[Foundation-l] models for adminship/wiki leadership

[Brianna Laugher]

On 11/04/07, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> A few weeks ago, a few en: editors and I were sitting in a room and we
> came up with the following idea (or was it with the Italians strolling
> outside in cold weather?):
>
> How about giving adminship not as a package but as an "opt-in" thing?
>
> You could become a "banner". Or a "blocker". Or a "protector". Or a
> "deletor". Or all of those, or any of those you choose to be. Not
> everyone knows how to use or can use wisely all the admin "powers".
> Breaking them into what people really need could be a step towards
> breaking the XP gain thing and levelling up to be an admin.
>
> You'd run for one of those or all of those and provide explicit
> reasons why you chose those options and not those others.

Hm. I don't really like this idea. From my own experience being an
admin on Commons, when I started I didn't really know what I was going
to do. I just wanted to *help*. Helping on Commons is mostly deleting,
so that's mostly what I did. But I became more involved with different
aspects and have now done a lot of editing in the MediaWiki namespace.
As they run across my path, I protect and block pages/users as
necessary, although I don't usually seek either out. So...it doesn't
exactly suit my thinking.

I would also have reservations about someone who wanted to volunteer
for just blocking users. To me this is a very negative activity that
doesn't help encourage the attitude of AGF, and is more like a power
or game thing as opposed to 'helping build the wiki'.
perhaps I have a very naive view about the way a popular wiki must be,
in this regard.

cheers
Brianna