[WikiEN-l] for years been promoting admins who go with the flow rather than challenge low level bad behavior by admins and long standing users

[WereSpielChequers]

> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 8:32 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net>
>> wrote:
>> >> On 14 July 2010 02:07, FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>> The expectations upon admins are the pivot point for that. See [[
>> >>> User:FT2/RfA <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FT2/RfA>]].
>> >>>
>> >>> Any ideas how we can get somewhere like that?
>> >>>
>> >>> FT2
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> Well to start with you could chuck your requirements out of the
>> >> window. Your requirements like most at RFA are selecting for 3 things
>> >>
>> >> 1)some degree of editing skill
>> >> 2)Not appearing to cause trouble
>> >> 3)A decent set of wikipolitics skill
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> It's two and three that cause the problem. Anyone whith a decent set
>> >> of wikipolitics skills is going to archive 2 by playing safe going
>> >> along with the flow and not challenging things. Almost anyone actually
>> >> passing RFA is going to have got into the habit of going along with
>> >> the ah "bad faith combined with mob justice". The people who might
>> >> actually try to challenge such things are unlikely to pass RFA because
>> >> either they lack the wikipolitics skills needed in order to pass (you
>> >> would tend to fail them under the "nor into politicking" clause among
>> >> others) or because they are not prepared to use them in a way that
>> >> would let them pass.
>> >>
>> >> Upshot is that we have for some years now been promoting a bunch of
>> >> admins who will go with the flow rather than challenge low level bad
>> >> behavior by admins and long standing users. The tiny number of rebels
>> >> and iconoclasts left are from years ago and have little to day to day
>> >> stuff.
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> geni
>> >
>> > Yes, that does seem to be the main requirement, a successful candidate
>> > must never have taken a stand. This for a job that requires taking
>> > stands.
>> >
>> > Fred
>>
>> I failed my first try, and could have failed my second if I hadn't
>> made a serious effort to ameliorate a negative perception from taking
>> a stand earlier.
>>
>> The edge of the knife that we must balance on is both being willing to
>> take stands, and be open to feedback from the community and from other
>> admins if we take the wrong stand.  Balancing there all the time is
>> very hard.  Being willing to admit you're wrong on something and still
>> come back the next day willing and ready to make a hard call on its
>> merits is not easy.
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert at gmail.com
>>
>>
> Somehow this thread became about RFA standards. What happened?
>
> - causa sui
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:56:22 +0100
> From: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Admin / experienced user flameout - how do we
>        talk people down off the ledge?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4C3D5F96.6010506 at ntlworld.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Ryan Delaney wrote:
>> Somehow this thread became about RFA standards. What happened?
>>
>>
> True. We seem to be missing the point that the trouble with the
> Administrators Noticeboard is at least in part that it is a
> "noticeboard", i.e. not a process for which there is a charter, but an
> unchartered discussion forum. Any claims that "AN has the authority" to
> do anything are complete nonsense, and admins act entirely as
> independent, responsible agents whatever thread they are pivoting off from.
>
> I don't see why this has to be the case, and have not done so for around
> three years. The community can require more. In fact it should require
> more. AN has long been something that should have been the subject of an
> RfC.
>
> Charles

> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:15:37 -0600 (MDT)
> From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at fairpoint.net>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Admin / experienced user flameout - how do we
>        talk people down off the ledge?
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <49934.66.243.197.173.1279098937.squirrel at webmail.fairpoint.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
>  Fred
>>
>> I failed my first try, and could have failed my second if I hadn't
>> made a serious effort to ameliorate a negative perception from taking
>> a stand earlier.
>>
>> The edge of the knife that we must balance on is both being willing to
>> take stands, and be open to feedback from the community and from other
>> admins if we take the wrong stand.  Balancing there all the time is
>> very hard.  Being willing to admit you're wrong on something and still
>> come back the next day willing and ready to make a hard call on its
>> merits is not easy.
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert at gmail.com
>>
>
> To tie this back to the original post: It is this sort of insight that
> enables a person to continue to participate and contribute over long
> periods of time. That sort of insight has been developed by people who
> have participated in the give and take of making decisions, some of which
> have worked out, while some have not. So how can we, in a practical way,
> socialize administrators in the skills involved in continuing to
> participate effectively in an important project when everything isn't
> going as you might like. This happens in all large organizations.
>
> I keep thinking that stories of our adventures are relevant. That's what
> happens in other social situations, building the culture of how
> difficulties are coped with. Stories of successes and disasters; I'm
> afraid most of that lore has been closely held by insiders and not widely
> shared in the administrator community, as much of what when on was
> confidential for one reason or another.
>
> We'd like people who get into trouble to work through it and continue to
> contribute on a long term basis. That is a different path from someone
> getting into trouble, then we're done with them.
>
> Fred
>

I've got a couple of concerns with the adminship thread above.

Firstly the idea that new generations of admins have come in and
somehow supplanted the old guard.  I've been an editor for a little
over three years and an admin for a year and quarter, by either
measure I'm easily in the newest 10% of admins. Whilst our editing
cadre and I suspect the nonadmin part of the ANI crowd will contain a
large proportion of editors who've edited for less time than I have,
the vast majority of our admins predate the RFA drought that began in
early 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_by_month

I agree that we have a problem if admins willing to take on
problematic vested contributors are in short supply. But I would
contend that if this is the case it is more a matter of such admins
having been removed from the admin cadre than their presence being
diluted by new admins. I suspect that I'm not the only newish admin
who takes a cautious approach when wielding the mop in unfamiliar or
contentious areas, but as most admin work is uncontentious grunt work
ideally suited to new admins, it shouldn't be a problem if thats what
our few new admins mostly do. I think that the <1% most difficult
blocks are best left to more experienced admins.

Secondly Fred Bauder's idea that "a successful candidate must never
have taken a stand. This for a job that requires taking stands."

I discussed RFA at Wikimania with a DE editor and a very longstanding
EN veteran. From the German editor I learned that the requirements on
DE Wiki are more inflated than our own, with 10,000 edits now the de
facto minimum for a serious RFA candidate. The EN veteran told me that
he used to check a candidate's entire contributions before !voting,
but he abandoned the RFA process when 2,000 edits became the norm, as
it took too long to check that many contributions.  Judging from my
experiences of RFA; whilst successful candidates with less than 12
months tenure and 3,500 edits are very rare, so too are opposes based
on diffs older than 6 months, except where it leaves an easy trace
such as a blocklog, a former RFA or "excessive use of tools",  as some
editors will oppose based on the percentage of automated edits rather
than a lack of manual edits. If you've been reasonably active in the
subsequent months then stands taken over a year ago are unlikely to be
mentioned, and one of RFA's few redeeming features is that almost
anything can be treated as a learning experience if you can
demonstrate that your recent edits show improved behaviour.  However a
recently taken controversial stand is high risk, even if a majority
agree with you it only needs a 30% minority to blackball a candidate.

Based on my observations of recent RFAs,  recency of diffs quoted in
RFAs, speed of the early votes in RFAs, the number of  pageviews of
various pages in my userspace when I ran at RFA and the emphasis in
RFAs on questions and statistics rather than diffs and behaviour; I
believe that whilst the number of candidates who meet the defacto
criteria for a serious RFA run is quite limited, frankly disclosed
past controversial stances and actions are usually considered time
expired after at most 12 months. Undisclosed old incidents that didn't
merit a block are rarely discovered; So either they don't happen or
more likely no-one spots them.
-- 
WereSpielChequers