At 02:56 AM 12/29/2007, David Goodman wrote:

If anything, 1% implies that we should be looking for more to investigate. i cannot believe that just that small number is the total size of the problem. No group of diverse voluntarily gathered people can do quite that well.

While this may be true, I'd really hate seeing a witch-hunt atmosphere. Rather, there should be a better complaint process. I'll report one incident from my own experience. I had started editing Wikipedia fairly intensively, my interest aroused by an article on a political topic. I discovered that an article was being maintained by sock puppets and an IP editor. The IP editor was making extensive reverts with a summary like "editor is a critic." I tried to file a 3RR report, and I hadn't yet figured out the proper way to do diffs. So I posted Contribs for the IP, which essentially pointed to the edits *more* efficiently than diffs. The admin who looked at it rejected the complaint because I hadn't followed proper process. I asked how to do it. I wasn't told. I was basically told, "Assume good faith." Good advice, inappropriate for the situation. There was enough information in my complaint that any admin paying attention would realize that some action was needed.

Many users would simply have gone away. I didn't. I had come to understand that any user has the same rights as any administrator, but without the buttons. So I did, effectively, what an administrator would have done, only less efficiently. I reverted sock edits -- unless they were useful -- and I didn't consider myself limited by 3RR, since blocking is *effectively* more than 3RR, even more damaging potentially.

Naturally, the sock knew process quite well. But also didn't want to call attention to himself. So he created a new sock which, as its first action, placed a 3RR warning on my Talk page, then filed the complaint. Since I saw it coming, I simply posted, underneath the warning, very briefly -- I *can* write briefly if I take the time, it's harder than writing as it comes -- what was going on.

The admin took one look at my Talk page -- as he had to, to verify the warning -- and blocked just about everyone in sight. One innocent user got blocked, and one meat puppet. I was temporarily IP blocked, immediately lifted. The article was semi-protected. All this could have happened much quicker if the admin watching 3RR had considered himself a servant of the community, instead of expecting the community to serve him by putting everything in proper form and *dismissing* the complaint when it was not.

I've been a chair for large meetings. If a member rises and says something that is out of order, and it is at all possible, it is the duty of the chair to assist the member to do what the member wants to do. A chair will often rephrase an improper motion from a member to make it proper. An abusive chair will say, "You are out of order," and if the member protests, will order the member removed from the meeting.

A helpful chair, if the member objects to the action of the chair, will inform the member about appeal process. Wikipedia has some good practices in this regard, explaining to blocked users how to appeal the block.

A little while later, an experienced user, who had originally written on my Talk page to warn me about what he thought was contentious editing, actually read my response and turned around: he started an RfA for me, and asked me to accept. I did not want to be an administrator, but I accepted, simply wanting to acknowledge his kindness and consideration. It was, of course, snowed out, but what was interesting to me was how parochial the process was. The administrator who had been so unhelpful in 3RR was a prominent objector, "he didn't even know how to present a diff."

Of course, he had been right, and I understand why admins want proper diffs in complaints, but.... he didn't know how to assist a user. Other objections were simply to the number of edits, which was still in the several hundred range. However, I've in the past taken on major responsibilities where I was technically not qualified, but .... I knew what to do when the situation was outside of what I was familiar with, who to ask. I've done this with life-and-death situations, and nobody died. The key question with administrators should be their personal trustworthiness, their willingness to serve the community consensus, their sensitivity to the needs of Wikipedia, their understanding of when to recuse themselves. Not knowing technical process is a remediable defect, not understanding how to serve the community is commonly much more difficult to fix.

The standard applied to me was almost purely number of edits. I forget, but I think that there may have been some objection as well, to contentious edits. (The blocking admin in the case above, though, clearly ratified my actions as protecting Wikipedia against sock puppets.) However, I had addressed this in the RfA, that I'd scrupulously avoid exercising administrative powers where I had a specific POV involved in the issue. The fact is that having admin powers would be a *hindrance* when I get involved in a difficult article. It would not have helped me with the article in question, I'd not have blocked the editors involved. The only reason I'd want those powers would be to more generally serve the community. And, in fact, I'm not particularly available for that, I couldn't do much of the routine mop work, and there is a lot of it.

Wikipedia is going to need many more administrators as the scale increases. It is also going to need additional structure to make administrative support more efficient, while preserving the open community process that makes Wikipedia so special.