Hi all, I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application, and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not doing enough "project work".
It's worth a read - he has every right to be annoyed at not being granted adminship, when he has followed the letter of the law, and was rejected by an RfA culture which does not reflect that policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship ----paste (hope he doesn't mind...)--------
An examination of policies and guidelines for RfA
I have been somewhat taken aback and disappointed by the 4 oppose and 1 neutral votes to date, not because they are "rejections" but because of the arbitrary imposition of personal preference over not only Wiki guidelines, but also over Wiki policy (I expand on this below). The only way a community project can succeed is if there are communal rules and understandings, which are respected and fulfilled. I do not consider the "oppositions" meet those standards. I am used to dealing with contention in my non-Wiki life, so that doesn't worry me. What does worry me is the undermining of objective standards. I should point out that I am not suggesting that there is any malevolent intent, more that standards have slipped. I hope that, whatever the outcome of this RfA, it may at least stimulate a debate about the process and lead to some self-examination.
I believe the first 4 oppose votes and the first neutral should be discounted on the basis that Wiki guidelines and policy have not been followed in making them.
In order to provide a proper context, I refer to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, which states:
This page is an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow.
Thus the nature of a policy is clearly spelt out, namely:
a standard that all users should follow.
The page then expands on this:
A policy is similar to a guideline, only more official and less likely to have exceptions. As with guidelines, amendments should generally be discussed on their talk pages, but are sometimes forked out if large in scope. One should not generally edit policy without seeking consensus first.
A guideline is defined on the same page as follows:
A guideline is something that is: (1) actionable and (2) authorized by consensus. Guidelines are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Amendments to a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, not on a new page - although it's generally acceptable to edit a guideline to improve it.
And also:
In addition to the generally accepted policies listed above, a very large number of guidelines have been proposed and adopted by Wikipedians. These are used to provide guidance in various situations that arise on Wikipedia. They cover everything from naming conventions and sensitive terms that should be avoided to how to get along, and why not to bite the newcomers.
Even guidelines, therefore, being "authorised by concensus" should normally be followed with only "the occasional exception". I suggest that in the RfA process the exception has become the rule. This may necessitate the rule being changed through the proper process, but in the meantime it is an an example of bad practice, which needs to be redressed.
However, a policy is an even stricter requirement, and "a standard that all users should follow" and "even less likely to have exceptions." There must be extreme conditions for it to be ignored, yet the current practice on granting admin rights allows voters to blatantly ignore policy as a matter of course. Again, if this policy needs to be changed, then it should be done so through a proper consensual process and established as such, but meanwhile its abuse is a deterioration of standards for Wiki. Such deterioration would not be tolerated in articles with POV and there is no more reason that it should be tolerated in RfA.
Wikipedia:Administrators states:
Administrators are Wikipedians who have access to a few technical features that help with maintenance ("SysOp rights"). Wikipedia policy is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active Wikipedia contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community. [my underlining]
I cannot stress strongly enough that this is stated as "Wikipedia policy". According to Wiki policy, there are therefore only two points to be considered:
* if the nominee has been "an active Wikipedia contributor for a while" * if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
If the nominee fulfills these criteria, then it is Wiki policy that that person should be granted administrator access. In regard to these two criteria:
* I have been "an active Wikipedia contributor for a while".
Please note that this policy does not specify any requirement for the amount of activity, only that the nominee has been "active". However, even Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship, gives a guideline of probably at least 1,000 edits, which I have exceeded, and Wikipedia:Miniguide to requests for adminship gives an "informal, minimalistic guide" of "at least 3 months", which again I have exceeded.
* I "generally a known and trusted member of the community." I am sufficiently well known and trusted to have been awarded two barnstars for my contributions. I cannot see that there is anything in my history at Wiki not to show me as trustworthy. I have not been involved in edit wars; I have not made 3 reverts in 24 hours; I have not vandalised any pages; I have not been abusive or uncivil; my articles have not been disputed for accuracy. On the contrary, I have reverted vandalism and left the appropriate "test" templates; I have notified an admin about some consistent abuse and been thanked for my vigilance; I have intervened to help settle disputes; I have left welcome messages on new contributors' talk pages; I have held dialogues with other editors where necessary to consult about points I was unsure of or to inform them as to why I was removing material that they had contributed.
There is, according to Wiki policy no reason not to grant my request for admin rights.
I am particularly concerned that potentially good administrators are being either put off altogether from applying due a process that can be perceived as a "kangaroo court", where the law is not administered fairly—and are unwilling to submit themselves to its arbitrariness—or are applying and being rejected because of subjective opinions, which violate policy. It is one thing to have a request denied because it does not meet the requirements of guidelines and policy, but a highly different one if the nominee has studied the guidelines and policy, fulfilled them and is still turned down. That is something that will obviously cause bad feeling and lack of faith in the system and other editors.
It is a poor example when voters assessing someone's fitness to uphold Wiki's policies, guidelines and procedures, are themselves in breach of those same rules, and seemingly unaware of their existence. This situation needs to be addressed.
The means to do this is also stated in Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, namely:
You are a Wikipedia editor. Since Wikipedia has no editor-in-chief or top-down article approval mechanism, active participants make copyedits and corrections to the format and content problems they see. So the participants are both writers and editors.
Individual users thus enforce most policies and guidelines by editing pages, and discussing matters with each other. Some policies, such as Vandalism are enforced by Administrators by blocking users. In extreme cases the Arbitration Committee has the power to deal with highly disruptive situations, as part of the general dispute resolution procedure.
I trust that the obvious concern of the voters so far for the betterment of Wiki will cause them to "self-police", in order to redress matters at the first stage, now that this situation has been pointed out.
Guide to requests for adminship
In respect of my own request, I address points on the page Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship, with the text from the page in italics and my comments in normal type:
What RfA contributors look for RfA contributors want to see a record of involvement and evidence that you can apply Wikipedia policies calmly, maturely and impartially. What are often looked for are:
Strong edit history with plenty of material contributions to Wikipedia articles.
I have detailed the nature of my editing already.
Varied experience. RfAs where an editor has mainly contributed on one subject have tended to be more controversial than those where the user's contributions have been wider.
I concentrate on art, but have edited a much wider range of articles to a lesser extent, including military, naval and geographical subjects.
User interaction. Evidence of you talking to other users, on article talk or user talk pages. These interactions need to be helpful and polite.
I have fulfilled these criteria.
Trustworthiness General reliability as evidence that you would use administrator rights carefully to avoid irreversible damage, especially in the stressful situations that can arise more frequently for Administrators.
I have already given a relevant statement on this.
Helping with chores. Evidence that you are already engaging in administrator-like work and debates such as RC Patrol and articles for deletion.
Again, I have already made the point that I am zealous as regarding vandalism, which I regularly look out for.
High quality of articles – a good way to demonstrate this is getting articles featured.
My work has been commended by Solipsist.
Observing policy A track record of working within policy, showing an understanding of policy.
I trust the previous observations show my understanding of, and attention to, the correct application of policy.
Edit summaries. Constructive and frequent use of edit summaries is a quality some RfA contributors want to see. See Wikipedia:Edit summary.
I always try to make use of edit summaries, and have 99% on major edits. I am surprised it's as low as 49% on minor edits and don't understand how this happened, but it will make me more vigilant in future.
Tyrenius 11:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
----------
Steve
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all, I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application, and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not doing enough "project work".
It's worth a read - he has every right to be annoyed at not being granted adminship, when he has followed the letter of the law, and was rejected by an RfA culture which does not reflect that policy.
- if the nominee has been "an active Wikipedia contributor for a while"
- if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
-- geni
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that fair enough?
I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with more than 2000.
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
</rant>
Steve
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that fair enough?
Since we are aparently following the hard wording of the rules no.
I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].
The regular RFAr votes probably know each other (myself I try to avoid voteing there for a number of reasons includeing spaming of my talk page)
I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with more than 2000.
Heh last time I was there I a fair number of the oppose votes came from people who said I should have held a policy debate first.
There is no way to prevent people from makeing snap judgements so at best we can hope to make sure those judements are as good as posible
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
</rant>
Steve
It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid. -- geni
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that fair enough?
Since we are aparently following the hard wording of the rules no.
Are we? It doesn't look like. Perhaps we should, but it doesn't look like we are.
We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].
Not a very notable category, I didn't know about it :)
The regular RFAr votes probably know each other (myself I try to avoid voteing there for a number of reasons includeing spaming of my talk page)
Eep. Regularly RFAr voters! So there is a self-appointed cabal that selects admins? Oh, goodie. :)
Heh last time I was there I a fair number of the oppose votes came from people who said I should have held a policy debate first.
Good god.
There is no way to prevent people from makeing snap judgements so at best we can hope to make sure those judements are as good as posible
Any ideas?
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.
I don't agree. There should be other ways of assessing whether a user has "gotten it" or not. A user who makes 3000 edits in a month is not substantially different from a user who makes 3000 edits in 2 years, is he? Or, even if there is a difference, is the difference critical?
Maybe we should adopt an "easy come, easy go" policy. Make it much easier for users to get admin rights, but make it much easier for them to be desysopped too (perhaps by simple request by 3 other admins?). Then, rather than attempting to prejudge admins, we could actually road-test them. Hell, give them a trial period of 2 weeks, *then* vote on them.
This arbitrary set of ever-increasing hurdles defined by a small group of regular voters seems to go against the Wikipedia spirit.
Steve
Steve
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Are we? It doesn't look like. Perhaps we should, but it doesn't look like we are.
The intial complainant is trying to make the case that we don't follow the rules and that under the rules he should be elected. The first part is true. The second is not.
We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].
Not a very notable category, I didn't know about it :)
Most people don't. You only need know about it if you deal with certain areas or want to be an all knowing admin.
Eep. Regularly RFAr voters! So there is a self-appointed cabal that selects admins? Oh, goodie. :)
Yes and no. While the regulars handle the nn cases they don't have the numbers to promote someone who picks up oposition from any signifant group of non regualar voters.
Good god.
It was a slightly non standard case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Genisock2
Any ideas?
Make as much information as about the candidate availible as quickly and as simply as posible.
I don't agree. There should be other ways of assessing whether a user has "gotten it" or not. A user who makes 3000 edits in a month is not substantially different from a user who makes 3000 edits in 2 years, is he? Or, even if there is a difference, is the difference critical?
The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems. This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other differences that are also likely to exist.
Maybe we should adopt an "easy come, easy go" policy. Make it much easier for users to get admin rights, but make it much easier for them to be desysopped too (perhaps by simple request by 3 other admins?).
That sounds like a great recipy for admins to vote against adminship requests of people they have had dissputes with
Then, rather than attempting to prejudge admins, we could actually road-test them. Hell, give them a trial period of 2 weeks, *then* vote on them.
2 weeks tells you nothing. Even I can avoid causeing problems for a couple of weeks with a bit of effort.
This arbitrary set of ever-increasing hurdles defined by a small group of regular voters seems to go against the Wikipedia spirit.
Maybe but wether it goes against the wikipedia spirit is not the issue.
-- geni
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems. This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other differences that are also likely to exist.
Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why do we have such prejudice against the idea?
That sounds like a great recipy for admins to vote against adminship requests of people they have had dissputes with
Sounds good, it would cut both ways, and they could be desysopped at the same time :) Well, seriously, if admins are having serious disputes with each other that they can't resolve, then are they better admins than fresh admins without a long trail of grudges? (just food for thought...)
2 weeks tells you nothing. Even I can avoid causeing problems for a couple of weeks with a bit of effort.
Cool. 2 weeks of problem-free adminning. What's the downside? :)
Steve
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems. This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other differences that are also likely to exist.
Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why do we have such prejudice against the idea?
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Cool. 2 weeks of problem-free adminning. What's the downside? :)
Steve
But we haven't learned anything.
-- geni
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Heh, nup. Who, apart from admins, does?
Steve
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Heh, nup. Who, apart from admins, does?
Steve
Some of our vandles (or they know a workaround). User:Ashibaka knew about it before they became an admin.
Of course there are probably admins who don't know about that page either (mediawiki is the cabal).
-- geni
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Heh, nup. Who, apart from admins, does?
Steve
I do, but that's because I have no life :D
--Oskar
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having a clue what that does.
-Matt
On 3/31/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having a clue what that does.
-Matt
I didn't vote for you (ok I didn't vote for anyone for reasons unrelated to my opions of the candidates).
You need to know about it to understand certian types of vandle activity and at the end of the autofelleto debate it was quite well know.
In any case for all you admin watchers out there it appears the userbox war has flared up again. Will the block on grue trigger a wheel war? Will wikipedia review finaly be put to bed? Will jimbo intervean and if so on which side? Has anyone got any idea what this fight is about anymore?
So ladies and gents get your popcorn ready for the next exciting epersode of the wikipedia soap opera.
-- geni
On 3/31/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having a clue what that does.
-Matt
I'd not heard of it before today.
Kelly
On 3/31/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having a clue what that does.
-Matt
I'd not heard of it before today.
Kelly
You know you are not helping my case here. -- geni
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
You know you are not helping my case here.
Probably not.
The thing is: not everyone has been that active in vandal fighting, and it is not required in order to become an administrator (nor arbitrator, for that matter). Thus, not everyone knows all the little vandal-fighting tricks.
-Matt
On 4/1/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
The thing is: not everyone has been that active in vandal fighting, and it is not required in order to become an administrator (nor arbitrator, for that matter). Thus, not everyone knows all the little vandal-fighting tricks.
Yes, does adminship have to be synonymous with vandal fighting? From the list of activities at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_how-to_guide , true vandal fighting (admin reversion) is only one of about 20 useful things admins can do.
Steve
geni wrote:
On 3/31/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having a clue what that does.
I'd not heard of it before today.
You know you are not helping my case here.
You're not helping your case either, so why don't we all just drop the whole thing?
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems. This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other differences that are also likely to exist.
Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why do we have such prejudice against the idea?
A one-month editor could be a good admin. What a minimum time rule really tests is patience. Is he willing to stick around when things get tedious. If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away maybe he wasn't meant to be one.
Has anyone done a statistical analysis of the day-by-day contributions of editors and graphed their number of edits over perhaps the first 100 days after they registe?. Does boredom hit suddenly or do the edits gradually diminish?
Ec
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Don't know about day-by-day, but Interiot's edit counter tool (linked to from his userpage) gives a month-by-month edit breakdown
Cynical
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems. This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other differences that are also likely to exist.
Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why do we have such prejudice against the idea?
A one-month editor could be a good admin. What a minimum time rule really tests is patience. Is he willing to stick around when things get tedious. If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away maybe he wasn't meant to be one.
Has anyone done a statistical analysis of the day-by-day contributions of editors and graphed their number of edits over perhaps the first 100 days after they registe?. Does boredom hit suddenly or do the edits gradually diminish?
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Thanks. I'll have to see whether I can use it.
Ec
David Alexander Russell wrote:
Don't know about day-by-day, but Interiot's edit counter tool (linked to from his userpage) gives a month-by-month edit breakdown
Cynical
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Has anyone done a statistical analysis of the day-by-day contributions of editors and graphed their number of edits over perhaps the first 100 days after they registe?. Does boredom hit suddenly or do the edits gradually diminish?
On 4/1/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems. This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other differences that are also likely to exist.
Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why do we have such prejudice against the idea?
A one-month editor could be a good admin. What a minimum time rule really tests is patience. Is he willing to stick around when things get tedious. If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away maybe he wasn't meant to be one.
It tests more than patience. A one-month editor might be a good admin, or might not. It's really hard to tell. Aside from the issue mentioned before (people who are trying to get sockpuppet accounts to admin status), how do we know how the person will perform under pressure? Does he really know the policies? It's really hard to get to know anything about an editor after just one month, and it's not like we're suffering from a lack of admins - we have almost 900.
Jay.
jayjg wrote:
On 4/1/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems. This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other differences that are also likely to exist.
Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why do we have such prejudice against the idea?
A one-month editor could be a good admin. What a minimum time rule really tests is patience. Is he willing to stick around when things get tedious. If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away maybe he wasn't meant to be one.
It tests more than patience. A one-month editor might be a good admin, or might not. It's really hard to tell. Aside from the issue mentioned before (people who are trying to get sockpuppet accounts to admin status), how do we know how the person will perform under pressure? Does he really know the policies? It's really hard to get to know anything about an editor after just one month, and it's not like we're suffering from a lack of admins - we have almost 900.
So, why do we still have backlogs?
Not all admins are active, and not all admins are suitable for all jobs. Conversely, we have a lot of non-admins who *are* active, and are doing jobs which admins aren't.
On 4/1/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
jayjg wrote:
On 4/1/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems. This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other differences that are also likely to exist.
Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why do we have such prejudice against the idea?
A one-month editor could be a good admin. What a minimum time rule really tests is patience. Is he willing to stick around when things
get
tedious. If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away maybe he wasn't meant to be one.
It tests more than patience. A one-month editor might be a good admin,
or
might not. It's really hard to tell. Aside from the issue mentioned
before
(people who are trying to get sockpuppet accounts to admin status), how
do
we know how the person will perform under pressure? Does he really know
the
policies? It's really hard to get to know anything about an editor
after
just one month, and it's not like we're suffering from a lack of admins
- we
have almost 900.
So, why do we still have backlogs?
What backlogs do we have that only admins can deal with?
Jay.
On Apr 1, 2006, at 7:22 PM, jayjg wrote:
So, why do we still have backlogs?
What backlogs do we have that only admins can deal with?
Deletion backlogs, mainly PROD and copyvio.
On 4/1/06, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
What backlogs do we have that only admins can deal with?
Indeed. I'm not clear when the policy that a non-admin cannot close an AfD came into play, for example. When I was first an admin, it was the case that non-admins could close AfDs, but it's my understanding now that a non-admin who attempts to close an AfD will probably get blocked.
Kelly
On 4/2/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. I'm not clear when the policy that a non-admin cannot close an AfD came into play, for example. When I was first an admin, it was the case that non-admins could close AfDs, but it's my understanding now that a non-admin who attempts to close an AfD will probably get blocked.
Provided it's not done maliciously, I personally undertake to unblock anyone who is blocked for this.
-- Sam
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*Ducks for cover* the '3 admins request' you suggested would mean that we end up with very few admins left - recent wheelwars have occured (where more than 3 admins were involved in each side) where both sides would be happy to use this procedure to desysop each other. I do think we need to make it easier to desysop 'screw process'/'screw consensus' admins, but making it a '3 admins request' would a) Make spurious desysoppings far too easy and b) Lead to charges of cabalism - why should admins only hold office at the pleasure of OTHER ADMIMS?
A better idea would be one of the perennial 'requests for deadminship' proposals, but the problem with these is not creating a logjam of automatic renominations (as the 'required to reapply every year' proposals would do) or violating WP:VIE (as the 'petition required to initiate new RFA') in the process. Perhaps if Arbcom was more willing to desysop admins who annoy the community, that would solve the problem.
Cynical
Steve Bennett wrote:
Maybe we should adopt an "easy come, easy go" policy. Make it much easier for users to get admin rights, but make it much easier for them to be desysopped too (perhaps by simple request by 3 other admins?). Then, rather than attempting to prejudge admins, we could actually road-test them. Hell, give them a trial period of 2 weeks, *then* vote on them.
"David Alexander Russell" wrote
Perhaps if Arbcom was more willing to desysop admins who annoy the community, that would solve the problem.
We are certainly willing to de-sysop those who annoy us. Not the same thing of course. But I think it would be a bad thing if admins went in fear of vocal minorities, who claim on occasion to speak for 'the community'.
I suspect that as time goes on a small proportion of admins will have their mops and buckets retired. This currently only happens in egregious cases of forfeit of confidence. The admin group is now very large. There is probably 1% or so who attract attention for their _recurrent_ questionable use of the powers. Mistakes are made, more widely than that, but it's part of the ArbCom's mission to be rather sparing in the use of its powers, and honest errors are part of life in a volunteer organisation.
Charles
G'day David,
*Ducks for cover* the '3 admins request' you suggested would mean that we end up with very few admins left - recent wheelwars have occured (where more than 3 admins were involved in each side) where both sides would be happy to use this procedure to desysop each other. I do think we need to make it easier to desysop 'screw process'/'screw consensus' admins, but making it a '3 admins request' would a) Make spurious desysoppings far too easy and b) Lead to charges of cabalism - why should admins only hold office at the pleasure of OTHER ADMIMS?
0) As a "screw process" admin, I wonder what leads you to believe my quick'n'easy de-sysopping is necessary.
1) There are not "screw consensus" admins. There *are* admins who disagree with certain wikilawyers about what "consensus" means, but then that's hardly their fault.
I think what you *meant* is that we need to make it easier to desysop people who abuse their privileges or are otherwise bad admins, and I agree entirely.
Cheers,
On 3/31/06, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day David,
*Ducks for cover* the '3 admins request' you suggested would mean that we end up with very few admins left - recent wheelwars have occured (where more than 3 admins were involved in each side) where both sides would be happy to use this procedure to desysop each other. I do think we need to make it easier to desysop 'screw process'/'screw consensus' admins, but making it a '3 admins request' would a) Make spurious desysoppings far too easy and b) Lead to charges of cabalism - why should admins only hold office at the pleasure of OTHER ADMIMS?
- As a "screw process" admin, I wonder what leads you to believe my quick'n'easy de-sysopping is necessary.
Process is the method by which the commonity can control admins. If admins wish to step outside that control another more direct method is required.
- There are not "screw consensus" admins. There *are* admins who disagree with certain wikilawyers about what "consensus" means, but then that's hardly their fault.
Wikilawyers don't really have many weapons against a recorded consensus or supermajority. Classic edit warriors do. This is because classic edit warriors work by takeing the screw process aproach.
-- geni
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- As a "screw process" admin, I wonder what leads you to believe my quick'n'easy de-sysopping is necessary.
Process is the method by which the commonity can control admins. If admins wish to step outside that control another more direct method is required.
What is a "screw process" admin anyway? Is it: - an admin who does destructive things without respect for consensus - an admin who streamlines process to achieve the right result
or something else?
Steve
G'day Steve,
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- As a "screw process" admin, I wonder what leads you to believe my
quick'n'easy de-sysopping is necessary.
Process is the method by which the commonity can control admins. If admins wish to step outside that control another more direct method is required.
What is a "screw process" admin anyway? Is it:
- an admin who does destructive things without respect for consensus
- an admin who streamlines process to achieve the right result
or something else?
The latter. Note that, in the case of the former, the problem is not his attitude to process, but the fact that he's doing destructive things (I'll ignore the "respect for consensus" thing, because that's a buzz-phrase).
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
What is a "screw process" admin anyway? Is it:
- an admin who does destructive things without respect for consensus
- an admin who streamlines process to achieve the right result
or something else?
Steve
It is an admin who ignores process without a very very good reason. streamlineing process does not involve ingoreing process. In thack I think we have a process for doing so. the village pump (policy) is probably a good place to start.
-- geni
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The 'generally known and trusted...' doesn't reflect how RFAs actually happen. It usually comes down to 'absence of fault' rather than any sort of positive support of a person. Unless someone has done something controversial (previously be desysopped, stated unpopular views on deletion policy or whatever) then, provided they have significant participation in various namespaces their RFA will probably be unanimous (if they have any of the aforementioned faults, however minor, it will probably degenerate into a no-consensus flamewar)
Cynical
geni wrote:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that fair enough?
Since we are aparently following the hard wording of the rules no.
I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].
The regular RFAr votes probably know each other (myself I try to avoid voteing there for a number of reasons includeing spaming of my talk page)
I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with more than 2000.
Heh last time I was there I a fair number of the oppose votes came from people who said I should have held a policy debate first.
There is no way to prevent people from makeing snap judgements so at best we can hope to make sure those judements are as good as posible
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
</rant>
Steve
It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid. -- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
David Alexander Russell wrote:
The 'generally known and trusted...' doesn't reflect how RFAs actually happen. It usually comes down to 'absence of fault' rather than any sort of positive support of a person. Unless someone has done something controversial (previously be desysopped, stated unpopular views on deletion policy or whatever) then, provided they have significant participation in various namespaces their RFA will probably be unanimous
Yes, this is a consequence of allowing anyone to create a new account without publically verifying their identity. Since user accounts have no pre-established reputation, and since very few new users actually accomplish something notable that is widely lauded across the project, the most we can actually ask for in terms of trust is "has been active for N months without having screwed up". Raising the bar much higher than that would significantly reduce the number of new admins.
Of course, the fact that it's much easier to achieve notoriety than acclaim means that a single screwup can easily ruin your chances of being trusted. Once your trust level has dropped below that of a random new user, you either need to work your way up the hard way, by making significant positive contributions, or give up and start over with a new account.
No, it's not fair, nor is it a particularly efficient system of judging the value of contributors. But it's the only one we've got.
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:57:08 +0000, you wrote:
We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].
Yes, I was going through that the other day. Some of these "notable Wikipedians" registered, created their own autobiography articles, added themselves to the category, and haven't been seen since... Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:57:08 +0000, you wrote:
We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].
Yes, I was going through that the other day. Some of these "notable Wikipedians" registered, created their own autobiography articles, added themselves to the category, and haven't been seen since...
By no means all, though: some have been marvellously modest.
That category needs to be renamed, but to what? It's basically a combination of "Wikipedians who are so notable they get an article" and "people who have an article who joined Wikipedia, if ever so temporarily".
I wonder whether "don't bite the newbies" needs to be amplified when it comes to this kind of person: it's bad enough when we're rude to someone who doesn't have sufficient clout to make a stink elsewhere. Deliberately pissing-off someone who could bring us much good publicity is simply asking for trouble, and Assuming Bad Faith simply because they're editing their own article should be stomped on hard.
HTH HAND
On 4/4/06, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder whether "don't bite the newbies" needs to be amplified when it comes to this kind of person: it's bad enough when we're rude to someone who doesn't have sufficient clout to make a stink elsewhere. Deliberately pissing-off someone who could bring us much good publicity is simply asking for trouble, and Assuming Bad Faith simply because they're editing their own article should be stomped on hard.
I agree, but I think the policy should be quite firm: Don't edit your own articles, add the material/corrections to the talk page instead. We don't have to accuse anyone of vanity, having an agenda etc. Sort of like the "For your safety, this store has surveillance cameras". Of course we trust *you* not to add false information to your own page, but you wouldn't want us to allow *other* people to modify their pages, would you?
I also think it makes the encyclopaedia look better if we have that kind of editing standard. "I tried to spin my article, but some editors stepped in and said they welcomed my contributions, but preferred to do the editing for me." As opposed to "Yeah, I took out that crap about a stupid promise I made 10 years ago and no one stopped me."
Steve
geni wrote:
It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly
certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.
If you think that the ability to apply range blocks is so important to being a good admin, maybe you should try to amend the rules to have that included.
Ec
On 3/31/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
geni wrote:
It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly
certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.
If you think that the ability to apply range blocks is so important to being a good admin, maybe you should try to amend the rules to have that included.
Ec
Nah that one is so uncommon that as long as we have one admin who knows how online at all times it isn't really an issue. There is a lot which is useful to know though.
-- geni
"Steve Bennett" wrote
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
I can't see what's wrong with that. There isn't the slightest entitlement to become an admin. Anyone who has more than 15000 edits or so is likely to get asked whether they want to be nominated. That's about the size of it.
Charles
On 3/31/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
I can't see what's wrong with that. There isn't the slightest entitlement to become an admin. Anyone who has more than 15000 edits or so is likely to get asked whether they want to be nominated. That's about the size of it.
How many admins do we want? We have 800. Do we want 2000? Or do we want 200?
I suspect that until we can answer that question, most of our discussion on how hard it should be to become an admin is actually fairly pointless. Why? Because ultimately, if adminship is not to be a "reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we don't know what X is.
Steve
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:39:38 +0200, you wrote:
ultimately, if adminship is not to be a "reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we don't know what X is.
Or indeed what defines top. Guy (JzG)
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There is no upper limit to the number of admins Wikipedia needs - even now with 800 admins there is a backlog on WP:COPYVIO and WP:PROD which needs work. There will always be vandals who could be blocked quicker, nonsense pages (created by the aforementioned vandals) which need deleting. The more admins we have, the quicker these things get done, and therefore the smoother Wikipedia works.
Cynical
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
I can't see what's wrong with that. There isn't the slightest entitlement to become an admin. Anyone who has more than 15000 edits or so is likely to get asked whether they want to be nominated. That's about the size of it.
How many admins do we want? We have 800. Do we want 2000? Or do we want 200?
I suspect that until we can answer that question, most of our discussion on how hard it should be to become an admin is actually fairly pointless. Why? Because ultimately, if adminship is not to be a "reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we don't know what X is.
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 3/31/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
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There is no upper limit to the number of admins Wikipedia needs - even now with 800 admins there is a backlog on WP:COPYVIO and WP:PROD which needs work. There will always be vandals who could be blocked quicker, nonsense pages (created by the aforementioned vandals) which need deleting. The more admins we have, the quicker these things get done, and therefore the smoother Wikipedia works.
Then would it make sense to relax some of the requirements for future admins, or at least ask voters to consider relaxing them? Is adminship really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?
Steve
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Then would it make sense to relax some of the requirements for future admins, or at least ask voters to consider relaxing them? Is adminship really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?
All admins learn on the job. It's not skill at doing the technical duties of an admin that matters, it's competence in using administrative powers responsibly that is being selected for. RfA has proven to be relatively poor at discriminating against people who should not be admins, because the criteria that most people are applying when they vote are not really very good proxies for "will not abuse administrative privilege" and in some cases are actually proxies for "will abuse administrative privilege".
Unfortunately, I don't have any better proxies for "will not abuse administrative privilege". But I do think it would be a good idea to have admin selection be more deliberative and less of a popularity contest, as it is today. But the best solutions to accomplish that all involve creating special "administrator selection committees" or similar such bodies, which will be roundly decried as anti-democratic and cabalistic by people who are more interested in Wikipedia as an social experiment. And while this latter group is smaller than the group of people who are interested in Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, this smaller group is disproportionately represented amongst those who participate in community processes, thereby skewing "consensus" toward the "social experiment" point of view.
I wish I had a solution to THAT problem.
Kelly
On 3/31/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
All admins learn on the job. It's not skill at doing the technical duties of an admin that matters, it's competence in using administrative powers responsibly that is being selected for. RfA has proven to be relatively poor at discriminating against people who should not be admins, because the criteria that most people are applying when they vote are not really very good proxies for "will not abuse administrative privilege" and in some cases are actually proxies for "will abuse administrative privilege".
Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled conflict" well. The trouble is then that those admins will obviously want to continue editing the same types of articles, only they have "admin" attached to their name now, and aren't treated or perceived the same way.
Speaking for myself, I treat an "admin" differently when he has a difference of opinion on content on a certain page. Perhaps we need a non-empowered "respected user" flag for oldbies with common sense that don't actually want to do any vandal fighting?
contest, as it is today. But the best solutions to accomplish that all involve creating special "administrator selection committees" or similar such bodies, which will be roundly decried as anti-democratic and cabalistic by people who are more interested in Wikipedia as an social experiment. And while this latter group is smaller than the
Would it be possible to make such a body purely an advisory panel? Ie, 3 people review a user, and present their findings to the community, who then votes? Is that feasible for the volume of RfAs?
group of people who are interested in Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, this smaller group is disproportionately represented amongst those who participate in community processes, thereby skewing "consensus" toward the "social experiment" point of view.
The "social experiement" type users are the most likely to react violently against a "cabal", right? Whereas the "get the encyclopaedia written" ones are theoretically more like to support such fascism. Does that help at all as a starting point?
Steve
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:09:30 +0200, you wrote:
Perhaps we need a non-empowered "respected user" flag for oldbies with common sense that don't actually want to do any vandal fighting?
This is, in effect, what happens now. You can tell the good guys by the string of barnstars on their user pages, and by their edit history. And the ones with no userpage, and only a Welcome message and ten {test} warnings - well, you know not to give their opinion quite the same weight. Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:09:30 +0200, you wrote:
Perhaps we need a non-empowered "respected user" flag for oldbies with common sense that don't actually want to do any vandal fighting?
This is, in effect, what happens now. You can tell the good guys by the string of barnstars on their user pages, and by their edit history. And the ones with no userpage, and only a Welcome message and ten {test} warnings - well, you know not to give their opinion quite the same weight.
Some of us are just a little less egotistical about our user pages. :-)
On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 15:10:38 -0800, you wrote:
Some of us are just a little less egotistical about our user pages. :-)
Sure. But it's usually not too hard to spot the people who are great contributors from those who spend most of their time adding articles about potty humour. Guy (JzG)
On 4/1/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
This is, in effect, what happens now. You can tell the good guys by the string of barnstars on their user pages, and by their edit history. And the ones with no userpage, and only a Welcome message and ten {test} warnings - well, you know not to give their opinion quite the same weight.
Some of us are just a little less egotistical about our user pages. :-)
I used to have a bunch of barnstars on my user page, but I deleted them a while ago, feeling that they were irrelevant and somewhat vain.
Kelly
"Steve Bennett" wrote
Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled conflict" well.
Errr ... aren't those exactly the kind of people we are short of? Few are natural diplomats, but part of being an admin is a willingness to intervene in tense situations, where there is no personal gain at all in sight.
Charles
On 3/31/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Steve Bennett" wrote
Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled conflict" well.
Errr ... aren't those exactly the kind of people we are short of? Few are natural diplomats, but part of being an admin is a willingness to intervene in tense situations, where there is no personal gain at all in sight.
Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.
I may be forgetting some pertinant situations here, but being well versed in getting a point of view across in a content dispute is not necessarily a useful skill in adminship. No?
Steve
"Steve Bennett" wrote
Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.
Sorry, we must be editing different sites. Going into edit wars and reading the riot act is basic admin stuff.
I may be forgetting some pertinant situations here, but being well versed in getting a point of view across in a content dispute is not necessarily a useful skill in adminship. No?
And writing well is useless for an editor? This is all just so wrong. Settling tough edit wars can come down to patient drafting of versions.
Charles
On 3/31/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Steve Bennett" wrote
Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.
Sorry, we must be editing different sites. Going into edit wars and reading the riot act is basic admin stuff.
Does the riot act say "team A is right", or does it say "I don't care who's right, play nicely please"?
And writing well is useless for an editor? This is all just so wrong. Settling tough edit wars can come down to patient drafting of versions.
But what does that have to do with being an admin? Any editor could do that.
Steve
"Steve Bennett" wrote
On 3/31/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Steve Bennett" wrote
Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.
Sorry, we must be editing different sites. Going into edit wars and reading the riot act is basic admin stuff.
Does the riot act say "team A is right", or does it say "I don't care who's right, play nicely please"?
The latter. No personal attacks, for example. It is a different matter when an admin says this, compared to people going on about ad hominem in a pot-kettle situation.
Charles
On 4/1/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Does the riot act say "team A is right", or does it say "I don't care who's right, play nicely please"?
The latter. No personal attacks, for example. It is a different matter when an admin says this, compared to people going on about ad hominem in a pot-kettle situation.
Right, so having gotten an article to featured article status is not necessarily a useful training ground for being an admin? In the same way that being a great soccer player is not necessarily an advantage in being a great referee, or being a great pianist is not particularly useful in being a piano tuner...
Steve
G'day Steve,
On 4/1/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Does the riot act say "team A is right", or does it say "I don't care who's right, play nicely please"?
The latter. No personal attacks, for example. It is a different matter when an admin says this, compared to people going on about ad hominem in a pot-kettle situation.
Right, so having gotten an article to featured article status is not necessarily a useful training ground for being an admin? In the same way that being a great soccer player is not necessarily an advantage in being a great referee, or being a great pianist is not particularly useful in being a piano tuner...
It is not necessary to have been a good player to become a good referee; or, indeed, to have played at all. However, it helps ... oh, crikey, does it help! The more experience you can get with the game (in my experience this applies to every game I've played or officiated), the easier it is to officiate that game. In a sporting context, being a player yourself helps you understand what the players require from an official, what things are trivial[0], what things are dangerous and tend to upset players and need to be stamped on, and so on. It is possible to learn these things, but it takes time, and while you're busy trying to work out what's expected of you your reputation suffers.
On Wikipedia this manifests itself differently. Those of us of a "process is descriptive, not prescriptive" bent like to see admins who have a handle on the way Wikipedia works, who can be trusted to do what seems best for the project (as opposed to just doing what policy says or, worse, just doing what they feel like). The more experience in the different areas of Wikipedia one has, the better an admin they'll make.
RC patrol and stub-sorting produces awe-inspiring edit counts, but doesn't really provide any real insight to how Wikipedia works. Now, an admin who becomes an admin solely on the strength of his vandal-fighting abilities is fine, so long as he restricts himself to vandal-fighting ... and doesn't run off to speedy delete stuff that doesn't need deleting, or close AfDs with "x% said delete/keep", or unblock patently offensive usernames because "you need a better summary than 'username'", or semi-protect pages because one vandal added 'poop' to the lede, or apply indefinite range blocks, or ...
There are plenty of things a good editor might find useful about adminship, and plenty of reasons why a good vandal-fighter might not be a good admin. Remember the CVU newbie syndrome from a while back? "I don't have a fucking clue about Wikipedia, but I'm good at whacking newbies, so I should have admin tools!"
The more experience you get, the greater an understanding of the project your receive, and (theoretically), the better an admin you are. This applies to all aspects of the project, whether you're stub-sorting, RC patrolling, newpages patrolling, on the welcome committee, mediating, working on the cleanup backlog, fixing typos, crafting FAs, or even just simply editing for fun once in a while. Administrator is a Wikipedia-wide rôle, and not just the preserve of one aspect of the project.
[0] Some levels of football expect to be allowed to get away with a certain degree of holding, pushing, etc. Some levels of softball expect some latitude with leaving the base early, pitching, etc. Some levels of netball expect you to go easy on the stepping, contact, etc. And so on ... knowing which level expects what, and how much to allow and how much to come down hard, is vital to the game. Be too strict, and you can kill the game. Be too laid-back, and the players will take advantage of you.
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Steve Bennett" wrote
Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled conflict" well.
Errr ... aren't those exactly the kind of people we are short of? Few are natural diplomats, but part of being an admin is a willingness to intervene in tense situations, where there is no personal gain at all in sight.
Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.
I may be forgetting some pertinant situations here, but being well versed in getting a point of view across in a content dispute is not necessarily a useful skill in adminship. No?
What undid Pete Rose was not simply gambling, but betting on baseball.
Admins will have opinions on different subjects, and hopefully many came here in the first place because they felt they had something to say about some encyclopedic topic. One way of reading what you say is that admins should abandon normal editing though I doubt that that is your intent. It is more immportant to avoid using admin status as a trump card in a dispute. There are many more articles where an admin can act as an honest broker.
Ec
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled conflict" well. The trouble is then that those admins will obviously want to continue editing the same types of articles, only they have "admin" attached to their name now, and aren't treated or perceived the same way.
Speaking for myself, I treat an "admin" differently when he has a difference of opinion on content on a certain page. Perhaps we need a non-empowered "respected user" flag for oldbies with common sense that don't actually want to do any vandal fighting?
There are admin tasks beside vandal figting.
Would it be possible to make such a body purely an advisory panel? Ie, 3 people review a user, and present their findings to the community, who then votes? Is that feasible for the volume of RfAs?
No.
The "social experiement" type users are the most likely to react violently against a "cabal", right? Whereas the "get the encyclopaedia written" ones are theoretically more like to support such fascism. Does that help at all as a starting point?
Steve
Not really the pure "get the encyclopaedia written" group never get involved in wikipolitics. Every other group tries to claim it as a title which can lead to some amuseing sitations.
The anti-"cabal" bunch are very divirse. Losers in the game of wikipedia politics who are looking for people to blame. People with trust issues. Conservatives who don't want the structures to change. Idealists. People who have seen too many power mad admins on other parts of the internet. People who geniunly belive that is the best way to give power to the people who get the encyclopaedia written.
The pro centeralisation of power seem to consist of Losers in the game of wikipedia politics who are looking for people to blame. People with trust issues. Conservatives who don't want the balance of power to change (ie they want the same longtimer admins in power forever). People who have seen too many internet communities wrecked by trolls. People who geniunly belive that is the best way to help the people who get the encyclopaedia written.
Seems bad huh? It is even more depressing. The only thing worse than the battle would be either side "winning".
-- geni
On Mar 31, 2006, at 7:59 AM, Kelly Martin wrote:
Unfortunately, I don't have any better proxies for "will not abuse administrative privilege". But I do think it would be a good idea to have admin selection be more deliberative and less of a popularity contest, as it is today. But the best solutions to accomplish that all involve creating special "administrator selection committees" or similar such bodies, which will be roundly decried as anti-democratic and cabalistic by people who are more interested in Wikipedia as an social experiment. And while this latter group is smaller than the group of people who are interested in Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, this smaller group is disproportionately represented amongst those who participate in community processes, thereby skewing "consensus" toward the "social experiment" point of view.
I wish I had a solution to THAT problem.
Kelly
Kelly, you seem to always ascribe bad faith to people for no reason other than the fact they disagree with you. I wish I had a solution to THAT problem.
On 4/1/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
Kelly, you seem to always ascribe bad faith to people for no reason other than the fact they disagree with you. I wish I had a solution to THAT problem.
Nonsense. I have never attributed bad faith to Geogre, Johnleemk, JayJG, Raul654, for example, despite disagreeing with them, in some cases quite vehemently.
The comments you so pithily dismissed as "assuming bad faith" are simply my observations on the political nature of the Wikipedia community. You apparently don't like those observations, and so you've accused me of assuming bad faith by making them. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Kelly
On Apr 2, 2006, at 9:56 AM, Kelly Martin wrote:
On 4/1/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
Kelly, you seem to always ascribe bad faith to people for no reason other than the fact they disagree with you. I wish I had a solution to THAT problem.
Nonsense. I have never attributed bad faith to Geogre, Johnleemk, JayJG, Raul654, for example, despite disagreeing with them, in some cases quite vehemently.
The comments you so pithily dismissed as "assuming bad faith" are simply my observations on the political nature of the Wikipedia community. You apparently don't like those observations, and so you've accused me of assuming bad faith by making them. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
You made a blanket assertion that anyone who opposes "special administrator selection committees" are "more interested in Wikipedia as an social experiment" for no clear reason other than the fact that they oppose taking decision-making power out of the hands of the common contributor. While that's an admirable way to trivialize opposing points of view, it also marginalizes those of us who oppose that sort of cabalism *because* we want to write a comprehensive and accurate encyclopedia from the neutral point of view. Instead of addressing opposing views, the sorts of blanket assertions you're making serve only to dismiss them without consideration by attacking people's supposed motivations.
If that's not a textbook example of assumption of bad faith, ad hominem, and a straw man, I don't know what is.
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:45:38 +0200, you wrote:
Is adminship really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?
Adminship can *only* be learned on the job. The point is, of course, that the admin tools are only really useful for certain classes of actions (like fighting vandalism). If you don't already do this things then you will make more and bigger mistakes if you start doing them with admin tools than with regular editor rights, and if you don't intend to do these things why do you need the tools? An admin has no more or less status in the community than any other editor in good standing. There are many editors who do nothing but create good content, and steer clear of edit wars, POV-pushers, contentious subjects and so on. Would that there were more of them! And they have no need of admin tools. Guy (JzG)
On 3/31/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
don't intend to do these things why do you need the tools? An admin has no more or less status in the community than any other editor in good standing. There are many editors who do nothing but create good
Oh, if that were true.
Steve
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:45:38 +0200, you wrote:
Is adminship really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?
Adminship can *only* be learned on the job. The point is, of course, that the admin tools are only really useful for certain classes of actions (like fighting vandalism).
Not necessarily. I have already gone over four years without becoming a Wikipedia admin. If I were to change my mind now I would most likely use Wikipedia adminship to revue the edit history of deleted articles that have been transwikied to Wiktionary. That would be a passive use that would not even appear in the logs.
If you don't already do this things then you will make more and bigger mistakes if you start doing them with admin tools than with regular editor rights, and if you don't intend to do these things why do you need the tools? An admin has no more or less status in the community than any other editor in good standing.
In theory!
There are many editors who do nothing but create good content, and steer clear of edit wars, POV-pushers, contentious subjects and so on. Would that there were more of them! And they have no need of admin tools.
Generally true.
Ec
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The skills can indeed be 'learned on the job', but we need to find out if people have the right ATTITUDE for adminship ie weed out potential 'screw process' (ie 'I will act outside my authority and there's nothing you can do about it') types
Cynical
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
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There is no upper limit to the number of admins Wikipedia needs - even now with 800 admins there is a backlog on WP:COPYVIO and WP:PROD which needs work. There will always be vandals who could be blocked quicker, nonsense pages (created by the aforementioned vandals) which need deleting. The more admins we have, the quicker these things get done, and therefore the smoother Wikipedia works.
Then would it make sense to relax some of the requirements for future admins, or at least ask voters to consider relaxing them? Is adminship really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
"Steve Bennett" wrote
Because ultimately, if adminship is not to be a "reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we don't know what X is.
We do know you can be a good editor, without being a suitable person for adminship (no names, no packdrill).
It is sadly the case that we are short of ways to recognise people's contributions. Leaving aside long-dead notions such as wiki-money, there appear to be just these, really:
- barnstars (but these are wholly debased as a coinage) - WP:1000, which is not really great as a measure - admin status granted - getting 'your' article featured (no ownership, naturally, but this is effective in areas where it works).
We could do with a fresh idea here. I didn't much like past article competitions, BTW.
Charles
Instead of fixed number, shouldn't it be a percentage? That way, when the wikipedia population grows - the number of admins can grow along with it. To me, the number of beauracrats should be along the same sort of formula.
Sue Anne
--- Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
How many admins do we want? We have 800. Do we want 2000? Or do we want 200?
I suspect that until we can answer that question, most of our discussion on how hard it should be to become an admin is actually fairly pointless. Why? Because ultimately, if adminship is not to be a "reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we don't know what X is.
Steve
On Mar 31, 2006, at 3:39 PM, Sue Reed wrote:
Instead of fixed number, shouldn't it be a percentage? That way, when the wikipedia population grows - the number of admins can grow along with it. To me, the number of beauracrats should be along the same sort of formula.
The number of bureaucrats should rise according to the amount of bureaucrat work required. Since bureaucrat work consists of user renames and admin promotions, then it's the rate of growth of admins, and not the number of admins, that should affect that.
Likely, the need for admins grows, not according to the number of users, but according to the rate of bad article creation and vandalism.
I propose that new bureaucratships be opened only when there is a need for them in terms of there being more admin promotions than the current bureaucrats can attend to in a timely fashion. At this point we calculate how many bureaucratships we need and have a competitive process to fill those slots.
Perhaps adminship can be done the same way.
On 4/1/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
The number of bureaucrats should rise according to the amount of bureaucrat work required. Since bureaucrat work consists of user renames and admin promotions, then it's the rate of growth of admins, and not the number of admins, that should affect that.
Last month bureaucrats on en changed user rights 35 times, 22 of them by Cecropia.
Last month bureaucrats on en renamed users 97 times, 62 of them by NichalP.
There is, so far as I know, no evidence of a backlog for either activity.
Seems like we don't need any more bureaucrats, and likely won't for quite a while.
There are 862 admins, 267 of which performed no administrative actions during the month of March. I do have a list. :)
It's my impression that the 596 active admins (there is one admin, Chuq, who did nothing in March but has used administrative rights at least once in April) are more than we need, and in fact we could stand to lose 100 to 200 of them without any serious impairment.
Kelly
On 4/2/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Last month bureaucrats on en changed user rights 35 times, 22 of them by Cecropia.
Last month bureaucrats on en renamed users 97 times, 62 of them by NichalP.
There is, so far as I know, no evidence of a backlog for either activity.
Seems like we don't need any more bureaucrats, and likely won't for quite a while.
Just to be clear, Cecropia has just resigned his bureaucratship. Whether we do need more is soon to be seen. However, I am sure that we need fewer, as almost all are completely inactive as bureaucrats, which isn't good.
-- Sam
Steve Bennett wrote:
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
However irritating this might seem to the person who is told that, this can in fact be quite reasonable advice. The subtext is often "We don't know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin. If you're still interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again in a few months." Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough yet. Try again when you've been around longer." Or possibly both.
People do change over time, and more importantly, people also reveal more about themselves as they interact with people. _I_ know I was as trustworthy back when I registered my account as when my RfA was passed, but for all anyone else knew back them, I could've been another WoW sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I got my admin buttons.
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
However irritating this might seem to the person who is told that, this can in fact be quite reasonable advice. The subtext is often "We don't know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin. If you're still interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again in a few months." Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough yet. Try again when you've been around longer." Or possibly both.
Do people know me? Probably not. Even though I've edited a fair few policy articles, I don't go out of my way to become "known". And I'm not sure that egos are good for adminning.
sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I got my admin buttons.
The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be quickly desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it). Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly, inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights? Sounds fishy to me.
To be honest, the more we proclaim that adminship is "no big deal", or "not a badge" or "not prestigious" or a "reward for good editing", the more I suspect that all those things are true. Hell, the word "promote" is even used on the "failed RfAs" page.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I got my admin buttons.
The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be quickly desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it). Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly, inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights? Sounds fishy to me.
Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole. It's more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
That said, even vandalism _is_ a concern, if an unlikely one. Besides the obvious opportunities, like replacing MediaWiki messages with genitalia, a malicious admin could really have a field day with the ability to edit the sitewide javascript files. Unfortunately that does make adminship a big deal in some ways.
(Ideas on how to sneak in some malicious javascript without getting immediately noticed snipped per [[WP:BEANS]].)
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole. It's more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
And we are going to detect such users by ensuring we only select admins who use edit summaries 95% of the time and have made at least 1500 distinct edits in the minimum 6 months they have had an account at en?
False metrics are worse than no metrics :(
I think I'd rather that each RfA required a neutral person to review the person's entire edit history, noting the number of edit wars, whether edit summaries were accurate, their apparent stance on controversial topics like userboxes etc, then publishing those facts for everyone to decide on. Rather than (incorrectly) assuming that each person voting does such a review for themselves.
That said, even vandalism _is_ a concern, if an unlikely one. Besides the obvious opportunities, like replacing MediaWiki messages with genitalia, a malicious admin could really have a field day with the ability to edit the sitewide javascript files. Unfortunately that does make adminship a big deal in some ways.
Has that ever happened?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole. It's more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
And we are going to detect such users by ensuring we only select admins who use edit summaries 95% of the time and have made at least 1500 distinct edits in the minimum 6 months they have had an account at en?
Not really, though there probably is _some_ correlation. For example, edit summaries exist for explaining one's actions, something that is desirable for admins in general. People who assume that others will know why they did what they did without an explanation may often not make very good admins.
Similarly, someone whose only edits are to user pages and templates is obviously not likely to be a viable admin candidate. Whereas someone who's only been around for a month is simply a wild card: we know they're sensible now, but will they continue to act sensibly when they get caught in an edit war, or someone insults their mother, or they go off their meds? Waiting three, or six, or twelve months improves the odds.
Of course, voting solely on the basis of numeric metrics like edit counts and account age is not only silly, but also easily gamed. Fortunately few people do so, except as minimum criteria to filter out the most unlikely candiates, and in any case the fact that everyone uses different criteria tends to balance things out.
I think I'd rather that each RfA required a neutral person to review the person's entire edit history, noting the number of edit wars, whether edit summaries were accurate, their apparent stance on controversial topics like userboxes etc, then publishing those facts for everyone to decide on. Rather than (incorrectly) assuming that each person voting does such a review for themselves.
Now there's a suggestion I would certainly support, if we could only figure out who this poor fellow would be. For non-selfnoms we might consider putting the obligation to provide detailed information about the nominee on the nominator; while not impartial, they are at least likely to be somewhat less biased than the nominee.
Of course, the way it currently works is that people provide reasons for their votes, and others may comment on them. While this system is far from perfect, and tends to weight memorable isolated incidents over long-term trends, it still generally results in at least some amount of public background review being done.
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Not really, though there probably is _some_ correlation. For example, edit summaries exist for explaining one's actions, something that is desirable for admins in general. People who assume that others will know why they did what they did without an explanation may often not make very good admins.
Sure, but the difference between 90% and 100% does not seem significant to me.
Similarly, someone whose only edits are to user pages and templates is obviously not likely to be a viable admin candidate. Whereas someone who's only been around for a month is simply a wild card: we know they're sensible now, but will they continue to act sensibly when they get caught in an edit war, or someone insults their mother, or they go off their meds? Waiting three, or six, or twelve months improves the odds.
I'm not sure that your correlation there should be against time, rather than against edits (or better, articles edited). That is, waiting for 3000 edits improves odds over 1000 odds. But 3000 odds over a year rather than over 3 months does not seem to improve the odds that they have really demonstrated ability to avoid edit wars, does it?
Of course, voting solely on the basis of numeric metrics like edit counts and account age is not only silly, but also easily gamed.
Yes. Very. 150 edits with summaries is not difficult to achieve, and looks impressive. It's also not terribly useful. And who is most likely to game the system? Someone who would really make a good admin?
Fortunately few people do so, except as minimum criteria to filter out the most unlikely candiates, and in any case the fact that everyone uses different criteria tends to balance things out.
Except in my brief glance I saw a lot of "as per everyone else".
Now there's a suggestion I would certainly support, if we could only figure out who this poor fellow would be. For non-selfnoms we might consider putting the obligation to provide detailed information about the nominee on the nominator; while not impartial, they are at least likely to be somewhat less biased than the nominee.
Random selection? Any admin that the would be admin can find to do the job? It would be an interesting step in the process - first you have to pass muster by an existing admin. It would also avoid people (like me) getting blown up by making a newbie mistake in the application process.
In case anyone misreads this, I'm suggesting that you have to find one admin to sponsor your application by reviewing your entire history. Not that one admin could singlehandedly block your application :)
Of course, the way it currently works is that people provide reasons for their votes, and others may comment on them. While this system is far from perfect, and tends to weight memorable isolated incidents over long-term trends, it still generally results in at least some amount of public background review being done.
Yeah, I saw one poor chap getting torn to shreds for a single instance of removing a comment that apparently had nothing to do with him from his talk page a long time ago.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Not really, though there probably is _some_ correlation. For example, edit summaries exist for explaining one's actions, something that is desirable for admins in general. People who assume that others will know why they did what they did without an explanation may often not make very good admins.
Sure, but the difference between 90% and 100% does not seem significant to me.
Agreed, definitely.
I'm not sure that your correlation there should be against time, rather than against edits (or better, articles edited). That is, waiting for 3000 edits improves odds over 1000 odds. But 3000 odds over a year rather than over 3 months does not seem to improve the odds that they have really demonstrated ability to avoid edit wars, does it?
There's probably correlation against both, but I'd personally consider time more important than edit count. Of course, that's time as an active contributor -- an abnormally low edit count may suggest long periods of nonparticipation, which should be discounted. Those edit frequency graphs are somewhat more useful here than just the totals, though nothing beats actually looking at the contribution history.
In any case, raw edit counts can be quickly and easily inflated. In fact, I could even argue that a low edit frequency _does_ suggest to some extent the ability to avoid edit wars, simply because edit wars themselves tend to inflate the edit count.
Also, having been around for a while without getting into trouble means one has had time to witness all sorts of "Wikipolitics" without getting dragged into edit wars and such, and also correlates negatively with the type of highly immediatist attitude that often makes one prone to hasty decisions, moral panics, edit/wheel wars, etc.
Fortunately few people do so, except as minimum criteria to filter out the most unlikely candiates, and in any case the fact that everyone uses different criteria tends to balance things out.
Except in my brief glance I saw a lot of "as per everyone else".
When a nomination is uncontroversial, the first dozen or so voters tend to say most of what needs to be said. After that most votes gradually become "per X above", simply because there's no point in restating what someone else already said better.
Random selection? Any admin that the would be admin can find to do the job? It would be an interesting step in the process - first you have to pass muster by an existing admin. It would also avoid people (like me) getting blown up by making a newbie mistake in the application process.
In case anyone misreads this, I'm suggesting that you have to find one admin to sponsor your application by reviewing your entire history. Not that one admin could singlehandedly block your application :)
So you're essentially proposing that candidates should only be nominated by someone who is already an admin, and that the nominating admin would be expected to carry out a background check on the nominee.
That sounds like a reasonable proposal to me, for what little my opinion counts. It's not as if anyone with the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of passing RfA couldn't find one _single_ admin to nominate them.
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
So you're essentially proposing that candidates should only be nominated
by someone who is already an admin, and that the nominating admin would be expected to carry out a background check on the nominee.
That sounds like a reasonable proposal to me, for what little my opinion counts. It's not as if anyone with the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of passing RfA couldn't find one _single_ admin to nominate them.
It sounds like the kind of reasonable proposal that most people will agree to and ignore. Either by ignoring the background check, or by not bothering to make nominations.
Ec
On 4/2/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
It sounds like the kind of reasonable proposal that most people will agree to and ignore. Either by ignoring the background check, or by not bothering to make nominations.
I was presuming that a potential admin would find themselves an admin willing to nominate them (perhaps simply by posting to an appropriate page, even Village Pump?). I wasn't anticipating that admins would have to actually go recruiting for new members.
Steve
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen lists@vyznev.net wrote:
When a nomination is uncontroversial, the first dozen or so voters tend to say most of what needs to be said. After that most votes gradually become "per X above", simply because there's no point in restating what someone else already said better.
Except that it demonstrates that they really have thought about what they're voting on, and aren't just being a sheep ;)
So you're essentially proposing that candidates should only be nominated by someone who is already an admin, and that the nominating admin would be expected to carry out a background check on the nominee.
Yep, but to clarify, the "background check" is not a pass/fail, it's a short report summarising all of the user's contributions (perhaps month by month?), whether good or bad. To give any debate over the user a bit of a starting point. Perhaps it could look something like this:
March 2006: Two semi-edit wars on [[Spock]] and [[Star Trek]], accused of violating NPOV. Large number of apparently helpful contributions on [[Brian Peppers]] and [[Moldova]]. :Yes, I saw this edit war on [[Spock]], he behaved like a total prat. [[User:PeanutGallery1]]... April 2006:No contributions, except for deleting the word "anti-semite" from 6 articles.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen lists@vyznev.net wrote:
When a nomination is uncontroversial, the first dozen or so voters tend to say most of what needs to be said. After that most votes gradually become "per X above", simply because there's no point in restating what someone else already said better.
Except that it demonstrates that they really have thought about what they're voting on, and aren't just being a sheep ;)
Heh, someone suggested a similar overhaul for AfD about six months ago, and they got shot down in flames.
So you're essentially proposing that candidates should only be nominated by someone who is already an admin, and that the nominating admin would be expected to carry out a background check on the nominee.
Yep, but to clarify, the "background check" is not a pass/fail, it's a short report summarising all of the user's contributions (perhaps month by month?), whether good or bad. To give any debate over the user a bit of a starting point. Perhaps it could look something like this:
March 2006: Two semi-edit wars
Ouch. What's a semi-edit? :)
(That should be semi edit-wars...)
on [[Spock]] and [[Star Trek]], accused of violating NPOV.
Presumably at this point you would see diffs where the alleged NPOV violations take place.
On a side note, I don't see why people are so damned precious about making sure that NPOV is perfectly applied for 100% of their edits - so what if someone's edit biases the article a little bit, if they've just added a rather large amount of useful information? I thought this was a wiki - someone else can always fix it later...
Of course, doing nothing but [[biasing]] an article is clearly a violation of NPOV - but accidentaly introducing bias into an article shouldn't be punished if the editor has acted in good faith.
Large number of apparently helpful contributions on [[Brian Peppers]] and [[Moldova]].
Good. Demonstrates ability to communicate with other editors on controversial articles. (Unless their contributions were "{{db-bio}}" and "#REDIRECT [[Romania]]" respectively.)
:Yes, I saw this edit war on [[Spock]], he behaved like a total prat. [[User:PeanutGallery1]]...
Presumably there would also be "I asked this user to apologise [42] and he refused/did so [43]. ~~~~" with this.
April 2006:No contributions, except for deleting the word "anti-semite" from 6 articles.
You also are using English instead of Esperanto :)
On 4/3/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, someone suggested a similar overhaul for AfD about six months ago, and they got shot down in flames.
Happens :)
March 2006: Two semi-edit wars
Ouch. What's a semi-edit? :)
(That should be semi edit-wars...)
Or semi-edit-wars? "Edit wars" is never hyphenated by itself. Anyway!
on [[Spock]] and [[Star Trek]], accused of violating NPOV.
Presumably at this point you would see diffs where the alleged NPOV violations take place.
Yeah, or even just a date. The idea is to just give potential voters a starting place to look at stuff that might be interesting, rather than everyone starting from ground zero.
On a side note, I don't see why people are so damned precious about making sure that NPOV is perfectly applied for 100% of their edits - so what if someone's edit biases the article a little bit, if they've just added a rather large amount of useful information? I thought this was a wiki - someone else can always fix it later...
Totally agree, as long as it's done in good faith, and preferably with self-awareness. I've certainly added info on music groups that I like, with edit summaries like "Added info, someone please de-POV". I don't claim to be able to write about my favourite bands with total impartiality, but I can avoid removing info, or claiming impartiality!
Large number of apparently helpful contributions on [[Brian Peppers]] and [[Moldova]].
Good. Demonstrates ability to communicate with other editors on controversial articles. (Unless their contributions were "{{db-bio}}" and "#REDIRECT [[Romania]]" respectively.)
No, you idiot, anyone contributing to an article on Moldova should not be an admin!!!
Well, at least there would be a sensible debate, rather than people simply taking unstated prejudices into the voting booth. I bet there are voters that see that an editor has edited some sex-related article, and immediately form a conclusion, regardless of whether they were simply performing routine maintenance like typos of interwiki links.
:Yes, I saw this edit war on [[Spock]], he behaved like a total prat. [[User:PeanutGallery1]]...
Presumably there would also be "I asked this user to apologise [42] and he refused/did so [43]. ~~~~" with this.
You would hope so.
April 2006:No contributions, except for deleting the word "anti-semite" from 6 articles.
You also are using English instead of Esperanto :)
Sorry I didn't catch that?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole. It's more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
And we are going to detect such users by ensuring we only select admins who use edit summaries 95% of the time and have made at least 1500 distinct edits in the minimum 6 months they have had an account at en?
I wouldn't attach much importance to en editor's use of edit summaries, unless it is part of a bigger pattern of hiding hostile edits.
False metrics are worse than no metrics :(
Very much!
I think I'd rather that each RfA required a neutral person to review the person's entire edit history, noting the number of edit wars, whether edit summaries were accurate, their apparent stance on controversial topics like userboxes etc, then publishing those facts for everyone to decide on. Rather than (incorrectly) assuming that each person voting does such a review for themselves.
As a Wiktionary bureaucrat I make a point of recusing myself from voting on any admin requests. When it appears that the candidate has more than trivial support I do look at the kind of things that you mention before acting. Usually the result will be to support the community, but I reserve the right to act contrarily. If I want to override the community I better have a good reason without being too stubborn about it.
Ec
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I got my admin buttons.
The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be quickly desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it). Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly, inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights? Sounds fishy to me.
Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole. It's more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to admin status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are truly of concern to them. This has been advertised and discussed on off-Wikipedia fora.
Jay.
jayjg wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I got my admin buttons.
The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be quickly desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it). Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly, inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights? Sounds fishy to me.
Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole. It's more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to admin status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are truly of concern to them. This has been advertised and discussed on off-Wikipedia fora.
Nod. Hence we don't just promote anyone who asks and fits the criteria as set out by the letter of the policy.
jayjg wrote:
There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to admin
status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are truly of concern to them. This has been advertised and discussed on off-Wikipedia fora.
Maybe we should simply ban socksysops. Checkuser could be used to identify that kind of abuse.
Ec
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
How about just banning all sockpuppets?
Cynical
Ray Saintonge wrote:
jayjg wrote:
There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to admin
status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are truly of concern to them. This has been advertised and discussed on off-Wikipedia fora.
Maybe we should simply ban socksysops. Checkuser could be used to identify that kind of abuse.
Ec
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David Alexander Russell wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
jayjg wrote:
There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to admin
status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are truly of concern to them. This has been advertised and discussed on off-Wikipedia fora.
Maybe we should simply ban socksysops. Checkuser could be used to identify that kind of abuse.
How about just banning all sockpuppets?
Identifying sockpuppets is more of an art than a science. Per [[WP:BEANS]], I won't elaborate any further.
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
However irritating this might seem to the person who is told that, this can in fact be quite reasonable advice. The subtext is often "We don't know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin. If you're still interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again in a few months." Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough yet. Try again when you've been around longer." Or possibly both.
People do change over time, and more importantly, people also reveal more about themselves as they interact with people. _I_ know I was as trustworthy back when I registered my account as when my RfA was passed, but for all anyone else knew back them, I could've been another WoW sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I got my admin buttons.
If we tell someone to come again later we need to tell him why, and what he must do in the interim to qualify.
I also think that it should be possible for bureaucrats to desysop someone more easily. There are always some candidates that seem borderline, and where it would be good to give them a chance, but one hesitates when there would be no easy chance to undo an error.
Ec
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that fair enough?
I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with more than 2000.
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
</rant>
Steve
Don't blame me, I went up for bureaucratship so that I could actually interpret RFA's as not being votes but based on consensus where the jackasses get discounted but the asshole cabal;voted me down 5 times in a row. If that doesn't show that Wikipedians and RFA are fucked up in the head I don't know what it says.
-Jtkiefer
Jtkiefer wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
- if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that fair enough?
I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with more than 2000.
And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin, but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
</rant>
Steve
Don't blame me, I went up for bureaucratship so that I could actually interpret RFA's as not being votes but based on consensus where the jackasses get discounted but the asshole cabal;voted me down 5 times in a row. If that doesn't show that Wikipedians and RFA are fucked up in the head I don't know what it says.
How many times did you self-nom? How long did you wait between each time? Have you been active on RFA? Have you been active on WT:RFA?
If you answered "too many", "not long enough", "no" and "no", then you'll understand *why* you were opposed 5 times in a row. It's not that I don't like you, but you can't just wander in and say "I have no idea what's going on here, but if you promote me I'll fix it my way, screw what the community thinks!". I found this out the hard way on my first RFA, and came up again in my second RFA, even though I specifically stated that I had no desire to carry out what I had promised the first time around.
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
yes. Amen. Ditto. (In some places it is considered bad form to post "me too" replies, but sometimes you just need to do it)
/habj
Well, perhaps this was not well done at RfA in the particular case. But the argument given is strange and pedantic, really. To take
"If the nominee fulfills these criteria, then it is Wiki policy that that person should be granted administrator access"
as the basis of an argument is pedantically strange. Does that mean that anyone who votes against is somehow breaching policy? Or even that anyone who fails to vote for is going against policy? I'm not a great fan of RfA votes, but the voting is a rough way of _determining_ who is trusted. Arguing that if you are in some abstract sense trusted then people have to vote for you is odd.
Charles
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:29:10 +0200, you wrote:
I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application, and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not doing enough "project work".
To be honest I am not a huge fan of self-nominations for adminship anyway. I turned down three nominations before accepting one, and had to be persuaded even then. Are we sure that Tyrenuis' assessment of his own fitness for adminship is objective? Not that I'm saying he would not be a good admin, but it seems to me that the people who get given admin tools are generally the ones who are seen to be likely to use them, those who are active in countering vandalism, cleaning up, stopping wars, finding vanity and spam articles and so on. If someone is not doing these things, why do they need the Wikimop? If they are doing these things, they will get noticed.
I do think it is bad that so few RfAs reach 100 votes. It would be much better if more people contributed. But then, I rarely vote so I can hardly talk. Guy (JzG)
On 3/31/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
To be honest I am not a huge fan of self-nominations for adminship anyway.
They allow people who would otherwise be overlooked to run. Personal I object to non self noms. As an admin you are going to have to stand alone and take responcibilty for your actions fast. Might as well start off by doing that.
-- geni
On 3/31/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
They allow people who would otherwise be overlooked to run. Personal I object to non self noms. As an admin you are going to have to stand alone and take responcibilty for your actions fast. Might as well start off by doing that.
Personally I object to there even being a distinction between a self-nom and a non-self-nom. Anyone can get a friend to nominate them. What is it supposed to prove exactly? If anyone really has no Wiki friends at all, such a fact will probably manifest itself in other ways.
Steve
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
To be honest I am not a huge fan of self-nominations for adminship
anyway. I turned down three nominations before accepting one, and had to be persuaded even then. Are we sure that Tyrenuis' assessment of his own fitness for adminship is objective? Not that I'm saying he would not be a good admin, but it seems to me that the people who get given admin tools are generally the ones who are seen to be likely to use them, those who are active in countering vandalism, cleaning up, stopping wars, finding vanity and spam articles and so on. If someone is not doing these things, why do they need the Wikimop? If they are doing these things, they will get noticed.
Self-nomination shouldn't be an issue if the standards for being an admin are otherwise the same. Self-nominating is nothing more and nothing less than letting the community know what one wants.
I think that you put undue emphasis on ferretting out the wrongdoesrs. I would be very suspicious of a candidate who does nothing but that, and does very little to contribute to actual articles. How can a person understand NPOV when he has no direct NPOV edits to his credit? The primary goal of Wikipedia is to build an encyclopedia; while it remains important to deal with vandalism that must still remain a secondary and incidental goal.
Ec
As one of the four opposers he asked votes not be counted, I personally note that his self-nom just noted the number of his edits, how long he's been here, and that he'd never been blocked. I opposed based on not enough information given. Regarless of whether it's a self-nom or not, I'd think just plainly saying "I've (This user's) never been blocked in my (their) X months here and have (has) Y edits and thus I want (they deserve) to be an admin" would not get anyone the mop and bucket.
--NSLE
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
<snip> ----------
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 4/1/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) nsle.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
As one of the four opposers he asked votes not be counted, I personally note that his self-nom just noted the number of his edits, how long he's been here, and that he'd never been blocked. I opposed based on not enough information given. Regarless of whether it's a self-nom or not, I'd think just plainly saying "I've (This user's) never been blocked in my (their) X months here and have (has) Y edits and thus I want (they deserve) to be an admin" would not get anyone the mop and bucket.
What more information did you want, other than access to his total edit history? If you don't have the time to go and analyse his contributions, that's one thing, but I don't see the justification for voting "oppose" for such a thing?
Steve
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all, I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application, and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not doing enough "project work".
Maybe I'm not awake enough, but surely his offline work would somehow be noticed if it benefited Wikipedia. Visible tools for editing, visible references added to articles. I work a lot offline too, but eventually that work shows in one or more edits.
Mgm
On 4/1/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe I'm not awake enough, but surely his offline work would somehow be noticed if it benefited Wikipedia. Visible tools for editing, visible references added to articles. I work a lot offline too, but eventually that work shows in one or more edits.
He was just remarking that he had made several edits consisting of the addition of 2-3000 words of text and 20 footnotes. Thus, a simple edit count was misleading in terms of the amount he had contributed to the project.
Steve