Just for your info if it will help devise effective strategies:

Continuance of Administrative privileges

In Malayalam, we have a periodical assessment of active Admins. Some of them are very very active (almost round the clock!). Some are frequenting on monthly or seasonally waving cycles of crests and troughs. Really very few are inactive over a long span.

During such talk page assessments, we discuss if someone (who has been idle for a long time) needs to be demoted from their Admin status. The general consensus is not to strictly enforce such demotions but to request them to relinquish the status by themselves. Most often, they agree to this.

The practice of such self-relinquishing of long time idle admins is to avoid a potential security risk of someone else stealing their wikimedia user login credentials and misuse the extra privileges.

If one such ex-admin would like to take back his admin role later (as he finds more time to get involved), he only need to put up a simple request at the concerned voting page. The request is almost automatically approved by other admins without the need of a new election.

As of now, we have a satisfactory ratio between the number of admins and active users.

Harvesting new admins

Instead of an abrupt promotion to the status of a sysop or bureaucrat, we encourage a gradual elevation of an active, self-motivated neutral and dedicated user. Others closely watch the activities of a new user and, in time, grants extra privileges (like Auto Patrol, Roll back etc.). Later, taking several parameters (like count and quality of editing, talks etc.), someone proposes him to be a new sysop. Voting is done as per protocols and then he becomes an admin.

Off the Wikimedia interface, these admins interact and consult mutually very frequently through list mails or threaded mails on a case to case basis.

So far, these models have proved themselves to be very effective, manageable and scalable.

-Viswam
(Wikiuser:Viswaprabha)

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 2:48 PM, subhashish <subhashish@cis-india.org> wrote:

I think that's a brilliant idea Ravi. In addition to all these points you have added it also brings stability and openness to the community.

On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:34:23 +0530, Ravishankar wrote:

Hi,

I was browsing through http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias and found the number of admin users across Indic Wikipedias very low.

Hindi has only 4, followed by Bengali and Marathi with 10 and Telugu and Malayalam with 18.

If you discount the inactive admin users, the count can be very low to maintain the quality.

In Tamil Wikipedia, we make sure to run admin elections regularly. We choose around 4 admins every year and don't hesitate to nominate promising newcomers. This helps to share work load, give a break for wikiholics and provide a sense of belonging for the whole community. In the beginning days, most of the founding members got admin access within few weeks of meaningful contribution and this good will has never failed.

Unless there are other compelling reasons for this low count of admin users, I urge every community to nominate / self-nominate good contributors and make them admins.

Ravi

-- Subha
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