[WikiEN-l] Worthy admins? (was "The userbox fad")

Tue Jan 3 18:20:46 UTC 2006

On 1/3/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > This is an increasing problem. Some of the users who cause most
> > trouble do very little editing of articles, and trying to deal with
> > their trolling on talk pages can be soul-destroying. Yet block one of
> > them and their friends scream blue murder, aided and abetted by
> > certain admins who should know better. It's something we need to get a
> > grip on because it's going to keep getting worse, and eventually
> > they'll start affecting policy.
> Unfortunately, some of these admins *don't* know better.  Recently I've
> seen
> people become admins with thousands of edits, but under a hundred Talk:
> page
> comments, and others who became admins with as few as 16 people voting for
> them.  People who have had so little interaction with other Wikipedians,
> or
> who are so unknown that there aren't even 20 Wikipedians willing to vouch
> for them, are simply not members of the Wikipedia community in any
> meaningful way.  It is not surprising, then, when they act in ways which
> display an ignorance of, or go against Wikipedia norms (e.g. unblocking
> blocked users without even first discussing the block with the blocking
> admin).  The purpose of Wikipedia is not to create a website where people
> can set up really cool user pages, or engage in wheel wars.  Nor is its
> purpose to create a website where one can endlessly pontificate on the
> actions of other editors, and devise more and more policies to control
> their
> actions in increasingly bizarre ways.  Rather, the purpose of Wikipedia is
> to create a great encyclopedia.
>
> Jay.

I am noticing some of the same issues: Users are slipping through RfA
without much opposition, but without much community support either. They
seem to be decent editors, mostly doing work in a small area of Wikipedia,
and when (self)nominated for adminship, they get their "Wikifriends" to
support them, and boom! admin tools. Inevitably, wheel warring (large or
small) will happen from these admins, because they actually don't understand
or generally support the long-standing policies that we have here.

I almost hate to say this, but with the growing size and popularity of
Wikipedia, we might need to start treating adminship truly as a big deal.

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake