[WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

These are issues that I've been thinking about for almost thirty 
years, and with Wikipedia, intensively, for almost three years 
specifically (and as to on-line process, for over twenty years). So 
my comments get long. If that's a problem for you, don't read it.

At 01:35 PM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:

>Actually, most people who don't apply as an admin just don't apply.

With ten million registered editors and a handful of RfAs, that's obvious.

>  They
>don't generate "evidence" one way or another. It is a perfectly sensible
>attitude for a well-adjusted Wikipedian getting on with article work not
>to want to be involved in admin work.

Sure. However, there is a minority who are *not* "well-adjusted" who 
would seek adminship for personal power. Some of these will have 
revealed this in their editing patterns, others will not. Some have 
been vanished editors who returned, knowing now how to behave so as 
to be approved. It's not at all difficult. And then there are others, 
probably the majority of problem admins, who started out with the 
best of intentions, but, quite naturally, developed their own idea of 
what is best for an "encyclopedia." That idea isn't the problem, it 
is when the admin starts using tools to enforce it and control others 
to that *personal* end. Definitely, it's hard to tell this apart from 
"enforcing" consensus. However, one difference is that genuine 
consensus doesn't need personal enforcement. When an admin starts to 
think of himself herself as the lone stopgap against a wave of 
POV-pushing and fancruft, for example, there is a sign that it's not 
consensus being enforced, but a personal view.

If the administrative community were not so ready to circle the 
wagons to defend individual administrators against charges of abuse, 
almost knee-jerk, just because they are administrators, and if 
"sactions" on administrators could be efficiently determined that 
would not toss out the baby with the bathwater, it wouldn't be such a 
problem. How many times has the community effectively told an 
administrator to avoid blocked a certain set of editors or using 
tools in a certain area? ArbComm does it, but that's a high-level 
remedy and unworkable, it should be reserved for cases where there is 
a genuine split in the community.

>  There are editors on the site who
>make the lives of those who cross them miserable: and an admin has the
>choice of avoiding such editors, or getting in the way of abuse.

And there are administrators who do this even more effectively. I 
find it difficult to understand how an "editor" or even an 
administrator on the site could make my life "miserable." An admin 
can block me, and that has no power over my "life." Genuine off-wiki 
harassment, sure, but often what has passed for that has been mere 
criticism. To "make the life of an administrator miserable," on-wiki, 
requires visible actions. Why would we assume that this would be 
invisible, but the complaints against the admin would be visible?

One of the problems is that issues get linked, instead of being 
resolved separately, even though separation is possible. Admin A 
blocks editor B abusively. B complains, and then what is considered 
is if B was violating guidelines, not whether or not the block was 
abusive. If editor B was violating behavioral guidelines, B's 
behavior should be examined through normal process for that, and 
blocking is only a temporarily protective measure. An abusive block 
is not an "incorrect" block, it is one that is done in a disruptive 
way, most commonly because the admin is actually involved in a 
dispute with the editor. For one side of a dispute to block the other 
side is disruptive and, indeed, it creates enemies, and sometimes 
causes whole factions to beging fighting. Incorrect blocks can be 
easily fixed. It's abusive blocks that are the problem.

>  My
>expressed fear is very far from "imaginary". You put your head above the
>parapet, you may get shot at, precisely for acting in good faith and
>according to your own judgement in awkward situations.

Sure. That's true everywhere in life. We expect administrators to 
understand how to use their tools without involvement. If they fail, 
they should be corrected. If they refuse to accept the correction, or 
show that they don't understand it, and are therefore likely to be 
disruptive in their use of tools, then the tools should be removed. 
General wiki principles would make this easy, with escalation to 
broader consideration when conflict persists.

One of the blatant manifestations of the problem is that there are 
administrators who have openly argued against recusal policy, and who 
have defended administrators who clearly violated it, and, even 
worse, who have attacked editors who challenged recusal failure. 
Those are administrators who are violating community consensus and 
ArbComm decisions, which have many times confirmed recusal policy, 
and they cannot be expected to voluntarily abstain from such 
violations. Therefore their tools should be subject to suspension 
until they assure the community that they will respect recusal 
policy, which is *essential* for a neutral project, and neutrality is 
a fundamental policy.

Some of these same administrators have also argued against neutrality 
policy and against the concept and value of consensus. Again, there 
is an obvious problem. These arguments and the position behind them 
is a minority position on Wikipedia, and it seems that the minority 
becomes smaller as a percentage with the size of the discussion 
(whereas I've seen it appear as a two-thirds majority or even higher 
in relatively isolated discussions). I.e., it's a position found 
preferentially among an active core, and I can suspect that Wikipedia 
process overall has been abusive enough that the active core has been 
filtered so that *actually neutral* editors have been leaving, frustrated.

Bad administrators isn't the essence of the Wikipedia problem. Poor 
process is. The adhocracy that was set up was misleading, because it 
was highly efficient at generating vast amounts of content that -- 
sort of -- seemed to improve itself. It did improve itself, but often 
not in areas where there is significant controversy in the real 
world. "Neutrality" is not "majority point of view," but even to 
recognise a majority point of view and to distinguish it from 
neutrality can require some sympathy for minority points of view. The 
only solution I see is full-blown consensus process, but most 
Wikipedia editors have no real experience with that, and it's not 
encouraged, because it requires a *lot* of discussion, in the real world.

I've suggested, then, that consensus be formed, tentatively, 
off-wiki, through voluntary participation, and then imported on-wiki 
for final confirmation that it really represents consensus (or it's 
rejected, goes back for more negotiation). That is like committee 
process. You'd think it might be done on-wiki, and, indeed it could, 
except that there are major elements that strongly oppose the kinds 
of discussion that are necessary. They can be voluminous, but key 
would be that they would take place in a deliberative environment, 
where actual decisions get made and are modified with the goal of 
increasing consensus. This isn't mere "discussion," and merely 
discussion can actually poison it. It generally takes some kind of 
facilitation by someone skilled at that.

>What follows that seems to be a non sequitur. It was not what I was
>arguing at all.
> >
> > What I'm seeing here, indeed, is an illustration of the problem. The
> > attitude that Charles expresses is clearly part of the problem, and
> > Charles is suggesting no solutions but perhaps one of ridiculing and
> > rejecting all the suggestions for change.

That was a personal judgment, and the core of it was "suggesting no 
solutions." If Charles is suggesting solutions, fine. What are they? 
Now, I do see one below, so I was incorrect. I'll get to that.

>Ah, but this is in line: "Charles's attitude" becomes something that
>must be fixed before recruiting more people to stand for adminship.

No, Charles is just one person. And it is not the province of 
Wikipedia, the Wikipedia community, nor myself, to "fix Charles's 
attitude. Charles does not need to change for more people to be 
recruited, unless, somehow, Charles is in charge of Wikipedia. Is he? 
(He isn't claiming to be, but there can be a subtle "we" vs "they" 
which arises, where "we" supposedly represents the community, in the 
mind of a writer, and the writer identifies with it, and "they" is 
the others, the outsiders, the interlopers, the people who don't 
understand, the disruptive.

But this attitude, shared by many, is part of the problem. Whose 
problem? Well, it's the community's problem and the foundation's 
problem, and it's up to those who have the problem to fix it. But the 
only one who can fix Charles's attitude is Charles. It cannot be 
coerced, period. One of the errors that ArbComm has made is to assume 
that it can modify an editor's attitude by sanctioning the editor. 
And it's shocked, shocked, when it doesn't work. Only someone 
seriously attached to editing Wikipedia can be coerced in that way. 
I.e, the very people that, in fact, might be harming the project. The 
attitude itself won't be changed, but the person will pretend 
compliance in order not to be blocked, so they can continue their 
"important work." It's important because they are attached. 
Sometimes, of course, their attachment is merely to creating things 
of beauty, and it's helpful. I'm not condemning these people!

>I
>was actually commenting on the thread, not the issue. We should examine
>this sort of solution, amongst others: identify WikiProjects with few
>admins relative to their activity, and suggest they should look for
>candidates.

That's fine, and, in fact, I agree with it. But it is only part of 
the solution. Given this, I apoligize for the implication that 
Charles was not suggesting solutions. On the other hand, my 
observation is that many Wikiprojects are completely dead. They can't 
seem to get active participants, much less people willing to stand, 
under present conditions, for adminship.

I see many, many signs that the project is in serious decline. If 
flagged revisions is widely adopted and used for articles, it is 
possible that the encyclopedia can still be maintained with far fewer 
editors active. But, then, the possibility of these editors being 
biased increases.

Generally, I suggesting backing up and starting to look at the *whole 
problem.* How can a neutral and complete encyclopedia be created and 
maintained? We have much experience from what has come down. 
Rationally, this could allow us to come up with a much better design 
than came together like Topsy when Wikipedia was founded and grew. 
But not if those elements who are preferentially empowered under the 
present structure do what such elements always do in organizations 
like Wikipedia: act to preserve their own power. That isn't simply 
"power hunger," there is a genuine "good faith" belief behind much of 
it, a belief that, as the most active participants, they know best. 
It is a classic problem. Solutions to that problem have been my 
long-term interest, as some of you may know. There are solutions, but 
I've never seen them arise in a community that has become 
established. They either muddle along or they collapse, but, either 
way, they are routinely far less effective than they would be with 
better structure. Only if a community is founded by people who 
understand how to create structure that will function with genuine 
consensus in the long term, have I seen it accomplished. Those people 
are effectively creating something greater than their own individual opinions.

With Wikipedia, though, if the problem of efficiently finding 
consensus isn't resolved, it has failed in its primary goal. It may 
have an encyclopedia, all right, but it won't be neutral.

I'm completely unconvinced that the Wikipedia community is capable of 
addressing the problems. I differ from many others at Wikipedia 
Review, though, in that I'm willing to try, to describe the problem 
and advocate solutions. I don't do that on Wikipedia any more, 
because it is clearly unwelcome and the very effort leads to 
sanctions. If I thought, however, that advocacy would be effective 
there, I'd do it, because I don't care about sanctions at all. I just 
don't want to waste my time.