Hello all,
My name is Swaroop Rao, and as a bureaucrat/admin on the Sanskrit Wikipedia, and admin on the English Wikipedia, I'd like to offer my views.
1) Adminship is no big deal, and this has to be made very clear to the editors. Administrators hold absolutely no special say in discussions; in fact, for smaller wikis, admin actions will be rare. Blocking of users is extremely rare, a deletion occasionally, and that's basically it.
2) English Wikipedia is not the best thing to follow, especially with respect to admin policies. If you are on Enwiki, you'll know this; people usually say that "RfA is a broken process", and we wouldn't want our communities to be affected by bad methodologies. enwiki policies are better suited for wikis with large communities. Our wikis are still growing, and following enwiki policies to the word might just reverse all the good work you guys have done.
3) Have a look at other wikis like frwiki (French Wikipedia), and others, which have more flexible admin policies; some wikis have fixed terms for admins (like 1 or 1.5 years)
4) Don't waste too much time on formulating admin policies; that's what happened in Sanskrit Wikipedia, and all that was not needed; its too much artificial bureaucracy for such a small community.
5) Adminship is not the "next step" after being an editor: In enwiki, most of the good editors are not admins. That speaks a lot.
5) At the end of the day, remember and relish the fact that our communities are more closely knit and friendly than many many other communities; the small community is like a family! Let's get rid of any sense of seniority or superiority!
Godspeed.
Swaroop Rao (MikeLynch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch)
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 23:18, W Chaipau wikichaipau@gmail.com wrote:
Hi AS-Wikipedians,
A few recent incidents have shaken our fledgling community like never before. Most of these involved questions on adminship, and the role admins play in a Wikipedia. Therefore, I take this opportunity to point out a few things.
First, an admin is not an award or a position of power but a position of responsibility. But all it comes down to is this: an admin is a sweeper. Look at the English Wikipedia article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators) and the first graphic. As an admin on Assamese Wikipedia I spend most of my time: making sure the Bengali ro has been replaced by the Assamese one and the pipes are replaced by a dari; checking links to articles marked for deletion (and deleting them); correcting mistakes in protected pages when Wikipedians points them out; listening to irate Wikipedians when things don't get fixed fast enough, etc. One might be forgiven if one thought being an admin was glamorous, but really it is more like a sweeper, a plumber, a firefighter etc rolled into one. Admins are at the community's beck and call to render service. And I must admit there is great pleasure in being able to do this.
Second, we need to move forward on this. The community has to figure out how best to put the rancour behind and get back to blissful Wikipedia-ing (admins have the power to verbalise nouns in emails---with the permission of the community). We should discuss among ourselves what the powers of an admin should be by setting down a set of policies and procedures. We should also work towards implementing the necessary templates and categories to facilitate these. The place to do this is this:
https://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%... https://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%...)
While formulating policies we should follow the English Wikipedia examples as much as possible. We should strive for consensus rather than votes which are devisive. Please go through the section on expectations of adminship ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators#Expectations_of_admins...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators) which governs the behaviour of admins both within Wikipedia as well as outside. Please read the section on how to engage an admin and how to resolve conflicts. It is better to resolve conflicts quickly than to avoid them and letting them fester.
What has happened is painful, yes. But I suspect they are nothing but growing pains. We have done great stuff in recent months, and we should continue doing it.
-- Chaipau Wikipedia
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