Dear Wikimedia-l subscribers,
I write to inform you that additional volunteers have been recruited to
co-admin this mailing list.
The new admins are all longtime, trusted volunteers. They are, in
alphabetical order:
** Butch Bustria * João Alexandre Peschanski (User:Joalpe)* Ravishankar
Ayyakkannu (User:Ravidreams)* Risker/Anne*
They join existing admins *Shani Evenstein Sigalov* (User:Esh77 and
User:Shani (WMF)) and *Asaf Bartov* (User:Ijon and User:Asaf (WMF)). *John
Vandenberg* is no longer an admin of the list.
We believe that the larger admin team will both improve response times
when messages need to be released from moderation, as well as diversify the
perspectives when reviewing alleged or actual misconduct and dealing with
spirited or controversial discussions, without the sense WMF has too much
control over the list.
That's the end of the announcement, but recognizing there may be some
questions, we try to answer some below. If you have no questions, you can
stop reading here. :)
Asaf Bartov (volunteer capacity)
on behalf of the Wikimedia-l list admins
*Questions and Answers:*====================
*Q: Why add admins?*A: For a long time now, John Vandenberg has not been
active in list administration, and has not responded to multiple requests
to re-engage. This left list-administration to Shani and Asaf. Asaf is WMF
staff, and Shani, though a volunteer when appointed list admin, has since
become a WMF Trustee.
Shani and Asaf both feel it would be better if the list management is not
dominated by people so closely associated with the Wikimedia Foundation.
Although they are both administering the list in their volunteer capacities
and are carefully avoiding acting in a conflict of interest, they want to
reduce even the potential appearance of such conflict.
Indeed, they have tolerated behaviors on the list that probably shouldn't
have been tolerated, only because they coincided with criticism of an
action of the Wikimedia Foundation, and they did not want to be suspected
of attempting to silence criticism. Both Shani and Asaf strongly believe
in criticism, including of the Foundation, and would never seek to silence
civil criticism.
*Q: What happened to John?*A: We don't know. We trust he is doing okay, and
just lost interest in this form of volunteering.
*Q: Why now?*A: There's no specific trigger beyond the situation mentioned
above, and no urgency. We have been meaning to do this for long months
now. But work and other volunteer commitments kept getting priority over
figuring out how to recruit new admins. Until one day we finally did, and
here we are.
*Q: How were the new admins selected?*A: In the same way Wikimedia-l
adminships have always been handled, and the way we were appointed
ourselves: the current admins reach out to some trusted volunteers seen to
have good judgment and an appropriate temperament for administering this
list, and offer them to join as co-admins. Some say no; eventually enough
people say yes to fill the number of slots we want to recruit, and we
proceed.
*Q: So it's basically just people Shani and Asaf like?*A: No. It's people
Shani and Asaf consider to meet the criteria mentioned in the previous
answer. There are people we like who don't. :) And we strove to invite
volunteers from different regions of the world, different kinds of
volunteer experience, and to preserve a good gender ratio. Some people we
sought to recruit have turned the thankless role down.
*Q: Still, it's quite a subjective way to pick admins, isn't it?*A: Yes, it
definitely is subjective. Again, it has always been so, and it seems to us
it has worked fairly well so far. It certainly seems to us to beat
potentially exhausting community elections to elect admins, with the
well-known weaknesses of the "popularity contest" effect, and the
un-guaranteed fitness-to-the-role elections bring. We understand some
people would have preferred to see elections despite that.
One way to reduce the personal bias in future rounds might be to curate a
public list of interested volunteers. We have just started one, here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia-l#Volunteers_interested_in_a…
Feel free to express interest, and you will be considered next time admins
are recruited for the list, probably in a couple of years.
*Q: Where's the catch?*A: There is no catch. This is a routine
administrative refreshing of the ranks, solving a non-critical but
undesirable situation that has been the case for a while, and is an obvious
net improvement in our opinion. We hope it is in yours, too.
*Q: Are there any changes to list policies?*A: None at this time, no. Any
future changes will be discussed among all admins.
--
Asaf Bartov <asaf.bartov(a)gmail.com>