This statemant, "adminship is no big deal", originates from enwiki. Could someone please explain in what circumstances this saying was worded? I see it used meaning "adminship is no big deal, so you shouldn't be so careful who to elect for this task" as well as "adminship is no big deal, so you shouldn't try and find ways to get rid of admins who are obviously unsuitable for the job".
My guess is: this sentence originates from the truly virgin stage of wikipedia, where some people wanted to avoid others starting fighting for admin (or at the time, "sysop") status. Currently, I see no reason for the remaining of this statements in various places in the Wikipedia namespace in various wikipedias - none at all.
/Habj
Habj <sweetadelaide@...> writes:
This statemant, "adminship is no big deal", originates from enwiki. Could someone please explain in what circumstances this saying was worded? I see it used meaning "adminship is no big deal, so you shouldn't be so careful who to elect for this task" as well as "adminship is no big deal, so you shouldn't try and find ways to get rid of admins who are obviously unsuitable for the job".
My guess is: this sentence originates from the truly virgin stage of wikipedia, where some people wanted to avoid others starting fighting for admin (or at the time, "sysop") status. Currently, I see no reason for the remaining of this statements in various places in the Wikipedia namespace in various wikipedias - none at all.
/Habj
I have not found the source from that quote. But I have found some postings from the early days that are about this is and contain that attitude I think.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/2197/ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/3804/ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/2172/
Walter
On 1/18/06, Walter Vermeir walter@wikipedia.be wrote:
I have not found the source from that quote. But I have found some postings from the early days that are about this is and contain that attitude I think.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/2197/ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/3804/ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/2172/
Walter
Interesting. It looks like Jimbo forgot to create the "sysop" (4) category and instead gave "sysop" (4) powers to the "community members" (2).
"Adminship is no big deal" would seem to be talking about (2), where "anyone can become a community member just by asking". But actual admin powers are closer to (4), of "which there might only be 1, [Jimbo], or a very small number".
But then, this merge seems to have already taken place by the second post (four months later), which eliminates the distinction and allows "Old-hand/sysop"s to "be able to do a tiny number of destructive (irreversible) things, IF we need to have those abilities for some reason".
The plan from the first post actually seems better, to me.
Anthony
Walter Vermeir wrote:
Habj <sweetadelaide@...> writes:
This statemant, "adminship is no big deal", originates from enwiki. Could someone please explain in what circumstances this saying was worded? I see it used meaning "adminship is no big deal, so you shouldn't be so careful who to elect for this task" as well as "adminship is no big deal, so you shouldn't try and find ways to get rid of admins who are obviously unsuitable for the job".
My guess is: this sentence originates from the truly virgin stage of wikipedia, where some people wanted to avoid others starting fighting for admin (or at the time, "sysop") status. Currently, I see no reason for the remaining of this statements in various places in the Wikipedia namespace in various wikipedias - none at all.
/Habj
I have not found the source from that quote. But I have found some postings from the early days that are about this is and contain that attitude I think.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/2197/ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/3804/ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/2172/
Walter
It should be reminded that originally (before the phases II/III of the software, which were implemented in spring then summer 2002 on the english wikipedia the "sysop" power were quite different from what they are right now. Afaik, phase II was never implemented on non english projects (german maybe ?) and international projects jumped directly from phase I to phase III end of 2002 and beginning 2003.
The original sysop (phase I) had a technical interface to delete or block editors. There was no protection feature. Deletion was "final" (content could not be recovered, ever). On the english wp, I think only Jimbo and Larry ever had that status. On a few languages, others had it (on the french, Aoineko, Shaihulud and myself, for 3 months, before we upgraded to phase II).
The current sysop status was introduced in phase II (probably) and really used in phase III. I presume Jimbo made the sysops in phase II and it switched to a voting model somewhere in phase III. I remember that in spring 2003, candidates were basically saying on the mailing list "could I be sysop ?" and if there was no opposition, it was done so (by a developer).
If you look at Walter archives, the first and third links are post to phase I, just bordering phase II. This was when the sysop status with reversibility action was introduced. Before that date, there was really no sysop.
Link II was posted around the time phase III was introduced. As you can note, it refers to non-reversible actions possible for sysops. However, afaik, except for images, sysops have never been able to do irreversable actions.
ant
In the early days, when the English Wikipedia more or less was Wikipedia, there was no procedure for nominating or ratifying administrators, not were there the specialized duties we are currently expecting administrators to perform, such as monitoring of users on probation. Folks would ask on the mailing list and if they seemed reasonably OK, they were made administrators. I don't remember any tension about fighting for that status. If you became an administrator, you could then do more chores. Still true, but the expectation is sometimes higher.
Yes, it is somewhat outdated, but it remains true in a sense; administrators are on the same level as everyone else as far as content is concerned, pointing out that you are an administrator will not get you far in a content dispute, and carried far enough, will get you desysopped. There are occasional lapses and few folks sneak around a bit, but those who think being an administrator gives them authority over the most important thing in Wikipedia, content, are mistaken.
Fred
On Jan 17, 2006, at 9:42 PM, Habj wrote:
This statemant, "adminship is no big deal", originates from enwiki. Could someone please explain in what circumstances this saying was worded? I see it used meaning "adminship is no big deal, so you shouldn't be so careful who to elect for this task" as well as "adminship is no big deal, so you shouldn't try and find ways to get rid of admins who are obviously unsuitable for the job".
My guess is: this sentence originates from the truly virgin stage of wikipedia, where some people wanted to avoid others starting fighting for admin (or at the time, "sysop") status. Currently, I see no reason for the remaining of this statements in various places in the Wikipedia namespace in various wikipedias - none at all.
/Habj _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Yes, it is somewhat outdated, but it remains true in a sense; administrators are on the same level as everyone else as far as content is concerned, pointing out that you are an administrator will not get you far in a content dispute, and carried far enough, will get you desysopped. There are occasional lapses and few folks sneak around a bit, but those who think being an administrator gives them authority over the most important thing in Wikipedia, content, are mistaken.
Fred
I'm amazed sometimes at how often blatently untrue statements like this get made.
Admins decide which content gets deleted and which content gets undeleted. They decide when pages are protected and when they are unprotected. While those pages are protected they decide what those pages are going to say. They decide when to block someone for violating the three revert rule and when not to block someone for violating it.
On very rare occassion an admin does something so ridiculously outrageous and out of touch with the POV of the arbitration committee that they get reprimanded for it, but there are numerous occassions where they influence content and nothing happens at all.
It's very hard to separate power from authority, and in a flat (as opposed to hierarchical) system, it's probably impossible.
Anthony
You mischaracterize an ambiguous situation as being totally corrupt.
Fred
On Jan 18, 2006, at 9:10 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Yes, it is somewhat outdated, but it remains true in a sense; administrators are on the same level as everyone else as far as content is concerned, pointing out that you are an administrator will not get you far in a content dispute, and carried far enough, will get you desysopped. There are occasional lapses and a few folks sneak around a bit, but those who think being an administrator gives them authority over the most important thing in Wikipedia, content, are mistaken.
Fred
I'm amazed sometimes at how often blatently untrue statements like this get made.
Admins decide which content gets deleted and which content gets undeleted. They decide when pages are protected and when they are unprotected. While those pages are protected they decide what those pages are going to say. They decide when to block someone for violating the three revert rule and when not to block someone for violating it.
On very rare occassion an admin does something so ridiculously outrageous and out of touch with the POV of the arbitration committee that they get reprimanded for it, but there are numerous occassions where they influence content and nothing happens at all.
It's very hard to separate power from authority, and in a flat (as opposed to hierarchical) system, it's probably impossible.
Anthony _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
2006/1/18, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net:
You mischaracterize an ambiguous situation as being totally corrupt.
Which is wrong, but still closer to the truth than your characterisation of no sysop power at all.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
A lot of it is poker. Folks without a decent hand, raising and bluffing. I suggest courteous calling: asking for sources, negotiating, patience, using the dispute resolution process effectively.
Fred
On Jan 18, 2006, at 9:45 AM, Andre Engels wrote:
2006/1/18, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net:
You mischaracterize an ambiguous situation as being totally corrupt.
Which is wrong, but still closer to the truth than your characterisation of no sysop power at all.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
A lot of it is poker. Folks without a decent hand, raising and bluffing. I suggest courteous calling: asking for sources, negotiating, patience, using the dispute resolution process effectively.
Fred
I suggest that, even if one is willing to go through all the trouble of learning and following the dispute resolution process, 9 times out of 10 nothing will happen anyway, because the arbitration committee is grossly ineffective at handling any but the most obvious of disputes.
There are many RFCs started against admins who have clearly exceeded the bounds of their authority, and that ultimately amount to nothing. Quite often the reasoning behind this is that the ultimate result justifies the means. Less often but still sometimes the excuse is more along the lines that the admin *thought* the ultimate result would justify the means. It's really not such a bad argument, but it makes any argument that admins don't have any authority pretty obviously false.
Some clear examples which illustrate my point would be wrt speedy deletion. Excuses for admins exceeding their authority under the speedy deletion policy (which in itself was created in some ways under threats of page protection and banning) include that the content would have been deleted anyway and even that the admin was "being bold" and doing something which she thought was right.
It seems absolutely clear to me that admins, collectively at least, have a significant amount of de-facto authority in Wikipedia. They have powers, and there are essentially no hard rules over how they are permitted to use it (let alone *enforced* rules).
Anthony
Fred Bauder wrote:
A lot of it is poker. Folks without a decent hand, raising and bluffing. I suggest courteous calling: asking for sources, negotiating, patience, using the dispute resolution process effectively.
Yep. Sometimes you even need to bluff with a good hand so that you can win a bigger pot.
Ec
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
You mischaracterize an ambiguous situation as being totally corrupt.
Fred
How so? I read over what I wrote and I don't think I imply corruption at all. I do believe there is some corruption, but I wouldn't even characterise the system as being totally corrupt if directly asked about it.
I guess you could take what I say about the arb com, that they choose cases which suit their POV, as a hint of corruption. I'm not sure I'd call that corruption, because I think it's true of any judicial or quasai-judicial entity.
Admins influence content with the admin actions they take. I consider that to be an accurate description of the way things are. It would be very hard to change this, you'd have to give someone (or some group) authority to make specific rules for the admins to follow, and then someone would have to enforce those rules strictly. That's not how things work in Wikipedia. It's probably not even a good idea.
But hiding your head in the sand and saying that admins exercise no authority over content is not a good idea either.
Anthony
On Jan 18, 2006, at 9:10 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Yes, it is somewhat outdated, but it remains true in a sense; administrators are on the same level as everyone else as far as content is concerned, pointing out that you are an administrator will not get you far in a content dispute, and carried far enough, will get you desysopped. There are occasional lapses and a few folks sneak around a bit, but those who think being an administrator gives them authority over the most important thing in Wikipedia, content, are mistaken.
Fred
I'm amazed sometimes at how often blatently untrue statements like this get made.
Admins decide which content gets deleted and which content gets undeleted. They decide when pages are protected and when they are unprotected. While those pages are protected they decide what those pages are going to say. They decide when to block someone for violating the three revert rule and when not to block someone for violating it.
On very rare occassion an admin does something so ridiculously outrageous and out of touch with the POV of the arbitration committee that they get reprimanded for it, but there are numerous occassions where they influence content and nothing happens at all.
It's very hard to separate power from authority, and in a flat (as opposed to hierarchical) system, it's probably impossible.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Yes, it is somewhat outdated, but it remains true in a sense; administrators are on the same level as everyone else as far as content is concerned, pointing out that you are an administrator will not get you far in a content dispute, and carried far enough, will get you desysopped. There are occasional lapses and few folks sneak around a bit, but those who think being an administrator gives them authority over the most important thing in Wikipedia, content, are mistaken.
Admins decide which content gets deleted and which content gets undeleted. They decide when pages are protected and when they are unprotected. While those pages are protected they decide what those pages are going to say. They decide when to block someone for violating the three revert rule and when not to block someone for violating it.
On very rare occassion an admin does something so ridiculously outrageous and out of touch with the POV of the arbitration committee that they get reprimanded for it, but there are numerous occassions where they influence content and nothing happens at all.
It's very hard to separate power from authority, and in a flat (as opposed to hierarchical) system, it's probably impossible.
It's all about building trust. If a sysop has built a reputation for fairness he can "get away" with a lot more. The community knows that his edits do not deviate radically from accepted norms. He will also show himself willing to discuss issues when his decisions are questioned, and will be quick to admit when he is wrong. If he wants to take a stand he will choose his issues carefully without feeling compelled to maintain an argument about everything.
That just seems like elementary ability to get along with people.
Ec
On 1/18/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
It's all about building trust. If a sysop has built a reputation for fairness he can "get away" with a lot more. The community knows that his edits do not deviate radically from accepted norms. He will also show himself willing to discuss issues when his decisions are questioned, and will be quick to admit when he is wrong. If he wants to take a stand he will choose his issues carefully without feeling compelled to maintain an argument about everything.
That just seems like elementary ability to get along with people.
Ec
I think you are mostly right, but with an important tweak. It really doesn't matter what the "community" thinks about the admin, so long as the community of admins (and in most cases, the arbitration committee) is willing to work with her.
Individual admins do not have very much authority, but as a group the admins have a great deal of authority. The role of admins in Wikipedia has become rather political, and the proportion of admins to all contributors is small. Thus adminship has become a big deal.
I suppose the fact that admins themselves tend to rule under a form of rough consensus mitigates the authority of any single admin even more. There seems to be a limit on the number of people, even people who are highly skilled at getting along with each other, that can reach a rough consensus on issues, and this particular group of admins seem to be around that threshold. Thus the introduction of "wheel warring". So far the arbitration committee seems unwilling to tackle that one, and in this case with good reason as it's going to be a difficult problem to resolve. Reducing the number of admins (and thus making them even less representative of the whole community) or modifying the power structure of Wikipedia in some way are probably the only solutions, and the arbitration committee doesn't really have the authority to do either. It'll probably take a while, but the problem of wheel warring might very well be one of the next major crises to hit.
I have read the discussion with great interest.
Svwiki started out letting pretty much everyone becoming an admin, and remained this way a long time. Our most complex troll ever, clever and mixing good contribution with direct destructive actions, became an admin, and used the position to "bite people" (not only newbies) - when stripped of his admin priviledges, he got a lot nicer.
We have several admins who would never be elected if they were nominted for adminship today - this is the main reason why many of us wants a system where admins are elected for say a year, not forever, and my guess we will have this new system running within a year. I see a group of admins who speak to newbies "from above"; the message is "I know the rules here, you don't". They could do the same if they weren't admins, of course - but my belief is these people would use a softer tone if non-admins. One or two of those who don't want clearly unsuitable admins to be removed from office (maybe because this admin realises he wouldn't get reelected?) tell me "adminship is no big deal - it is you who are making it into a big deal." It is logikal - if adminship is no big deal, what is so bad with having some admins who don't respect other people's views?
If I don't know everyone in the community, I will judge them partly from other people's opinions. The admin hat gives it's carrier a certain credibility, earned or not. The response a user gets in discussions tell me what informal status this person has in the group, so to speak, but finding someone in the list of administrators also tells me "this is a trusted member, so maybe what he says isn't so bad as it first sounded to me". When an admin is being unjust to newbies, people don't speak up since you don't want to create a fight. There are other ways of getting a position where your words are a bit "heavier" than others, but getting adminship is an important one.
The main reason I spent a long time at the swedish wiki competitor, susning.nu, rather than at Swedish Wikipedia was that I felt treated badly by a person who wasn't just an admin, but one of the "heavy names", one of the influentual ones. He felt his adminship had nothing to do with his actions towards me, and his judgement of me based on little information... nothing at all. I strongly felt it had. When exposed to unjust actions from an admin, you kind of believe there is the wiki concensus behind it. Why should I expect anything good from places where people who are elected to some kind of position don't treat me with respect?
In my eyes, it comes down to - if we keep saying "adminship is no big deal", does this make the adminship a lesser deal, or do we just keep saying something that isn't true and thus prevents us from seeing the reality? Personally, I resigned from adminship without anyone asking me to do so since I felt I could do more good as a non-admin. I have my position in the community regardless of admin status, so it doesn't make much of a difference. In my opinion, it is those whose position in the group relies heavily on their adminship, who are most unwilling to loose it.
/Habj
I am reluctant to accept a case which involves one dispute. Everyone makes mistakes. I would not be reluctant if the dispute was sustained or or repeated. My take is that letting yourself get caught up in a wheel war is punishment enough if it is only an occasional event. All you have is your reputation.
Fred
On Jan 19, 2006, at 4:51 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Thus the introduction of "wheel warring". So far the arbitration committee seems unwilling to tackle that one, and in this case with good reason as it's going to be a difficult problem to resolve.
If the Supreme Court accepted to hear all cases that were submitted to them they would never get through all the work. Not only that, but yet others would be encouraged to submit even more cases.
Ec
Fred Bauder wrote:
I am reluctant to accept a case which involves one dispute. Everyone makes mistakes. I would not be reluctant if the dispute was sustained or or repeated. My take is that letting yourself get caught up in a wheel war is punishment enough if it is only an occasional event. All you have is your reputation.
On Jan 19, 2006, at 4:51 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Thus the introduction of "wheel warring". So far the arbitration committee seems unwilling to tackle that one, and in this case with good reason as it's going to be a difficult problem to resolve.
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