Responding to a few different points:
(1) I don't envision this training as being sufficient to make anyone an
expert in harassment or incivility response; the goal isn't to train all
administrators to handle large-scale harassment. Rather, the goal is to
train the administrators who take this course (further discussions below on
how wide the recruiting for that will be) to a baseline level of
familiarity with how to handle harassment and incivility if and when they
encounter it. I think of it this way: in the physical world, only a few
police officers will specialize in investigating harassment cases, but all
police officers ideally should have a basic familiarity with how to address
incivility and harassment situations. Anecdotally, I rarely hear people
complain about learning more or getting reinforcement about "people
skills", communication, leadership skills, and self-awareness. On Wikimedia
sites, administrators are often in the potision of being "first responders"
to difficult situations, and it seems to me that training for how to handle
those situations would be good. Of course, some wikis may have developed
their own training programs, and this training would be in addition rather
than a replacement.
(2) Let me reiterate that while I support offering this training, I am not
supportive of making this training mandatory until it has been widely
tested. Even if there is a desire to make the training mandatory, I think
it would be preferable that the decision be made by individual wiki
communities who can adapt the training to their individual circumstances. I
feel that a global mandate for administrators to take this training would
be 2 years from now at the earliest, after administrators and communities
who voluntarily adopt the training have had considerable time to test it,
adapt it, and make suggestions about how to optimize it. With widespread
feedback from multiple communities, we might eventually be able to offer a
set of training modules that could be adaptable globally and that WMF could
mandate with reasonable certainty that the benefits are worth the costs.
(3) The training is not a panacea. It won't stop block evasion. It won't
make administrators be superhumans who are always right. It won't stop the
problem that there are a few administrators who cause enough problems that
they shouldn't be administrators. But I feel that overall, if done
carefully and well, training administrators could move us in a good
direction.
Pine
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Adrian Raddatz <ajraddatz(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Many volunteer organisations have mandatory training
for volunteers, so
that in itself is not a bad idea. But what about the cross-project
differences that Risker brings up?
And more importantly, how could such training help when faced with the type
of harassment that is referenced 99% of the time here - block or lock
evasion after the system has already worked? Training would be a single
sentence: "rinse and repeat the block/hide process until they decide to
stop."
Adrian Raddatz
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 1:18 PM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hmmm. I find this recommendation concerning.
There *might* be some
validity on large projects with hundreds of administrators, but there
are a
lot of projects with only a few admins, and they
were "selected" because
they were willing to do the grunt work of deletions, protections, and
blocks. Nobody was selecting them to handle large-scale harassment.
Indeed, I cannot think of a single administrator even on a large project
who was selected because of their ability or their interest in handling
harassment incidents. There's pretty good evidence that it is not only
not
a criterion seriously considered by communities,
but that absent the
interest or willingness to carry out other tasks or demonstration of
aptitude for other areas of administrator work, an admin candidate would
not be selected by most communities, even large ones where harassment is
a
much more visible concern.
There is also no basis for putting forward that mandatory training for
any
administrator function would be useful on a
global scale. How does one
set
up a mandatory training program for carrying out
page protection, given
that every large project has a different policy? What happens if an
administrator doesn't "pass" a mandatory program? Are they desysopped,
over
the objections of their community?
I'll point out in passing that there is not even consideration of a
formal
global checkuser training program - again, the
local policies vary
widely,
and the types of issues addressed by checkusers
on different projects is
very different.
Risker/Anne
On 7 June 2016 at 15:01, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
My suggestion is to come up with a general type
training that can work
for
> all administrators and functionaries since all have the freedom and
> permission to do all types of work on WMF projects. And that training
> should be mandatory.
>
> Then people who are focusing on a particular type of administrative or
> functionaries work can take more advanced courses that could be
mandatory
> for doing some types of work.
>
> Sydney
>
>
>
>
>
> Sydney Poore
> User:FloNight
> Wiki Project Med Foundation
> WikiWomen's User Group
> Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/sydney.e.poore
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:10 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Sydney,
> >
> > Thanks for that link. I think that for now I would suggest avoiding
> making
> > the training mandatory because we won't know how successful it is
until
> > after we've used it for awhile.
After the training has been tested
and
> > refined based on feedback, and if the
consensus is that the training
is
helpful, then at that point we could consider making
this a required
annual
> training.
>
> I could foresee is that, on wikis that have arbitration committees or
> other systematic ways of dealing with administrators who mess up, the
> ArbComs and/or the community could say that those administrators who
have
> > demonstrated weakness in areas that are addressed by the training
will
be
> required to take or re-take the training as
a condition of keeping
their
> > admin permissions.
> >
> > My hope is that the training will be of such good quality, and so
> > interesting and useful to administrators, that many administrators
will
>
*want* to take the training or at least be curious enough to try it.
Big
> carrot, small stick. We can escalate from
there if the training
develops
> a
> > track record of success.
> >
> > I would think of success as being measured in two ways:
administrators'
>
feedback about the training shows a consensus that they found it
helpful,
> > and communities report higher levels of satisfaction with their
> > administrators as shown in the difference between surveys that are
done
> > before on multiple wikis (1) before the
training starts and (2)
after 6
or
> 12 months of the training being rolled out.
>
> Comments welcome, including suggestions about how to measure the
success
> of the training.
>
> Pine
>
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 7:58 PM, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore(a)gmail.com
wrote:
> Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight suggested Annual Training during the
> Harassment Consultation, 2015.
>
>
>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Harassment_consultation_2015/Ideas/Annual_t…
>
> If you've not seen it, it is worth your time to read the talk page
> discussion.
>
> Sydney
>
> Sydney Poore
> User:FloNight
> Wiki Project Med Foundation
> WikiWomen's User Group
> Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/sydney.e.poore
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 9:17 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have created
>>
>>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Training_for_administrators
> >>> and would welcome feedback
there.
> >>>
> >>> On the subject of block evasion, I have some ideas but would defer
to
our
>>> experienced CheckUsers.
>>>
>>> Pine
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