On 2/9/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: Duh. 100% edit summaries. 3000 edits, well distributed across article space, project space and article talk space. Never having pissed anyone off. Ever. Steve

Marc Riddell wrote: He's not wrong. -Jeff

On 2/9/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: And you can't have made the 3000 edits over too long or too short a period of time.

On 2/9/07, Taco Deposit <tacodeposit(a)gmail.com> wrote: Because Heaven knows we wouldn't want people who had been hanging around the project for a long time to be admins. KP's point, below, about only people who have lots and lots of time to edit becoming admins is a good one -- it means, for the most part, that people with very busy outside lives will never get the chance. We're losing a whole swath of potential admins this way. The thing about adminship (to sort of address Marc's questions) is we don't really have any other "official" way to recognize editors. Sure, there are barnstars and the like; but these are pretty meaningless outside of a narrow context. There are cabals, but since TINC, well, you're out of luck :) Being able to say "I'm an administrator on the English Wikipedia!" is a kind of code for "I've devoted a lot of time to the project, and people recognize and value my contributions -- I'm an important person!" It doesn't really matter what the actual work is. The current administrators on this list are talking about the pain and suffering of having to use the mop & bucket (which is, as far as I can tell, entirely true) but ignoring the fact that by having the sysop bit they have recognition within the project that it's not possible to get in any other way. There's no "trusted editor bit" that can be set. There's no "you've been editing for three years, now you're level x". You can make a tremendous number of valuable edits on the projects (or perhaps a smaller number of really good edits over a long time), but there's no way to up your privileges or even recognize you officially without making you an admin. And what if I want that recognition, but don't really have any interest in deleting speedys or mucking through endless policy? Perhaps then you get trouble, or at least an inefficient system where people play to "admin criteria" rather than "let's make this a good encyclopedia criteria". I give a lot of talks on wikipedia to the outside world, and I get asked all the time if I'm an admin -- not because the people asking really have any conception of what that means, but because they assume that if I know a lot about the site I must be in the "in crowd" and the only thing they know about on Wikipedia that constitutes an "in-crowd" is adminship. We must change this, and find some other recognition mechanism for devoted, conscientious and level-headed editors that does not depend on their knowledge of what the heck "A7" means or whether they've made x number of edits to the wikipedia namespace. -- phoebe (brassratgirl)

On 2/9/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'd be reluctant to support anyone who has never pissed anyone off. They don't know how to handle personal confrontation. - Josh

on 2/9/07 8:35 AM, Timwi at timwi(a)gmx.net wrote: Timi, I would think for the same reason that, before you decide something is substandard, you would first need to define what the standard is. Marc

Yes, as long as we get the "no big deal" message across (like we have been since the inception of Wikipedia) and admins have no greater power than, blah blah blah, all we really need to do is prevent the bad admins from getting it. Almost all actions that admins take are reversible anyway, all we need is an RfA that ensures that the mediocre admins can still get the bit while we can successfully "fail" the bad admins. I don't even bother checking RFA anymore, it's almost as painful reading through all the questions as it is to actually vote, I know I'd think thrice before accepting an RFA nomination if I were to get it in this day and age. On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote:

On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:17:48 -0500, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: Badly, for the most part :-) The admins considered good by other admins are the ones who are prepared to take on the difficult tasks. A small but very vocal group of non-admins considers these to be the *worst* admins, because they are typically the ones who delete things like Encyclopedia Dramatica, myg0t and GNAA. There is a culture of baiting these admins until they crack. A recent example was MONGO. There are others. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

Marc Riddell wrote: It would be continuously attacked, as proof positive of the evil admin cabal. That's all part of the baiting culture. There are also quite a few editors who are inclined to regard admins unfavorably to begin, as tiny manifestations of the The Man(tm), and who I'm sure are secretly gleeful when admins are taken down. It's not an organized program of divide-and-conquer, but the net effect is the same. One of the reasons I don't do more admin work is that I see what happens to other admins who stick their necks out, and it's just not worth it to me. Stan

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: Um, yeah, but what's real and what's vandalism on it? I couldn't tell. ED is a useful example of why WP needs to be tough on vandals and trolls, so we don't end up the same way. Stan

Marc Riddell wrote: If it was just a matter of wackos, then yeah, we would just ignore them. But there seem to be a bunch of otherwise-rational editors who would make trouble over it as well, and would take mutual support as a reason to escalate the whole thing into "impending destruction of WP by power-hungry admins". Just look at Cunctator's one-liner here - an admin leaves in pain, and his response is "well, a little churn is good". I encourage you to try designing a support system though, WP can't afford to lose all its admins to "churn". Stan

On 2/9/07, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: Wait until they come back?

on 2/9/07 2:58 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs(a)earthlink.net wrote: Stan I¹ve learned a lot from the List today; specifically about some of the people who make Wikipedia go. I have a hell of a lot to learn about its administrative workings; and I won¹t even think about going near the technical background elements (no one is ready for the chaos that would produce :-) ) But, the peopleŠ Everyone brings their own special gifts to the Project; that¹s what makes it work so well. Mine happens to be people: how they interact with their self, and with other persons. needed to help persons in the project experiencing periodic, situational difficulties. Were are dealing with creative personalities here, and, like it or not, this creativity comes with a certain degree of fragility, and, yes, flakiness (very definitely, me included ­ in fact I¹ve been called things I had to look up). To even suggest that if someone burns out, there are hundreds waiting in the wings to replace them is to dehumanize them. I¹m going to chew on this some more. But whatever proposal I come up with is probably going to require people to do some thinking outside the Wikibox; but why the hell not ­ something¹s not working within it. Marc Riddell

On 09/02/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net> wrote: c.f. the attacks upon #wikipedia-en-admins, which are largely a proxy for attacks on Kelly Martin. - d.