Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:34:26 +0100 From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
On 11 September 2012 17:29, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
It seems I have not posed this as a question. The question is how could we better handle VIP subjects who give us feedback, attempt to edit either themselves or through an agent, or contact OTRS?
For example, could we assign some diplomatic people to handle such situations, I've noticed CBS does that. It's a skill.
We have assigned diplomatic people to handle such situations - they're the OTRS volunteers. The problem is how we make sure people get directed to OTRS.
One problem with that approach is that OTRS is not seen as representative of WP; the administrators are. If the admins are widely perceived as being dicks (probably because way to many of them behave like dicks a large portion of the time), then OTRS is going to continue to be ineffective at changing the perception of WP as unfriendly and more concerned with protecting territory than having accurate information.
Even more fundamentally, WP admins are not accountable for doing a good job, only avoiding doing a bad one. Until that changes, most admins have little incentive to be anything beyond mediocre. Sure, I believe they generally mean well, but if they think they're right, why shouldn't they be rude and drive off the annoying editor who says they're wrong, rather than waste a bunch of time trying to be helpful and diplomatic. They can be as rude and territorial as they want, provided they don't cross the line into "abusing the tools", and no-one will punish them, so why should they bother politely pointing someone to OTRS, much less spend time and effort trying to be diplomatic themselves?
Sxeptomaniac
On 12 September 2012 16:50, Matthew Jacobs sxeptomaniac@gmail.com wrote:
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:34:26 +0100 From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
On 11 September 2012 17:29, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
It seems I have not posed this as a question. The question is how could we better handle VIP subjects who give us feedback, attempt to edit either themselves or through an agent, or contact OTRS?
For example, could we assign some diplomatic people to handle such situations, I've noticed CBS does that. It's a skill.
We have assigned diplomatic people to handle such situations - they're the OTRS volunteers. The problem is how we make sure people get directed to OTRS.
One problem with that approach is that OTRS is not seen as representative of WP; the administrators are. If the admins are widely perceived as being dicks (probably because way to many of them behave like dicks a large portion of the time), then OTRS is going to continue to be ineffective at changing the perception of WP as unfriendly and more concerned with protecting territory than having accurate information.
It's certainly easy to draw conclusions if you include them in the premises of the argument.
Even more fundamentally, WP admins are not accountable for doing a good job, only avoiding doing a bad one. Until that changes, most admins have little incentive to be anything beyond mediocre. Sure, I believe they generally mean well, but if they think they're right, why shouldn't they be rude and drive off the annoying editor who says they're wrong, rather than waste a bunch of time trying to be helpful and diplomatic. They can be as rude and territorial as they want, provided they don't cross the line into "abusing the tools", and no-one will punish them, so why should they bother politely pointing someone to OTRS, much less spend time and effort trying to be diplomatic themselves?
Ditto.
Charles
On 12 September 2012 16:50, Matthew Jacobs sxeptomaniac@gmail.com wrote:
One problem with that approach is that OTRS is not seen as representative of WP; the administrators are. If the admins are widely perceived as being dicks (probably because way to many of them behave like dicks a large portion of the time), then OTRS is going to continue to be ineffective at changing the perception of WP as unfriendly and more concerned with protecting territory than having accurate information.
I think that's a bit of an inside view. The outside world can't tell an admin from a non-admin, there aren't generally little tags on people's sigs. So the problem is more general dickishness, not specifically admin dickishness.
As far as I can tell, outsiders like to have someone central to approach, e.g. the email address.
(I vaguely understand someone gave Roth/his biographer the wrong answer, i.e. needing a secondary source rather than a referenceable self-statement. That's a different problem, of course.)
- d.
On 12 September 2012 17:08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 September 2012 16:50, Matthew Jacobs sxeptomaniac@gmail.com wrote:
One problem with that approach is that OTRS is not seen as representative of WP; the administrators are. If the admins are widely perceived as
being
dicks (probably because way to many of them behave like dicks a large portion of the time), then OTRS is going to continue to be ineffective at changing the perception of WP as unfriendly and more concerned with protecting territory than having accurate information.
I think that's a bit of an inside view. The outside world can't tell an admin from a non-admin, there aren't generally little tags on people's sigs. So the problem is more general dickishness, not specifically admin dickishness.
As far as I can tell, outsiders like to have someone central to approach, e.g. the email address.
(I vaguely understand someone gave Roth/his biographer the wrong answer, i.e. needing a secondary source rather than a referenceable self-statement. That's a different problem, of course.)
- d.
I figured out where; there is also UTRS (note the U) which is a separately maintained support tool (staffed by English Wikipedia admins) for requesting unblocks.
We probably need to look into how people are filtered to these things.
(I also am not sure why we have UTRS over OTRS, and why the participants are not told to pass such issues onto OTRS who are more experienced in handling them).
Tom
UTRS was created because handling ip unblock requests on OTRS would violate our privacy policy On Sep 12, 2012 6:17 PM, "Thomas Morton" morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:
On 12 September 2012 17:08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 September 2012 16:50, Matthew Jacobs sxeptomaniac@gmail.com
wrote:
One problem with that approach is that OTRS is not seen as
representative
of WP; the administrators are. If the admins are widely perceived as
being
dicks (probably because way to many of them behave like dicks a large portion of the time), then OTRS is going to continue to be ineffective
at
changing the perception of WP as unfriendly and more concerned with protecting territory than having accurate information.
I think that's a bit of an inside view. The outside world can't tell an admin from a non-admin, there aren't generally little tags on people's sigs. So the problem is more general dickishness, not specifically admin dickishness.
As far as I can tell, outsiders like to have someone central to approach, e.g. the email address.
(I vaguely understand someone gave Roth/his biographer the wrong answer, i.e. needing a secondary source rather than a referenceable self-statement. That's a different problem, of course.)
- d.
I figured out where; there is also UTRS (note the U) which is a separately maintained support tool (staffed by English Wikipedia admins) for requesting unblocks.
We probably need to look into how people are filtered to these things.
(I also am not sure why we have UTRS over OTRS, and why the participants are not told to pass such issues onto OTRS who are more experienced in handling them).
Tom _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
How exactly? On OTRS we handle much more sensitive private info :-)
Tom Morton
On 12 Sep 2012, at 17:26, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
UTRS was created because handling ip unblock requests on OTRS would violate our privacy policy On Sep 12, 2012 6:17 PM, "Thomas Morton" morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:
On 12 September 2012 17:08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 September 2012 16:50, Matthew Jacobs sxeptomaniac@gmail.com
wrote:
One problem with that approach is that OTRS is not seen as
representative
of WP; the administrators are. If the admins are widely perceived as
being
dicks (probably because way to many of them behave like dicks a large portion of the time), then OTRS is going to continue to be ineffective
at
changing the perception of WP as unfriendly and more concerned with protecting territory than having accurate information.
I think that's a bit of an inside view. The outside world can't tell an admin from a non-admin, there aren't generally little tags on people's sigs. So the problem is more general dickishness, not specifically admin dickishness.
As far as I can tell, outsiders like to have someone central to approach, e.g. the email address.
(I vaguely understand someone gave Roth/his biographer the wrong answer, i.e. needing a secondary source rather than a referenceable self-statement. That's a different problem, of course.)
- d.
I figured out where; there is also UTRS (note the U) which is a separately maintained support tool (staffed by English Wikipedia admins) for requesting unblocks.
We probably need to look into how people are filtered to these things.
(I also am not sure why we have UTRS over OTRS, and why the participants are not told to pass such issues onto OTRS who are more experienced in handling them).
Tom _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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I have no idea, but legal was sure. On Sep 12, 2012 6:28 PM, "Thomas Morton" morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:
How exactly? On OTRS we handle much more sensitive private info :-)
Tom Morton
On 12 Sep 2012, at 17:26, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
UTRS was created because handling ip unblock requests on OTRS would
violate
our privacy policy On Sep 12, 2012 6:17 PM, "Thomas Morton" morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:
On 12 September 2012 17:08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 September 2012 16:50, Matthew Jacobs sxeptomaniac@gmail.com
wrote:
One problem with that approach is that OTRS is not seen as
representative
of WP; the administrators are. If the admins are widely perceived as
being
dicks (probably because way to many of them behave like dicks a large portion of the time), then OTRS is going to continue to be ineffective
at
changing the perception of WP as unfriendly and more concerned with protecting territory than having accurate information.
I think that's a bit of an inside view. The outside world can't tell an admin from a non-admin, there aren't generally little tags on people's sigs. So the problem is more general dickishness, not specifically admin dickishness.
As far as I can tell, outsiders like to have someone central to approach, e.g. the email address.
(I vaguely understand someone gave Roth/his biographer the wrong answer, i.e. needing a secondary source rather than a referenceable self-statement. That's a different problem, of course.)
- d.
I figured out where; there is also UTRS (note the U) which is a separately maintained support tool (staffed by English Wikipedia
admins)
for requesting unblocks.
We probably need to look into how people are filtered to these things.
(I also am not sure why we have UTRS over OTRS, and why the participants are not told to pass such issues onto OTRS who are more experienced in handling them).
Tom _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 10:19 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
How exactly? On OTRS we handle much more sensitive private info :-)
Tom Morton
Checkuser may be employed in either instance if there is a good reason, such as an apparent sock puppet or abuse of multiple accounts.
Fred
Right. UTRS is what was formerly unblock-en-l (now automated / ticketed). I am no longer active there or OTRS, but was for some yeas on both. OTRS did not as a rule get IP address / personal identifying information about editors.
The unblock-en-l folks did, routinely, get personal name / IP / email account troikas, which are within the community and in the privacy policy treated as especially sensitive. None of the non-legal stuff on OTRS seemed to be - within the community and internal privacy policy - that sensitive, though OTRS does see personal identifying info of those filing complaints or requests.
As Fred points out, Checkuser checks were also routinely if rarely applied for questionable issues / incidents, though the non-CU approved unblock-en-l folks were only given the same public "results" info that gets posted on-wiki for sock checks.
On 12 September 2012 17:16, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:
I figured out where; there is also UTRS (note the U) which is a separately maintained support tool (staffed by English Wikipedia admins) for requesting unblocks. We probably need to look into how people are filtered to these things. (I also am not sure why we have UTRS over OTRS, and why the participants are not told to pass such issues onto OTRS who are more experienced in handling them).
Roth's biographer emailed this UTRS? Aaargh.
(Just spoke to someone from the Sunday Times about the Roth issue. I characterised it as a series of miscommunications and an instance of the general problem of people not knowing how to approach Wikipedia about problems in an article about them. I did note a couple of times that we were discussing the problem intensely at length, trying to work out how we could do better next time, and that we don't yet have an elegant solution to the general problem. Hopefully some of that will make it to print.)
-d.
(Disclaimer - I'm a UTRS Developer)
OTRS is not allowed to handle unblocks because of a statement from the WMF legal team. It involves the issue of private data retention, and how OTRS does not have the measures to handle removal of private data.
Your right in the fact that we haven't told administrators specifically to pass anything not related to unblock to OTRS (not that there is an easy way for doing this, the interface is not setup to reply except to anyone but the appealing, plus administrators are not shown the appealing users email address because it's toolserver which is subject to European laws and private data + identification to the foundation.
Besides that though, do we really need to tell administrators to ONLY handle the unblock part and forward ALL unrelated requests to OTRS? Seems excessive, redundant, and more work on us programmers...something that I might have been able to help with a few weeks ago, but it's hard now that i'm in school.
------ DeltaQuad English Wikipedia Administrator and Checkuser
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:16 PM, Thomas Morton < morton.thomas@googlemail.com> wrote:
On 12 September 2012 17:08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 September 2012 16:50, Matthew Jacobs sxeptomaniac@gmail.com
wrote:
One problem with that approach is that OTRS is not seen as
representative
of WP; the administrators are. If the admins are widely perceived as
being
dicks (probably because way to many of them behave like dicks a large portion of the time), then OTRS is going to continue to be ineffective
at
changing the perception of WP as unfriendly and more concerned with protecting territory than having accurate information.
I think that's a bit of an inside view. The outside world can't tell an admin from a non-admin, there aren't generally little tags on people's sigs. So the problem is more general dickishness, not specifically admin dickishness.
As far as I can tell, outsiders like to have someone central to approach, e.g. the email address.
(I vaguely understand someone gave Roth/his biographer the wrong answer, i.e. needing a secondary source rather than a referenceable self-statement. That's a different problem, of course.)
- d.
I figured out where; there is also UTRS (note the U) which is a separately maintained support tool (staffed by English Wikipedia admins) for requesting unblocks.
We probably need to look into how people are filtered to these things.
(I also am not sure why we have UTRS over OTRS, and why the participants are not told to pass such issues onto OTRS who are more experienced in handling them).
Tom _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
As far as I can tell, outsiders like to have someone central to approach, e.g. the email address.
- d.
VIPs expect to deal with another VIP, with authority to get things fixed, with a word, even if the rules have to be bent a bit. That is the way of the world. We, particularly a random community member they are interacting with, often do not have authority to do what has to be done. They do not understand or appreciate discussions with the community about their problem.
Fred
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.netwrote:
VIPs expect to deal with another VIP, with authority to get things fixed, with a word, even if the rules have to be bent a bit. That is the way of the world. We, particularly a random community member they are interacting with, often do not have authority to do what has to be done. They do not understand or appreciate discussions with the community about their problem.
For what it's worth, this is not just a VIP behavior. Most people assume that Wikipedia has centralized control over content, and they want Someone In Charge to fix things for them. (cf. all the people who e-mail Jimbo asking him to make changes, or the people who volunteer for OTRS because they want to fix errors on pages) It's difficult to correct these assumptions, even after pointing out the big "edit" tab at the top of nearly every page.
On 12 September 2012 18:32, Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net
wrote:
VIPs expect to deal with another VIP, with authority to get things fixed, with a word, even if the rules have to be bent a bit. That is the way of the world. We, particularly a random community member they are interacting with, often do not have authority to do what has to be done. They do not understand or appreciate discussions with the community about their problem.
For what it's worth, this is not just a VIP behavior. Most people assume that Wikipedia has centralized control over content, and they want Someone In Charge to fix things for them. (cf. all the people who e-mail Jimbo asking him to make changes, or the people who volunteer for OTRS because they want to fix errors on pages) It's difficult to correct these assumptions, even after pointing out the big "edit" tab at the top of nearly every page.
And most people don't read instructions. And I suppose people who follow the "Contact Wikipedia" link take no notice of the content of the page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us
which says these things. There is nothing on that page about VIP treatment, and I don't think there should be. If something gets into OTRS and is from a household name, it would be sensible to have it passed to someone with a lot of experience, but I don't know if that is part of the system.
(I do find a certain irony that Fred started this thread, given his previous comments about monarchy. The whole "celebrities expect to be treated like royalty" thing strikes me as mainly a Hollywood invention. Actual royalty - bred to it - are the last to kick up a fuss in this fashion. So arriviste.)
Charles
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
If something gets into OTRS and is from a household name, it would be sensible to have it passed to someone with a lot of experience, but I don't know if that is part of the system.
Of course, we'd first have to establish that the message legitimately was from said household name, either directly or via an assistant or publicist. Even for legitimate VIPs, though, OTRS volunteers aren't going to change content without good reason (and "but it's my article" is not a good reason).
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
If something gets into OTRS and is from a household name, it would be sensible to have it passed to someone with a lot of experience, but I don't know if that is part of the system.
Of course, we'd first have to establish that the message legitimately was from said household name, either directly or via an assistant or publicist. Even for legitimate VIPs, though, OTRS volunteers aren't going to change content without good reason (and "but it's my article" is not a good reason).
-- Jim Redmond jredmond@gmail.com
We should assume it is from the person they claim to be. If it turns out they are not that problem can be addressed at that time. If they are the VIP they should get VIP treatment from the beginning. By which I mean courtesy and taking their complaint seriously, not doing every little thing they might want.
Fred
Courtesy and taking complaints seriously (initially, at least) should be standard practice, not "VIP treatment". On Sep 12, 2012 7:17 PM, "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
If something gets into OTRS and is from a household name, it would be sensible to have it passed to someone with a lot of experience, but I don't know if that is part of the system.
Of course, we'd first have to establish that the message legitimately was from said household name, either directly or via an assistant or publicist. Even for legitimate VIPs, though, OTRS volunteers aren't going to change content without good reason (and "but it's my article" is not a good reason).
-- Jim Redmond jredmond@gmail.com
We should assume it is from the person they claim to be. If it turns out they are not that problem can be addressed at that time. If they are the VIP they should get VIP treatment from the beginning. By which I mean courtesy and taking their complaint seriously, not doing every little thing they might want.
Fred
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On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
If something gets into OTRS and is from a household name, it would be sensible to have it passed to someone with a lot of experience, but I don't know if that is part of the system.
Of course, we'd first have to establish that the message legitimately was from said household name, either directly or via an assistant or publicist. Even for legitimate VIPs, though, OTRS volunteers aren't going to change content without good reason (and "but it's my article" is not a good reason).
-- Jim Redmond jredmond@gmail.com
We should assume it is from the person they claim to be. If it turns out they are not that problem can be addressed at that time. If they are the VIP they should get VIP treatment from the beginning. By which I mean courtesy and taking their complaint seriously, not doing every little thing they might want.
Fred
As opposed to regular OTRS tickets, which we should treat boorish, and dismiss their complaint out of hand?
Re Fred's comments about giving VIPs VIP treatment.
We can't simply assume that everyone we encounter on the Internet is who they claim to be. Doing that would be a recipe for abuse of a lot of VIPs and just as worryingly lots of other people as well.
We should treat everyone with courtesy, and treat every serious complaint seriously.
But no we should not give preferential treatment to "VIPs" over others. If anyone is entitled to preferential treatment it is the people we have seriously maligned, that includes VIPs like Siegenthaler and some very ordinary people as well. By contrast no-one is arguing that Mr Roth's complaint is about something similarly damaging to him or to others. If anything by giving him a quick and fairly easy way to correct a meme that was widely circulated beyond Wikipedia we have given him better service than the print media.
If we were a commercial outfit selling high end products to those who could afford them then I would understand and expect a strategy of giving VIPs better treatment than others. But we are volunteers helping a charity with a mission to make the world's knowledge freely available to everyone. If our clients are "everyone" why would we want to give a differential service level by status rather than seriousness?
WSC
On 12 September 2012 22:11, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.comwrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
If something gets into OTRS and is from a household name, it would be sensible to have it passed to someone with a lot of experience, but I don't know if that is part of the system.
Of course, we'd first have to establish that the message legitimately
was
from said household name, either directly or via an assistant or publicist. Even for legitimate VIPs, though, OTRS volunteers aren't going to change content without good reason (and "but it's my article" is not a good reason).
-- Jim Redmond jredmond@gmail.com
We should assume it is from the person they claim to be. If it turns out they are not that problem can be addressed at that time. If they are the VIP they should get VIP treatment from the beginning. By which I mean courtesy and taking their complaint seriously, not doing every little thing they might want.
Fred
As opposed to regular OTRS tickets, which we should treat boorish, and dismiss their complaint out of hand?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re Fred's comments about giving VIPs VIP treatment.
We can't simply assume that everyone we encounter on the Internet is who they claim to be. Doing that would be a recipe for abuse of a lot of VIPs and just as worryingly lots of other people as well.
We should treat everyone with courtesy, and treat every serious complaint seriously.
But no we should not give preferential treatment to "VIPs" over others. If anyone is entitled to preferential treatment it is the people we have seriously maligned, that includes VIPs like Siegenthaler and some very ordinary people as well. By contrast no-one is arguing that Mr Roth's complaint is about something similarly damaging to him or to others. If anything by giving him a quick and fairly easy way to correct a meme that was widely circulated beyond Wikipedia we have given him better service than the print media.
If we were a commercial outfit selling high end products to those who could afford them then I would understand and expect a strategy of giving VIPs better treatment than others. But we are volunteers helping a charity with a mission to make the world's knowledge freely available to everyone. If our clients are "everyone" why would we want to give a differential service level by status rather than seriousness?
WSC
Assuming on a provisional basis that someone who claims to be a VIP or an agent of one is all that is proposed. Such claims need to be verified to avoid spoofing. For example, suggesting to Roth that he give an interview to someone about the issues he raised is verified when he does so and an article appears in The New Yorker. Obviously we were dealing with Roth's agent in this case.
As noted, everybody should be treated courteously and taken seriously.
While ass kissing is inappropriate, wealthy and powerful people are a source of funds and political support to a non-profit corporation, and of potential public relations damage. Careful handling is appropriate. So is firmness regarding our policies, but diplomatically expressed.
Fred
On 12 September 2012 18:32, Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com wrote:
For what it's worth, this is not just a VIP behavior. Most people assume that Wikipedia has centralized control over content, and they want Someone In Charge to fix things for them. (cf. all the people who e-mail Jimbo asking him to make changes, or the people who volunteer for OTRS because they want to fix errors on pages) It's difficult to correct these assumptions, even after pointing out the big "edit" tab at the top of nearly every page.
And when they *do* see the edit tab, we get a Grant Shapps incident ...
- d.
why should they bother politely pointing someone to OTRS, much less spend time and effort trying to be diplomatic themselves?
Sxeptomaniac
Because they are decent capable people, take pride in doing a good job, and are concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia.
Fred
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:07:03 -0600 (MDT) From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
why should they bother politely pointing someone to OTRS, much less spend time and effort trying to be diplomatic themselves?
Sxeptomaniac
Because they are decent capable people, take pride in doing a good job, and are concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia.
Fred
Oh really? So why do we have to desysop admins? Were they "misusing their tools" in a "decent capable" way? Was it part of "doing a good job"? Were they desysopped for being "concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia"?
I can understand if you think I'm overstating the problem, but I find it ridiculous that you would deny the obvious: some people are drawn to adminship for the wrong reasons, and some maybe even for the right reasons, but choose to act on them in a short-sighted way. No RFA process, no matter how good, will ever be able to fully weed out people who really shouldn't be admins. The problem is, WP has no mechanism for dealing with those who turn out to not exemplify what an administrator should be, but stop short of actually breaking rules.
Sxeptomaniac
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:07:03 -0600 (MDT) From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
why should they bother politely pointing someone to OTRS, much less spend time and effort trying to be diplomatic themselves?
Sxeptomaniac
Because they are decent capable people, take pride in doing a good job, and are concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia.
Fred
on 9/12/12 2:58 PM, Matthew Jacobs at sxeptomaniac@gmail.com wrote:
Oh really? So why do we have to desysop admins? Were they "misusing their tools" in a "decent capable" way? Was it part of "doing a good job"? Were they desysopped for being "concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia"?
I can understand if you think I'm overstating the problem, but I find it ridiculous that you would deny the obvious: some people are drawn to adminship for the wrong reasons, and some maybe even for the right reasons, but choose to act on them in a short-sighted way. No RFA process, no matter how good, will ever be able to fully weed out people who really shouldn't be admins. The problem is, WP has no mechanism for dealing with those who turn out to not exemplify what an administrator should be, but stop short of actually breaking rules.
Sxeptomaniac
Agreed. But how could such a mechanism be created given the existing structure of the Project?
marc Riddell
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:12:49 -0400 From: Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:07:03 -0600 (MDT) From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
why should they bother politely pointing someone to OTRS, much less spend time and effort
trying
to be diplomatic themselves?
Sxeptomaniac
Because they are decent capable people, take pride in doing a good job, and are concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia.
Fred
on 9/12/12 2:58 PM, Matthew Jacobs at sxeptomaniac@gmail.com wrote:
Oh really? So why do we have to desysop admins? Were they "misusing their tools" in a "decent capable" way? Was it part of "doing a good job"? Were they desysopped for being "concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia"?
I can understand if you think I'm overstating the problem, but I find it ridiculous that you would deny the obvious: some people are drawn to adminship for the wrong reasons, and some maybe even for the right
reasons,
but choose to act on them in a short-sighted way. No RFA process, no
matter
how good, will ever be able to fully weed out people who really shouldn't be admins. The problem is, WP has no mechanism for dealing with those who turn out to not exemplify what an administrator should be, but stop short of actually breaking rules.
Sxeptomaniac
Agreed. But how could such a mechanism be created given the existing structure of the Project?
marc Riddell
I've seen a lot of complicated RfA proposals, as well as community desysop
procedures, and I really think the simplest solution would be for Adminship to no longer be a lifetime appointment. Make it for terms of one or two years, with no limit on the number of terms, and no requirement to re-apply. It simply means that admins remain accountable to the community, giving them an incentive to remain polite and fair, to the best of their ability. I don't buy the arguments that "good admins will never be re-appointed", as good admins may make a few enemies, but they'll gain even more supporters. I also believe that the community could easily adapt to manage the increase in RfAs.
To be clear, there is no perfect solution, but I think that instituting admin terms would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, I also don't think the community will ever accept such a major change, as it's become far to conservative regarding policy.
Sxeptomaniac
----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Jacobs" sxeptomaniac@gmail.com To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 6:02 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:12:49 -0400 From: Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:07:03 -0600 (MDT) From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
why should they bother politely pointing someone to OTRS, much less spend time and effort
trying
to be diplomatic themselves?
Sxeptomaniac
Because they are decent capable people, take pride in doing a good job, and are concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia.
Fred
on 9/12/12 2:58 PM, Matthew Jacobs at sxeptomaniac@gmail.com wrote:
Oh really? So why do we have to desysop admins? Were they "misusing their tools" in a "decent capable" way? Was it part of "doing a good job"? Were they desysopped for being "concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia"?
I can understand if you think I'm overstating the problem, but I find it ridiculous that you would deny the obvious: some people are drawn to adminship for the wrong reasons, and some maybe even for the right
reasons,
but choose to act on them in a short-sighted way. No RFA process, no
matter
how good, will ever be able to fully weed out people who really shouldn't be admins. The problem is, WP has no mechanism for dealing with those who turn out to not exemplify what an administrator should be, but stop short of actually breaking rules.
Sxeptomaniac
Agreed. But how could such a mechanism be created given the existing structure of the Project?
marc Riddell
I've seen a lot of complicated RfA proposals, as well as community desysop
procedures, and I really think the simplest solution would be for Adminship to no longer be a lifetime appointment. Make it for terms of one or two years, with no limit on the number of terms, and no requirement to re-apply. It simply means that admins remain accountable to the community, giving them an incentive to remain polite and fair, to the best of their ability. I don't buy the arguments that "good admins will never be re-appointed", as good admins may make a few enemies, but they'll gain even more supporters. I also believe that the community could easily adapt to manage the increase in RfAs.
To be clear, there is no perfect solution, but I think that instituting admin terms would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, I also don't think the community will ever accept such a major change, as it's become far to conservative regarding policy.
This isn't a new idea, and has been proposed, and rejected, more than once: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Reconfirm_adminis...
As you point out, it is open to abuse by enemies the admins may have made- which is only to be expected if they're doing their job properly, since some people, sadly, will never accept authoritative statements of WP policy. Worse (as in my case), they might receive death threats on a daily basis.
Re Matthew Jacobs and the periodic reconfirmation idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_reform#Periodic_reco...
There's also the point that some of us don't like the idea of admins becoming a small elite group within the community. OK we are already quite a way from the "no big deal" idea of adminship, but one of the downsides of reducing the admin cadre to a small number of fixed term admins is that the vast majority of our current 1400 or so admins have insufficient activity to get through an RFA. Many of the rest are unlikely to want to put themselves through the RFA hoops again, especially if remaining an admin means taking on a significantly larger share of the admin workload.
We need to remember that admins are unpaid volunteers doing a bunch of essential chores on the site.
We also need to remember that the fewer admins there are the more their scarcity value increases. So fixed terms might be of interest to status seekers and those exhibitionists who rather enjoy the opportunity of an RFA to have a public confrontation with their critics. But we'd lose most of the quiet and uncontentious admins who are active editors who have the tools and use them as and when they come across a situation that requires them.
Of course periodic reconfirmation would work if we made adminship a salaried position. But I'm hoping that we can find other ways to fix the RFA problem long before that starts to look necessary.
That said RFA is continuing to decline, this year, maybe even this month, may well see the first month without a new admin since October 2002. With 20 new admins so far this year compared to 52 last year we will be doing very well in the rest of the year if we manage to kepp the year on year decline at only one third. There is a real risk that 2012 could see the rate of decline steepen and only half as many new admins be appointed as the previous year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_stats
WSC