[WikiEN-l] Thoughts on the process of requesting adminship

Sat Jul 2 23:20:38 UTC 2005

On 6/30/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> I have come to realise that our current process of requesting adminship
> is at a sharp contrast to the wiki model in general. I have come to
> believe that we are not following our own principles that we so highly
> value.

This was a lovely essay, Timwi.  

There is no fundamental reason not to apply soft security to
adminship.  A few technical changes which should be made to allow
this:

1) Prevent permanent image deletion. 
2) Provide much better (and more visible) feedback mechanisms for the
whole community to see what has been deleted - both revisions of
articles and revisions of images.  These things should show up on
watchlists, for instance, with links to their deleted histories.
2.1) Those SPECIAL cases in which there is some deleted personal
information that the whole wide world shouldn't see, should be dealt
with specially.  They should not prevent active users from browsing or
commenting on the bulk of deleted revisions/images.
2.2) There should be additional feedback mechanisms highlighting
anything that /is/ deleted permanently; with meta-information visible
to all.

And a few social changes : If you reduce hard security, you do have to
increase soft security.
* It would become normal for admins who crossed a line to be
admonished and forced to stop using admin powers for a short while,
just as good users are sometimes blocked for a short while.
* There would be a page for people to discuss users who shouldn't be admins.
* If an admin were admonished, the person who nominated that admin
should be also; people should take responsibility for their
sponsorships

One final thing I would like to stress : we take in all manner of
people who *can't write* and, by allowing them to try for weeks and
months, in the presence of good models, we teach them.  People who
have never been good writers become skilled at writing crisp, neutral,
encyclopedic prose... even if they still can't write a decent letter
to their parents.
Ond of the advantages of making adminship more open would be that more
people would learn to be skillful, neutral administrators.

-- 
++SJ