[WikiEN-l] declining numbers of active EN wiki admins

Fri May 28 15:31:03 UTC 2010

The good news is that after dipping below the 1720 peak, admin numbers
are on the rise again and we currently have what I believe is a new
record of 1724 admins. However if one were to exclude adminbots then I
think we are still below peak levels, and even if we are now
appointing admins faster than they are resigning, the key metric is
the number of active admins, and that is currently about 170 below
peak levels, as less than half our admins are now active.

Apart from admin bots we only have 24 admins who created their
accounts in the last 24 months, and at least a couple of them were new
accounts for returning admins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&dir=prev&group=sysop&creationSort=1
What few RFAs we have are largely mopping up stragglers from years
back, so wikipedia may still be getting lots of new editors, but very
few are becoming admins

We had a step change after rollback was unbundled in early 2008, and
there was a big fall in RFAs, Things have since deteriorated further,
there were fewer successful RFAs in 2009 than 2008, and the 2010
results so far are continuing the trend. It used to provoke comment
whenever there were no RFAs on the board, now such events have become
normal.

My fear is that if these trends
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_by_month
continue, we will have a growing gulf between admins and non-admins,
as the defacto requirements for RFA are becoming out of reach for most
editors.

We may still have enough admins to do the urgent admin tasks for quite
some time to come; But I can see us becoming more dependant on the
occasional admin who can clear  a 100 article backlog at CSD in an
hour or two, and  I fear a growing divide between admins and others.

WereSpielChequers

> Date: Wed, 26 May 2010 17:02:06 -0700
> From: Howie Fung <hfung at wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4BFDB67E.4000003 at wikimedia.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Here are some numbers I pulled a few months ago regarding the number of
> admin requests over time:
>
>
>        successful      unsuccessful    total requests  % successful
> 2004    177     63      240     74%
> 2005    387     213     600     65%
> 2006    353     543     896     39%
> 2007    408     512     920     44%
> 2008    201     392     593     34%
> 2009    121     234     355     34%
>
>
> I can't comment on the reasons, but I thought I'd share the data in case
> people are interested.
>
> Howie
>
> Source:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Successful_requests_for_adminship
> and related pages.
> Note: 2004 is incomplete as unsuccessful candidacies were tracked
> starting April 2005
>
> On 5/26/10 3:51 PM, Ryan Delaney wrote:
>> Pretty much. That's more or less why I quit the project.
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 1:51 PM, The Cunctator<cunctator at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>
>>> By all measures, en.wiki has been in decline for years as an active
>>> project.
>>> It's just the typical death by bureaucracy that most projects like this
>>> undergo.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Kwan Ting Chan<ktc at ktchan.info>  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> WereSpielChequers wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> What are the likely results of a dwindling number of admins, and a
>>>>> growing wikigeneration gap between admins and other editors?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Well, they're not dwindling since admin rights don't get taken away on
>>>> inactivity. ;-) But to the general question, because the standard
>>>>
>>> expected
>>>
>>>> of a candidate for RfA has gone up over the years?
>>>>
>>>> KTC
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
>>>>     - Heinrich Heine
>>>>
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>>>>
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>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Wed, 26 May 2010 19:03:40 -0500
> From: MuZemike <muzemike at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4BFDB6DC.6020407 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> We need to remember that correlation does not imply causation here,
> which I think is what David is slightly hinting at. There are probably
> many other factors in admin decline as well, including increased
> popularity of Wikipedia (which leads and has led to a lot more problems,
> good and bad), increased questioning of literally every decision made,
> increased criticism (general and specific) of adminship and
> administrators, higher RfA standards, etc. The list goes on.
>
> -MuZemike
>
> On 5/26/2010 6:34 PM, David Goodman wrote:
>> Are you saying that a _declining_ number of administrators means a
>> _growth_ in bureaucracy?  It would normally mean the opposite, either
>> a loss of control, or that the ordinary members were taking the
>> function upon themselves.  What I see is a greater degree of control
>> and uniformity, not driven by those in formal positions of authority.
>>
>> On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 6:51 PM, Ryan Delaney<ryan.delaney at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> Pretty much. That's more or less why I quit the project.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 1:51 PM, The Cunctator<cunctator at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> By all measures, en.wiki has been in decline for years as an active
>>>> project.
>>>> It's just the typical death by bureaucracy that most projects like this
>>>> undergo.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Kwan Ting Chan<ktc at ktchan.info>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> WereSpielChequers wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> What are the likely results of a dwindling number of admins, and a
>>>>>> growing wikigeneration gap between admins and other editors?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Well, they're not dwindling since admin rights don't get taken away on
>>>>> inactivity. ;-) But to the general question, because the standard
>>>>>
>>>> expected
>>>>
>>>>> of a candidate for RfA has gone up over the years?
>>>>>
>>>>> KTC
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Experience is a good school but the fees are high.
>>>>>     - Heinrich Heine
>>>>>