[WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 09:07 AM 6/1/2010, David Gerard wrote:
>On 1 June 2010 05:56, Durova <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com> wrote:

>>  [...] It is hardly surprising that, in this weak economy, wise 
>> editors have been > declining offers of nomination.

>This is IMO asymptom of there being insufficient admins.

Yes.

>And again, this is because of ridiculously ratcheted-up requirements 
>by serial objectors at RFA that have no reasonable threat model attached.

I just opposed a call for adminship that I would not have opposed if 
it were easier to modify the behavior of abusive administrators. The 
editor might make a fine administrator and was merely naive about 
blocking policy and how free of abuse it is.

>The way it's done at RationalWiki is that sysophood is inflicted on 
>almost all regular editors without their asking. The criterion is 
>"mostly harmless." That way, it really is "no big deal."

Yes. The power gap between editors and administrators on Wikipedia is 
too great. It was, perhaps, a decent first attempt at addressing the 
problem of how to manage the project, but it became frozen.

>Of course, that's a wiki with 1/1000 of the activity of en:wp. (Some 
>powers that sysops have on en:wp, such as editing interface text, 
>are reserved to bureaucrats. I realise this just puts the problem 
>off another level.

Levels are good.

>But then again, the cycle of heavily active participation is 18 
>months anyway, so changing everything every couple of years keeps 
>the system fresh.)

In my view, that cycle should be building a large body of 
editors-in-reserve, people who may only occasionally edit but who 
will contribute great value when they do. That would require some 
kind of superstructure that connects inactive editors and brings them 
in when they are needed. Part of the proxy concept is that proxies 
would serve as links to those they represent, would understand and 
know their special interests and expertise, and would, say, email 
them when it was needed. "Proxy" is a bit misleading. There has been 
no proposal that proxies would exercise actual voting power, for 
example, but only that it might be possible to estimate consensus 
more efficiently if we have some designations of personal trust.

The proxy is really a node in a communications network, in delegable 
proxy systems. It works, I've seen that. Value is gained from even a 
single proxy designation, for the proxy and client.