[WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

[Keitei]

On Feb 15, 2007, at 13:10, Rich Holton wrote:
> Sorry, but I have to disagree. The only real criteria I can figure is
> that we want to avoid admins who go completely zonkers and start
> systematically working against the aims of Wikipedia. If we can be
> reasonably sure someone won't do that, then there's no reason to keep
> them from becoming an admin.
>
> Of course, we need to be willing (and able) to de-admin someone when
> they consistently demonstrate the sort of behaviors you mention (or
> worse). But the whole wiki concept is one of self healing and
> resilience, not pre-approval. What we don't want to have is a class of
> users (admins) who are placed into the spotlight every time they  
> make a
> mistake, or every time one of them turns out to be less than  
> desirable.
>
> I respect the concerns of those who want to avoid granting large  
> blocks
> of admin rights to what end up as sock-puppets intent on destruction.
> Perhaps we do need a sizable class of users whose sole role is  
> granting
> and revoking admin rights--but these users should not be themselves
> admins. These people should be very carefully selected, and should for
> the most part stay out of controversy.
>
> -Rich

Just for clarification: my post was to discuss the role of adminship,  
not the merits of making people admins easier or whatever the other  
thread was dedicated to. :] I'm not thinking of the one or two people  
who might be inclined to make huge swaths of sockpuppets, but rather  
those whose own personal biases prevent them from acting in the best  
interests of others. These are the people who I think should not be  
given a general managerial role such as admin, but who are perfectly  
adept at making Wikipedia a wonderful place.

I think the idea is that of consensus: the community agrees to  
delete, block, protect and the admin is only doing what the community  
wants. Or preempting it as the case may be, but that's more tricky.  
We want admins who will follow consensus; not all people do this  
naturally, while all people correct errors naturally.

What I think we don't want is admins who put their own input into  
what they do, and delete things they want deleted, and protect things  
they want protected. We /do/ very much want people to edit things  
they want edited, change things they want changed. Deleting and  
editing are not quite the same thing and thus shouldn't work quite  
the same way.

Also, I don't see how your comments were in response to mine, but  
it's all good. :]
--keitei