I answered this private message from Jeff thinking it was to the list, then checked with him and he said he'd intended it to go to the list ... so here it is.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com Date: 18-Apr-2007 16:03 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Major dysfunction in RfA Culture To: jeff.raymond
On 18/04/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
As you would have noticed if you'd read above, oppose voters need a decent justification for opposing, as candidates are assumed not dangerous unless opposed with a decent reason. So the cases are not symmetrical. If that wasn't the point of your question, please clarify at greater length.
The question is why don't support voters need a decent justification for supporting?
That would be the question I just answered.
Why not require support voters to demonstrate trust instead of only assuming the good faith of those supporting the candidate?
Because adminship is No Big Deal. Anyone who's been around a while and won't actually damage the wiki with the tools should have them.
As such, "support" votes are presumed to echo the nominator; "oppose" votes need a reason.
The bar at RFA is stupidly high and we should have three times the number of admins we do now, at least. That you didn't pass is completely stupid of RFA, for example.
- d.
On 18/04/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Why not require support voters to demonstrate trust instead of only assuming the good faith of those supporting the candidate?
It depends on whether you see adminship as a big deal or not a big deal. The 'crat who sees it as not a big deal will think, "Well, this guy's been nominated, no reason not to trust him with the tools has been given. Promote."
The 'crat who sees it as a big deal will think, "Well, this guy's been nominated, but it would hurt really badly if we make someone who's been around enough to be nominated an admin just without thinking! There's no evidence he can be trusted, so reject."
I personally feel that adminship is not a big deal, and no convincing argument has been presented to think otherwise. I just checked, and I realise I replied to you on the list concerning this subject in the very same thread just three days ago, after you suggested that this philosophy may be antiquated.
A single rogue admin, or even a few of them, won't hurt WP to the point that it can't recover, or needs immense effort to recover. We know this from painful experiences in things like the userbox wars. A philosophy of "promote if no reason not to trust" may let one or two rogues through, but if it means an extra couple of hundred admins, who can each do at least a couple of hundred admin actions a day on average, I'm all for it.
(You might dispute the assertion that this philosophy will only let a tiny amount of bad apples in, but I can't think of many, sorry, any bad apples who didn't get in under our present Kafkaesque gauntlet at RfA that would have gotten in under an RfA operating under the "no big deal" thinking I'm advocating.)
Johnleemk
On 4/18/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
(You might dispute the assertion that this philosophy will only let a tiny amount of bad apples in, but I can't think of many, sorry, any bad apples who didn't get in under our present Kafkaesque gauntlet at RfA that would have gotten in under an RfA operating under the "no big deal" thinking I'm advocating.)
Any thoughts on how the current "gauntlet culture" developed? One wild guess might be that some of the current voters might have some time in the past been "burned" by an admin who didn't have one or more of the attributes they are looking for. One example would be someone who spent a lot of time and effort writing an article just to have it speedied by some admin with most of his edits in policy areas quoting WP:THIS or WP:THAT. An admin with experience with a project would be less likely to go decimate somebody else's project. (think webcomics)
In short, an admin with lots of experience writing "articles" would be less likely to nuke somebody else's hard work. Just a guess.
On 4/19/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/18/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
(You might dispute the assertion that this philosophy will only let a
tiny
amount of bad apples in, but I can't think of many, sorry, any bad
apples
who didn't get in under our present Kafkaesque gauntlet at RfA that
would
have gotten in under an RfA operating under the "no big deal" thinking
I'm
advocating.)
Any thoughts on how the current "gauntlet culture" developed? One wild guess might be that some of the current voters might have some time in the past been "burned" by an admin who didn't have one or more of the attributes they are looking for. One example would be someone who spent a lot of time and effort writing an article just to have it speedied by some admin with most of his edits in policy areas quoting WP:THIS or WP:THAT. An admin with experience with a project would be less likely to go decimate somebody else's project. (think webcomics)
In short, an admin with lots of experience writing "articles" would be less likely to nuke somebody else's hard work. Just a guess.
Of course correct - but ironically much of the problem lies with people who want users to participate more in morasses like AfD or to brush up on area X of policy, rather than making article edits. And on at least one occasion, I've seen one guy say something along the lines of "I trust you to have the tools, but oppose because you don't have enough article edits". The whole question revolves around *trust*.
Simply put, people should not be opposing because they "see no need for the tools" - a comment which often comes up when decent article editors are nominated. The more admins we have the better. To be honest, if I ran for RfA today, I would probably be denounced as having no need for th tools, since I rarely use them. But I still use them, at least a few times a month (mainly because I work in quiet areas of the 'pedia, and can't be arsed to get involved in crazily controversial areas of WP) - and this is the sort of quiet work that probably would be more effective.
People like geni reject this suggestion because they look at the admin stats presently and point out that, say, 20% of the admins are doing 80% of the work. But it doesn't have to be that way. I hypothesise that they are confusing cause and effect. I think it's more likely that our unnecessary restrictions making only the most crazy/hard-working/real-lifeless people get through RfA are preventing a "long tail" from building up that can do most of the work.
Heck, for editing in general, it is the long tail which does most of the edits. I see no reason the same can't apply for admins, except for our artificial restrictions which focus more on arbitrary qualifications than the question of trust.
Johnleemk
On 4/18/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
Any thoughts on how the current "gauntlet culture" developed?
When it was decided that one person would be nominated and a huge group of people would vote on their quality? I mean honestly, that's how it's set up. I don't have any great alternative, but we shouldn't be surprised that it's gauntlet-like, that is how it is currently designed.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
Ron Ritzman wrote:
On 4/18/07, John Lee wrote:
(You might dispute the assertion that this philosophy will only let a tiny amount of bad apples in, but I can't think of many, sorry, any bad apples who didn't get in under our present Kafkaesque gauntlet at RfA that would have gotten in under an RfA operating under the "no big deal" thinking I'm advocating.)
Any thoughts on how the current "gauntlet culture" developed? One wild guess might be that some of the current voters might have some time in the past been "burned" by an admin who didn't have one or more of the attributes they are looking for. One example would be someone who spent a lot of time and effort writing an article just to have it speedied by some admin with most of his edits in policy areas quoting WP:THIS or WP:THAT. An admin with experience with a project would be less likely to go decimate somebody else's project. (think webcomics)
In short, an admin with lots of experience writing "articles" would be less likely to nuke somebody else's hard work. Just a guess.
I don't think it's a matter of experience writing articles. It's more about an excessive zeal to protect their own firmly held points of view about what is right.
Even more, it's about a screwed up decision making system that does not scale well into such a large community. A number of people begin with what they honesly feel is a valuable proposal, and set about writing rules about it. They are able to convince a small number of others that these rules are valuable, and a partisan crowd builds around that rule, willing to protect it. Most of the rest of us have other things to do than to be constantly on the alert about the new rules, and tend to ignore them until somebody tries to enforce the rule. In theory, some of these rules could sit there for years before most of us know about them. Some rules go so far as to discourage anyone from informing the community that the rules are being changed. This is most likely to affect those who would disagree with the rule. Votes taken without the community being properly informed about them do not reflect the will of the community.
At other times the rule changes come in a series of small increments which individually might take place without objection, but which collectively can have a profound effect.
Unless and until rule making can be seriously reformed we can expect the kind of harmful rigidity that pervades RfA and deletion processes to continue. Beyond our fundamental root principles absolutely no rule should be set in stone. When a rule has been adopted (under whatever rule adoption procedure is followed) no-one be able to sit back and feel the relief of being able to say, "That's one more problem out of the way."
Many of us grow up in the real world with a set of rules already there, rules about which we had no influence. Similarly, newbies come to us and are confronted with a set of rules about which they had no influence. We need a mechanism that allows anyone at any time to have a meaningful say in the future of a rule. Even a newbie should have an influence on a rule that was adopted long ago.
Ec
Ron Ritzman wrote:
Any thoughts on how the current "gauntlet culture" developed?
I ''really'' wish I could freely name names.
Let's put it this way - with no realistic, easy way to remove bad admins, it makes people less likely to promote people who would be good ones. When poor admins are consistently acting in ways contrary to the positive working of the project, and other bad admins back them up, and RfC after RfC doesn't help, and ArbCom doesn't step in until it's too late, and even then they need to be prodded and begged, why take any risks?
The RfA culture is ridiculous, absolutely. But a lot of ways to fix it will be to make it as easy to lose adminship as it should be to gain it, but that's become a perennial proposal that isn't gaining traction.
If I was in better favor with people as of late, I'd actively try a different style entirely, but I'm not the person who could do it successfully and I have yet to find someone who I think has the cache to do it instead. So until we reform the removal portion...
-Jeff
On 19/04/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Let's put it this way - with no realistic, easy way to remove bad admins,
Um, the ArbCom is shooting bad admins as needed.
I think what you mean is there's no easy lynch mob^W^Wcommunity process method of removing an admin people don't like this month.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 19/04/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Let's put it this way - with no realistic, easy way to remove bad admins,
Um, the ArbCom is shooting bad admins as needed.
They really aren't. There's at least 6 admins who had to go a month ago who will never be removed, and ArbCom won't bother with it because it's a waste of their time.
I think what you mean is there's no easy lynch mob^W^Wcommunity process method of removing an admin people don't like this month.
It is rather twisted that the community can be trusted to choose them, but not trusted to remove them. But you say potato...
-Jeff
on 4/19/07 12:30 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
We need a mechanism that allows anyone at any time to have a meaningful say in the future of a rule. Even a newbie should have an influence on a rule that was adopted long ago.
Yes! This is not only effective policy, but would represent a positive, inclusive culture.
Marc Riddell