Hmmm. I find this recommendation concerning. There *might* be some validity on large projects with hundreds of administrators, but there are a lot of projects with only a few admins, and they were "selected" because they were willing to do the grunt work of deletions, protections, and blocks. Nobody was selecting them to handle large-scale harassment. Indeed, I cannot think of a single administrator even on a large project who was selected because of their ability or their interest in handling harassment incidents. There's pretty good evidence that it is not only not a criterion seriously considered by communities, but that absent the interest or willingness to carry out other tasks or demonstration of aptitude for other areas of administrator work, an admin candidate would not be selected by most communities, even large ones where harassment is a much more visible concern.
There is also no basis for putting forward that mandatory training for any administrator function would be useful on a global scale. How does one set up a mandatory training program for carrying out page protection, given that every large project has a different policy? What happens if an administrator doesn't "pass" a mandatory program? Are they desysopped, over the objections of their community?
I'll point out in passing that there is not even consideration of a formal global checkuser training program - again, the local policies vary widely, and the types of issues addressed by checkusers on different projects is very different.
Risker/Anne
On 7 June 2016 at 15:01, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
My suggestion is to come up with a general type training that can work for all administrators and functionaries since all have the freedom and permission to do all types of work on WMF projects. And that training should be mandatory.
Then people who are focusing on a particular type of administrative or functionaries work can take more advanced courses that could be mandatory for doing some types of work.
Sydney
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wiki Project Med Foundation WikiWomen's User Group Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sydney.e.poore
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:10 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Sydney,
Thanks for that link. I think that for now I would suggest avoiding
making
the training mandatory because we won't know how successful it is until after we've used it for awhile. After the training has been tested and refined based on feedback, and if the consensus is that the training is helpful, then at that point we could consider making this a required
annual
training.
I could foresee is that, on wikis that have arbitration committees or other systematic ways of dealing with administrators who mess up, the ArbComs and/or the community could say that those administrators who have demonstrated weakness in areas that are addressed by the training will be required to take or re-take the training as a condition of keeping their admin permissions.
My hope is that the training will be of such good quality, and so interesting and useful to administrators, that many administrators will *want* to take the training or at least be curious enough to try it. Big carrot, small stick. We can escalate from there if the training develops
a
track record of success.
I would think of success as being measured in two ways: administrators' feedback about the training shows a consensus that they found it helpful, and communities report higher levels of satisfaction with their administrators as shown in the difference between surveys that are done before on multiple wikis (1) before the training starts and (2) after 6
or
12 months of the training being rolled out.
Comments welcome, including suggestions about how to measure the success of the training.
Pine
On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 7:58 PM, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight suggested Annual Training during the Harassment Consultation, 2015.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Harassment_consultation_2015/Ideas/Annual_tr...
If you've not seen it, it is worth your time to read the talk page discussion.
Sydney
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wiki Project Med Foundation WikiWomen's User Group Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sydney.e.poore
On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 9:17 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I have created
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Training_for_administrators
and would welcome feedback there.
On the subject of block evasion, I have some ideas but would defer to
our
experienced CheckUsers.
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