We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
On 2/8/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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We need esperanza!
-ducks-
On 2/8/07, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/8/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
We need esperanza!
-ducks-
Nobody expects the Spanish Waterfowl?
Perhaps it's the fact that we only really promote to adminship the workaholics or veterans who slipped through the cracks and we forgot to nominate, so we end up with a backlog of everything. There is a lot of pressure on admins and admin candidates to act perfectly, all of the time.
ikiroid wrote:
Perhaps it's the fact that we only really promote to adminship the workaholics or veterans who slipped through the cracks and we forgot to nominate, so we end up with a backlog of everything. There is a lot of pressure on admins and admin candidates to act perfectly, all of the time.
I confess that when somebody offered to nominate me for adminship, I declined. It was partly that I didn't feel quite up to the have-you-done-everything-a-lot filter in RfA voting, and partly because it looked like a major time commitment, with a lot of hair-pulling involved.
I don't know if it's correct, but my impression was that ten hours a week was about a minimum to do it right. I felt like staying an editor let me keep the ability to put in time as schedule and stress level allow.
Now that I think about it, though, maybe I got that impression from watching the busy ones burn out.
William
William Pietri wrote:
ikiroid wrote:
Perhaps it's the fact that we only really promote to adminship the workaholics or veterans who slipped through the cracks and we forgot to nominate, so we end up with a backlog of everything. There is a lot of pressure on admins and admin candidates to act perfectly, all of the time.
I confess that when somebody offered to nominate me for adminship, I declined. It was partly that I didn't feel quite up to the have-you-done-everything-a-lot filter in RfA voting, and partly because it looked like a major time commitment, with a lot of hair-pulling involved.
Next week will be the 5th anniversary of my participation in Wikipedia. I have declined adminship twice during that time. I have been a bureaucrat in Wiktionary and Wikisource, though I am not currently active in those two projects. Lately I have taken interest in a specific Wikibook for which last week I though it would be useful to seek adminship; so far I have two oppose votes and nothing else.
What I see in the RfA process is an attempt to draw people into tasks and issues that don't interest them at all. If I don't want to spend a lot of time vandal fighting or on RC patrol or arguing the fine points of policy why should I commit to that. For those of us who come here to develop information in an area of interest our work as admins will be an extension of that. As a consequence a good admin will deal with the problem people when they begin to affect his areas of interest. Who would want to spend time debating deletion requests about subjects in which he has neither interest nor knowledge.
If new admins are expected to spend their time grovelling about in the muck it's no wonder that they burn out so quickly.
I don't know if it's correct, but my impression was that ten hours a week was about a minimum to do it right. I felt like staying an editor let me keep the ability to put in time as schedule and stress level allow.
If you have only ten hours a week to contribute you may want to take a more focussed approach to your efforts, both as an editor and as an admin.
Now that I think about it, though, maybe I got that impression from watching the busy ones burn out.
Sounds like an excellent reason to avoid being an admin. :-)
Ec
George Herbert wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
Alkavar also recently had three of his horribly poor speedy deletions challenged, and I'm not sure how bad his image deletions were within that context, or any others.
What do we need to do right? Maybe elect more admins who can do things right so they don't get challenged, stressed, and then bail?
-Jeff
On 2/9/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote: Alkavar also recently had three of his horribly poor speedy deletions
challenged, and I'm not sure how bad his image deletions were within that context, or any others.
What do we need to do right? Maybe elect more admins who can do things right so they don't get challenged, stressed, and then bail?
-Jeff
A certian percentage of any user type will always walk away. Admins are no exception. Some turnover is even required as long as we promote fast enough and enough experenced people stay on.
Speedies could be helped by getting people to prod rather than false speedy tag but that is always going to be an issue.
George Herbert wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
On the other side, his message isn't really just about admins, but editors in general. People who edit articles simply are not valued on this project anymore. Tha'ts a big problem, since it's people who edit articles that got us to this point.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
On the other side, his message isn't really just about admins, but editors in general. People who edit articles simply are not valued on this project anymore. Tha'ts a big problem, since it's people who edit articles that got us to this point.
Absolutely! Newbies get jumped on for breach of incomprehensible rules. Articles are cluttered with transclusion templates that only the experts know how to edit properly. Articles get threatened with deletion because they don't have the right kind of references. Some editors become so obsessed with trying to be authoritative that they take all the fun out of editing. We all want an accurate reference work, but there are certain intangibles that we should not accept as part of the cost.
Ec
on 2/8/07 9:29 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
This is tricky because it involves the personal side of a Wikipedia Community Member. He would need to want to stay badly enough to confront the reasons he is leaving.
Marc Riddell
Over-tendency toward editcounts as criteria in RFA is definitely not good. The couple months before and after my RFA (a year ago), I averaged 2000 edits/month. No way that is sustainable for me, considering real-life demands and priorities.
Since July, my edit count is half that each month -- a more sustainable level. Even at that, I may have to cut back more in order to spend more time doing freelance paid work, in addition to my regular job. Though this has nothing to do with wikiconflicts, it may resonate with other folks.
Very unlikely that I would ever quit Wikipedia entirely, but slower and steady is the way to keep going on Wikipedia in the longer-run and not burnout.
On 2/8/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
We are putting way too much on an admin pool, where only a small group handle 60% of the load. We all need to remember, adminship is *NOT* a big deal. You are not and should not be defined by your edit count. Everyone is quick too jump on prospective admins, without examining it all, and getting to know how someone will handle things. Without requiring 5,000 edits (Which yes, is not hard to obtain.). Now this doesn't mean there are occasions where something needs to be WP:SNOW'ed away.
Threats from unknown sources, I know when my RfA went through, I received a few threats against myself. Now, while I am quite used to it, not everyone is. No one should be subjected to them. I am not sure if these were from actual editors, trolls, or what-have it.
Abuse does happen, and when it does happen, even in small amounts it builds up a group of people who turn and look at the admin pool as if it was full of abuse and corruption (There is no cabal, becomes, There is a cable and we haven't found the leader yet.). Which when this happens, it puts stress on the admin pool.
Vandalism continues to happen, and is something we will never stop. But we can slow it down, and rather than just block half the internet, we need a stronger relationship with the tech community to handle the abuse at the account end (You can't pull a new IP, if you have no account.). We need to make it known, childish pranks *WILL NOT* be tolerated, and blatant vandalism will result in more than just a block and a reset of your modem/router/connection/tin can on a string.
Some proposed solutions: * Wikipedia doubles every 6 months, we need an admin pool to compensate it, and we need those who will focus on handling admin issues, not waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use. So lets not look at a new admin based on his edit count, but his contributions and WILLINGNESS.
* ArbCom needs 9 new appointments (3 per term), ArbCom yes has great arbitrators who do a wonderful job, but it is the same people doing it, and slow down those eager to mediate disputes. So I propose we, not take away from those arbitrators doing a great job already, but give them more help. Arbitration is a very time consuming job, and these should be people willing to mediate. (I do not propose we remove the arbitrators currently serving, but we add more.)
* ArbCom needs an "internal affairs" department to look at complaints of abuse and decide if they are just base less complaints which can hurt an admins rep, or if the complaint is actually abuse, then forward it to ArbCom. The committee should consist of non-ArbCom members, and contain atleast 2 non admins.
* Admin actions need to be supported. You can not have an admin take a good action, a user jump them, and other admins choose to take the popular route in hopes of not pissing someone off.
* We need to get more of the people who are reading articles, and just reading, to edit. Devising a strategy to do this, is not something I personally am an expert in. I'm better involved in other ways.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Regards, Joshua Brady [[User:Somitho]]
Joshua Brady wrote:
We are putting way too much on an admin pool, where only a small group handle 60% of the load. We all need to remember, adminship is *NOT* a big deal. You are not and should not be defined by your edit count. Everyone is quick too jump on prospective admins, without examining it all, and getting to know how someone will handle things. Without requiring 5,000 edits (Which yes, is not hard to obtain.). Now this doesn't mean there are occasions where something needs to be WP:SNOW'ed away.
Yeah, I was pretty astounded at how RfA worked when I went there after a long period of not looking at it. I became an admin back in mid-2003 sometime, after being active on the project for about 6 months, with maybe 400 or 500 edits. I didn't have to answer some 20-question-long interview, and nobody really pored over my edit history with a fine-toothed comb. If I had to go through some bureaucratic process, I would probably tell the process-wonk asking me to answer some questionnaire where he could stick it.
I had been around for six months, seemed to know what was going on and hand't done anything stupid, and so of course I was given adminship upon request. Why don't we do that now? It's still not hard to take back adminship if someone badly misuses it, so IMO all RfA candidates should get adminship by default, with the burden of proof being upon anyone who thinks they should be denied it to argue why. More concretely, any unexplained "no" votes should not be counted.
-Mark
On 09/02/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I had been around for six months, seemed to know what was going on and hand't done anything stupid, and so of course I was given adminship upon request. Why don't we do that now? It's still not hard to take back adminship if someone badly misuses it, so IMO all RfA candidates should get adminship by default, with the burden of proof being upon anyone who thinks they should be denied it to argue why. More concretely, any unexplained "no" votes should not be counted.
Fully agreed. It seemed to work with many, including me (well, I'll leave that judgement to the reader ;-)); the current system seems to be negatively selecting against people who will "be bold" or "ignore all rules", too, which suggests a slow corruption of our community's spirit (note that I do not suggest that this is in any way deliberate). Let's do it - if it doesn't work, we can always return to the era of the Spanish Inquisition RfA.
On 2/9/07, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
Fully agreed. It seemed to work with many, including me (well, I'll leave that judgement to the reader ;-)); the current system seems to be negatively selecting against people who will "be bold" or "ignore all rules", too, which suggests a slow corruption of our community's spirit (note that I do not suggest that this is in any way deliberate).
Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped.
So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.
Let's do it - if it doesn't work, we can always return to the era of the Spanish Inquisition RfA.
It is already the de-facto standard that every oppose has to give a reason. It changes nothing.
geni wrote:
Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped.
So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.
Because I really don't know and am curious, can you give an example to illustrate the amount of damage an admin can do?
-Rich
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Because I really don't know and am curious, can you give an example to illustrate the amount of damage an admin can do?
Userboxes. Take admin powers out of that fight and things would have been a lot less ah dramatic.
Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those involved are still admins.
geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Because I really don't know and am curious, can you give an example to illustrate the amount of damage an admin can do?
Userboxes. Take admin powers out of that fight and things would have been a lot less ah dramatic.
Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those involved are still admins.
Yeah, the userboxes thing I've heard about. How much actual damage to the project was done? Who, aside from those directly involved, were affected by this?
I have no idea what the "Bobby Boulders troll" is about. But again, how much actual damage was done to the project?
For both of these, and the other unspoken cases, would having many more admins have helped or hurt?
It seems to me that no method of selecting admins will be perfect... there will always be some who, with hindsight, we can say should not have been made admins. But it would almost seem to be a question of ratios. If our de-facto policy of selecting admins results in a very small number actually being selected, is our ratio of good to bad admins significantly better than having a less restrictive selection process that allows many more people be admins?
What we don't want is to have admins be so rare that it becomes big news when one screws up. That would be a bad thing. Far better to have so many admins that it's no big deal when one screws up. Just like it's no big deal when a page gets vandalized. The vandalism gets fixed, perhaps the vandal gets blocked, and we move on.
-Rich
geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Because I really don't know and am curious, can you give an example to illustrate the amount of damage an admin can do?
Userboxes. Take admin powers out of that fight and things would have been a lot less ah dramatic.
Given that the issue was unimportant one way or the other, I don't see where the massive damage comes from.
Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those involved are still admins.
I work on WP for a hour or so every day, and this is the first I've heard of a "Bobby Boulders". Are you sure it was that big of a deal?
This whole overdramatization of admin activity is the root cause underlying burnout, I'd say. All admin actions are reversible, so no permanent damage is possible, but POV-pushers and other miscreants have learned that they can get their way by blowing everything way out of proportion, accusing admins of tyranny and cabals and bla bla bla, so that the reasonable people get tired of it all and walk away.
It's kind of a clever way for POV-pushers to get control of WP actually; raise the bar for new admins, drying up the supply, and drive the old ones away with continual harassment.
Stan
On 2/9/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Given that the issue was unimportant one way or the other, I don't see where the massive damage comes from.
Community relations. The anger. The blocks. Take out the admin powers and it would have been just another minor spat. It was the involvement of the admin powers that caused the damage to the community. At lost of the distrust of admins comes from that event.
I work on WP for a hour or so every day, and this is the first I've heard of a "Bobby Boulders". Are you sure it was that big of a deal?
It resulted in the brief deletion of the counter vandalism unit see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Cou...
This whole overdramatization of admin activity is the root cause underlying burnout, I'd say. All admin actions are reversible, so no permanent damage is possible,
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
but POV-pushers and other miscreants have learned that they can get their way by blowing everything way out of proportion, accusing admins of tyranny and cabals and bla bla bla, so that the reasonable people get tired of it all and walk away.
I suspect there are other reasons.
It's kind of a clever way for POV-pushers to get control of WP actually; raise the bar for new admins, drying up the supply, and drive the old ones away with continual harassment.
The role of admins in dealing with POV pushers is little different from the role of non-admins.
geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
I work on WP for a hour or so every day, and this is the first I've heard of a "Bobby Boulders". Are you sure it was that big of a deal?
It resulted in the brief deletion of the counter vandalism unit see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Cou...
Bleah. I couldn't even read the whole thing, it's so sordid and petty.
This whole overdramatization of admin activity is the root cause underlying burnout, I'd say. All admin actions are reversible, so no permanent damage is possible,
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
There are many hurts in life. I know Mr. Linkspam-Cabo-every-day is bummed that I revert him over and over, he's even said so, but his goal is to make a buck no matter what it does to WP. I'm sure if he was smarter, he could find editors to testify to the arbcom that I'm being a mean and nasty admin by not reverting him with an individually-composed, sensitive, and caring message each time, and should be desysopped as an example to the others. So, are you on his side, or on mine?
If I'm not going to be supported by other editors, admin or not, then I don't want to be an admin any longer.
Stan
On 2/9/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Bleah. I couldn't even read the whole thing, it's so sordid and petty.
The CVU has rather a good record of bringing new people into the community. So when a group of admins falls for a troll and trys to take action against the first group to make you feel part of a community on wikipedia it is understandable that you are going to want to make sure that doesn't happen again.
There are many hurts in life. I know Mr. Linkspam-Cabo-every-day is bummed that I revert him over and over, he's even said so, but his goal is to make a buck no matter what it does to WP. I'm sure if he was smarter, he could find editors to testify to the arbcom that I'm being a mean and nasty admin by not reverting him with an individually-composed, sensitive, and caring message each time, and should be desysopped as an example to the others. So, are you on his side, or on mine?
That would the false dilemma logical fallacy.
No one is objecting to linkspamers being reverted or blocked. Problem is the community know admins don't just limit themselves to that kind of activity
If I'm not going to be supported by other editors, admin or not, then I don't want to be an admin any longer.
We have no right to demand support. We have to earn it.
geni wrote:
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
Think about this a bit more. Being blocked hurts. Is it so much of a stretch of imagination to realise that (for some if not most people) being excluded from adminship also hurts? It is, after all, functionally the same as being "blocked" from the extra features.
People probably don't realise this readily because it's a qualitatively different kind of hurting -- it's not a singular event like being blocked or a page being deleted, which is like a stab in the chest which may (or may not) heal. This is different; it's more like a nagging headache that doesn't go away.
Wow, look at all these messages. I don't have time to read them all, so I'll probably be saying more of the same, but here my perspective on this.
Being an admin is not what it is made out to be. People think, once you are an admin, you get a big office on the top floor with a massage chair. This is not the case, especially for the more hardworking ones like (in my opinion) Alkivar and others. The situation is that we do something like clear out hundreds of pages in CAT:CSD, and instead of getting support and encouragement for doing a task that's a pain in the ass, we get yelled at by everyone. Whether we delete pages, or even remove CSD tags, we get harassed, threatened, and yelled at, sometimes by established editors who know better.
My point? The hardworking admins who help clear the backlogs and do janitorial work get zilch, while the rest go about their daily business without being worried whether some pissed off lunatic is going to call them while they're at work and frighten them.
The close-knit community of yesterday is gone, and I want it back. Less bitching, more supporting.
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
geni wrote:
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted
hurts.
Think about this a bit more. Being blocked hurts. Is it so much of a stretch of imagination to realise that (for some if not most people) being excluded from adminship also hurts? It is, after all, functionally the same as being "blocked" from the extra features.
People probably don't realise this readily because it's a qualitatively different kind of hurting -- it's not a singular event like being blocked or a page being deleted, which is like a stab in the chest which may (or may not) heal. This is different; it's more like a nagging headache that doesn't go away.
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Pilotguy wrote:
Being an admin is not what it is made out to be. People think, once you are an admin, you get a big office on the top floor with a massage chair. This is not the case [...]. The situation is that we do something like clear out hundreds of pages in CAT:CSD, and instead of getting support and encouragement for doing a task that's a pain in the ass, we get yelled at by everyone. [...]
This is probably all true. But that's not the problem we're discussing. You see, no matter how many people you tell this story, the majority of new users will still view adminship as "having a big office on the top floor with a massage chair". Why? Not because they've been there and seen it or anything, but simply because people start out /without/ it and, if accepted by the community, are elevated to this "higher status". That is enough already to create this impression that admins are (considered by the community to be) "better people".
Timwi
On 2/9/07, Pilotguy pilotguy.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
The close-knit community of yesterday is gone, and I want it back. Less bitching, more supporting.
In my experience, the days of a close-knot community were long gone by the time you joined. I'd hate to think what Stevertigo or David or Ed think of as "the days of the close-knit community"
Pilotguy wrote:
...
The close-knit community of yesterday is gone, and I want it back. Less bitching, more supporting.
"Close-knit community" equals "cabal" when viewed from outside. There will never be one such group, and I think there never was. Many smaller groups exist, but any attempt to affiliate yourself with one creates conflict with others.
-Gurch
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal. Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and nothing happens.
I think that probably punitive blocks would have less drama and be better received overall. Currently blocks mean "this person is a danger to the community." A punitive block would just mean "this person did such and such" and would both prevent further unwanted actions and not stigmatize it more than needed. But I will not be pushing for a rewrite of the blocking policy. I just think it really ought to be no big deal.
--keitei
On 2/9/07, Keitei nihthraefn@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal. Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and nothing happens.
Problem is the out of process blocks. In that case the problem is two fold. When something is within process it looks like everyone is working from the same rulebook and for the most part admins can avoid takeing flack since thier actions are not really personal.
Once you step outside process you have the problem that it appears the rules only apply to the little people and that it looks a lot more personal. Worse still it may be more than apearence.
Keitei wrote:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal. Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and nothing happens.
Being blocked hurts simply because it is a slap-in-your-face message that someone doesn't like you, and uses force to keep you out of somewhere. Many users get blocked but don't realise that they were violating some policy. Many users appear to regard the conflicts they get into as a mere disagreement with some opinion, and then if they get blocked it easily seems like the person is using their power unfairly to enforce their opinion and to suppress the user's. If you were a new user and you were to get that impression, I'm quite sure you'd feel hurt.
Timwi
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Keitei wrote:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal. Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and nothing happens.
Being blocked hurts simply because it is a slap-in-your-face message that someone doesn't like you, and uses force to keep you out of somewhere. Many users get blocked but don't realise that they were violating some policy. Many users appear to regard the conflicts they get into as a mere disagreement with some opinion, and then if they get blocked it easily seems like the person is using their power unfairly to enforce their opinion and to suppress the user's. If you were a new user and you were to get that impression, I'm quite sure you'd feel hurt.
Timwi
Other newusers, when they get blocked for doing exactly what an adminisrator and long-time user do, get angry that Wikipedia policies are biased to favor established users and administrators over newbies. After all, when the established user and adminsitrator do something and get away with it, what right does any administartor have to expect that a newbie shouldn't act exactly how they were shown to act?
Wikipedia has a lot of unwritten rules, number one of which seems to be post more than humanly possible for anyone who knows any subject outside of Wikipedia.
The trick to getting administrators to stay is to stop proliferating the exact same type of administrators who already own all of Wikipedia, namely editors who have endless time to do nothing but edit Wikipedia. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit is a brilliant idea, one of the leading ones of the Cyberspace era. But an encyclopedia created and edited and administrated entirely by folks who live in Cyberspace 24 hours a day is a prescription for a crappy encyclopedia.
A variety of administrators, limited time as an admin before you have to get revoted (make it a year, it's no big deal, after all, so why should it be dictatorship for life?), and limited admins with limited hoops to jump to gain it, like admins with ISP blocking powers, again for one year.
Again, if it's no big deal, why is it such an exclusive club for only those welded to cyberspace? If it's no big deal, why is it granted for life? If it's no big deal, why can't anyone get it? Especially anyones who don't edit 24/7/365? Thanks to God (insert diety of choice or remove as necessary) for leap years.
KP
K P wrote:
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Keitei wrote:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal. Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and nothing happens.
Being blocked hurts simply because it is a slap-in-your-face message that someone doesn't like you, and uses force to keep you out of somewhere. Many users get blocked but don't realise that they were violating some policy. Many users appear to regard the conflicts they get into as a mere disagreement with some opinion, and then if they get blocked it easily seems like the person is using their power unfairly to enforce their opinion and to suppress the user's. If you were a new user and you were to get that impression, I'm quite sure you'd feel hurt.
Timwi
Other newusers, when they get blocked for doing exactly what an adminisrator and long-time user do, get angry that Wikipedia policies are biased to favor established users and administrators over newbies. After all, when the established user and adminsitrator do something and get away with it, what right does any administartor have to expect that a newbie shouldn't act exactly how they were shown to act?
Wikipedia has a lot of unwritten rules, number one of which seems to be post more than humanly possible for anyone who knows any subject outside of Wikipedia.
The trick to getting administrators to stay is to stop proliferating the exact same type of administrators who already own all of Wikipedia, namely editors who have endless time to do nothing but edit Wikipedia. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit is a brilliant idea, one of the leading ones of the Cyberspace era. But an encyclopedia created and edited and administrated entirely by folks who live in Cyberspace 24 hours a day is a prescription for a crappy encyclopedia.
A variety of administrators, limited time as an admin before you have to get revoted (make it a year, it's no big deal, after all, so why should it be dictatorship for life?), and limited admins with limited hoops to jump to gain it, like admins with ISP blocking powers, again for one year.
Again, if it's no big deal, why is it such an exclusive club for only those welded to cyberspace? If it's no big deal, why is it granted for life? If it's no big deal, why can't anyone get it? Especially anyones who don't edit 24/7/365? Thanks to God (insert diety of choice or remove as necessary) for leap years. \ia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I propose an experiment:
Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.
Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed. Otherwise, we treat them as regular admins. The only difference with a "probationary" admin is the level of scrutiny they receive.
If this works, then after 3 months we do it again. And again every three months. Soon, adminship loses almost all of its "status" appeal. It's just something you'll get if you hang around and keep your nose clean.
Of course, you can still apply through RfA. But I predict that RfA will quickly become much less political and controversial.
*My suggestion for "minimal criteria": At least 50 edits to at least 10 different non-own-user pages for each of the past three months, and No blocks in the past three months
Essentially, just enough to give a good indication that the user is involved and isn't a trouble-maker. Nothing more.
Comments? Flames?
-Rich Holton (user rholton)
the
On 09/02/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I propose an experiment: Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice. Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed. Otherwise, we treat them as regular admins. The only difference with a "probationary" admin is the level of scrutiny they receive. If this works, then after 3 months we do it again. And again every three months. Soon, adminship loses almost all of its "status" appeal. It's just something you'll get if you hang around and keep your nose clean. Of course, you can still apply through RfA. But I predict that RfA will quickly become much less political and controversial. *My suggestion for "minimal criteria": At least 50 edits to at least 10 different non-own-user pages for each of the past three months, and No blocks in the past three months Essentially, just enough to give a good indication that the user is involved and isn't a trouble-maker. Nothing more. Comments? Flames?
EXCELLENT idea. If Jimbo and the ArbCom like it (I'm picking the AC as sanity checkers here) then the experiment should be declared.
- d.
On 2/9/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/02/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I propose an experiment: Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice. Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed. Otherwise, we treat them as regular admins. The only difference with a "probationary" admin is the level of scrutiny they receive. If this works, then after 3 months we do it again. And again every three months. Soon, adminship loses almost all of its "status" appeal. It's just something you'll get if you hang around and keep your nose clean. Of course, you can still apply through RfA. But I predict that RfA will quickly become much less political and controversial. *My suggestion for "minimal criteria": At least 50 edits to at least 10 different non-own-user pages for each of the past three months, and No blocks in the past three months Essentially, just enough to give a good indication that the user is involved and isn't a trouble-maker. Nothing more. Comments? Flames?
EXCELLENT idea. If Jimbo and the ArbCom like it (I'm picking the AC as sanity checkers here) then the experiment should be declared.
Good idea. How about no blocks after the first week of editing? Editors who are bold and learn from their mistakes would make good admins.
The Cunctator wrote:
On 2/9/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/02/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I propose an experiment: Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice. Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed. Otherwise, we treat them as regular admins. The only difference with a "probationary" admin is the level of scrutiny they receive. If this works, then after 3 months we do it again. And again every three months. Soon, adminship loses almost all of its "status" appeal. It's just something you'll get if you hang around and keep your nose clean. Of course, you can still apply through RfA. But I predict that RfA will quickly become much less political and controversial. *My suggestion for "minimal criteria": At least 50 edits to at least 10 different non-own-user pages for each of the past three months, and No blocks in the past three months Essentially, just enough to give a good indication that the user is involved and isn't a trouble-maker. Nothing more. Comments? Flames?
EXCELLENT idea. If Jimbo and the ArbCom like it (I'm picking the AC as sanity checkers here) then the experiment should be declared.
Good idea. How about no blocks after the first week of editing? Editors who are bold and learn from their mistakes would make good admins. _______________________________________________
Well, my criteria were just a starting point, and I hope they can be improved upon. Do note, however, that I suggested no blocks in the last three months. Blocks early on won't matter after three months of no blocks.
-Rich
Rich Holton wrote:
I propose an experiment:
Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.
You left out the three months of impassioned debate about a) the selection process, b) the minimal criteria, c) the number of editors to be selected, d) the connotations of the term "probationary", and e) the very concept of doing an experiment in the first place.
:-) (I hope)
Stan
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I propose an experiment:
Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.
So we increase the number of paper admins in return for what? Risk benefit analysis doesn't look good.
Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed. Otherwise, we treat them as regular admins. The only difference with a "probationary" admin is the level of scrutiny they receive.
I have better things to do with my time than babysit admins. So do most people.
If this works, then after 3 months we do it again. And again every three months. Soon, adminship loses almost all of its "status" appeal. It's just something you'll get if you hang around and keep your nose clean.
Statistically no. In fact you end up with resentment against the lucky ones. At least at the moment there is some theoretical reason why people are or are not admins.
Of course, you can still apply through RfA. But I predict that RfA will quickly become much less political and controversial.
*My suggestion for "minimal criteria": At least 50 edits to at least 10 different non-own-user pages for each of the past three months, and No blocks in the past three months
So I now need to be hitting users who stay just below the level of blocking with 1 second blocks?
Essentially, just enough to give a good indication that the user is involved and isn't a trouble-maker. Nothing more.
Comments? Flames?
I strongly suspect you don't know all the things that it is theoretically possible for an admin to do.
geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I propose an experiment:
Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.
So we increase the number of paper admins in return for what? Risk benefit analysis doesn't look good.
[...]
OK, so I guess I wasn't joking after all!
Stan
On 2/9/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I propose an experiment:
Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.
So we increase the number of paper admins in return for what? Risk benefit analysis doesn't look good.
Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed. Otherwise, we treat them as regular admins. The only difference with a "probationary" admin is the level of scrutiny they receive.
I have better things to do with my time than babysit admins. So do most people.
If you don't want to be involved, then don't be.
On 2/9/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
If you don't want to be involved, then don't be.
You didn't have a problem trying to tell us how to delete images.
on 2/9/07 3:44 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
you end up with resentment against the lucky ones.
After reading all of the posts on the provocatively-named subject "Admin Burnout", I am hard pressed to see anything "lucky" about being "chosen" as one. How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on? The whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are enough masochists out there to fill the positions?
Marc Riddell
On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/9/07 3:44 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Šyou end up with resentment against the lucky ones.
After reading all of the posts on the provocatively-named subject "Admin Burnout", I am hard pressed to see anything "lucky" about being "chosen" as one. How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on? The whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are enough masochists out there to fill the positions?
Why is anyone contributing to Wikipedia at all?
Answer: I think we all buy the premise that we're producing something really good here. There are different facets of "producing", from contributing articles, to watching for abuse and vandalism and protecting against it, and figuring out the shape and structure of what we're trying to do.
All are important. All are valued. Some are more thankless than others.
George Herbert wrote:
On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on? The whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are enough masochists out there to fill the positions?
Why is anyone contributing to Wikipedia at all?
That's a really good answer to this.
I mean, I look at things this way, for myself:
1) I'd make a really good, if not great, administrator on this site. 2) Even as a mediocre administrator, I have the spare time and ability to clean out uncontroversial backlogs. I'm "available" 12-16 hours a day in many cases. 3) I'll never pass RfA for a number of reasons, none of which would have to do with my trustworthiness except for one or two editors. 4) I'm still not sure I even want to be part of that "club," given some of the administrators in place. 5) Even with #4 being true, I'm dedicated enough to this project to have donated two years of my time to it, and I'm capable of more and would do it if I could. 6) I can't.
Do I WANT to be an administrator? No, not really, for all the reasons people describe - it's largely thankless, it leaves you wide open for even more criticism, and it's not "fun" in the way writing about an 18th century chess hoax is. Could I BE a greater asset to the project as an administrator? Without question.
So the system leaves people like me behind. Since I don't really WANT the bit, I'm not terribly concerned about it. But when I hear about burnout and backlogs from the same people who want to stand in the way of getting people who can use the tools equipped (and that generally does not apply to people here), I simply have to roll my eyes.
So yeah. Someone else said it - it's probably going to take a Foundation/Jimbo-level decree to get anything to change on this point. A great idea at [[Wikipedia:Trial adminship]] was ditched this week, and the 100 new admins every 3 months idea is even better, but will never gain traction from the non-mailing list community. It's a pathetic truth, but there it is. And until we start being more forgiving of users who've made mistakes and learned from them, the situation's not going to get much better.
-Jeff
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 16:32:37 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Do I WANT to be an administrator? No, not really, for all the reasons people describe - it's largely thankless, it leaves you wide open for even more criticism, and it's not "fun" in the way writing about an 18th century chess hoax is. Could I BE a greater asset to the project as an administrator? Without question.
That was my view, anyway :-) But we know what the outcome was (and many of us know that it was wrong). Perhaps we should try again.
Guy (JzG)
On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/9/07 3:44 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Šyou end up with resentment against the lucky ones.
After reading all of the posts on the provocatively-named subject "Admin Burnout", I am hard pressed to see anything "lucky" about being "chosen" as one. How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on? The whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are enough masochists out there to fill the positions?
Marc Riddell
You can see deleted edits you can speedy stuff without tagging and you can block without going through AIV. You can edit protected templates without messing around. reverting is less effort. Certian types of page moves are only posible for admins
On the less official side people tend to think twice before attacking you and you tend to get a free pass when it comes to being trusted.
On the against policy but can be done anyway if you are smart. You can:
Speedy rather than prod Block new users who are being anoying
On 2/9/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/9/07 3:44 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Šyou end up with resentment against the lucky ones.
After reading all of the posts on the provocatively-named subject "Admin Burnout", I am hard pressed to see anything "lucky" about being "chosen"
as
one. How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on?
The
whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are
enough
masochists out there to fill the positions?
Marc Riddell
You can see deleted edits you can speedy stuff without tagging and you can block without going through AIV. You can edit protected templates without messing around. reverting is less effort. Certian types of page moves are only posible for admins
On the less official side people tend to think twice before attacking you and you tend to get a free pass when it comes to being trusted.
On the against policy but can be done anyway if you are smart. You can:
Speedy rather than prod Block new users who are being anoying
Having admin powers is convenient from an editing perspective, especially the ability to move pages and see deleted edits.
There are a lot of reasons not to give people admin powers after just 50 edits. I'm guessing that one of them is copyright. Right now there are a lot of deleted copyvios. If anyone who registers (just about) has access to those copyvios, then aren't we back to publishing the copyvios? It would also create a lot more need for oversight - we'd be opening up a huge amount of personal information to the public.
Then, of course, there's the damage an admin can do. Willy on Wheels can sit tight for 50 edits. Fifty edits with a sleeper account and you can put all the penises you want on the main page. A dozen sleeper accounts and a dynamics IP, and you could really have fun. And while I won't go into details per WP:BEANS, there are a lot of ways that an admin can do effectively irreversible damage.
While we probably need lots more admins, we don't need automatic admins.
Guettarda wrote:
There are a lot of reasons not to give people admin powers after just 50 edits. I'm guessing that one of them is copyright. Right now there are a lot of deleted copyvios. If anyone who registers (just about) has access to those copyvios, then aren't we back to publishing the copyvios?
Really, that's something we should fix anyway. If we don't have permission from the copyright hiolders, we shouldn't have this material on our servers at all.
-M-
Guettarda wrote:
Then, of course, there's the damage an admin can do. Willy on Wheels can sit tight for 50 edits. Fifty edits with a sleeper account and you can put all the penises you want on the main page. A dozen sleeper accounts and a dynamics IP, and you could really have fun. And while I won't go into details per WP:BEANS, there are a lot of ways that an admin can do effectively irreversible damage.
Out of 100 randomly chosen admins how many would actually engage in this kind of behaviour? Is there any evidence for such a number?
Ec
Out of 100 randomly chosen admins how many would actually engage in this kind of behaviour? Is there any evidence for such a number?
Out of 100 randomly chosen admins, how many would actually engage in legitimate admin actions? Is there any evidence for such a number?
It's not a matter of calculating risk, it's a matter of calculating the risk/reward ratio. Does the gain from these 100 admins outweigh the loss of a couple of them possibly going rogue? I agree the risk is very small, but I think the gain could also be very small.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Out of 100 randomly chosen admins how many would actually engage in this kind of behaviour? Is there any evidence for such a number?
Out of 100 randomly chosen admins, how many would actually engage in legitimate admin actions? Is there any evidence for such a number?
It's not a matter of calculating risk, it's a matter of calculating the risk/reward ratio. Does the gain from these 100 admins outweigh the loss of a couple of them possibly going rogue? I agree the risk is very small, but I think the gain could also be very small.
I think the last point is where the difference lies. A pertinent question is, what is your assessment of the current system? If you're satisfied with it, then of course you would view the potential gain to be small. If, like many, you see the current system as severely dysfunctional, then the potential gain is significant.
-Rich
I think the last point is where the difference lies. A pertinent question is, what is your assessment of the current system? If you're satisfied with it, then of course you would view the potential gain to be small. If, like many, you see the current system as severely dysfunctional, then the potential gain is significant.
I would say the current systems works well in the majority of cases, although it is far from perfect. As it only goes wrong in a minority of cases, the potential gain from any new system is quite small, so the increased risk from it also needs to be small to be worth it. This proposal doesn't fix every case, so it's gain is even smaller, and as such requires the risk to be even smaller, which it isn't.
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 2/9/07 3:44 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Šyou end up with resentment against the lucky ones.
After reading all of the posts on the provocatively-named subject "Admin Burnout", I am hard pressed to see anything "lucky" about being "chosen" as one. How on earth would you go about persuading someone to take this on? The whole day's posts have spoken about nothing but the negative side of the job; are there any advantages - or are you simply hoping there are enough masochists out there to fill the positions?
Marc Riddell
While it's true that some people's approach to being admins puts them in the way of much undeserved abuse, that is not the only way to be an admin.
Lest I be misunderstood, I appreciate the work that those admins do. It is necessary work, and Wikipedia benefits from it. These admins deserve our thanks and our support.
However, Wikipedia can also benefit from the less active admins. These admins have a lower profile, and spend much less time on the project. Because of how RfA works now, these admins tend to be those who have burned out, or who became admins quite some time ago (as I did).
-Rich
geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I propose an experiment:
Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.
So we increase the number of paper admins in return for what? Risk benefit analysis doesn't look good.
Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed. Otherwise, we treat them as regular admins. The only difference with a "probationary" admin is the level of scrutiny they receive.
I have better things to do with my time than babysit admins. So do most people.
If this works, then after 3 months we do it again. And again every three months. Soon, adminship loses almost all of its "status" appeal. It's just something you'll get if you hang around and keep your nose clean.
Statistically no. In fact you end up with resentment against the lucky ones. At least at the moment there is some theoretical reason why people are or are not admins.
Of course, you can still apply through RfA. But I predict that RfA will quickly become much less political and controversial.
*My suggestion for "minimal criteria": At least 50 edits to at least 10 different non-own-user pages for each of the past three months, and No blocks in the past three months
So I now need to be hitting users who stay just below the level of blocking with 1 second blocks?
Essentially, just enough to give a good indication that the user is involved and isn't a trouble-maker. Nothing more.
Comments? Flames?
I strongly suspect you don't know all the things that it is theoretically possible for an admin to do.
Well, in your last point you're wrong. I'm one of those "paper admins" that you seem to hate so much.
As far as "hitting users who stay just below the level of blocking with 1 second blocks", it sounds to me like "gaming the system".
What is your *real* objection to this suggestion, Geni? You seem to simultaneously complaining about any added work, and bashing good faith suggestions for improving the situation.
-Rich
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Well, in your last point you're wrong. I'm one of those "paper admins" that you seem to hate so much.
How does the whitelist work?
As far as "hitting users who stay just below the level of blocking with 1 second blocks", it sounds to me like "gaming the system".
I would regard it as protecting the system from itself. Legal fictions have a long and sometime honorable history.
What is your *real* objection to this suggestion, Geni? You seem to simultaneously complaining about any added work, and bashing good faith suggestions for improving the situation.
-Rich
Good faith does not mean correct. My experience is that most people most of the time act in good faith. Left to themselves humans tend to do so. No I am not claiming the idea was made in anything other than good faith. It could be argued that the first sentence of that paragraph assumed bad faith but perhaps it is better read as a request for clarification.
But I do claim it was flawed. Lets look at the benefits yes? Maybe 10 active admins. Maybe.
Downsides:
100 admins who don't really know policy. Sure we have a load that applies to at the moment but at least in their case we know they once did.
100 admins I can't trust (that is what probation means). Sure there are a handful I can't trust right now (whoever is behind wikitruth) but that is a problem I would rather not see grow.
Greater ease for someone with an agenda to get admin powers. Astroturfers, Scientologists, probably various political agents
Greater ease for trolls perhaps whoever it was who was hitting the main page a while back.
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
The risks outweigh the benefits.
On 10/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
I must say I hadn't heard of that one. Do you have any pointers to somewhere I can read up on this?
I still aspire to an English Wikipedia where any editor can become admin unless unsuitable - rather than the present utterly broken RFA process. Meh!
- d.
On 2/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
I must say I hadn't heard of that one. Do you have any pointers to somewhere I can read up on this?
markov text generator
The tactics tends to be regarded as black hat so a lot of stuff isn't public and at present direct scraping wikipedia and the like is more popular
I still aspire to an English Wikipedia where any editor can become admin unless unsuitable - rather than the present utterly broken RFA process. Meh!
That will first require a more effective way of neutraliseing problem admins.
geni wrote:
On 2/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
I must say I hadn't heard of that one. Do you have any pointers to somewhere I can read up on this?
markov text generator
The tactics tends to be regarded as black hat so a lot of stuff isn't public and at present direct scraping wikipedia and the like is more popular
I still aspire to an English Wikipedia where any editor can become admin unless unsuitable - rather than the present utterly broken RFA process. Meh!
That will first require a more effective way of neutraliseing problem admins.
Geni,
What do you see as the current issues in dealing with problem admins? Is it that it's necessary to go through a lengthy ArbCom process? Do you have any thoughts on how to improve?
-Rich
On 2/10/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Geni,
What do you see as the current issues in dealing with problem admins? Is it that it's necessary to go through a lengthy ArbCom process? Do you have any thoughts on how to improve?
-Rich
The problem is who do admins answer to on a day to day basis? And I mean de facto because de jure tends not to be very relevant in day to day matters.
Now editors answer to each other and admins. Do something silly and people will let you know.
Admins who do admins answer to. It is a long time since admins in any meaningful sense answered to the community in any meaningful sense and since any formal mechanism for doing so has serious bugs (think RFA on steroids) at this present time that appears broken beyond repair. What about other admins then? Problem is that going up against a fellow admin is risky it gets political fast and people cease to be objective. Nether the less I think if there is hope of making admins more accountable it is to find a way to make them answer to their fellow admins.
On 10/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I still aspire to an English Wikipedia where any editor can become admin unless unsuitable - rather than the present utterly broken RFA process. Meh!
That will first require a more effective way of neutraliseing problem admins.
Oh, I dunno. (I don't think I'm revealing anything I shouldn't about AC discussions by saying that) The AC is quite aware of problematic admin behaviour and, while extending admins a *lot* of trust and slack, will deadmin people at the end of a case or (if needed) at the drop of a hat for the good of the project. The AC doesn't scale, but us old burnouts are telling the n00bs to do a set number of hours a week on mucking out the arbitration pits AND NO MORE.
- d.
On 2/9/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
I must say I hadn't heard of that one. Do you have any pointers to somewhere I can read up on this?
I still aspire to an English Wikipedia where any editor can become admin unless unsuitable - rather than the present utterly broken RFA process. Meh!
The one plus side is that controversial people get flagged really quickly.
I think that my RFA failed because of that - as much as I think I was in the right in where I was trying to balance my responses to the MONGO situation previously, at the time my RFA came up, the topic and what I was trying to do were pretty controversial.
I can live with that. I don't think it was fair, but it's probably the least of the unfair things that happened to people coming out of that sequence of events. The community saying "that's controversial" was reasonable.
I do want a good feedback mechanism in place. It may make more sense on the back end (desysopping more easily) than front end (RFAs harder) but I do think we need that feedback and correction mechanism working there.
geni wrote:
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
This is indeed true, and no text generation system or bot is necessary. 150 small, useful, constructive edits, done manually, should take about half an hour, on a slow day.
-Gurch
On 2/10/07, Gurch matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
geni wrote:
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
This is indeed true, and no text generation system or bot is necessary. 150 small, useful, constructive edits, done manually, should take about half an hour, on a slow day.
-Gurch
You will want to run a lot more than one account though and it adds up.
geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Well, in your last point you're wrong. I'm one of those "paper admins" that you seem to hate so much.
How does the whitelist work?
As far as "hitting users who stay just below the level of blocking with 1 second blocks", it sounds to me like "gaming the system".
I would regard it as protecting the system from itself. Legal fictions have a long and sometime honorable history.
What is your *real* objection to this suggestion, Geni? You seem to simultaneously complaining about any added work, and bashing good faith suggestions for improving the situation.
-Rich
Good faith does not mean correct. My experience is that most people most of the time act in good faith. Left to themselves humans tend to do so. No I am not claiming the idea was made in anything other than good faith. It could be argued that the first sentence of that paragraph assumed bad faith but perhaps it is better read as a request for clarification.
But I do claim it was flawed. Lets look at the benefits yes? Maybe 10 active admins. Maybe.
Downsides:
100 admins who don't really know policy. Sure we have a load that applies to at the moment but at least in their case we know they once did.
100 admins I can't trust (that is what probation means). Sure there are a handful I can't trust right now (whoever is behind wikitruth) but that is a problem I would rather not see grow.
Greater ease for someone with an agenda to get admin powers. Astroturfers, Scientologists, probably various political agents
Greater ease for trolls perhaps whoever it was who was hitting the main page a while back.
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
The risks outweigh the benefits.
Geni,
You're welcome to your opinions, and I appreciate your more thought-out response. However, I do believe that you're missing the largest benefit of the proposal: the de-politicizing of RfA. The de-emphasizing of the status of being an admin. Perhaps you don't see these a benefits.
It seems to me that one hazard for an admin who if heavily involved is a sort of "messiah complex" -- the belief that without them (or in this case, others like them) the project will fail.
As others have pointed out, Wikipedia is built on a premise that open editing can produce a quality encyclopedia. This is a premise that many (most?) traditional encyclopedia editors can't believe will work, because they passionately believe that without people like them, it cannot possibly work.
So I ask you to think carefully about your own motives and beliefs about admins on Wikipedia. No one else knows what those are.
It's very possible that my proposed experiment has real problems and is unworkable. But, may I suggest that you offer alternate suggestions for improvements, instead of just criticizing those of others?
-Rich
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Well, in your last point you're wrong. I'm one of those "paper admins" that you seem to hate so much.
How does the whitelist work?
As far as "hitting users who stay just below the level of blocking with 1 second blocks", it sounds to me like "gaming the system".
I would regard it as protecting the system from itself. Legal fictions have a long and sometime honorable history.
What is your *real* objection to this suggestion, Geni? You seem to simultaneously complaining about any added work, and bashing good faith suggestions for improving the situation.
-Rich
Good faith does not mean correct. My experience is that most people most of the time act in good faith. Left to themselves humans tend to do so. No I am not claiming the idea was made in anything other than good faith. It could be argued that the first sentence of that paragraph assumed bad faith but perhaps it is better read as a request for clarification.
But I do claim it was flawed. Lets look at the benefits yes? Maybe 10 active admins. Maybe.
Downsides:
100 admins who don't really know policy. Sure we have a load that applies to at the moment but at least in their case we know they once did.
100 admins I can't trust (that is what probation means). Sure there are a handful I can't trust right now (whoever is behind wikitruth) but that is a problem I would rather not see grow.
Greater ease for someone with an agenda to get admin powers. Astroturfers, Scientologists, probably various political agents
Greater ease for trolls perhaps whoever it was who was hitting the main page a while back.
I don't know if you read SEO forums much but text generation systems are getting quite good. How certain are you that you can pick up 100% of them within 150 edits? Heck write a wikification bot and even fewer will be picked up.
The risks outweigh the benefits.
Geni,
You're welcome to your opinions, and I appreciate your more thought-out response. However, I do believe that you're missing the largest benefit of the proposal: the de-politicizing of RfA. The de-emphasizing of the status of being an admin. Perhaps you don't see these a benefits.
Is the benefit worth the trouble of a dozen vandalbots with admin powers? Is it worth the benefit of trying to undo some of the far worse things an admin can do... (I won't give examples, per BEANS, but I'm sure you could come up with some pretty awful things)
It seems to me that one hazard for an admin who if heavily involved is a
sort of "messiah complex" -- the belief that without them (or in this case, others like them) the project will fail.
As others have pointed out, Wikipedia is built on a premise that open editing can produce a quality encyclopedia. This is a premise that many (most?) traditional encyclopedia editors can't believe will work, because they passionately believe that without people like them, it cannot possibly work.
So I ask you to think carefully about your own motives and beliefs about admins on Wikipedia. No one else knows what those are.
It's very possible that my proposed experiment has real problems and is unworkable. But, may I suggest that you offer alternate suggestions for improvements, instead of just criticizing those of others?
-Rich
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 2/10/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Geni,
You're welcome to your opinions, and I appreciate your more thought-out response. However, I do believe that you're missing the largest benefit of the proposal: the de-politicizing of RfA. The de-emphasizing of the status of being an admin. Perhaps you don't see these a benefits.
I see that after the resulting mess people will be more uptight than ever about who they let get hold of the admin bit.
It seems to me that one hazard for an admin who if heavily involved is a sort of "messiah complex" -- the belief that without them (or in this case, others like them) the project will fail.
Such admins are normally within a couple of a weeks of burnout. Generally they drop off before they become a problem.
As others have pointed out, Wikipedia is built on a premise that open editing can produce a quality encyclopedia. This is a premise that many (most?) traditional encyclopedia editors can't believe will work, because they passionately believe that without people like them, it cannot possibly work.
Admins are a pragmatic response to finding that the pure editing approach doesn't quite work.
Unfortunately we then hit a "if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail problem". It has become to tempting to try and solve problems by increasing admin powers or throwing admins at the problem. Often it appears to work but far to often admins are little more than a sticking plaster.
So I ask you to think carefully about your own motives and beliefs about admins on Wikipedia. No one else knows what those are.
I think admins useful furthering the objective of finish what my ancestors started and conquering the world in the name of the Crown. No you don't know my motives are and I don't know yours (I think it is a fairly safe assumption that you want to improve wikipedia) but that has little relevance to the truth or otherwise of my arguments
It's very possible that my proposed experiment has real problems and is unworkable. But, may I suggest that you offer alternate suggestions for improvements, instead of just criticizing those of others?
I always tended towards Karl Popper's philosophy but no matter. I think we need to find a better way of dealing with problem admins and stop trying to use admins as a sticking plaster for problems that are better dealt with through other means.
On 2/10/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Then leave it to those who don't. There will be enough. Especially if you let more people be admins.
We have spare admin resources? We have backog of over 1000 images needing deletion (see [[CAT:CSD]]) could you ask these people to help doing something about it?
On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:35:11 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We have spare admin resources? We have backog of over 1000 images needing deletion (see [[CAT:CSD]]) could you ask these people to help doing something about it?
OK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:0008811297923.jpg
An album cover, with a fair use rationale, used in the right place, but tagged for speedy as "no source" - do I delete it or not?
Guy (JzG)
On 2/10/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
OK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:0008811297923.jpg
An album cover, with a fair use rationale, used in the right place, but tagged for speedy as "no source" - do I delete it or not?
Heh that has always been a bit of a grey area. Technicaly yes since it does not mention the music lable. In practice I would be woundering why User:Sfgsn6 only has edits to the image namespace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sfgsn6
Guy,
Quoting Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net:
OK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:0008811297923.jpg
An album cover, with a fair use rationale, used in the right place, but tagged for speedy as "no source" - do I delete it or not?
If you're interested in what, in theory, should happen when one is cleaning out image CSDs, take a look at it now -- I edited the page to identify the copyright holder (we need to do this), added our standard fair use rationale for an album cover. I then orphaned the image, because it wasn't being used in the way the rationale specifies -- it was decorating a discography listing on the artists' page, not being used in an article about the album.
Jkelly
If you're interested in what, in theory, should happen when one is cleaning out image CSDs, take a look at it now -- I edited the page to identify the copyright holder (we need to do this), added our standard fair use rationale for an album cover. I then orphaned the image, because it wasn't being used in the way the rationale specifies -- it was decorating a discography listing on the artists' page, not being used in an article about the album.
Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the rationale is nonsense.
Thomas,
Quoting Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the rationale is nonsense.
I agree with this, of course. But en: treats unfree content as deserving of many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at Deletion Review.
Jkelly
We should see if there's an article we can use it in with a reasonable fair use claim. If we can't delete it. We're in our right with policy backing us. We can delete images that were uploaded without correct copyright information. Inform the user and list it as usual. If anyone claims process is being ignored then...
On 2/10/07, jkelly@fas.harvard.edu jkelly@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
Thomas,
Quoting Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the rationale is nonsense.
I agree with this, of course. But en: treats unfree content as deserving of many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at Deletion Review.
Jkelly
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I agree with this, of course. But en: treats unfree content as deserving of many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at Deletion Review.
It it process. It's CSD I5. You tag it, wait 7 days, and then delete it. Not a very speedy form of speedy deletion, but it's on the list.
I'm not sure why we give people so long - they can upload the image again if they find a use for it. I would suggest reducing it to 24 hours (enough to account for images being removed from articles without consensus, any longer is unnecessary), but I'm not really involved in the image side of things, so I'll leave it to someone else.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I agree with this, of course. But en: treats unfree content as deserving of many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at Deletion Review.
It it process. It's CSD I5. You tag it, wait 7 days, and then delete it. Not a very speedy form of speedy deletion, but it's on the list.
I'm not sure why we give people so long - they can upload the image again if they find a use for it. I would suggest reducing it to 24 hours (enough to account for images being removed from articles without consensus, any longer is unnecessary), but I'm not really involved in the image side of things, so I'll leave it to someone else.
Should we really expect everybody to check on everything they care about every 24 hours?
The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.
William
William,
Quoting William Pietri william@scissor.com:
The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.
You're clear that we're discussing uploads of unusable unfreely licensed media here, right? Nobody's suggesting that the free content work of Wikipedia contributors be deleted more quickly.
Jkelly
jkelly@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
William,
Quoting William Pietri william@scissor.com:
The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.
You're clear that we're discussing uploads of unusable unfreely licensed media here, right? Nobody's suggesting that the free content work of Wikipedia contributors be deleted more quickly.
Yep. I'm imagining a case where I put in a fair-use image. Somebody happens to delete that reference, making the image an orphan. 24 hours later, it's gone. I come back in a couple of days and I'm sad that I have to re-upload or talk somebody into undeleting it.
I know for serious contributors, 24 hours seems like a long time, but when I get busy in real life, I feel like coming back every few days to run through my watchlist is a fair effort. I'm imagining others feel the same. Perhaps I'm wrong.
William
Should we really expect everybody to check on everything they care about every 24 hours?
The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.
We don't need everybody to check, just one person out of everyone that wants the image kept needs to check. If there is only one person that wants the image kept on an article, then there isn't consensus to keep it, is there?
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Should we really expect everybody to check on everything they care about every 24 hours?
The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.
We don't need everybody to check, just one person out of everyone that wants the image kept needs to check. If there is only one person that wants the image kept on an article, then there isn't consensus to keep it, is there?
I guess the articles I tend to edit must be unusually low traffic if you feel 24 hours is sufficient to conclusively determine consensus on some editorial question. Sorry for butting in.
William
I guess the articles I tend to edit must be unusually low traffic if you feel 24 hours is sufficient to conclusively determine consensus on some editorial question. Sorry for butting in.
It's enough time to determine if more time is needed. Admins are selected for their good judgement - try trusting them. The deleting admin just needs to click on the link to the article in the fair use rationale (if it doesn't state the article [and it's not just that the image page has been edited recently], then the image should be deleted straight away), and see if the removal was controversial. If some controversy starts after the 24 hours is up, then the image can be re-uploaded, or undeleted. Neither is much work. I would imagine any admin would undelete an image under such circumstances if asked.
On 2/11/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's enough time to determine if more time is needed. Admins are selected for their good judgement - try trusting them. The deleting admin just needs to click on the link to the article in the fair use rationale (if it doesn't state the article [and it's not just that the image page has been edited recently], then the image should be deleted straight away), and see if the removal was controversial. If some controversy starts after the 24 hours is up, then the image can be re-uploaded, or undeleted. Neither is much work. I would imagine any admin would undelete an image under such circumstances if asked.
So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.
So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.
And for those 7 days we are breaking the law. Copyright violation is illegal, and having an unlicensed image on Wikipedia without it being acceptable under fair use (and if it isn't used on any pages, then it isn't acceptable under fair use) is copyright violation.
IANAL, but I think we can justify 24 hours of violation while we work out what we should do, I don't think we can justify 7 days. Not when it is so easy to undo a deletion.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.
And for those 7 days we are breaking the law. Copyright violation is illegal, and having an unlicensed image on Wikipedia without it being acceptable under fair use (and if it isn't used on any pages, then it isn't acceptable under fair use) is copyright violation.
IANAL, but I think we can justify 24 hours of violation while we work out what we should do, I don't think we can justify 7 days. Not when it is so easy to undo a deletion.
If it comes down to a legal question, perhaps you could ask for a legal opinion? I can think of a couple of reasonable justifications, and I'm sure others can think of many more. But I've never found amateur lawyering to be particularly productive.
William
On 2/11/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.
And for those 7 days we are breaking the law.
who is we? see DMCA safe harbour.
Copyright violation is illegal, and having an unlicensed image on Wikipedia without it being acceptable under fair use (and if it isn't used on any pages, then it isn't acceptable under fair use) is copyright violation.
IANAL,
Neither am I but we have people who know rather a lot about copyright involved in our deletion policies. I think it is safe to say if there was a problem they would have told us.
but I think we can justify 24 hours of violation while we work out what we should do, I don't think we can justify 7 days. Not when it is so easy to undo a deletion.
The foundation doesn't have to do anything until it gets a DMCA takedown notice.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I guess the articles I tend to edit must be unusually low traffic if you feel 24 hours is sufficient to conclusively determine consensus on some editorial question. Sorry for butting in.
It's enough time to determine if more time is needed. Admins are selected for their good judgement - try trusting them. The deleting admin just needs to click on the link to the article in the fair use rationale (if it doesn't state the article [and it's not just that the image page has been edited recently], then the image should be deleted straight away), and see if the removal was controversial. If some controversy starts after the 24 hours is up, then the image can be re-uploaded, or undeleted. Neither is much work. I would imagine any admin would undelete an image under such circumstances if asked.
I don't think either one is much work for the admin, but I think it's the kind of thing that can take the wind out of an editor's sails, especially a relative newbie, for whom this will be a fair bit of work. What's the harm you're seeing it waiting a week?
Oh, and generally I do trust admins to use good judgment. But especially given that they're overworked, it seems like we should pick defaults that are reasonable, and require as little use of that good judgment as possible.
Thanks,
William
William Pietri wrote:
The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone because I'd taken the weekend off.
In fact I have a real-life example, where I was on vacation for a couple weeks, during which some vandal blanked half of a stamp-related article, which included the only refs to some fair-use scans I had made. Nobody but me watching the article apparently, so the vandalism went unreverted; then somebody came along and marked the now-unused images as orphans, them somebody else deleted, all before I got back. Apparently nobody thought it odd that a longtime WP admin would be uploading unused fair-use images! Fortunately I had local copies - stamp scanning and post-scan cleanup is sufficiently laborious that without the backups, I probably wouldn't have troubled to redo the work.
Stan
Fortunately I had local copies - stamp scanning and post-scan cleanup is sufficiently laborious that without the backups, I probably wouldn't have troubled to redo the work.
If you're a long time WP admin, you have access to the undelete option on the image page. No need to rescan anything, even if you didn't have local copies.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Fortunately I had local copies - stamp scanning and post-scan cleanup is sufficiently laborious that without the backups, I probably wouldn't have troubled to redo the work.
If you're a long time WP admin, you have access to the undelete option on the image page. No need to rescan anything, even if you didn't have local copies.
Now I do, certainly - this incident predates the image undeletion feature.
Stan
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Now I do, certainly - this incident predates the image undeletion feature.
It's irrelevant, then, isn't it?
If I thought so, then I wouldn't have posted it, eh? :-) My point was to show a real-life example showing how much the system can screw up when everybody operates on a hair trigger; delays of a few days are a chance to correct errors instead of compounding them. Note that some people (Matthew Woodcroft most recently) are also proposing entirely scrubbing revisions that are deemed copyvios, which would make images unrecoverable.
Ironically, many of my stamp scans are probably PD, but I haven't been able to find a clear statement of the stamps' legal status, so I'm conservative and assume they're fully copyrighted.
Stan
If I thought so, then I wouldn't have posted it, eh? :-) My point was to show a real-life example showing how much the system can screw up when everybody operates on a hair trigger; delays of a few days are a chance to correct errors instead of compounding them. Note that some people (Matthew Woodcroft most recently) are also proposing entirely scrubbing revisions that are deemed copyvios, which would make images unrecoverable.
Your example does indeed show that it's a good thing to wait before deleting, but only because it's difficult to undelete. It is now easy to undelete, so your example is irrelevant. I know you think otherwise - that doesn't make you right.
On 2/11/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Your example does indeed show that it's a good thing to wait before deleting, but only because it's difficult to undelete. It is now easy to undelete, so your example is irrelevant. I know you think otherwise
- that doesn't make you right.
Oh well I think that is enough messing around. Orphan fair use is currently being handled by bot. So the judgment of admins isn't much involved one way other other.
Strangely despite a give away deletion pattern no one noticed for several days which also rather shoots down the theory that admins monitor each other's deletions.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
If I thought so, then I wouldn't have posted it, eh? :-) My point was to show a real-life example showing how much the system can screw up when everybody operates on a hair trigger; delays of a few days are a chance to correct errors instead of compounding them. Note that some people (Matthew Woodcroft most recently) are also proposing entirely scrubbing revisions that are deemed copyvios, which would make images unrecoverable.
Your example does indeed show that it's a good thing to wait before deleting, but only because it's difficult to undelete. It is now easy to undelete, so your example is irrelevant. I know you think otherwise
- that doesn't make you right.
Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
Could you tell me more about what's motivating you here?
Thank,s,
William
Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
Could you tell me more about what's motivating you here?
I think reducing the time before unused unfree images can be deleted would improve Wikipedia. What else would my motivation be?
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
Could you tell me more about what's motivating you here?
I think reducing the time before unused unfree images can be deleted would improve Wikipedia. What else would my motivation be?
I was thinking your motivation was to reduce some real-world harm. E.g., images sitting for a week causes difficulty X to person Y. I gather you're saying it's a more abstract thing, an aesthetic preference?
The reason I'm pursuing this is that I think it's easy for experts to forget how opaque and frustrating Wikipedia can seem to non-experts. The real-world harm that I'm eager to prevent is frustrating average and newbie editors, for whom getting something undeleted is not the relatively minor thing it is for one of us.
William
I was thinking your motivation was to reduce some real-world harm. E.g., images sitting for a week causes difficulty X to person Y. I gather you're saying it's a more abstract thing, an aesthetic preference?
The real world harm is that of copyright violations. IANAL, so I don't know if it is actually illegal for us to have unfree images on the site for a week without them being fair use, but it has to be quite close to that fine line. Just because we can't technically be punished unless we refuse to remove it upon request doesn't make it legal for us to keep it there until that request is made (by my understanding of the law - if I assault someone, I can't be punished unless they decide to press charges, them not pressing charges doesn't make my act legal, though).
On 2/11/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The real world harm is that of copyright violations.
The copyright is already violated if it's actually the case. It doesn't matter if we delete it in 24 hours or 7 days. Reasonable time taken to investigate the issue is quite OK, in my opinion.
-Matt
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I was thinking your motivation was to reduce some real-world harm. E.g., images sitting for a week causes difficulty X to person Y. I gather you're saying it's a more abstract thing, an aesthetic preference?
The real world harm is that of copyright violations. IANAL, so I don't know if it is actually illegal for us to have unfree images on the site for a week without them being fair use, but it has to be quite close to that fine line.
"According to Wikipedia", the copyright holder does have to make a claim of infringement before the legal system will even take an interest in the matter. I don't really see how any copyright holder is going to make much of a case for the revenue they're losing because a copy of an image is flagged as being a probable copyvio for a few days, and is deleted even faster if they complain about it. Intent is all-important, and it will be pretty clear to everybody that we police ourselves rather severely, in fact several fair-use advocates who work in the publishing business grumble that we're being way pickier about copyright than is normal for the industry.
To tie back into admins, it would be amusing if a court ordered us to create more admins so that copyvio backlogs could be cleared quicker. :-) Then people voting against RfAs could be jailed for being in contempt of court... :-)
Stan
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I was thinking your motivation was to reduce some real-world harm. E.g., images sitting for a week causes difficulty X to person Y. I gather you're saying it's a more abstract thing, an aesthetic preference?
The real world harm is that of copyright violations. IANAL, so I don't know if it is actually illegal for us to have unfree images on the site for a week without them being fair use, but it has to be quite close to that fine line. Just because we can't technically be punished unless we refuse to remove it upon request doesn't make it legal for us to keep it there until that request is made (by my understanding of the law
You don't really "know" that it's illegal unless the owner has expressed himself. Even there that assumes that the claimant has a valid claim; perhaps the image was not copyrightable in the first place. Perhaps the merger principle applies. What Wikipedia allows as fair use is only a fraction of what the law or the courts might allow as fair use. As long as we are in that very wide space between the two definitions of fair use we are quite safe when we wait for a reasonable time.
if I assault someone, I can't be punished unless they decide to press charges, them not pressing charges doesn't make my act legal, though).
Not correct. If we are talking about criminal charges it is the state that presses the charges. If the assault took place when there was no third party witness it would jusat be difficult to prove the case when the victim does not testify.
Ec
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 08:21:00 -0800, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin. And probably an arbitrator. And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.
William is probably my favourite Wikipedian; he knows this :-)
Guy (JzG)
On 2/11/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 08:21:00 -0800, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin. And probably an arbitrator. And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.
You view not assuming good faith as a good thing?
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:07:01 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin. And probably an arbitrator. And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.
You view not assuming good faith as a good thing?
William always assumes good faith. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TIGERS
Guy (JzG)
geni wrote:
On 2/11/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
i, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin. And probably an arbitrator. And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.
You view not assuming good faith as a good thing?
Hi, Geni and Guy.
Although I appreciate his comments at the same time I feel they were too kind, I think I was assuming good faith. I just couldn't understand the goal of Thomas's proposal, and his vehemence seemed out of proportion to the apparent harm. When I and another fellow had asked him directly what problem he was trying to solve, he didn't answer.
If I weren't assuming good faith, I'd just have put him in the category of "difficult person" and stopped responding to him. In this case, the best he's-acting-in-good-faith theory I could come up with was that there was some other factor that I was missing. So I asked.
What would you prefer I have done? And just to be clear, that's a sincere question, not rhetorical snark.
Thanks,
Wiliam
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I'm not sure why we give people so long - they can upload the image again if they find a use for it. I would suggest reducing it to 24 hours (enough to account for images being removed from articles without consensus, any longer is unnecessary), but I'm not really involved in the image side of things, so I'll leave it to someone else.
Images might be orphans due to vanadalism on some other article, and there's no way to check that directly from the image page itself. If orphaned fair use images were more rapidly deleted then vandalism on the low-traffic pages that use them becomes a lot more destructive.
And it's not necessarily that easy to reupload an image. The original uploader might be long gone from Wikipedia, or he might not have retained a local copy of it, etc.
On 2/11/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Images might be orphans due to vanadalism on some other article, and there's no way to check that directly from the image page itself. If orphaned fair use images were more rapidly deleted then vandalism on the low-traffic pages that use them becomes a lot more destructive.
As Thomas said above, for images claimed as fair use, one simply needs to check the fair use rationale on the image description page to see which articles the image is claimed to be fair use in. If there is no such rationale, then the image is speedy deleteable anyway.
And it's not necessarily that easy to reupload an image. The original uploader might be long gone from Wikipedia, or he might not have retained a local copy of it, etc.
Completely unnecessary: image undeletion has been available since June last year. It's as trivial to undelete an image mistakenly deleted as it is to undelete an article mistakenly deleted.
On a tangential note, I proposed last month that all the "waiting periods" in the image criteria be removed, since they were only added in the first place because image undeletion didn't exist at the time. The only good argument I heard against the proposal was that bots like OrphanBot need some waiting period in which to do their business. I don't see why images can't simply be put into a pool for bots like OrphanBot to work on, then put into another pool to be deleted immediately - with no further delays - once the bots are done.
Stephen Bain wrote:
On a tangential note, I proposed last month that all the "waiting periods" in the image criteria be removed, since they were only added in the first place because image undeletion didn't exist at the time. The only good argument I heard against the proposal was that bots like OrphanBot need some waiting period in which to do their business. I don't see why images can't simply be put into a pool for bots like OrphanBot to work on, then put into another pool to be deleted immediately - with no further delays - once the bots are done.
Waiting periods gives more opportunity for human review. I usually turn this issue around and ask why we _shouldn't_ have a waiting period. The length of a queue doesn't alter the throughput; the same amount of deletion can be done with a queue or without one, and with the same amount of work.
On 2/11/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Stephen Bain wrote:
On a tangential note, I proposed last month that all the "waiting periods" in the image criteria be removed, since they were only added in the first place because image undeletion didn't exist at the time. The only good argument I heard against the proposal was that bots like OrphanBot need some waiting period in which to do their business. I don't see why images can't simply be put into a pool for bots like OrphanBot to work on, then put into another pool to be deleted immediately - with no further delays - once the bots are done.
Waiting periods gives more opportunity for human review. I usually turn this issue around and ask why we _shouldn't_ have a waiting period. The length of a queue doesn't alter the throughput; the same amount of deletion can be done with a queue or without one, and with the same amount of work.
Work is not increased in all cases; for example when a non-admin tags an image as being eligible for deletion, an admin must later review the image and delete it or not. This would still be necessary whether or not there was a fixed waiting period. But work is increased where an admin must tag an image, then wait a week to come back and delete it. We empower admins to decide whether things meet the criteria
The waiting periods were indeed introduced for images to allow for human review. But none were introduced for articles, templates, portals etc. The reason was that those pages could be reviewed after they were deleted, whereas images couldn't. But since June, images can also be undeleted. There is no other factor that makes images special. Either waiting periods should be introduced for all types speedy deletion, or they should be removed for images.
Stephen Bain wrote:
The waiting periods were indeed introduced for images to allow for human review. But none were introduced for articles, templates, portals etc. The reason was that those pages could be reviewed after they were deleted, whereas images couldn't. But since June, images can also be undeleted. There is no other factor that makes images special. Either waiting periods should be introduced for all types speedy deletion, or they should be removed for images.
While I would generally support any increases in waiting periods for deletion (I once seriously proposed extending the duration of AfD to 30 days), there's also a third option; leave waiting periods the way they are right now. It seems to work reasonably well.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I'm not sure why we give people so long - they can upload the image again if they find a use for it. I would suggest reducing it to 24 hours (enough to account for images being removed from articles without consensus, any longer is unnecessary), but I'm not really involved in the image side of things, so I'll leave it to someone else.
Waiting seven days instead acting after 24 hours reduces the impression that you are trying to rush something through. That alone is a positive contribution to the way people get along.
Ec
jkelly@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
Quoting Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the rationale is nonsense.
I agree with this, of course. But en: treats unfree content as deserving of many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at Deletion Review.
The point of giving the original uploader a few days to respond is to verify that it really is the case that it's a fair-use image no longer being used. If we zap things instantly, we can't distinguish, for example, a case where it's a perfectly legitimate fair-use image but momentarily not being used because somebody vandalized the page it was used in. I don't see what's wrong with proposing it for deletion, waiting a week or so, and deleting it if the allegation turns out to be correct.
-Mark
On 2/10/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
If you're interested in what, in theory, should happen when one is cleaning out image CSDs, take a look at it now -- I edited the page to identify the copyright holder (we need to do this), added our standard fair use rationale for an album cover. I then orphaned the image, because it wasn't being used in the way the rationale specifies -- it was decorating a discography listing on the artists' page, not being used in an article about the album.
Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the rationale is nonsense.
You have to wait 7 days before zapping orphans.
geni wrote:
On 2/10/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Then leave it to those who don't. There will be enough. Especially if you let more people be admins.
We have spare admin resources? We have backog of over 1000 images needing deletion (see [[CAT:CSD]]) could you ask these people to help doing something about it?
No, I can't, because these people fail the current RfA system.
Rich Holton wrote:
I propose an experiment:
Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.
Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed.
Within no time, you'll have people impose ridiculous criteria on what a probationary admin needs to do in order to "pass the test". Before you know it, people will be demoted simply for being on holiday and not showing up in a month.
Timwi wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
I propose an experiment:
Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship without prejudice.
Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed.
Within no time, you'll have people impose ridiculous criteria on what a probationary admin needs to do in order to "pass the test". Before you know it, people will be demoted simply for being on holiday and not showing up in a month.
Well, you may be right about what would happen, but that is certainly not my proposal. Under my proposal, if the person did nothing different from what they had been doing, or even if they did far less than they had been doing, they would still be kept as an admin.
I know that there have been objections amounting to the fear of 'bots or sleeper vandals becoming regular admins--apparently this is one of the reasons the RfA requirements continue to creep.
Remember that under my suggestion, we're talking a total of 6 months that a sleeper vandal would have to "sleep" before they entered the ranks of "normal" admins (3 months of keeping your nose clean, followed by three months of continued good behavior as an admin). And remember, someone setting out as a sleeper vandal would not be guaranteed of becoming an admin after three months, it's still up to the random selection. Is it impossible for someone to game this process? Sure. Is it likely? Hardly.
-Rich
Remember that under my suggestion, we're talking a total of 6 months that a sleeper vandal would have to "sleep" before they entered the ranks of "normal" admins (3 months of keeping your nose clean, followed by three months of continued good behavior as an admin). And remember, someone setting out as a sleeper vandal would not be guaranteed of becoming an admin after three months, it's still up to the random selection. Is it impossible for someone to game this process? Sure. Is it likely? Hardly.
The flaw in that logic is in thinking that there is anything different between a "normal admin" and a "provisional admin" besides the name. There isn't. Adminship is a bit in a database, either you have that bit and are able to do enormous damage to Wikipedia, or you don't. There is no need to sleep for 6 months when you can do the damage immediately. It would take a few minutes at the very best to desysop a provisional admin that started vandalising - how much damage do you think an AdminVandalBot could do in that time? I imagine it would be hours normal-admin time to cleanup.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Remember that under my suggestion, we're talking a total of 6 months that a sleeper vandal would have to "sleep" before they entered the ranks of "normal" admins (3 months of keeping your nose clean, followed by three months of continued good behavior as an admin). And remember, someone setting out as a sleeper vandal would not be guaranteed of becoming an admin after three months, it's still up to the random selection. Is it impossible for someone to game this process? Sure. Is it likely? Hardly.
The flaw in that logic is in thinking that there is anything different between a "normal admin" and a "provisional admin" besides the name. There isn't. Adminship is a bit in a database, either you have that bit and are able to do enormous damage to Wikipedia, or you don't. There is no need to sleep for 6 months when you can do the damage immediately. It would take a few minutes at the very best to desysop a provisional admin that started vandalising - how much damage do you think an AdminVandalBot could do in that time? I imagine it would be hours normal-admin time to cleanup.
Couldn't that logic be applied almost equally to allowing everybody to edit?
Curiously,
William
On 2/10/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Couldn't that logic be applied almost equally to allowing everybody to edit?
Curiously,
William
Nope. Firstly the damage you can do through editing is less.
Secondly the software, tools and our social structures are built around being ready to undo editing vandalism. We have very little in the way of methods of taking down problem admins fast.
geni wrote:
On 2/10/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Couldn't that logic be applied almost equally to allowing everybody to edit?
Nope. Firstly the damage you can do through editing is less.
Secondly the software, tools and our social structures are built around being ready to undo editing vandalism. We have very little in the way of methods of taking down problem admins fast.
As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a regular editor. Is that right?
As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.
If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being under the benefit of X?
William
William Pietri wrote:
geni wrote: As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a regular editor. Is that right?
As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.
If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being under the benefit of X?
William
And add to that the fact that the project has been running for six years with virtually no Y (possibly even none at all), whereas X happens every few seconds?
-Gurch
On 2/11/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a regular editor. Is that right?
I can think of attack lines that would force a rollback the database or weeks of cleanup.
They do exist.
As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.
If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being under the benefit of X?
William
You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block and can hit every page one wikipedia? Admins are to a large extent our solution to problem editing. The same solution won't work for problem admins. You are free to suggest ways of dealing with that but remeber they need to be >99.98% effective.
geni wrote:
On 2/11/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a regular editor. Is that right?
I can think of attack lines that would force a rollback the database or weeks of cleanup.
They do exist.
As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.
If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being under the benefit of X?
William
You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block and can hit every page one wikipedia? Admins are to a large extent our solution to problem editing. The same solution won't work for problem admins. You are free to suggest ways of dealing with that but remeber they need to be >99.98% effective.
If there are things that admins can do NOW that could cause us to have to roll-back two weeks, then there is an immediate problem NOW, not connected to any change in our selection procedure for admins. No selection procedure will be 99.98% effective, and the damage of attempting to achieve that is just too great.
Sleepers are certainly possible through the current RfA process. You don't think someone determined enough to want to damage Wikipedia in the way you're describing couldn't jump through the RfA hoops?
So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so such damage is impossible?
-Rich
On 2/11/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
If there are things that admins can do NOW that could cause us to have to roll-back two weeks, then there is an immediate problem NOW,
Since most of the attacks use fundimental admin powers that have more legit uses there isn't much to be done.
Rollback wouldn't be two weeks but to the last copy saved before the attack began.
not connected to any change in our selection procedure for admins. No selection procedure will be 99.98% effective, and the damage of attempting to achieve that is just too great.
Current system appears to be pretty close. depending on how you define it iw has a rate of 100 or 99.91%.
Sleepers are certainly possible through the current RfA process. You don't think someone determined enough to want to damage Wikipedia in the way you're describing couldn't jump through the RfA hoops?
I would be impressed if someone managed it.
So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how to cause such damage?
No we need people who know what can be done so they can spot and stop it. Of course by then then it would likely be too late but it is better than nothing
Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so such damage is impossible?
For various reasons that would be rather tricky and the devs have other priorities.
Rich Holton wrote:
If there are things that admins can do NOW that could cause us to have to roll-back two weeks, then there is an immediate problem NOW, not connected to any change in our selection procedure for admins. No selection procedure will be 99.98% effective, and the damage of attempting to achieve that is just too great.
Geni said "weeks of cleanup OR a rollback of the database", not both. I don't see what possible vandalism could require a rollback to a point before the vandalism actually started happening. The vandalism would have to be pretty stealthy to be ongoing for two weeks.
So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so such damage is impossible?
Bit of a false dilemma there. Considering these methods of admin vandalism have been available for quite some time and I don't know of any actually being used, how about leaving things as they are?
I can think of an approach right off the top of my head to cause major havoc using my admin powers that I wouldn't be able to undo with any conventional tools. I've been an admin since mid 2002 and was at one point the most prolific human editor (before AWB came along, grumble mumble :) so hopefully I've got enough trust built up to avoid being de-admined for admitting this.
So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so such damage is impossible?
You're misunderstanding the nature of risk. Our aim is not to remove all risk, that's impossible. Our aim is to reduce risk to the minimum possible while stilling being able to make our encyclopaedia as well as possible. Talking about the level of risk of a certain thing is meaningless, you have to take about the level of risk compared to the gain from it. The gain from 1000 admins is enormous compared to the risk of 1000 admins. The gain from 10000 admins is much small compared to the risk of 10000 admins. In my opinion, and apparently in the majority opinion, that gain is not worth the risk.
You're misunderstanding the nature of risk. Our aim is not to remove all risk, that's impossible. Our aim is to reduce risk to the minimum possible while stilling being able to make our encyclopaedia as well as possible. Talking about the level of risk of a certain thing is meaningless, you have to take about the level of risk compared to the gain from it. The gain from 1000 admins is enormous compared to the risk of 1000 admins. The gain from 10000 admins is much small compared to the risk of 10000 admins. In my opinion, and apparently in the majority opinion, that gain is not worth the risk.
I don't generally reply to myself to correct typos, but that email is full of them!
stilling -> still take about -> talk about small -> smaller
I shouldn't type with cold fingers... sorry!
Thomas Dalton wrote:
So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so such damage is impossible?
You're misunderstanding the nature of risk. Our aim is not to remove all risk, that's impossible. Our aim is to reduce risk to the minimum possible while stilling being able to make our encyclopaedia as well as possible.
Is that our aim?
Long ago, I used to work for market makers. These days, I do a lot of work for Internet companies. In both lines of work, risk management is essential. In both, the aim is to take as many well-managed, likely-profitable risks as possible. That's how things get better, and that's where a lot of your best information comes from.
The risk management strategy you describe strikes me as a good one for something much more settled, like a water utility.
Do you really think Wikipedia should be that risk-averse? I had thought it a much more dynamic enterprise, at least for the next few decades.
William
Is that our aim?
Long ago, I used to work for market makers. These days, I do a lot of work for Internet companies. In both lines of work, risk management is essential. In both, the aim is to take as many well-managed, likely-profitable risks as possible. That's how things get better, and that's where a lot of your best information comes from.
The risk management strategy you describe strikes me as a good one for something much more settled, like a water utility.
Do you really think Wikipedia should be that risk-averse? I had thought it a much more dynamic enterprise, at least for the next few decades.
Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward. How risk-averse you are determines where you put that balance (in other words, how much reward you require to make the risk worthwhile), but you have to put the balance somewhere. It's never wise to take a risk that offers no reward. Being not at all averse to risk is never a good idea.
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 16:41:43 +0000, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward.
And the values of both are culturally constructed (i.e. arbitrary) as is the balance between them. I know one of the more prominent risk theorists, he has a hard time getting people to accept the validity of the concept of plain bad luck.
Guy (JzG)
Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward.
And the values of both are culturally constructed (i.e. arbitrary) as is the balance between them. I know one of the more prominent risk theorists, he has a hard time getting people to accept the validity of the concept of plain bad luck.
Exactly - that cultural construction is what people are talking about when they say someone is more or less risk-averse than someone else.
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:09:01 +0000, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
And the values of both are culturally constructed (i.e. arbitrary) as is the balance between them. I know one of the more prominent risk theorists, he has a hard time getting people to accept the validity of the concept of plain bad luck.
Exactly - that cultural construction is what people are talking about when they say someone is more or less risk-averse than someone else.
Up to a point. There are two issues: first, the /value/ of risk and the /value/ of reward are subjective; second, the perceived /balance/ between them differs.
To say that different individuals are more or less risk averse is only half the story - they may be identically risk averse but have formed different judgments of the value of risk in a given context.
Guy (JzG)
Up to a point. There are two issues: first, the /value/ of risk and the /value/ of reward are subjective; second, the perceived /balance/ between them differs.
To say that different individuals are more or less risk averse is only half the story - they may be identically risk averse but have formed different judgments of the value of risk in a given context.
You're absolutely right, I oversimplified things.
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 18:43:31 +0000, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
You're absolutely right, I oversimplified things.
That's my soapbox you're standing on there ;-)
Only a couple of days ago I received a copy of an out-of-print book, an early work on risk by John Adams of UCL. This is one of my favourite topics.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
"Thomas Dalton" wrote:
And the values of both are culturally constructed (i.e. arbitrary) as is the balance between them. I know one of the more prominent risk theorists, he has a hard time getting people to accept the validity of the concept of plain bad luck.
Exactly - that cultural construction is what people are talking about when they say someone is more or less risk-averse than someone else.
Up to a point. There are two issues: first, the /value/ of risk and the /value/ of reward are subjective; second, the perceived /balance/ between them differs.
To say that different individuals are more or less risk averse is only half the story - they may be identically risk averse but have formed different judgments of the value of risk in a given context.
"Plain bad luck" in our context means that there may be instances where we will be sued no matter what we do.
Ec
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:24:24 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
"Plain bad luck" in our context means that there may be instances where we will be sued no matter what we do.
Sure. But if we have done our best and show it, we'll be OK.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:24:24 -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
"Plain bad luck" in our context means that there may be instances where we will be sued no matter what we do.
Sure. But if we have done our best and show it, we'll be OK.
IOW getting sued is not the thing to worry about. Getting sued successfully is.
Ec
On 2/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:24:24 -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
"Plain bad luck" in our context means that there may be instances where we will be sued no matter what we do.
Sure. But if we have done our best and show it, we'll be OK.
IOW getting sued is not the thing to worry about. Getting sued successfully is.
Ec
Under US law the winner may still have costs so to an extent both need to be worried about.
geni wrote:
On 2/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:24:24 -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
"Plain bad luck" in our context means that there may be instances where we will be sued no matter what we do.
Sure. But if we have done our best and show it, we'll be OK.
IOW getting sued is not the thing to worry about. Getting sued successfully is.
Under US law the winner may still have costs so to an extent both need to be worried about.
That's all possible. But at some point one has to stop backpeddling out of fear of the cost of being right. I readily recognize that some people are so paralyzed by the thought of any costs associated with being right that they become a part of the problem.
Ec
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Is that our aim?
Long ago, I used to work for market makers. These days, I do a lot of work for Internet companies. In both lines of work, risk management is essential. In both, the aim is to take as many well-managed, likely-profitable risks as possible. That's how things get better, and that's where a lot of your best information comes from.
The risk management strategy you describe strikes me as a good one for something much more settled, like a water utility.
Do you really think Wikipedia should be that risk-averse? I had thought it a much more dynamic enterprise, at least for the next few decades.
Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward. How risk-averse you are determines where you put that balance (in other words, how much reward you require to make the risk worthwhile), but you have to put the balance somewhere. It's never wise to take a risk that offers no reward. Being not at all averse to risk is never a good idea.
That's all true, and I agree completely.
Remind me who was advocating taking risks that offer no reward?
Also, my question wasn't about whether one should balance risks and rewards, but what the right level of risk tolerance is for Wikipedia. I'm saying that I expect Wikipedia would be pretty hungry for well-managed risk. Unless people feel that the era of innovation at Wikipedia is more or less over, in which case the minimum-risk strategy you suggest seems more appropriate.
Thanks,
William
Remind me who was advocating taking risks that offer no reward?
No-one. I phrased that wrong, sorry. I meant a negative expectation, ie. less reward than risk, which is how I assess the expectation of this proposal, rather than no reward at all.
Also, my question wasn't about whether one should balance risks and rewards, but what the right level of risk tolerance is for Wikipedia. I'm saying that I expect Wikipedia would be pretty hungry for well-managed risk. Unless people feel that the era of innovation at Wikipedia is more or less over, in which case the minimum-risk strategy you suggest seems more appropriate.
I agree, we have to take significant risks for Wikipedia to work. Allowing everyone to edit is an enormous risk, and we frequently lose time because of it (ie. we have to fix vandalism). However, the gain in terms of good contributions is even more enormous, so we consider it an acceptable risk. The risk of allowing large numbers of people access to admin tools without the strict standards we employ at the moment is extremely high, and the reward is very small, so (in my opinion, according to the values I've placed on the risk and reward and the balance between them that I've determined) it's not an acceptable risk.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Remind me who was advocating taking risks that offer no reward?
No-one. I phrased that wrong, sorry. I meant a negative expectation, ie. less reward than risk, which is how I assess the expectation of this proposal, rather than no reward at all.
Also, my question wasn't about whether one should balance risks and rewards, but what the right level of risk tolerance is for Wikipedia. I'm saying that I expect Wikipedia would be pretty hungry for well-managed risk. Unless people feel that the era of innovation at Wikipedia is more or less over, in which case the minimum-risk strategy you suggest seems more appropriate.
I agree, we have to take significant risks for Wikipedia to work. Allowing everyone to edit is an enormous risk, and we frequently lose time because of it (ie. we have to fix vandalism). However, the gain in terms of good contributions is even more enormous, so we consider it an acceptable risk. The risk of allowing large numbers of people access to admin tools without the strict standards we employ at the moment is extremely high, and the reward is very small, so (in my opinion, according to the values I've placed on the risk and reward and the balance between them that I've determined) it's not an acceptable risk.
You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage".
Why is it that those admins, let in under much less strict processes, have not resulted in all the nastiness that are predicted if we somehow relax the process again?
-Rich user:Rholton
Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com writes:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Remind me who was advocating taking risks that offer no reward?
No-one. I phrased that wrong, sorry. I meant a negative expectation, ie. less reward than risk, which is how I assess the expectation of this proposal, rather than no reward at all.
Also, my question wasn't about whether one should balance risks and rewards, but what the right level of risk tolerance is for Wikipedia. I'm saying that I expect Wikipedia would be pretty hungry for well-managed risk. Unless people feel that the era of innovation at Wikipedia is more or less over, in which case the minimum-risk strategy you suggest seems more appropriate.
I agree, we have to take significant risks for Wikipedia to work. Allowing everyone to edit is an enormous risk, and we frequently lose time because of it (ie. we have to fix vandalism). However, the gain in terms of good contributions is even more enormous, so we consider it an acceptable risk. The risk of allowing large numbers of people access to admin tools without the strict standards we employ at the moment is extremely high, and the reward is very small, so (in my opinion, according to the values I've placed on the risk and reward and the balance between them that I've determined) it's not an acceptable risk.
You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage".
Why is it that those admins, let in under much less strict processes, have not resulted in all the nastiness that are predicted if we somehow relax the process again?
-Rich user:Rholton
Because Wikipedia is more of a target now? and those who would seek adminship can no longer be trusted to be self-selected well-meaning geeks? For much of Wikipedia's history, the rest of the world really didn't care about the avenues to power in Wikipedia because they wouldn't try to take them even if they were easy.
I daresay things have changed since those early days.
You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage".
Why is it that those admins, let in under much less strict processes, have not resulted in all the nastiness that are predicted if we somehow relax the process again?
The main difference between Wikipedia then and Wikipedia now is that we now have people reading who don't contribute. Contributors know what to expect, they don't mind a little vandalism because they know how to fix it. Readers need what's visible at the moment to be right, not just something hidden away in the history. When Wikipedia first started, the only people that read it were those that contributed too, that is no longer the case. Originally, Wikipedia was made by geeks, for geeks. Now it is made by geeks for the world (for a suitable definition of geek - there are so many definitions out there, I'm sure one fits). We have a responsibility to our readers.
on 2/11/07 5:16 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The main difference between Wikipedia then and Wikipedia now is that we now have people reading who don't contribute. Contributors know what to expect, they don't mind a little vandalism because they know how to fix it. Readers need what's visible at the moment to be right, not just something hidden away in the history. When Wikipedia first started, the only people that read it were those that contributed too, that is no longer the case. Originally, Wikipedia was made by geeks, for geeks. Now it is made by geeks for the world (for a suitable definition of geek - there are so many definitions out there, I'm sure one fits). We have a responsibility to our readers.
Thomas,
Excellent observation - interesting fact.
Thank you,
Marc
Rich Holton wrote: <snip>
You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage".
So, you know the history of Oversight then?
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
<snip> > You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being > an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and > despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people > being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either > non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage". >
So, you know the history of Oversight then?
Geni,
If you have examples that demonstrate me wrong, please do bring them forward.
-Rich
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
<snip> > You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being > an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and > despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people > being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either > non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage". >
So, you know the history of Oversight then?
Sorry. Just after I hit send, I realized the email was from Alphax, not Geni. Again, my apologies.
-Rich
geni wrote:
You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block and can hit every page one wikipedia?
When I left, the delay between me hitting the "save" button to post my de-adminship request on Meta and the sysop bit being removed was about 150 seconds. That included time spent indicating to the steward handling the request, via IRC, that I really did want to be de-adminned.
So I fail to see where this inability to block comes in. That's a lot quicker than the response time for the average AIV request, for example. The stewards know what to do; in an emergency, they would be able to act just as fast, if not faster.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
I can think of an approach right off the top of my head to cause major havoc using my admin powers that I wouldn't be able to undo with any conventional tools.
If the servers were being exceptionally responsive, you might just manage 40 edits/actions before you were stopped, assuming someone using IRC noticed your first action (which, if they are intended to have the effect you suggest, is pretty likely). No matter what those actions are, they can be reversed, usually quickly. Simply making as many blocks or deletions as possible would have no lasting effect. Changing the various MediaWiki pages could do all sorts of things, but such changes can be reverted like any others (at most, someone would need to disable JavaScript and select a custom skin in order to do so). About the worst you could do is try to do history merges on pages with long edit histories (which are still reversible, just tedious to do), but the amount of time they take you'd be lucky if you finished *one* in three minutes. Also, attempting this on a page with a very long history will likely just return a database timeout error (as does attempting to clear a very large watchlist, for example), inconveniencing nobody but yourself.
-Gurch
Gurch wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
I can think of an approach right off the top of my head to cause major havoc using my admin powers that I wouldn't be able to undo with any conventional tools.
If the servers were being exceptionally responsive, you might just manage 40 edits/actions before you were stopped, assuming someone using IRC noticed your first action (which, if they are intended to have the effect you suggest, is pretty likely).
No, you misunderstand what I mean by "major havoc". For implicitly hard-to-revert damage subtle is much "better" primarily because it isn't noticed right away. Inserting just one paragraph of copyvio into an existing article compared to cut-and-pasting whole websites, for example. This can go unnoticed for months or even years and possibly taint a lot of subsequent work.
About the worst you could do is try to do history merges on pages with long edit histories (which are still reversible, just tedious to do), but the amount of time they take you'd be lucky if you finished *one* in three minutes. Also, attempting this on a page with a very long history will likely just return a database timeout error (as does attempting to clear a very large watchlist, for example), inconveniencing nobody but yourself.
I sometimes do history merges as part of my routine activities on Wikipedia, usually correcting old cut-and-paste moves that weren't noticed until lots of additional work had been done. If I were to start occasionally merging inappropriate histories while still using plausible-sounding delete/move/undelete summaries and leaving behind correct-looking current versions it might be a while before anyone noticed. Especially if I'm not stupid enough to try doing it to [[George W. Bush]] and [[Main Page]].
The point is that this is something bad admins can do that's not easily undoable. If lots of vandals were admins the whack-a-mole approach of responding to their actions after the fact would become untenable, so some care must be taken with giving the ability out.
On 2/11/07, Gurch matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
geni wrote:
You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block and can hit every page one wikipedia?
When I left, the delay between me hitting the "save" button to post my de-adminship request on Meta and the sysop bit being removed was about 150 seconds. That included time spent indicating to the steward handling the request, via IRC, that I really did want to be de-adminned.
So I fail to see where this inability to block comes in. That's a lot quicker than the response time for the average AIV request, for example. The stewards know what to do; in an emergency, they would be able to act just as fast, if not faster.
Experience when we had something that certainly appeared to be a rouge admin suggests otherwise
If the servers were being exceptionally responsive, you might just manage 40 edits/actions before you were stopped, assuming someone using IRC noticed your first action (which, if they are intended to have the effect you suggest, is pretty likely).
Um no. I've carried out actions that directly match the first stage of some attacks. No one noticed.
No matter what those actions are, they can be reversed, usually quickly.
That simply isn't the case
Simply making as many blocks or deletions as possible would have no lasting effect. Changing the various MediaWiki pages could do all sorts of things, but such changes can be reverted like any others (at most, someone would need to disable JavaScript and select a custom skin in order to do so).
Haveing the goatse on every page would not be good for wikipedia's reputation but that isn't the most lethal attack line.
About the worst you could do is try to do history merges on pages with long edit histories (which are still reversible, just tedious to do), but the amount of time they take you'd be lucky if you finished *one* in three minutes. Also, attempting this on a page with a very long history will likely just return a database timeout error (as does attempting to clear a very large watchlist, for example), inconveniencing nobody but yourself.
-Gurch
I have deleted some pages with histories of over 1000 edits from time to time (Biology comes to mind). There are ways to do it and there was no comment by anyone.
When I left, the delay between me hitting the "save" button to post my de-adminship request on Meta and the sysop bit being removed was about 150 seconds. That included time spent indicating to the steward handling the request, via IRC, that I really did want to be de-adminned.
So I fail to see where this inability to block comes in. That's a lot quicker than the response time for the average AIV request, for example. The stewards know what to do; in an emergency, they would be able to act just as fast, if not faster.
The reason Stewards respond so quickly is because they don't have very much to do - everything is designed so that local admins and crats do as much of the work as possible. If it became necessary to desysop people much more often (as often as we currently block people, if the most radical suggestion were to be implemented), meta's requests for permissions page would become just like AIV. The solution would, of course, be creating more stewards. Once we've done that, the problem has just moved up a level.
Whatever you do, you have to have a small number of carefully selected people with more power than everyone else. What level of power you make the cutoff point is up to you, but you have to make it somewhere, and wherever you make it, you'll get the same complaints we're getting now about RfA. It's unfortunate that this is the case, but that's life.
Couldn't that logic be applied almost equally to allowing everybody to edit?
It can, but it's a matter of degree. The amount of damage, and the time for cleanup, is much less with regular editing, and (very importantly) the gain is much greater. Inexperienced editors do a lot of good for Wikipedia, inexperienced admins wouldn't do much good at all.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It would take a few minutes at the very best to desysop a provisional admin that started vandalising - how much damage do you think an AdminVandalBot could do in that time? I imagine it would be hours normal-admin time to cleanup.
Of course, when making this assessment you are assuming the current MediaWiki software. Unfortunately, the current software is inefficient at undoing large amounts of activity. For example, the User Contributions page should have an "undo all of this user's contributions" button, especially if it isn't many. At the same time, this undoing of all contributions should also be undoable with a single command. There should also be a selective feature, e.g. undo only all image uploads or undo only the article edits that involve adding an external link. All of these are non-trivial to code, which is why no-one has done it yet, but it would make cleaning up after vandalism much more efficient, even if the vandal is himself an admin.
Timwi
Of course, when making this assessment you are assuming the current MediaWiki software. Unfortunately, the current software is inefficient at undoing large amounts of activity. For example, the User Contributions page should have an "undo all of this user's contributions" button, especially if it isn't many. At the same time, this undoing of all contributions should also be undoable with a single command. There should also be a selective feature, e.g. undo only all image uploads or undo only the article edits that involve adding an external link. All of these are non-trivial to code, which is why no-one has done it yet, but it would make cleaning up after vandalism much more efficient, even if the vandal is himself an admin.
Trying to code automated fixes to admin vandalism can have only limited effectiveness. A skilled vandal could easily find some form of vandalism that you haven't coded a way to undo yet. Or, better yet, use your "undo all contributions" button as a form of vandalism in itself. (If you restrict access to that button, then you've just recreated all the problems we have now, just with different names.)
Timwi wrote:
Of course, when making this assessment you are assuming the current MediaWiki software. Unfortunately, the current software is inefficient at undoing large amounts of activity. For example, the User Contributions page should have an "undo all of this user's contributions" button, especially if it isn't many. At the same time, this undoing of all contributions should also be undoable with a single command. There should also be a selective feature, e.g. undo only all image uploads or undo only the article edits that involve adding an external link. All of these are non-trivial to code, which is why no-one has done it yet, but it would make cleaning up after vandalism much more efficient, even if the vandal is himself an admin.
Timwi
Oh god... imagine viewing AntiVandalBot's contributions and hitting the "Undo" button by mistake. If you're lucky, it only vandalizes half of Wikipedia; if you're unlucky, you kill the servers in the process.
For administrators at least, this is not an issue; going down a list of 20 or 30 contributions clicking the "rollback" link next to each takes very little effort.
-Gurch
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 14:06:46 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those involved are still admins.
We don't require people to be infallible, only to acknowledge when they are wrong.
Guy (JzG)
On 2/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 14:06:46 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Other than that there were the ones who facilitated the Bobby Boulders troll. Many things are best left buried. A significant number of those involved are still admins.
We don't require people to be infallible, only to acknowledge when they are wrong.
The various guides to stepping outside policy and IARs to a large extent biol down to "be right" the further you step away from policy the more important it is the be right. Or not get caught either will do.
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 14:48:45 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The various guides to stepping outside policy and IARs to a large extent biol down to "be right" the further you step away from policy the more important it is the be right. Or not get caught either will do.
This is true. Being right mainly involves thinking first and foremost about whether a given action makes a better encyclopaedia. Of course, some people confuse a better encyclopaedia with one which better reflects their personal interests.
Guy (JzG)
On 2/9/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/9/07, James Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com wrote:
Fully agreed. It seemed to work with many, including me (well, I'll leave that judgement to the reader ;-)); the current system seems to be negatively selecting against people who will "be bold" or "ignore all rules", too, which suggests a slow corruption of our community's spirit (note that I do not suggest that this is in any way deliberate).
Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped.
So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.
Or simply make admin powers an automatic process after hitting some reasonable editing benchmarks.
geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, James Forrester wrote:
Fully agreed. It seemed to work with many, including me (well, I'll leave that judgement to the reader ;-)); the current system seems to be negatively selecting against people who will "be bold" or "ignore all rules", too, which suggests a slow corruption of our community's spirit (note that I do not suggest that this is in any way deliberate).
Do you blame them? People have seen the amount of damage admins can do before being stopped. They know that if the admin is smart enough and not unlucky it is highly unlikely they will be stopped.
This approach requires one to assume bad faith
So what is the rational response to this situation. To elect safe admins who you have a fairly good idea how they will act. That means electing admins who respect policy and don't like getting into fights.
The present situation, notably with its inquisitorial approach and stress on certain kind of tasks, tends to favour admins who respect the letter of policy, and who DO like to get into fights. The kind of people who do what they are told and join armies.
Ec
Joshua Brady wrote:
- Wikipedia doubles every 6 months, we need an admin pool to
compensate it, and we need those who will focus on handling admin issues, not waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use. So lets not look at a new admin based on his edit count, but his contributions and WILLINGNESS.
Here is this wrong sentiment again. Just because you need admins who "will focus on handling admin issues", you are (incorrectly) concluding that people who only "waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use" are somehow worthless and therefore shouldn't be made admins. Even if someone helps out with some admin tasks for only 2 months, surely they're worth more than they would be if they couldn't do any of it because they're denied access to the admin functions. You never know if one of them stays on and becomes the focussed admin you need.
Timwi
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Joshua Brady wrote:
- Wikipedia doubles every 6 months, we need an admin pool to
compensate it, and we need those who will focus on handling admin issues, not waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use. So lets not look at a new admin based on his edit count, but his contributions and WILLINGNESS.
Here is this wrong sentiment again. Just because you need admins who "will focus on handling admin issues", you are (incorrectly) concluding that people who only "waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use" are somehow worthless and therefore shouldn't be made admins. Even if someone helps out with some admin tasks for only 2 months, surely they're worth more than they would be if they couldn't do any of it because they're denied access to the admin functions. You never know if one of them stays on and becomes the focussed admin you need.
Out of everything I posted, how did you draw the conclusion that I said anything to the effect that, those who "wave the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use" were worthless?
I simply stated that we need more admins who were willing to stick it out for the long haul.
Timwi
- Josh
Joshua Brady wrote:
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Joshua Brady wrote:
- Wikipedia doubles every 6 months, we need an admin pool to
compensate it, and we need those who will focus on handling admin issues, not waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use. So lets not look at a new admin based on his edit count, but his contributions and WILLINGNESS.
Here is this wrong sentiment again. Just because you need admins who "will focus on handling admin issues", you are (incorrectly) concluding that people who only "waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use" are somehow worthless and therefore shouldn't be made admins. Even if someone helps out with some admin tasks for only 2 months, surely they're worth more than they would be if they couldn't do any of it because they're denied access to the admin functions. You never know if one of them stays on and becomes the focussed admin you need.
Out of everything I posted, how did you draw the conclusion that I said anything to the effect that, those who "wave the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use" were worthless?
I simply stated that we need more admins who were willing to stick it out for the long haul.
So essentially you're saying nothing more than "more constructive contributors is better than less"? In that case, you are merely stating the obvious.
Timwi
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 18:29:54 -0800, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
Ultimately the only way to fix this is probably to be more willing to chuck out people who resolutely refuse to follow policy. Look at the crap Carnildo got simply because he was bot-tagging images which violate our copyright policies. A lot of Alkivar's problem is that there are quite a few editors who flatly refuse to accept that an image scraped off the net somewhere is not an inherently legitimate illustration for any vaguely related article. That's probably the biggest cause of friction.
The second major cause of admin burnout in my opinion is trying to keep insidious POV pushers and off-wiki warriors apart. As soon as you step in and prevent one action, you are immediately seen as "involved" and are no longer trusted by the other side - the best that can happen is when both sides decide you are biased against them. Wikipedia is the number 1 destination for people seeking to fix problems without he outside world, and the editors who come here to pursue these agendas have endless time to pursue them. Caring even slightly about the neutrality of the project means that you *will* get stress.
The third biggest cause of friction is groups who believe they "deserve" a Wikipedia article because they are so great, even though there are no reliable secondary sources. I am getting crap at the moment about the General Mayhem forum, which is of surpassing significance to its members and (as far as I can tell) nobody else.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ultimately the only way to fix this is probably to be more willing to
chuck out people who resolutely refuse to follow policy. Look at the crap Carnildo got simply because he was bot-tagging images which violate our copyright policies. A lot of Alkivar's problem is that there are quite a few editors who flatly refuse to accept that an image scraped off the net somewhere is not an inherently legitimate illustration for any vaguely related article. That's probably the biggest cause of friction.
The second major cause of admin burnout in my opinion is trying to keep insidious POV pushers and off-wiki warriors apart. As soon as you step in and prevent one action, you are immediately seen as "involved" and are no longer trusted by the other side - the best that can happen is when both sides decide you are biased against them. Wikipedia is the number 1 destination for people seeking to fix problems without he outside world, and the editors who come here to pursue these agendas have endless time to pursue them. Caring even slightly about the neutrality of the project means that you *will* get stress.
The third biggest cause of friction is groups who believe they "deserve" a Wikipedia article because they are so great, even though there are no reliable secondary sources. I am getting crap at the moment about the General Mayhem forum, which is of surpassing significance to its members and (as far as I can tell) nobody else.
The problem I find with this analysis is that it's too one sideed. You outline three broad problems that do indeed happen, and take up a lot of admin time. Still another huge problem is the tendency of some admins to zealotry, or assuming that a small error by a newbie is a precursor to vandalism. The most desirable skill in an admin is patience, and we don't see much of that.
Ec
On 2/11/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The most desirable skill in an admin is patience, and we don't see much of that.
I suspect the patient admins don't make waves, or headlines.
-Matt
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:14:01 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The problem I find with this analysis is that it's too one sideed. You outline three broad problems that do indeed happen, and take up a lot of admin time. Still another huge problem is the tendency of some admins to zealotry, or assuming that a small error by a newbie is a precursor to vandalism. The most desirable skill in an admin is patience, and we don't see much of that.
That's partly a consequence of promoting mainly vandal fighters, with a culture of immediatism, and partly the result of the cynicism inspired by the relentless onslaught of POV pushers, self-promoters and other types.
But yes, there are issues like you describe. One that particularly annoys me is the tendency to overdramatise supposed death threats and legal threats when the comments have no degree of credibility. A credible threat of harm is bad, and reducing the currency of such by saying that generic "Meh! I'll kill ya!" crap is a death threat (rather than just simple stupidity) does not help.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
One that particularly annoys me is the tendency to overdramatise supposed death threats and legal threats when the comments have no degree of credibility. A credible threat of harm is bad, and reducing the currency of such by saying that generic "Meh! I'll kill ya!" crap is a death threat (rather than just simple stupidity) does not help.
Whe the expression, "I'll kill you," is used in a TV comedy nobody seems to get upset or take it seriously.
Often some of our editors interpret much less explicit statements as death threats or otherwise seriously offensive without recourse to any kind of reality check. Sometimes it seems that there are people who thrive on being offended.
Ec
On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 10:02:47 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Whe the expression, "I'll kill you," is used in a TV comedy nobody seems to get upset or take it seriously. Often some of our editors interpret much less explicit statements as death threats or otherwise seriously offensive without recourse to any kind of reality check. Sometimes it seems that there are people who thrive on being offended.
Or it's Chicken Little. Or maybe an excuse.
Guy (JzG)
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ultimately the only way to fix this is probably to be more willing to
chuck out people who resolutely refuse to follow policy.
Do you know exactly how many admins that would encompass?
-Jeff
On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 07:14:47 -0500, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Do you know exactly how many admins that would encompass?
Not many, as far as I can see. Or do you mean blindly follow process, instead of canonical policy? ;-)
Lighten up, Jeff.
List, be it noted that I personally consider the failure to sysop Jeff as a prime example of the RFA system being broken. Not one person was able to advance a credible reason why we should worry that Jeff would abuse the tools. Chances of unwarranted deletions and blocks: roughly zero. Chances of wheel warring? Low, and if he does we desysop him. Jeff is not stupid. Jeff also participates in deletion reviews and it would be of great assistance if he could see deleted history. He'd also be likely to Wikignome, removing personal info from histories and stuff. So what if he's the most inclusionist inclusionist on the project? If we allow republicans to be sysops we should allow inclusionists :-)
Others who should have been promoted but were not for ridiculous reasons include Stephen B Streater and Georgewilliamherbert.
/me gets off soapbox.
Guy (JzG)
On 2/12/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
So what if he's the most inclusionist inclusionist on the project? If we allow republicans to be sysops we should allow inclusionists :-)
The "community" only wants admins who will delete whatever they decide to put into [[CAT:CSD]].
Others who should have been promoted but were not for ridiculous reasons include Stephen B Streater and Georgewilliamherbert.
This sounded like a good idea to me before, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm hounded down as a cabalist: how about if any X number of admins think someone should have the mop, then that person gets the mop on a trial basis for Y amount of time, perhaps with a regular RFA at the end of the trial period. Adjust X and Y to taste.
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:42:53 +1100, "Stephen Bain" stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
This sounded like a good idea to me before, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm hounded down as a cabalist: how about if any X number of admins think someone should have the mop, then that person gets the mop on a trial basis for Y amount of time, perhaps with a regular RFA at the end of the trial period. Adjust X and Y to taste.
Happy enough. My main problem with RFA is - no, I can't say this without gross overgeneralisation and assuming bad faith, which would in some cases at least be very unfair, but suffice it to say that it's as bad as the bloody FA cabal, only without the redeeming feature of actually delivering high quality articles.
Guy (JzG)
Stephen Bain wrote:
On 2/12/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
So what if he's the most inclusionist inclusionist on the project? If we allow republicans to be sysops we should allow inclusionists :-)
The "community" only wants admins who will delete whatever they decide to put into [[CAT:CSD]].
Others who should have been promoted but were not for ridiculous reasons include Stephen B Streater and Georgewilliamherbert.
This sounded like a good idea to me before, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm hounded down as a cabalist: how about if any X number of admins think someone should have the mop, then that person gets the mop on a trial basis for Y amount of time, perhaps with a regular RFA at the end of the trial period. Adjust X and Y to taste.
I have no problem with bureaucrats who use common sense to override a negative RfA result.
Ec
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Others who should have been promoted but were not for ridiculous reasons include Stephen B Streater and Georgewilliamherbert.
I should add Serpent's Choice to that list. I don't know why his RfA failed, I missed it entirely, but he's been going wonderful work rescuing the most unlikely articles from deletion by making such massive improvements to them that delete votes get retracted in droves. I'm sure he'd rescue even more that way if he could see deleted article histories.
On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 10:08:03 -0700, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I should add Serpent's Choice to that list. I don't know why his RfA failed, I missed it entirely, but he's been going wonderful work rescuing the most unlikely articles from deletion by making such massive improvements to them that delete votes get retracted in droves. I'm sure he'd rescue even more that way if he could see deleted article histories.
Yup. Uncle G does this, too. It's a job which attracts remarkably few thanks, and those pretty grudging. I think it's great work, but some of the RFA crowd almost seemed to think that rewriting crap articles on good subjects so we had instead pretty good articles on good subjects is somehow not playing the game. Go figure.
Guy (JzG)
on 2/12/07 12:50 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG at guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
some of the RFA crowd almost seemed to think that rewriting crap articles on good subjects so we had instead pretty good articles on good subjects is somehow not playing the game. Go figure.
It's about power. There is a cancer in the culture.
Marc Riddell
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ultimately the only way to fix this is probably to be more willing to
chuck out people who resolutely refuse to follow policy.
Do you know exactly how many admins that would encompass?
We have no way of knowing. This sort of thing is often based on inconsistent and changing policy, applied by inconsistent admins with varying attitudes about how punitive they can or should be.
I have no problem with chucking out problem admins, including ones who consistently block people for a month when policy calls for a 24-hour block for the offense in question.
Ec
George Herbert wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
You can't prevent burnout.
What you're doing wrong is you're making it too hard for new admins to fill up the "vacancies".
George Herbert wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
Look, some of us have this thing called "real life" (you may have heard of it) which sometimes gets in the way of things; and unbelievable though it may sound, it is more important to us than this stupid little website, and we just have to call it quits. Like adminship itself, this should be no big deal.
The way to deal with this is to stop imposing such preposterous requirements at RfA. Most (not many, MOST) of the current admins don't measure up to the standards being imposed on new candidates. The supply of new administrators should be compensating for the departure of old ones whilst keeping pace with the growth of the project.
-Gurch
on 2/9/07 6:48 AM, Gurch at matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Look, some of us have this thing called "real life" (you may have heard of it) which sometimes gets in the way of things; and unbelievable though it may sound, it is more important to us than this stupid little website, and we just have to call it quits. Like adminship itself, this should be no big deal.
Perspective! Feels good!
The way to deal with this is to stop imposing such preposterous requirements at RfA. Most (not many, MOST) of the current admins don't measure up to the standards being imposed on new candidates.
Where do these standards come from?
Marc Riddell
On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:48:21 +0000, Gurch matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Look, some of us have this thing called "real life" (you may have heard of it) which sometimes gets in the way of things
What is this real life of which you speak, and where can I download it?
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:48:21 +0000, Gurch matthew.britton@btinternet.com wrote:
Look, some of us have this thing called "real life" (you may have heard of it) which sometimes gets in the way of things
What is this real life of which you speak, and where can I download it?
Try [[Second Life]].
On Feb 8, 2007, at 21:29, George Herbert wrote:
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests; you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.
In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin, one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted their page, trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers pissed that one has protected their page, users insistent that one is just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that one is abusing one's powers, and "valued contributors" insistent that one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.
It's a wonder all the admins haven't left the project.
And from my experience as an admin at other wikis, it's not the newbies or the vandals that get you down. It's the bitter resentment from invested users targeted at you over and over and over again. As if because the admins have such unspeakable power, they have to be abused to keep them down, so they won't take over in power-mad fits. It just gets to the point where one is like, "Fine! If you don't want me around so much, I'll leave. Have fun."
And why shouldn't they? Nobody is obligated to stay and if admins aren't valued, why would they want to?
--keitei
On 2/9/07, Keitei nihthraefn@gmail.com wrote:
I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests; you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.
Never really run across that one.
In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin, one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted their page,
Their feelings can be understood although in some cases their behaviour can be kinda cute.
trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers pissed that one has protected their page,
These form a fairly minor part of admin tasks. the number of pages protected per month to stop edit waring is pretty low.
users insistent that one is just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust
That was the general theory.
and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that one is abusing one's powers,
Fairly easy to deal with.
and "valued contributors" insistent that one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.
Generaly there are few reasons to have dealings with such users beyond those required by policy.
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:00, geni wrote:
On 2/9/07, Keitei nihthraefn@gmail.com wrote:
I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests; you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.
Never really run across that one.
. . .If the janitors with mops are to make some vital "decisions" in this temple of knowledge, I will be the first to walk away. Admins are not priests but janitors. When janitors prevent priests from performing their duties (i.e., editors from writing the articles), priests should evacuate the temple. --Ghirla -трёп- 08:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/ IncidentArchive167)
On 09/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/9/07, Keitei nihthraefn@gmail.com wrote:
I don't suppose it has anything to do with the, "We are the priests; you are the janitors. Now shovel our crap." mindset.
Never really run across that one.
Giano and team.
- d.
On 2/9/07, Keitei nihthraefn@gmail.com wrote:
In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin, one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted their page, trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers pissed that one has protected their page, users insistent that one is just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that one is abusing one's powers, and "valued contributors" insistent that one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.
We should put this on a plaque and hand it out to every new admin with their mop, bucket, and hazmat suit.
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 08:50:04 -0500, Keitei nihthraefn@gmail.com wrote:
In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time.
Not so. I was invited a couple of times before I finally accepted a nomination, I never aimed for it. Who would? They'd be mad.
Guy (JzG)
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:39, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 08:50:04 -0500, Keitei nihthraefn@gmail.com wrote:
In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time.
Not so. I was invited a couple of times before I finally accepted a nomination, I never aimed for it. Who would? They'd be mad.
A lot of people do... c.f. Editor review. However, I meant that in order to get the edit summary percentage right, and the proper namespace distribution, the right total number of edits, edits per day, all the ridiculous arbitrary things, one pretty much has to be aware of these arbitrary measures and aiming to reach them. Which is a horrible, horrible thing because we get those people who come to Wikipedia just to be admins and aren't really in sync with the mores of the project and all that jazz. Well, theoretically we do at least.
--keitei
Keitei wrote:
In order to become an admin, one must have an impeccable track record and have been aiming for adminship for quite some time. Then one must jump through all sorts of flaming hoops while all the people one gets along with the least gather to heckle. Then having become an admin, one gets treated like shit by newcomers pissed that one has deleted their page, trolls pissed that one has blocked them, POV pushers pissed that one has protected their page, users insistent that one is just the same as them and does not have any greater level of trust and should never be given any level of slack, users convinced that one is abusing one's powers, and "valued contributors" insistent that one does not matter and should go to hell because they do so much more and are so much more important to the encyclopedia.
Gee! You make it sound so much like the real world. :-)
And from my experience as an admin at other wikis, it's not the newbies or the vandals that get you down. It's the bitter resentment from invested users targeted at you over and over and over again. As if because the admins have such unspeakable power, they have to be abused to keep them down, so they won't take over in power-mad fits. It just gets to the point where one is like, "Fine! If you don't want me around so much, I'll leave. Have fun."
Absolutely. Sometimes the best way to get your point across is to let it go. One of the big failings of democratic and quasi-democratic systems is that they cannot reconcile the right of everyone to participate in the decisions with the expenditure of time needed to be fully and fairly involved in those decisions. Participatory democracy sounds good in theory, but it requires that those who participate have a higher goal than winning debating points through persistence.
Ec
On 2/8/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
Why assume we're doing anything wrong? Some degree of churn is, I think, healthy.
On 2/9/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/8/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
Why assume we're doing anything wrong? Some degree of churn is, I think, healthy.
Turnover isn't a bad thing. People go from active, to inactive and back to active all the time. But burnout is a problem when it comes from conflict and causes a person to leave feeling upset and ill-served by the community.
The Cunctator wrote:
On 2/8/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
Why assume we're doing anything wrong? Some degree of churn is, I think, healthy.
I can't speak for George (the OP), but I don't think I'm working from the assumption that we're doing anything wrong. I come to the conclusion that we do.
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
On 2/8/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from ending up going over the edge. What are we doing wrong, or what do we need to learn to do right?
Why assume we're doing anything wrong? Some degree of churn is, I think, healthy.
I can't speak for George (the OP), but I don't think I'm working from the assumption that we're doing anything wrong. I come to the conclusion that we do.
Okay, how have you come to that conclusion?
The Cunctator wrote:
I can't speak for George (the OP), but I don't think I'm working from the assumption that we're doing anything wrong. I come to the conclusion that we do.
Okay, how have you come to that conclusion?
I've already explained this elsewhere, so I'll only give a quick summary here. Wikipedia does something _right_ by letting everyone edit. The underlying philosophy is that everyone starts out as innocent, and is blocked from editing only if they show misbehaviour. Adminship is the wrong way around. Users start out as being viewed with caution and suspicion, and must "earn" their admin "privileges" by fulfilling some ridiculous set of criteria. The _right_ way would be to demote the ones who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.
Timwi
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote: The _right_ way would be to demote the ones
who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.
And who would be empowered to de-admin people? Those people would become the cabal with the "special" "privilieges" instead of admins.
On 09/02/07, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
The _right_ way would be to demote the ones
who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.
And who would be empowered to de-admin people? Those people would become the cabal with the "special" "privilieges" instead of admins.
The ArbCom does this now.
- d.
On 2/9/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/02/07, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
The _right_ way would be to demote the ones
who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.
And who would be empowered to de-admin people? Those people would become the cabal with the "special" "privilieges" instead of admins.
The ArbCom does this now.
Of course, but they'd hardly be able to handle the extra workload in their current form.
On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 17:17:58 +0000, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The ArbCom does this now.
LOOK! LOOK! CABAL!
Guy (JzG)
Rob wrote:
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote: The _right_ way would be to demote the ones
who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.
And who would be empowered to de-admin people? Those people would become the cabal with the "special" "privilieges" instead of admins.
Oh, but the people who are currently empowered to _grant_ adminship aren't considered a "cabal" by the admins!
It seems to me that this whole "cabal" thing usually refers only to admins who do blocking or speedy deletions, but never to an admin who enforces an AfD decision or a bureaucrat who executes the result of an RfA. The reason for this is likely because there is sufficient discussion going on in the latter cases. Blocks are not discussed, so to a new user they can easily seem arbitrary and (perhaps) personal.
Thus, if de-adminship was discussed enough, it would probably solve your concern. Of course, people who go on a rampage would still need to be de-adminned quickly, but the discussion can still go on and the user can perhaps defend their actions and get their permissions back if it turns out they were acting correctly.
Timwi
On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
I can't speak for George (the OP), but I don't think I'm working from the assumption that we're doing anything wrong. I come to the conclusion that we do.
Okay, how have you come to that conclusion?
I've already explained this elsewhere, so I'll only give a quick summary here. Wikipedia does something _right_ by letting everyone edit. The underlying philosophy is that everyone starts out as innocent, and is blocked from editing only if they show misbehaviour. Adminship is the wrong way around. Users start out as being viewed with caution and suspicion, and must "earn" their admin "privileges" by fulfilling some ridiculous set of criteria. The _right_ way would be to demote the ones who misuse it, not to prevent the constructive ones from being constructive.
Oh, I agree with that. I just was saying I don't think admins getting burned out and taking a wikibreak is necessarily a huge problem.
The Cunctator wrote:
Oh, I agree with that.
Glad to hear that :)
I just was saying I don't think admins getting burned out and taking a wikibreak is necessarily a huge problem.
Okay, maybe we're in agreement, but let me clarify: I don't think it's a huge problem _in itself_, but it is a problem now (maybe not a huge one, but whatever) because it is made too difficult for new admins to fill up the gaps. Otherwise people wouldn't make such a big deal out of someone leaving.
Timwi
Having read with great interest much of the discussion, I'd like to offer another proposal for reforming the way we get admins. This isn't really something I'm championing; I'm just throwing it out in hopes of advancing the discussion. Many of the elements are borrowed, and if this goes anywhere, I'll gladly go back and cite them.
The spirit of this is that there is a lot of relatively uncontroversial admin work that needs to be done, so that we should let a wider set responsible people do some of the basic mop-and-bucket stuff. For controversial stuff, that would effectively stay in the hands of current admins. It's more "I guess it's my turn to clean the bathroom" than "I run this place."
The basics:
* We introduce the status of "deputy admin" (other possible names: provisional, temporary, transient, acting, probationary). * Deputies have all the powers of a regular admin. * If stepping into something controversial or difficult, they are expected to get help from a permanent admin. * The term is limited to, say, 3 months. * Application is similar, but the bar is lower: o they should have a modest history as a useful contributor; o they should have demonstrated reasonable knowledge of how Wikipedia works; o they shouldn't be obviously dangerous; o no serious objections means they pass. * They can be more easily be de-admined. Possible mechanisms: o their request stays open, and a serious objection means they lose the bit; o any N (1? 2? 3?) admins can agree to de-admin them with cause; or o any serious, validated complaint of admin power abuse ends their term. * After their term is up, there is a mandatory break of say, 6 weeks, during which they are just another editor. * After the break, they can: o carry on editing, without prejudice or pressure, o apply for another term as a deputy, or o apply for administrator-for-life status through the RfA process.
So that's the basic notion. Like a lot of what goes on here, I think there will be a lot of useful social convention that grows up around the core mechanism.
Why do it? Here's my thinking:
Pros:
* Many hands make light work. * Experienced admins can focus on the hard stuff. * Gives deputies a track record for future full RfA. * Helps de-emphasizes adminship as status item. * Limited scope and term will make it less appealing to those seeking admin-hood for the power. * Helps identify responsible people. * Wider distribution of power means less us-vs-them divide. * Requires no code changes.
Cons:
* More admins to keep track of. * The process of deciding who gets in and who doesn't is more work, and possibly more drama than the current setup. * More work blessing and de-blessing deputy admins.
Naturally, I don't think this would solve all of the problems that have come up, but do folks think it would be a step forward?
Thanks,
William
It's not a new idea. My main problem with it is that it reduces the trust the community has in admins as a whole. Admins can only do their job if the rest of the community lets them, and the rest of the community will only do that if they trust them. Having a way for people to get admin tools without the strict processes of RfA would diminish that trust and make the whole project unworkable.
To summarise: Adminship is not about being trustworthy, it's about being trusted.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It's not a new idea. My main problem with it is that it reduces the trust the community has in admins as a whole. Admins can only do their job if the rest of the community lets them, and the rest of the community will only do that if they trust them. Having a way for people to get admin tools without the strict processes of RfA would diminish that trust and make the whole project unworkable.
To summarise: Adminship is not about being trustworthy, it's about being trusted.
I think you got this backwards. If the RfA process is so strict and everyone then "trusts" the people who are made admins, surely that makes it much easier for those admins to wreak havoc (whether intentional or not). Surely *that* makes the whole project more unworkable.
Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all. Adminship should be synonymous with innocence. Not being allowed the admin tools should be a penalty, and a penalty should only be applied when someone does something wrong, no sooner.
Timwi
I think you got this backwards. If the RfA process is so strict and everyone then "trusts" the people who are made admins, surely that makes it much easier for those admins to wreak havoc (whether intentional or not). Surely *that* makes the whole project more unworkable.
When I say it's about trust, and not trustworthyness, that's because most people that use Wikipedia *are* trustworthy, and aren't going to wreak havoc. That is the premise to all these discussions about making it easier to become an admin - that more people are trustworthy than those than get through RfA. If that's not true, then RfA isn't broken, and we have nothing to discuss.
I accept that making many more people admins would not result in many wreaking havoc, however, it would result in an ungodly number of false complaints about admins wreaking havoc. That is what I mean when I say the community needs to trust admins.
Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all. Adminship should be synonymous with innocence. Not being allowed the admin tools should be a penalty, and a penalty should only be applied when someone does something wrong, no sooner.
If we were in Utopia, I would agree with you 100%, however, we are in the real world, and we need to base our decisions on logic, not ideology.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I accept that making many more people admins would not result in many wreaking havoc, however, it would result in an ungodly number of false complaints about admins wreaking havoc. That is what I mean when I say the community needs to trust admins.
What evidence do you have of this. Speculation is not evidence
Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all. Adminship should be synonymous with innocence. Not being allowed the admin tools should be a penalty, and a penalty should only be applied when someone does something wrong, no sooner.
If we were in Utopia, I would agree with you 100%, however, we are in the real world, and we need to base our decisions on logic, not ideology.
I'm glad to see that you are finally moving out of Utopia (=Nowhere) into the real world. Your conversion to logic would be welcome.
Ec
What evidence do you have of this. Speculation is not evidence
This entire discussion is speculation, that's what you get when you discuss a plan. You can't say what has happened because the plan hasn't been implemented yet. At best you can have indirect evidence to support views, generally you just have logical arguments.
I'm glad to see that you are finally moving out of Utopia (=Nowhere) into the real world. Your conversion to logic would be welcome.
That reads like an ad hominem attack, although I have no idea what you are getting at. For a start, there is a difference between an unachievable ideal place and "nowhere". I can't see how anything I've said could be taken to be nieve, which is the only interpretation I can come up with for your first sentence, and I have no idea what you think I've been basing my arguments on if it isn't logic. To convert to something, you have to convert from something.
On Feb 13, 2007, at 14:41, Thomas Dalton wrote:
I'm glad to see that you are finally moving out of Utopia (=Nowhere) into the real world. Your conversion to logic would be welcome.
That reads like an ad hominem attack, although I have no idea what you are getting at. For a start, there is a difference between an unachievable ideal place and "nowhere". I can't see how anything I've said could be taken to be nieve, which is the only interpretation I can come up with for your first sentence, and I have no idea what you think I've been basing my arguments on if it isn't logic. To convert to something, you have to convert from something.
"Utopia (from Greek i.e. "no place" or "place that does not exist")" I think maybe it was a joke? A continuation of the original punning? I didn't see it as an attack, at the least.
--keitei
"Utopia (from Greek i.e. "no place" or "place that does not exist")" I think maybe it was a joke? A continuation of the original punning? I didn't see it as an attack, at the least.
Ok, so that part was a pun, the rest was an ad hominem attack. He referred to me multiple times and never made any mention of my arguments - it's an excellent example of an ad hominem attack.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I'm glad to see that you are finally moving out of Utopia (=Nowhere) into the real world. Your conversion to logic would be welcome.
That reads like an ad hominem attack, although I have no idea what you are getting at. For a start, there is a difference between an unachievable ideal place and "nowhere". I can't see how anything I've said could be taken to be nieve, which is the only interpretation I can come up with for your first sentence, and I have no idea what you think I've been basing my arguments on if it isn't logic. To convert to something, you have to convert from something.
You are clearly unaware that when Sir Thomas More chose the title "Utopia" for his novel it was precisely taken from the Greek for "no place".
Ec
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I can't see how anything I've said could be taken to be nieve, which is the only interpretation I can come up with for your first sentence, and I have no idea what you think I've been basing my arguments on if it isn't logic. To convert to something, you have to convert from something.
Nieve? Obsolete Scottish dialect for clenched fist? Spanish for snow?
Nieve? Obsolete Scottish dialect for clenched fist? Spanish for snow?
In what way does a sarcastic comment about my spelling make a useful contribution to this conversation? It was obvious what I meant. Language exists to transfer meaning from one person to another, as long as that aim is achieved does the spelling really make any difference?
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Nieve? Obsolete Scottish dialect for clenched fist? Spanish for snow?
In what way does a sarcastic comment about my spelling make a useful contribution to this conversation? It was obvious what I meant. Language exists to transfer meaning from one person to another, as long as that aim is achieved does the spelling really make any difference?
It was perfectly obvious that no rational person knew what the fuck you meant with that collection of letters. That's why I checked the dictionary. Language does indeed serve to transfer meaning from one person to another. In this case the aim was not achieved.
Some misspellings are obvious, some are completely misleading, and others are meaningless nonsense. Meaningless nonsense may be less drastic than misleading people, but in either case it is not the responsibility of the reader to divine your intent.
I can and have frequently made allowances for those with dyslexia or for whom English is not their native language, and would for other understandable dysfunctionalities in the use of language. Perhaps, as subsequent messages have suggested, you did mean "naïve". Recognizing that would be more appropriate than trying to justify a misspelling.
Ec
On 16/02/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Nieve? Obsolete Scottish dialect for clenched fist? Spanish for snow?
In what way does a sarcastic comment about my spelling make a useful contribution to this conversation? It was obvious what I meant.
It was perfectly obvious that no rational person knew what the fuck you meant with that collection of letters.
I recognised it as "naive" instantly. I am sure that many others did.
Recognizing that would be more appropriate than trying to justify a misspelling.
No. What is inappropriate is your grossly insulting and offensive language as quoted above.
Moderators, please consider putting this person on moderation. I do not see how posts such as the one quoted improve the level of conversation in this forum.
On 2/17/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
Moderators, please consider putting this person on moderation. I do not see how posts such as the one quoted improve the level of conversation in this forum.
Yes, would you both please quit this bickering and discuss something vaguely on topic?
Thanks, Steve
On 17/02/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
Moderators, please consider putting this person on moderation. I do not see how posts such as the one quoted improve the level of conversation in this forum.
It's definitely not our job to fix injured sensibilities. I strongly suggest you both play nicer.
- d.
On 18/02/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It's definitely not our job to fix injured sensibilities. I strongly suggest you both play nicer.
As you're the second person to use the phrase "you both" when replying to me, I should point out that... oh, forget it.
On 2/19/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
As you're the second person to use the phrase "you both" when replying to me, I should point out that... oh, forget it.
Heh, sorry, point taken. I meant Ray and Thomas. See what happens when you stray into the crossfire?
Steve
On 19/02/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/19/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
As you're the second person to use the phrase "you both" when replying to me, I should point out that... oh, forget it.
Heh, sorry, point taken. I meant Ray and Thomas. See what happens when you stray into the crossfire?
Indeed. *ahem* ALLA YOUSE KIDS. QUIETEN DOWN. DON'T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE! I DON'T CARE WHO STARTED IT!
- d.
On 2/11/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
I think you got this backwards. If the RfA process is so strict and everyone then "trusts" the people who are made admins, surely that makes it much easier for those admins to wreak havoc (whether intentional or not). Surely *that* makes the whole project more unworkable.
Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all.
You have no choice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&...
There is nop humane way to check to see if all those deleations were correct and within policy.
You have no choice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&...
There is nop humane way to check to see if all those deleations were correct and within policy.
Well, we can do deletion log patrol, just as we do recent changes patrol at the moment. Spotting the vandalism isn't too hard, it's cleaning up after it when you have no greater powers than the vandals which is hard. It's not impossible, and if we would get significant gain out of giving everyone access to the delete button then it might be worth it, but we would get very little gain, so it's simply not worth the hassle.
geni wrote:
Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all.
You have no choice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&...
There is nop humane way to check to see if all those deleations were correct and within policy.
I thought the theory was that editors check that work, yes? We trust editors to check each other, and I had assumed that the same mechanism was the main check on administrative error and malfeasance.
William
On 2/11/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
I thought the theory was that editors check that work, yes? We trust editors to check each other, and I had assumed that the same mechanism was the main check on administrative error and malfeasance.
Nah. Unless you are rather unluckly or do something stupid you would be unlikely to be caught slipping in a few non legit deletions along with the legit ones.
geni wrote:
On 2/11/07, William Pietri wrote:
I thought the theory was that editors check that work, yes? We trust editors to check each other, and I had assumed that the same mechanism was the main check on administrative error and malfeasance.
Nah. Unless you are rather unluckly or do something stupid you would be unlikely to be caught slipping in a few non legit deletions along with the legit ones.
:'(
What many of the unlucky ones don't understand is that they need to apologize profusely for the error of their ways rather than trying to defend the indefensible. How they deal with discovery has a lot of influence on whether their future errors will be discovered. ;-)
Ec
Well, I am all for it, but, then again, I am a bit biased as I am not an admin, and want to be one.
On 2/10/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Having read with great interest much of the discussion, I'd like to offer another proposal for reforming the way we get admins. This isn't really something I'm championing; I'm just throwing it out in hopes of advancing the discussion. Many of the elements are borrowed, and if this goes anywhere, I'll gladly go back and cite them.
The spirit of this is that there is a lot of relatively uncontroversial admin work that needs to be done, so that we should let a wider set responsible people do some of the basic mop-and-bucket stuff. For controversial stuff, that would effectively stay in the hands of current admins. It's more "I guess it's my turn to clean the bathroom" than "I run this place."
The basics:
* We introduce the status of "deputy admin" (other possible names: provisional, temporary, transient, acting, probationary). * Deputies have all the powers of a regular admin. * If stepping into something controversial or difficult, they are expected to get help from a permanent admin. * The term is limited to, say, 3 months. * Application is similar, but the bar is lower: o they should have a modest history as a useful contributor; o they should have demonstrated reasonable knowledge of how Wikipedia works; o they shouldn't be obviously dangerous; o no serious objections means they pass. * They can be more easily be de-admined. Possible mechanisms: o their request stays open, and a serious objection means they lose the bit; o any N (1? 2? 3?) admins can agree to de-admin them with cause; or o any serious, validated complaint of admin power abuse ends their term. * After their term is up, there is a mandatory break of say, 6 weeks, during which they are just another editor. * After the break, they can: o carry on editing, without prejudice or pressure, o apply for another term as a deputy, or o apply for administrator-for-life status through the RfAprocess.
So that's the basic notion. Like a lot of what goes on here, I think there will be a lot of useful social convention that grows up around the core mechanism.
Why do it? Here's my thinking:
Pros:
* Many hands make light work. * Experienced admins can focus on the hard stuff. * Gives deputies a track record for future full RfA. * Helps de-emphasizes adminship as status item. * Limited scope and term will make it less appealing to those seeking admin-hood for the power. * Helps identify responsible people. * Wider distribution of power means less us-vs-them divide. * Requires no code changes.Cons:
* More admins to keep track of. * The process of deciding who gets in and who doesn't is more work, and possibly more drama than the current setup. * More work blessing and de-blessing deputy admins.Naturally, I don't think this would solve all of the problems that have come up, but do folks think it would be a step forward?
Thanks,
William
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