[WikiEN-l] Thoughts on the process of requesting adminship

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 7/3/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >No. Doing the proposed would make adminship less of a big deal,
> >becuause it would cause adminship to eventually include all
> >trustworthy users.
> >
> >Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not
> >abusing the tools long ago...
> Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy;
> someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so.  And
> consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.

Consensus is a fantastic method for governance when the decision is
something with directly effects everyone... it is perhaps the only
method for governance where it is possible to act without ethical
compromises.

However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction
is less harmful than action.

In the case of those adminships, there was no consensus to admin but
there was also no consensus to fail to admin. Because adminship is no
big deal, and because the natural state of a longtime and trustworthy
user should be as an admin, it would be reasonable to argue that the
correct result of a no consensus adminship should be adminning.

The adminships I cited were not just random failures: In each of the
cited the reasons given by the oppose were cited by a fair number of
the supporters as not reasons to oppose. In each of the cases the
support community contained a group of wikipedians at least as well
respected and as experienced as users in the opposed camp.

By failing to act on these adminships we have done a great disservice
to the Wikipedia community. Short of actually being adminned, these
users will have no way of proving themselves. (that much is clear, at
least one of them had a failed prior adminship due to real issues and
put in an additional year of hard work before someone renominated).
 
The complex popularity game that it takes to become an admin turns
adminship into something it should not be, a big deal... and it is our
duty to tack action to fix that.