to say something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want
to
defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will be (have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is
irrelevant,
because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the
number
12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone, we
have
close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have over
2.4
million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know how many edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume that
it
is a very substantial number.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to something this big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies.
Yet
we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it
is
assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a different story). Of these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some
can
be
found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others
pop
in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much
that
needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative
structure,
and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only
natural
that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks, whether
they
are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is
especially
onerous when every action is going to be viewed by people who will challenge it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid
decisions
that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some bad decisions will inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do
you
experiment with something new and untested? If there is to be change, what are the priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what
point
do we end the talking and decide to act?
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note
that
they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no
right
answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet,
decisions
have to be made.
Danny
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Really? I don't see how it's prone to confusing rules. They simply won't see the option - or they'll get an error - if they try to do something they don't have the power to do.
Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that one day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the next day being able to do all these amazing things. Imagine if you one day woke up with x-ray vision: your first thought would probably be to use it on your hot next-door neighbor, wouldn't it?
I'd consider my proposal sort of a "training wheels" time for new admins, so they can work with the tools and get used to it without being able to cause too much havoc. It wouldn't stop those who deliberately gamed the system to get admin power, if they are determined, but it might stop some of those who are simply in over their heads or prone to having 'bad days'.
And it might help people lower their expectations, and get more candidates, if they weren't pushing them instantly to so heavy of a position.
Parker
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
The example you listed is particularly prone to confusing rules and stuff. It's best to determine whether to give someone a specific power without any artificial restrictions. That way the editor can apply for some powers and explain why they need them and show their expertise in that particular field.
Does anyone know why the proposal failed? I seem to remember it did. If nominations are drying up, the current system isn't scaling and if WP is growing we need more admins to do housekeeping.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Mgm,
I could agree with that. I think that maybe there ought to be multiple grades of admin, who have specific abilities. Part of the problem right now is that so many admins wield what might as well be "absolute power" when compared to a normal user.
For instance, why not have a "first grade" admin who have the power only to semiprotect articles (to protect from systemic anon-ip/newuser
vandalism),
not to lock talk pages at all (including user talk pages) and to impose blocks up to 48 hours but no longer? Make them ask for help if they see anything that needs anything longer or appears to be a problem?
You could have a lot more of those less-powerful admins handling many of the issues without worry about whether they went nuts, because even if they went nuts, there's be a lot less permanent damage they could do.
Parker
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar
in
a
specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give
people
the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to
say
something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want
to
defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will
be
(have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is
irrelevant,
because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the
number
12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone,
we
have
close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have
over
2.4
million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know
how many
edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume
that
it
is a very substantial number.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to
something
this big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies.
Yet
we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it
is
assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a
different
story). Of these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some
can
be
found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others
pop
in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much
that
needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative
structure,
and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only
natural
that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks,
whether
they
are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is
especially
onerous when every action is going to be viewed by people who will
challenge
it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid
decisions
that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some
bad
decisions will inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or
do
you
experiment with something new and untested? If there is to be
change,
what are the priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what
point
do we end the talking and decide to act?
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising.
Note
that
they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no
right
answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet,
decisions
have to be made.
Danny
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that one day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the next day being able to do all these amazing things. Imagine if you one day woke up with x-ray vision: your first thought would probably be to use it on your hot next-door neighbor, wouldn't it?
It been traditional for Wikipedia to have as many admins as possible without laxing our barriers to adminship too much. I think this is from the open source "many eyes catch all the bugs" school of thinking. The reason we are able to do this is because, as someone has already mentioned, all admin actions are recorded and reversible.
I also do not think that making it harder to become an admin would make some admins more civil. Many of the most curt admins (perhaps read "uncivil") have been with us for a long time. Clearly, their curtness has nothing to do with your X-ray effect and is more related to a jaded outlook.
I didn't suggest making it harder to become an admin.
I suggested making it easier for more people to have "some" power, without lowering the bar for people to attain the "absolute" power an adminship now entails.
I'm also suggesting that without the burden of such powers, perhaps some of the more incivil admins might be able to take a load off, relax, and leave the really heavy stuff to those who could handle it better and without being incivil.
Parker
On 10/6/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that
one
day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the
next
day being able to do all these amazing things. Imagine if you one day
woke
up with x-ray vision: your first thought would probably be to use it on your hot next-door neighbor, wouldn't it?
It been traditional for Wikipedia to have as many admins as possible without laxing our barriers to adminship too much. I think this is from the open source "many eyes catch all the bugs" school of thinking. The reason we are able to do this is because, as someone has already mentioned, all admin actions are recorded and reversible.
I also do not think that making it harder to become an admin would make some admins more civil. Many of the most curt admins (perhaps read "uncivil") have been with us for a long time. Clearly, their curtness has nothing to do with your X-ray effect and is more related to a jaded outlook. -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Parker Peters wrote:
I suggested making it easier for more people to have "some" power, without lowering the bar for people to attain the "absolute" power an adminship now entails.
I'm also suggesting that without the burden of such powers, perhaps some of the more incivil admins might be able to take a load off, relax, and leave the really heavy stuff to those who could handle it better and without being incivil.
The answer is simple. Since RfAr is considered a major roadblock to removing adminship, make it easier to do. Then, people who you may have trust issues with can be more easily promoted, because they can easily be removed. I'm much more likely to vote support on a candidate with a long history, but some questions about, if I know that if they abuse the tools or continually do the wrong thing, I can work to get them removed. That's not the case currently.
-Jeff
On 06/10/06, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
The answer is simple. Since RfAr is considered a major roadblock to removing adminship, make it easier to do. Then, people who you may have trust issues with can be more easily promoted, because they can easily be removed. I'm much more likely to vote support on a candidate with a long history, but some questions about, if I know that if they abuse the tools or continually do the wrong thing, I can work to get them removed. That's not the case currently.
In practice I don't think this is such a problem. I can think of a couple of people who are now admins who I had pretty much this qualm over, but who both shaped up fine after a slightly rocky start.
And deadminning is a much bigger deal than adminning by its nature.
- d.
On 6 Oct 2006, at 19:59, David Gerard wrote:
On 06/10/06, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
The answer is simple. Since RfAr is considered a major roadblock to removing adminship, make it easier to do. Then, people who you may have trust issues with can be more easily promoted, because they can easily be removed. I'm much more likely to vote support on a candidate with a long history, but some questions about, if I know that if they abuse the tools or continually do the wrong thing, I can work to get them removed. That's not the case currently.
In practice I don't think this is such a problem. I can think of a couple of people who are now admins who I had pretty much this qualm over, but who both shaped up fine after a slightly rocky start.
And deadminning is a much bigger deal than adminning by its nature.
Isn't it better to try to improve an Admin rather than just deadmin them, at least to start with? Deadmin should be a much rarer process.
Even Admins respond to feedback.
On 06/10/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 6 Oct 2006, at 19:59, David Gerard wrote:
In practice I don't think this is such a problem. I can think of a couple of people who are now admins who I had pretty much this qualm over, but who both shaped up fine after a slightly rocky start. And deadminning is a much bigger deal than adminning by its nature.
Isn't it better to try to improve an Admin rather than just deadmin them, at least to start with? Deadmin should be a much rarer process. Even Admins respond to feedback.
Well, yes!
I mean, there's more than one way to do it. On Meta, adminship is for a year at a time, for example. On sr:, admins aren't just janitors but have editorial decision powers. Etc.
People still complain that it's impossible to get rid of a bad admin when that's manifestly false. The ArbCom is *not* happy with cases of clear abuse of admin powers and does act when such are brought to its attention.
I think it's far better and simpler to make it relatively easy to become an admin, then remove the bad ones as and when they show it, than to require a process with ever-escalating requirements for adminship most of which have nothing to do with the powers in question in the hope that this will stop the problem before it occurs.
As I said, I've yet to hear a convincing reason why we wouldn't want most editors to have admin powers once they've got enough experience to know their way around. Admin powers are just more ability to do nuts'n'bolts things around the wiki.
- d.
I seem to remember proposals for limited-term adminship on here at some point, but it was a while back and got shouted down pretty quick...
I mean, there's more than one way to do it. On Meta, adminship is for a year at a time, for example. On sr:, admins aren't just janitors but have editorial decision powers. Etc.
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
I mean, there's more than one way to do it. On Meta, adminship is for a year at a time, for example. On sr:, admins aren't just janitors but have editorial decision powers. Etc.
I seem to remember proposals for limited-term adminship on here at some point, but it was a while back and got shouted down pretty quick...
The practical effects on en: would be (a) a lot of people with experience going "o rly? you do it then." (b) the people with no experience then enthusiastically recapitulating the entire history of wikistupid as they make all the same mistakes again; (c) lots of really bad process wars, like late 2005 all over again once more with feeling, for maybe a couple of years; (d) turning adminship into quite definitely A Big Deal.
It strikes me as a bad idea with not much reason if the problem is that RFA isn't promoting suitable candidates because they're making a big deal of it. I'd address the problem at the RFA end, and am presently attempting to do so.
- d.
That's because it would give more opportunities to argue when the year is up. While there would be some benefit to clearing out the deadwood, this serves no useful purpose in relation to active admins.
Assuming terms of one year, the idiots would make themselves obvious long before that. Those who use admin privileges sparingly but correctly, thus consistently flying under the radar, would be unjustifiably forced annually to run the gauntlet of the inhabitants at Requests for Adminship.
The first thing that I would scrap about adminships is the voting. Establish a few easily defined criteria for becoming an admin, and anyone who has met those criteria and wants to be an admin then only needs to ask and it will be granted. This simplicity would bolster the principle that adminship is no big deal. It would also be no big deal to de-sysop for absenteeism, because that person would only need to become active again in order to be reappointed.
Repeated incivility (however we choose to define that) could be a further basis for automatic desysopping, but that too can be reversed when the person (who can still make ordinary edits) shows an ability to get along with people.
Ec
Parker Peters wrote:
I seem to remember proposals for limited-term adminship on here at some point, but it was a while back and got shouted down pretty quick...
I mean, there's more than one way to do it. On Meta, adminship is for a year at a time, for example. On sr:, admins aren't just janitors but have editorial decision powers. Etc.
On 06/10/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
People still complain that it's impossible to get rid of a bad admin when that's manifestly false. The ArbCom is *not* happy with cases of clear abuse of admin powers and does act when such are brought to its attention.
I think it's far better and simpler to make it relatively easy to become an admin, then remove the bad ones as and when they show it, than to require a process with ever-escalating requirements for adminship most of which have nothing to do with the powers in question in the hope that this will stop the problem before it occurs.
Proposal: Arbcom states it is willing to desysop people on petition. X many admins, in a set time frame, are willing to sign their names to "This guy keeps doing X and Y and bringing the project into disrepute by so doing"? He's gone, and he can RFA if he wants the bit back. (Arbcom would have the power to say "go away" to frivolous complaints, of course)
Defining X would be tricky, but no doubt we could think of something. Equal to half the support votes on their RFA, in a few days?
This proposal is based on the key, and possibly fallacious, assumption that 90% of admins are sane sensible quiet people who know Acting Like A Tosser when it's pointed out to them. (Restricting it to admins isn't meant to be some kind of elegant blackball system for overriding RFA, just to get some guaranteed sanity involved...)
Thoughts?
On 06/10/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Proposal: Arbcom states it is willing to desysop people on petition. X many admins, in a set time frame, are willing to sign their names to "This guy keeps doing X and Y and bringing the project into disrepute by so doing"? He's gone, and he can RFA if he wants the bit back. (Arbcom would have the power to say "go away" to frivolous complaints, of course) This proposal is based on the key, and possibly fallacious, assumption that 90% of admins are sane sensible quiet people who know Acting Like A Tosser when it's pointed out to them. (Restricting it to admins isn't meant to be some kind of elegant blackball system for overriding RFA, just to get some guaranteed sanity involved...)
Given recent conflicts on the wiki, particularly the surprisingly nasty one on RFAr right now, I doubt it would *guarantee* sanity. It might be something.
But ... I'm still waiting for anything resembling verifiable evidence that there are clear targets for such a process. That is to say: evidence diffs of problematic behaviour, not just ranting on the mailing list that admins are an evil abusive cabal.
- d.
We were shown one the other day.
You dismissed the person who brought it up, and that killed the discussion. That didn't sit well with me at all. Killing the messenger is never acceptable.
I passed another to Jimbo directly and as far as I know he's looking at it or at least agrees the circumstances are troubling.
Now, never have I said that "admins are an evil abusive cabal." There are plenty who think they are doing the right thing. There are plenty that just have a Bad Day now and then. I'm sure there are plenty I've not noticed who probably don't disobey the rules.
However, those who have a Bad Day need to be censured for it if they don't apologize promptly. We need to correct the bad behavior, not justify it with excuses. We need to stop letting the problem ones, even if they are only a problem for a day before relatively regaining their senses, get away with it.
Parker
On 10/6/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/10/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Proposal: Arbcom states it is willing to desysop people on petition. X many admins, in a set time frame, are willing to sign their names to "This guy keeps doing X and Y and bringing the project into disrepute by so doing"? He's gone, and he can RFA if he wants the bit back. (Arbcom would have the power to say "go away" to frivolous complaints, of course) This proposal is based on the key, and possibly fallacious, assumption that 90% of admins are sane sensible quiet people who know Acting Like A Tosser when it's pointed out to them. (Restricting it to admins isn't meant to be some kind of elegant blackball system for overriding RFA, just to get some guaranteed sanity involved...)
Given recent conflicts on the wiki, particularly the surprisingly nasty one on RFAr right now, I doubt it would *guarantee* sanity. It might be something.
But ... I'm still waiting for anything resembling verifiable evidence that there are clear targets for such a process. That is to say: evidence diffs of problematic behaviour, not just ranting on the mailing list that admins are an evil abusive cabal.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
We were shown one the other day.
And you can be sure it was looked at, and if nothing happened then nobody cared.
You dismissed the person who brought it up, and that killed the discussion. That didn't sit well with me at all. Killing the messenger is never acceptable.
Because I have l33t powers, which is why you are no longer posting.
- d.
Testing to see if this gets through... and I do not appreciate your continued rudeness.
Parker
On 10/6/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
We were shown one the other day.
And you can be sure it was looked at, and if nothing happened then nobody cared.
You dismissed the person who brought it up, and that killed the
discussion.
That didn't sit well with me at all. Killing the messenger is never acceptable.
Because I have l33t powers, which is why you are no longer posting.
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Testing to see if this gets through... and I do not appreciate your continued rudeness.
I don't appreciate your continued querulousness, but it's useful as an object lesson in why the list got moderated the first time around.
What you're whining about is that Queeran's post (the character is what passes, btw, for creativity from Enviroknot; he kept making homophobic and anti-Muslim comments, so he thought we'd definitely never pick it was him if he pretended to be a GAY MUSLIM!! Then, when he was busted yet again, he started complaining on IRC ... using his home IP. Well done) got through to the list fine and then did not result in the admin in question immediately being taken out and shot.
Admin complaints get through fine, and several of the *many* admins on this list will look into them, but most are spurious and are not acted upon or commented upon after people have had a look at the issue. This is what *usually* happens. If you were an admin you'd have known this perfectly well.
I expect you to do better next time around.
- d.
On 06/10/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/10/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
This proposal is based on the key, and possibly fallacious, assumption that 90% of admins are sane sensible quiet people who know Acting Like A Tosser when it's pointed out to them. (Restricting it to admins isn't meant to be some kind of elegant blackball system for overriding RFA, just to get some guaranteed sanity involved...)
Given recent conflicts on the wiki, particularly the surprisingly nasty one on RFAr right now, I doubt it would *guarantee* sanity. It might be something.
But ... I'm still waiting for anything resembling verifiable evidence that there are clear targets for such a process. That is to say: evidence diffs of problematic behaviour, not just ranting on the mailing list that admins are an evil abusive cabal.
I dunno. I agree with the general broad thrust of this complaint; there are too many "young admins" generally being... overzealous. I'm not sure I can really quantify it, but I know the feeling.
(Maybe this is just me feeling a little burned out; I don't know. But there is something there, even if I don't feel it as strongly...)
On 10/6/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
People still complain that it's impossible to get rid of a bad admin when that's manifestly false. The ArbCom is *not* happy with cases of clear abuse of admin powers and does act when such are brought to its attention.
The ArbCom also seems to take a fairly narrow view of what constitutes "abuse", in the sense that disruptive behavior -- even *massively* disruptive behavior -- is ignored if it (a) seems to sort of work out in the end, (b) can be claimed as being "for the good of Wikipedia", or (c) both.
I think it's far better and simpler to make it relatively easy to become an admin, then remove the bad ones as and when they show it, than to require a process with ever-escalating requirements for adminship most of which have nothing to do with the powers in question in the hope that this will stop the problem before it occurs.
Actually, the current RFA is fairly successful in one respect: it's a decent filter against people who are likely to react explosively to pressure, which is actually pretty helpful. Having admins that lose their composure easily is not really the best idea, for obvious reasons.
On 06/10/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/6/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
People still complain that it's impossible to get rid of a bad admin when that's manifestly false. The ArbCom is *not* happy with cases of clear abuse of admin powers and does act when such are brought to its attention.
The ArbCom also seems to take a fairly narrow view of what constitutes "abuse", in the sense that disruptive behavior -- even *massively* disruptive behavior -- is ignored if it (a) seems to sort of work out in the end, (b) can be claimed as being "for the good of Wikipedia", or (c) both.
You mean, where they consider the "disruption" was the right thing, they consider it was the right thing? Well, uh, yeah.
(If you don't mean that, be specific about what you do mean.)
Actually, the current RFA is fairly successful in one respect: it's a decent filter against people who are likely to react explosively to pressure, which is actually pretty helpful. Having admins that lose their composure easily is not really the best idea, for obvious reasons.
There is a certain appeal to that at present. Mind you, overcompensating would be bad, and I wouldn't have picked *any* of the present participants as explosive.
- d.
On 06/10/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
There is a certain appeal to that at present. Mind you, overcompensating would be bad, and I wouldn't have picked *any* of the present participants as explosive.
"... at the time of their RFA, for sure."
- d.
On 10/6/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/10/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
The ArbCom also seems to take a fairly narrow view of what constitutes "abuse", in the sense that disruptive behavior -- even *massively* disruptive behavior -- is ignored if it (a) seems to sort of work out in the end, (b) can be claimed as being "for the good of Wikipedia", or (c) both.
You mean, where they consider the "disruption" was the right thing, they consider it was the right thing? Well, uh, yeah.
(If you don't mean that, be specific about what you do mean.)
No, I meant that they would overlook the disruption (which is generally not the best way of doing things, even if it happens to work out in the end) if the person responsible for it had good intentions.
This isn't necessarily consitent behavior, of course. In some cases (e.g. Anoranza) the ArbCom has decided that acting in good faith to improve the encyclopedia did not justify doing so in a disruptive manner; in other cases (e.g. the various iterations of the userbox affair) the disruptive effects of certain actions were ignored because the person responsible was acting in good faith to improve the encyclopedia.
David Gerard wrote:
On 06/10/06, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
The answer is simple. Since RfAr is considered a major roadblock to removing adminship, make it easier to do. Then, people who you may have trust issues with can be more easily promoted, because they can easily be removed. I'm much more likely to vote support on a candidate with a long history, but some questions about, if I know that if they abuse the tools or continually do the wrong thing, I can work to get them removed. That's not the case currently.
In practice I don't think this is such a problem. I can think of a couple of people who are now admins who I had pretty much this qualm over, but who both shaped up fine after a slightly rocky start.
Maybe a probation period is needed.
And deadminning is a much bigger deal than adminning by its nature.
That alone is a problem. The hoops that one must jump through to become an admin establish it as a big deal, even when we say it isn't.
Ec
And deadminning is a much bigger deal than adminning by its nature.
That alone is a problem. The hoops that one must jump through to become an admin establish it as a big deal, even when we say it isn't.
The hoops have gotten bigger and bigger over time.
It used to be, someone who'd been around and reliable had a shot.
Now, you have to get some group behind you (a pov pushing group or otherwise) to pad the vote count, you have to have not raised the ire of certain self-proclaimed "vandal fighters" by contradicting their trigger-happy and incivil behavior, and you have to satisfy an increasingly mind-bogglingly high edit count requirement.
But every time we bring this up, the debate goes on for about a week, and then it vanishes and nothing is ever done.
Parker
On 10/8/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
It used to be, someone who'd been around and reliable had a shot.
Still true.
Now, you have to get some group behind you (a pov pushing group or otherwise) to pad the vote count,
not so.
you have to have not raised the ire of certain self-proclaimed "vandal fighters" by contradicting their trigger-happy and incivil behavior,
How long have you been a Bobby Boulders sock?
and you have to satisfy an increasingly mind-bogglingly high edit count requirement.
nah that has been pretty steady for months.
But every time we bring this up, the debate goes on for about a week, and then it vanishes and nothing is ever done.
Well of course. So far it appears that RFA is the worst system except for all the others.
Parker Peters wrote:
It used to be, someone who'd been around and reliable had a shot.
Now, you have to get some group behind you (a pov pushing group or otherwise) to pad the vote count, you have to have not raised the ire of certain self-proclaimed "vandal fighters" by contradicting their trigger-happy and incivil behavior, and you have to satisfy an increasingly mind-bogglingly high edit count requirement.
But every time we bring this up, the debate goes on for about a week, and then it vanishes and nothing is ever done.
Did you seriously expect that it would be otherwise this time? Cleaning it up will take bold and courageous action by someone of fairly high stature.
Ec
On 6 Oct 2006, at 19:03, Oldak Quill wrote:
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that one day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the next day being able to do all these amazing things. Imagine if you one day woke up with x-ray vision: your first thought would probably be to use it on your hot next-door neighbor, wouldn't it?
It been traditional for Wikipedia to have as many admins as possible without laxing our barriers to adminship too much. I think this is from the open source "many eyes catch all the bugs" school of thinking. The reason we are able to do this is because, as someone has already mentioned, all admin actions are recorded and reversible.
I also do not think that making it harder to become an admin would make some admins more civil. Many of the most curt admins (perhaps read "uncivil") have been with us for a long time. Clearly, their curtness has nothing to do with your X-ray effect and is more related to a jaded outlook.
Also, people don't like change. The older Admins are used to the old way of working.
Parker Peters wrote:
Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that one day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the next day being able to do all these amazing things.
Oh sure, the ability to delete an unsourced picture of a penis is definitely an "amazing thing"...
By the power of this mop I declare my dominion over the Wikiverse!!
:-)
Stan
This is similar to the system we have on Wikiversity, actually. Anyone can nominate themselves for custodianship (our term for sysop), but a present custodian has to accept them for mentoring, and then they undergo a mentoring period for a number of weeks, after which the community can comment on their performance and decide if they can become a full sysop or not. Their actions generally come under further scrutiny during their mentorship period, and its assumed that they'll learn not to do anything stupid (of course, tests are acceptable and encouraged, I blocked myself for 10 minutes during my probation period to familiarise myself with it). It is, in essence, quite an effective system considering Wikiversity is just coming up.
On 10/7/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Really? I don't see how it's prone to confusing rules. They simply won't see the option - or they'll get an error - if they try to do something they don't have the power to do.
Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that one day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the next day being able to do all these amazing things. Imagine if you one day woke up with x-ray vision: your first thought would probably be to use it on your hot next-door neighbor, wouldn't it?
I'd consider my proposal sort of a "training wheels" time for new admins, so they can work with the tools and get used to it without being able to cause too much havoc. It wouldn't stop those who deliberately gamed the system to get admin power, if they are determined, but it might stop some of those who are simply in over their heads or prone to having 'bad days'.
And it might help people lower their expectations, and get more candidates, if they weren't pushing them instantly to so heavy of a position.
Parker
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
The example you listed is particularly prone to confusing rules and stuff. It's best to determine whether to give someone a specific power without any artificial restrictions. That way the editor can apply for some powers and explain why they need them and show their expertise in that particular field.
Does anyone know why the proposal failed? I seem to remember it did. If nominations are drying up, the current system isn't scaling and if WP is growing we need more admins to do housekeeping.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Mgm,
I could agree with that. I think that maybe there ought to be multiple grades of admin, who have specific abilities. Part of the problem right now is that so many admins wield what might as well be "absolute power" when compared to a normal user.
For instance, why not have a "first grade" admin who have the power only to semiprotect articles (to protect from systemic anon-ip/newuser
vandalism),
not to lock talk pages at all (including user talk pages) and to impose blocks up to 48 hours but no longer? Make them ask for help if they see anything that needs anything longer or appears to be a problem?
You could have a lot more of those less-powerful admins handling many of the issues without worry about whether they went nuts, because even if they went nuts, there's be a lot less permanent damage they could do.
Parker
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar
in
a
specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give
people
the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Mgm
On 10/6/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to
say
something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want
to
defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will
be
(have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is
irrelevant,
because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the
number
12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone,
we
have
close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have
over
2.4
million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know
how many
edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume
that
it
is a very substantial number.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to
something
this big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies.
Yet
we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it
is
assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a
different
story). Of these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some
can
be
found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others
pop
in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much
that
needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative
structure,
and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only
natural
that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks,
whether
they
are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is
especially
onerous when every action is going to be viewed by people who will
challenge
it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid
decisions
that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some
bad
decisions will inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or
do
you
experiment with something new and untested? If there is to be
change,
what are the priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what
point
do we end the talking and decide to act?
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising.
Note
that
they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no
right
answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet,
decisions
have to be made.
Danny
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Draicone wrote:
This is similar to the system we have on Wikiversity, actually. Anyone can nominate themselves for custodianship (our term for sysop), but a present custodian has to accept them for mentoring, and then they undergo a mentoring period for a number of weeks, after which the community can comment on their performance and decide if they can become a full sysop or not. Their actions generally come under further scrutiny during their mentorship period, and its assumed that they'll learn not to do anything stupid (of course, tests are acceptable and encouraged, I blocked myself for 10 minutes during my probation period to familiarise myself with it). It is, in essence, quite an effective system considering Wikiversity is just coming up.
This is why project autonomy is important. It increases the probability that at least one project may find a solution that works. It is still had to say how such a working solution will scale.
Ec
On 10/6/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Mgm,
I could agree with that. I think that maybe there ought to be multiple grades of admin, who have specific abilities. Part of the problem right now is that so many admins wield what might as well be "absolute power" when compared to a normal user.
For instance, why not have a "first grade" admin who have the power only to semiprotect articles (to protect from systemic anon-ip/newuser vandalism), not to lock talk pages at all (including user talk pages) and to impose blocks up to 48 hours but no longer? Make them ask for help if they see anything that needs anything longer or appears to be a problem?
Gradations are the wrong way to go about it. You may be giving people the tools they don't need, while at the same time denying them the tools they do. For example, I do a lot of work dealing with problem uploads. That means I need the ability to delete, undelete, and view deleted pages, and the ability to edit protected pages. On the other hand, I've got little use for protecting, unprotecting, and semi-protecting pages, or for blocking and unblocking users. Your "first grade" admin tools would be useless to me.
On the other hand, a newpages patroller needs the ability to block users, delete pages, and protect pages from creation, but is unlikely to need to undelete pages, unblock users, protect or unprotect existing pages, or edit protected pages. A recent-changes patroller needs the abilities of a newpages patroller, but also the ability to protect or semi-protect pages. A toolset tailored to my needs would be nearly useless to either of them.
The correct way to get rid of the appearance of "absolute power" is to have users specify the tools they want as part of their RfA application, and re-apply if they find they need a different set of tools.
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Even as screwed up as things are today with respect to RFA the fact remains that adminship is more about trust than about knowledge. If we can't *trust you* to refrain from breaking the site too badly than you should have exactly zero admin features.
That adminship is mostly is sometimes being obscured the fact that there is no clear way to measure trust... but breaking up adminship into little boxes will not solve that.
It is a shame because the tools of adminship are really tools which every experienced user acting in good faith should have. ... that was always the intent, .. Remember? "No big deal". But life has turned out so much more complex.
On 6 Oct 2006, at 20:51, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Even as screwed up as things are today with respect to RFA the fact remains that adminship is more about trust than about knowledge. If we can't *trust you* to refrain from breaking the site too badly than you should have exactly zero admin features.
That adminship is mostly is sometimes being obscured the fact that there is no clear way to measure trust... but breaking up adminship into little boxes will not solve that.
It is a shame because the tools of adminship are really tools which every experienced user acting in good faith should have. ... that was always the intent, .. Remember? "No big deal". But life has turned out so much more complex.
That's because people don't trust strangers, and most people on RfA are strangers.
Basically, paranoia is safer.
On 6 Oct 2006, at 20:56, Stephen Streater wrote:
On 6 Oct 2006, at 20:51, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Even as screwed up as things are today with respect to RFA the fact remains that adminship is more about trust than about knowledge. If we can't *trust you* to refrain from breaking the site too badly than you should have exactly zero admin features.
That adminship is mostly is sometimes being obscured the fact that there is no clear way to measure trust... but breaking up adminship into little boxes will not solve that.
It is a shame because the tools of adminship are really tools which every experienced user acting in good faith should have. ... that was always the intent, .. Remember? "No big deal". But life has turned out so much more complex.
That's because people don't trust strangers, and most people on RfA are strangers.
Basically, paranoia is safer.
I might also add that is why Wikignomes always get promoted, and exciting people who might actually make some progress have a tough time. People are risk averse when it comes to Admins.
On 10/6/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote: [snip]
It is a shame because the tools of adminship are really tools which every experienced user acting in good faith should have. ... that was always the intent, .. Remember? "No big deal". But life has turned out so much more complex.
That's because people don't trust strangers, and most people on RfA are strangers.
Basically, paranoia is safer.
Yes. This is a factor. I can think of .. um, one? Wikipedian I've met in person whom I wouldn't want to support for adminship, ... comfort is still very much a meat based thing for most people.
But it goes beyond the simple familiarity issue that you pointed out: As an RFA participant we're asked to state our trust about how the person for an indefinite time into the future when challenged with a potentially infinite spectrum of tasks under an infinite number of conditions. People change, our needs change... and as a result our process makes it unrealistically difficult to feel comfortable with an approval.
On 6 Oct 2006, at 21:04, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 10/6/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote: [snip]
It is a shame because the tools of adminship are really tools which every experienced user acting in good faith should have. ... that was always the intent, .. Remember? "No big deal". But life has turned out so much more complex.
That's because people don't trust strangers, and most people on RfA are strangers.
Basically, paranoia is safer.
Yes. This is a factor. I can think of .. um, one? Wikipedian I've met in person whom I wouldn't want to support for adminship, ... comfort is still very much a meat based thing for most people.
But it goes beyond the simple familiarity issue that you pointed out: As an RFA participant we're asked to state our trust about how the person for an indefinite time into the future when challenged with a potentially infinite spectrum of tasks under an infinite number of conditions. People change, our needs change... and as a result our process makes it unrealistically difficult to feel comfortable with an approval.
It is interesting how the psychology is set up. People could also be concerned about all the good decisions that might be lost if someone is not promoted. But as these never happen, they are easier to ignore individually.
But collectively, the conservative nature of Admin promotions is contributing to the problems we see. For examples, Admins don't generally choose to stand up and correct bad actions in other Admins - they are being selected to be inane and bland.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
Even as screwed up as things are today with respect to RFA the fact remains that adminship is more about trust than about knowledge. If we can't *trust you* to refrain from breaking the site too badly than you should have exactly zero admin features.
I agree
That adminship is mostly is sometimes being obscured the fact that there is no clear way to measure trust... but breaking up adminship into little boxes will not solve that.
I'm somewhat inclined to believe this. If you break adminship into five levels it will just mean five promootion levels for people to complain.
Ec
On Fri, 6 Oct 2006 12:47:01 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
I'm not sure. I've proposed, I think, two or three people for adminship, in each case because I was very confident that they would assume good faith and be fair-minded. That is, in my view, all you need. Everything else can be learned on the job.
Needless to say these people were voted down at RFA, for reasons entirely divorced from their fitness to do what the sysop bit allows, namely blocking where justified and deleting where necessary.
Obviously it's me who is at odds with consensus. I think that Stephen Streater in particular would be a fine admin, and if I can persuade William Pietri to accept a nomination I will be very happy. I bet somebody will find a reason to oppose even William.
But really I think that the peer-review process for admin actions is lacking. I am firmly of the view that we should talk more about what we do, and we desperately need to find a better way of dealing with trolls: either they get blocked immediately (which violates BITE) or we let them hang around until we get thoroughly fed up with them, in which case they poison everything they touch. Danny's right, though - these are dilemmas and there is no easy answer.
Guy (JzG)
On 6 Oct 2006, at 23:11, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 6 Oct 2006 12:47:01 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
I'm not sure. I've proposed, I think, two or three people for adminship, in each case because I was very confident that they would assume good faith and be fair-minded. That is, in my view, all you need. Everything else can be learned on the job.
Needless to say these people were voted down at RFA, for reasons entirely divorced from their fitness to do what the sysop bit allows, namely blocking where justified and deleting where necessary.
Obviously it's me who is at odds with consensus. I think that Stephen Streater in particular would be a fine admin, and if I can persuade William Pietri to accept a nomination I will be very happy. I bet somebody will find a reason to oppose even William.
That's very kind of you.
Needless to say, you do not meet the current requirement for blandness!
But really I think that the peer-review process for admin actions is lacking. I am firmly of the view that we should talk more about what we do, and we desperately need to find a better way of dealing with trolls: either they get blocked immediately (which violates BITE) or we let them hang around until we get thoroughly fed up with them, in which case they poison everything they touch. Danny's right, though - these are dilemmas and there is no easy answer.
Yes - there seems to be a stiff entry requirement followed by little accountability. Perhaps if we did it the other way round, we would get better service from our Admins.
Danny,
since you took the time to think about this, I've done the same before replying. Responses are inline, I hope this doesn't get too long.
On 10/6/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to say something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want to defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will be (have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is irrelevant, because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
Yes, it is a macro-issue, but it comes from many, many single instances I've seen while being an editor and later an admin.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia
is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the number 12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone, we have close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have over 2.4 million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know how many edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume that it is a very substantial number.
That might be part of it, but even when Wikipedia was smaller, the seeds of the problem I'm seeing were there.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to something this
big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies. Yet we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it is
assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a different story).
I'd beg to differ in one respect: I think admins are responsible for their own actions. And I think, since admins are the only ones who can safely combat or fix the problems caused by other admins, we're in trouble.
Of
these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some can be found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others pop in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
For now, consider me in the latter category.
As such, the burden is overwhelming.
I don't think it needs to be, nor should the size of the burden be an excuse for abuses or incivil behavior.
There is so much to do, so much that
needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative structure, and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only natural that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks, whether they are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out.
Agreed. But again, too often this "burn-out" has been used as an excuse to justify poor admin behavior rather than a notice to censure admins and get them to back off, take a breather, and come back fresh. I don't really care what the genesis of poor behavior is, if the result is that new editors are driven away from the project or incivility is tolerated, then it is a problem that can't be excused and needs to be fixed.
It is especially onerous
when every action is going to be viewed by people who will challenge it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid decisions that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some bad decisions will inevitably be made?
If you're willing to learn from your bad decisions and apologize if you are at fault, I don't think so. What I have a problem with is people who are unwilling to admit they made a mistake, unwilling to admit when they are at fault, and quite willing to attack anyone who differs with them.
Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once
worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do you experiment with something new and untested?
I would hope we risk the new and untested procedures, but I've rarely seen a new policy or procedure pass unless it actually increases admin power while decreasing admin responsibility. My problem I mentioned with the unblocking procedures is a case in point; we've set up so many roadblocks after someone got their panties in a wad seeing another admin unblock someone they hated, that now it's impossible to unblock an illegitimately blocked user in an expeditious fashion without the risk of being accused of incivility or wheel war incitement.
If there is to be change, what are
the priorities?
I would hope that the priority is to make a better encyclopedia and a more civil community, and maybe to tear down some bureaucratic roadblocks so that things can move more smoothly. I feel we have too many bumps in our collective road.
If there is to be discussion about change, at what point do we
end the talking and decide to act?
I don't know.
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note that
they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no right answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet, decisions have to be made.
Yes, decisions have to be made. I've made a few suggestions today that I hope will be taken seriously:
#1 - the creation of a "mini-admin" or "first grade" admin position, as a "training wheels" step for new admins, so that they have some power but not the total power an admin today has, to minimize the damage they can do while allowing them to learn the role of an admin.
#2 - Altering the account creation procedure so that all new registered editors immediately get the welcome notice, as well as a link to the dispute resolution page, so that they immediately have those items on hand and have some help readily available if Being Bold gets them into conflict with someone.
I'd also suggest that we take quite seriously warning template abuse: good faith edits should not receive "vandalism" warnings and so forth, and too many pov warriors still feel like they can call any edit they disagree with "vandalism" and get away with it.
These are my suggestions, trying to be helpful. You seem reasonable and I hope they are taken seriously.
Parker
Parker Peters wrote:
Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once
worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do you experiment with something new and untested?
I would hope we risk the new and untested procedures, but I've rarely seen a new policy or procedure pass unless it actually increases admin power while decreasing admin responsibility.
Being new by itself is not an adequate reason for adopting new procedures. The transclusion templates have been a big favorite among the geeks, but making editing difficult for everything else. I suppose you could say that that makes them admin friendly
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note that
they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no right answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet, decisions have to be made.
Yes, decisions have to be made. I've made a few suggestions today that I hope will be taken seriously:
#1 - the creation of a "mini-admin" or "first grade" admin position, as a "training wheels" step for new admins, so that they have some power but not the total power an admin today has, to minimize the damage they can do while allowing them to learn the role of an admin.
That would be fine if the problem were purely technical, but I don't think it will accomplish much in dealing with jerks.
Ec
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to say something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want to defend some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will be (have been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is irrelevant, because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue, and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our thinking.
I'm glad to see that you have grasped what is important in Parker's message.
I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the number 12 website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone, we have close to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have over 2.4 million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know how many edits we are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can only assume that it is a very substantial number.
Yep! According to [[List of countries by population]] this puts us between Oman and Latvia, and we have a bigger growth rate. :-)
There are dangers when you become big without ever having learned to think big. The governance principles that were fine for a small community may not have scaled very well in a large and diverse population.
No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to something this big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies. Yet we have to. That is the challenge.
There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it is assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't, since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a different story). Of these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some can be found patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others pop in for a few minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
That 1,015 is only for the ones on en:Wikipedia. Elsewhere different policies and procedures have developped which work just as well, and perhaps better. There is nothing to be alarmed about in the different rates of participation as long as those differences are not used as an excuse for making one person's efforts and ideas superior to those of another.
As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much that needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative structure, and the fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only natural that admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks, whether they are admins or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is especially onerous when every action is going to be viewed by people who will challenge it--and the admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid decisions that need to be made, one after the other, even if it means that some bad decisions will inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once worked quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do you experiment with something new and untested? If there is to be change, what are the priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what point do we end the talking and decide to act?
There are similarities between this and the way that Israelis make domestic and local decisions. (This has nothing to do with Palestinians, or Israel's foreign relations.) There are probably positive models that we can draw from their example. The situation can be completely maddening for a person whose job it is to implement policy.
The person who is comfortable in his own corner of the Wiki, and who is able to make decisions that are easily accepted by everyone in that sub-community, may be completely unsuitable to the task in a bigger community.
The problems need to be reviewed at the broadest possible level without descending to the point where all we are considering is individual pet peeves by people who can't look beyond their personal involvement. If a vandal fighter is so taken up by his role that every aspect of his involvement in Wikipedia is tainted by his vandal-fighting perspective, he has limited his usefulness to his own area of operation. He has a hard time seeing how his efforts fit in with everyone else's completely different efforts.
Most people challenge a decision because they do not feel temselves to be a part of the decision, though they may themselves be poor decision makers. Properly applied consensus can help make them a part of the decision. There will still be some people who challenge everything as some part of a game to be won, but we do best not to spend too much time with these; nothing silences a troll more effectively than silence.
One of the biggest deficiencies at Wikimania 2006 was not having a session where those who have been directly and seriously involved with the Wikimedia projects could deal with the kind of problems that you raise. There were a lot of lecture based sessions with one person at the head of the room could be asked questions at the end of his speech. These sessions included many visitors and press who just wanted to find out about Wikipedia, but it did nothing to find solutions to the very real problems that are a natural part of rapid growth. The sessions seemed to do no more than nibble at the edges of the problems. In some of the informal conversations that took place after the conference was over there was a clear need expressed that we desparately need a major session at Wikimania 2007, closed to all but active editors, to address the problems that need to be addressed. The unassigned time slot between hacking days and the opening of the main conference could serve for that.
These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note that they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no right answer, except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet, decisions have to be made.
At the rate things move I don't know how many of these decisions can wait until Wikimania 2007. I don't think that it's good for your mental health to put yourself in the position where all these decision rest on your shoulders. Nor should anyone else be put into that position. Doing things that way maximizes the possibility of bad decisions. Still, some decisions MUST be made. As few as possible should be irreversible, at least until the next Wikimania.
Yes we are huge. This is complicated by the fact that there is no model for this kind of organization. There is no reliable body of laws to guide all our practices. There are no comparable multi-national non-profits with such a grass roots base. Profit oriented multinationals have different priorities, and easily available material resources for implementing their goals. It boggles the mind, and frankly, I am humble enough to say that I don't know what the fuck we should be doing.
Ec