[WikiEN-l] Analysis of Request for Adminship

[Steve Bennett]

On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those
> > who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that
> > fair enough?
> >
>
> Since we are aparently following the hard wording of the rules no.

Are we? It doesn't look like. Perhaps we should, but it doesn't look
like we are.

> We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].

Not a very notable category, I didn't know about it :)

> The regular RFAr votes probably know each other (myself I try to avoid
> voteing there for a number of reasons includeing spaming of my talk
> page)

Eep. Regularly RFAr voters! So there is a self-appointed cabal that
selects admins? Oh, goodie. :)

> Heh last time I was there I a fair number of the oppose votes came
> from people who said I should have held a policy debate first.

Good god.

> There is no way to prevent people from makeing snap judgements so at
> best we can hope to make sure those judements are as good as posible

Any ideas?

> > And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
> > because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
> > but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.

> It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly
> certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so
> it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.

I don't agree. There should be other ways of assessing whether a user
has "gotten it" or not. A user who makes 3000 edits in a month is not
substantially different from a user who makes 3000 edits in 2 years,
is he? Or, even if there is a difference, is the difference critical?

Maybe we should adopt an "easy come, easy go" policy. Make it much
easier for users to get admin rights, but make it much easier for them
to be desysopped too (perhaps by simple request by 3 other admins?).
Then, rather than attempting to prejudge admins, we could actually
road-test them. Hell, give them a trial period of 2 weeks, *then* vote
on them.

This arbitrary set of ever-increasing hurdles defined by a small group
of regular voters seems to go against the Wikipedia spirit.

Steve

Steve