RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

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michaelturley＠myway.com

21 Jun 2005 21 Jun '05

5:26 a.m.

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Ed is spot on, and couldn't be more right about such whinging. Admins shouldn't be above the law, and precious few of us are here to experience an online soap opera of hysterical emotionalism. Its just an encyclopedia, get over it already...

Referring to the 3RR blocking as "law" or "near automatic" is flawed, which is why the treatment of RickK is a disappointment, and the potential loss of a very valuable individual. If you read the text of the WP:3RR page, it would not qualify as anything like "law" as we understand it: "If you violate the three-revert rule, after your fourth revert in 24 hours, sysops may block you for up to 24 hours." Emphasis on the "may" part. For a good system of law you need pre-knowledge of the rules, fair application and an independent judiciary. The arbitration committee approaches these ideals, but enforcement of 3RR? Nowhere close, and it's causing lots of problems. -User:Fuzheado

Come on, now. "May" indicates that the administrator had the option to block RickK for up to 24 hours. An administrator used that option to do so. (The very same who had in November 2004 awarded RickK the "Order of Canada" for "past work in defending our integrity".) Certainly you cannot be upset that an administrator used his own independent judgement and chose to use the authority granted to him by the community at large in a way prescribed by formal policy? Part of the more general problem I see here that causes this is that granting administratorship at Wikipedia is meant to be "no big deal", yet anything that even hints at removing such, even for an hour or two, is the seen as end of the world as we know it. If granting administrator status truly is "no big deal", it shouldn't be that much less common to remove it, if only temporarily. Instead, we have more and more policies and procedures that excuse and insulate administrators from the "no big deal" portion and say "forgive the administrator for being mean because you really were a jerk" or "don't worry about the administrator driving off new users because he's so good at catching vandals." If we truly want to live up to the perception and ideal that adminship is "no big deal", it should be a matter of routine to revoke admin priviledges for a few hours for something as little as a single foul mouthed comment, even if provoked and egged on by peers. If this is done, perhaps we will see less admins defending their actions at any cost, and more "shrugging it off" and proceeding with business. For an example of an insulating policy, what's the point of getting another user to certify an RfC if it's only meant to be a request for <i>comments</i>? To paraphrase a comment I posted earlier on WP, it's as if people think of it as two people ganging up on a third to administer a lashing. It probably comes from being the first "formal" step of dispute resolution, but we should try to de-escalate the seriousness of RfC so we have a more basic forum for public commentary. I didn't mean for this to be a rant, but I hope this is an appropriate place for such comments. I also hope that anyone not interested will sell me an indulgence for the price of fifteen good edits as penance. Michael Turley User:Unfocused _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com

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Alphax

21 Jun 21 Jun

6:08 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 michaelturley(a)myway.com wrote: <snip>

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Part of the more general problem I see here that causes this is that granting administratorship at Wikipedia is meant to be "no big deal", yet anything that even hints at removing such, even for an hour or two, is the seen as end of the world as we know it. If granting administrator status truly is "no big deal", it shouldn't be that much less common to remove it, if only temporarily. Instead, we have more and more policies and procedures that excuse and insulate administrators from the "no big deal" portion and say "forgive the administrator for being mean because you really were a jerk" or "don't worry about the administrator driving off new users because he's so good at catching vandals."

This is why I look forward to graduated user rights levels. The abilities to block, delete, protect, and revert should all be assigned individually, not as a lump sum just for "doing a few hours RC patrol, having a bajillion edits and working on a featured article". Sure, those things make a person a good Wikipedian, but does that justify adminship? We seem to have a lot of hot-headed admins about (not just the rouge ones) - and when an admin decides to throw a hissy fit, block, revert and delete pages, and announce that they are fed up with the whole thing, it only serves to re-inforce some people's beliefs that people should be stripped of their admin priveleges.

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If we truly want to live up to the perception and ideal that adminship is "no big deal", it should be a matter of routine to revoke admin priviledges for a few hours for something as little as a single foul mouthed comment, even if provoked and egged on by peers. If this is done, perhaps we will see less admins defending their actions at any cost, and more "shrugging it off" and proceeding with business.

Indeed; at present, it takes the intervention of a steward (which I've always thought of as being comparable to a Herculean effort) for someone to have admin priveleges removed; even so, it must be at the request of said admin, or the result of an RfAr, or something equally vile. For example, there are several Wikipedians on en who are listed as "missing", and yet still have their mystical powers. Who knows what would happen if they ever returned. I agree that admins should be elected, and elected by the community; but reading the votes at RfA gives me the feeling that members of the Cabal are elected by the Cabal, for the Cabal, and Cabal memebership is some kind of certificate you hang on your wall, much like a diploma. Yes, you can lose it, but it requires breaking, entering, pillaging, and arson.

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For an example of an insulating policy, what's the point of getting another user to certify an RfC if it's only meant to be a request for <i>comments</i>? To paraphrase a comment I posted earlier on WP, it's as if people think of it as two people ganging up on a third to administer a lashing. It probably comes from being the first "formal" step of dispute resolution, but we should try to de-escalate the seriousness of RfC so we have a more basic forum for public commentary.

Also, how come only users get subpages at RfC, and not articles/policies/whatever? And why is an RfC only ever a /bad/ thing? Why is there never a /positive/ RfC? As in "I think this is really great, what do you think?"

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I didn't mean for this to be a rant, but I hope this is an appropriate place for such comments. I also hope that anyone not interested will sell me an indulgence for the price of fifteen good edits as penance.

The mailing list is the home of all good rants not unleashed at RfAr, IRC or WP:VP :)

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Michael Turley User:Unfocused

- -- Alphax OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis

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Tim Starling

7:55 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Alphax wrote:

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If you think it's too hard to get a steward to desysop someone, you could always become a steward yourself. The process of becoming a steward is reasonably democratic. Just state your platform and try to get elected. Of course stewards aren't the real problem, before the introduction of stewards there were a few instances where I was responsible for such things. An admin violated policy, everyone got angry, I had my finger on the desysop button and I was encouraging the community to make a decision, but there was no consensus. Then as now, many people thought that revoking admin privileges was something you just don't do, except in some unspecified case of extreme behaviour, like deleting the main page or something. There was a lack of direction, few people seemed to believe in the importance of discipline. Frustrated, I later argued that all rules pertaining to the conduct of sysops were just guidelines, to be broken at will, because there was no method for enforcing those rules. I've long thought that the best way to deal with community apathy is by passionate leadership. I had hoped that the arbcom would fill this role, and I guess they have been improving over time in this respect. That doesn't mean other members of the community can't fulfill a similar role in a less legalistic environment -- by climbing the ladder of technical power, by proposing policies and enforcing them, and by inspiring other users to join them in lobbying developers and the Board for changes which are in their interests. This is of course the exact opposite to the position of Michael Turley and Erik, who believe that the problem is in the existence of a power structure, rather than the solution. Some Wikipedians believe that all our problems can be traced to a deviation from anarchy, and that the solution lies in denigrating would-be leaders by calling them "janitors" or "bureaucrats". I respectfully disagree with this philosophy, I put my hope in enlightened democratic leadership rather than the mob. Some people complain that those in power are a cabal, rather than an accountable and democratic body. I'd prefer it if they'd use a more accurate word (despots?), but besides that, it will remain a perfectly valid criticism for as long as there is no easy way for the community to remove them from power. -- Tim Starling

Dan Grey

8:41 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Haven't people made attempts at formulating a policy for de-sysopping before now, and been shot down in flames? This is a bit like the content-committee discussion - I'm not sure how much of a problem there really is. When have we ever truly needed to desysop someone? Can anyone point to an example? Admins, by and large, behave perfectly well. I would hope that the community is selecting those who are trustworthy to be admins, and that peer-pressure from the responsible majority will keep the odd rouge in line. Dan

Rebecca

9:27 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

On 6/21/05, Dan Grey <dangrey(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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As far as I remember, three users have been desysopped. It is a big thing - and it so it should be, which is why it's dealt with the way it is now. Our admins are generally our contributors that have been here the longest and in almost all cases, have put in tireless amounts of work to improve the encyclopedia (and anyone who isn't an admin, unless they either don't want to be an admin, or are in some way a dick, should be one in the future with a few more contributions). I'm getting really damned sick of all this admin-bashing on wikien-l. We seem to be getting a small clique of very loud users who seem to contribute remarkably little to the project apart from persecuting users who actually *do* (and loudly defending those that don't). Wikipedia is not an experiment in anarchy. If you start punishing good users without a very good reason, they will leave. This is a volunteer project - we rely on the people who are prepared to put in hours and hours of work. The people that are prepared to do this (without causing scores of controversy), become admins. We've seen enough good users leave because of people - and you know who are - who seem to get some bizarre kick out of chasing good users away from the project. -- ambi

Skyring

11:10 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

On 6/21/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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There's a problem right there. Not every editor has the same set of wants and needs. Just because someone is a good editor doesn't mean that they will be a good admin. You've outlined adminship as something like having a driver's licence - everyone should be able to get one once they are off their Learner's Permit - when to my mind it should be something more like becoming a Justice of the Peace or a police constable. Look at the way you've defined entry and exit paths. Easy to get in and hard to get out. There's an imbalance in the process. I'm not just flapping my keyboard here. I'm one of a very small number of "admins" in a web community of a size comparable to Wikipedia, and I've been given the task of creating a class of special users, who will have privileges and recognition beyond that of the average member. Given the nature of the tasks they will have to do, the selection process is crucial, and I'm wondering how to go about it. Do I set an arbitrary bar of membership time and number of actions performed, or do I make it a matter of having those "in the know" selecting "people like us"? The example of Wikipedia is before me, and I'm trying to find out out what works and what mistakes to avoid. -- Peter in Canberra

JAY JG

6:51 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than"no big dea

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From: Rebecca <misfitgirl(a)gmail.com> I'm getting really damned sick of all this admin-bashing on wikien-l. We seem to be getting a small clique of very loud users who seem to contribute remarkably little to the project apart from persecuting users who actually *do* (and loudly defending those that don't).

A small clique of very loud users who keep whining that someone else is the clique. Quite often they are failed candidates for various positions additional power on Wikipedia themselves.

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Wikipedia is not an experiment in anarchy. If you start punishing good users without a very good reason, they will leave. This is a volunteer project - we rely on the people who are prepared to put in hours and hours of work. The people that are prepared to do this (without causing scores of controversy), become admins. We've seen enough good users leave because of people - and you know who are - who seem to get some bizarre kick out of chasing good users away from the project.

Yep. Jay.

Ray Saintonge

4:53 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Dan Grey wrote:

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Haven't people made attempts at formulating a policy for de-sysopping before now, and been shot down in flames?

Particularly by those who see such a response as an act of self-preservation.

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Admins, by and large, behave perfectly well. I would hope that the community is selecting those who are trustworthy to be admins, and that peer-pressure from the responsible majority will keep the odd rouge in line.

I presume you mean "rogue". :-) I agree that most do behave perfectly well, and the same can be said about most contributors. Choosing trustworthy admins is just a pseudo-democratic crap-shoot. Most of us don't participate in the voting; we have more useful things to do. The only functioning standard is the ability to get votes in an "election" that is only attended by people interested in elections, and thus reflecting the POVs of that group. The person who quietly and without controversy continues to work and build in his own special area is probably not represented. I would like to see more objective criteria for candidacy as sysops. These could cover time spent, number of edits, number of original contributions, social skills, etc. Unless a person meets these criteria, he would not be eligible to receive votes. Peer pressure will work well in most cases, but there will still be problem sysops. Notably these are individuals who do a tremendous amount of good work, but whose good works are often offset by an inability to muster the social skills such as patience needed to deal with others holding a different opinion. Ec

Anthere

10:54 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Alphax a écrit:

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

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Asking a steward to remove sysop status is not an Herculean effort at all. We are numerous enough so that you can find one within an hour at most. So, if you want hurry action, I think it is fine. The Herculean effort comes from the fact you may not remove a sysop status without a full set a actions, so complicated, bureaucratic and generally upsetting... that you just do not do it :-) I would recommand some rules I proposed more than a year ago on meta. I believe a few projects follow them as well. There are two ideas * an editor is gone, does not edit any more ---> he will be removed sysop status. If he needs them back, he can ask and sysop position is granted back pretty easily. But we do not pretend we have 600 sysops while only 100 are active. * an editor must be lightly confirmed once a year. Without making a big mess of it. If several people question the status, it will just be removed. No fuss. Only one person complained in 1 year, not because he was desysoped, but because we did not tell him he was desysoped... but actually, I just did not think of telling him at all... as I think any one asking to be an admin on a project... should know the rules of adminship on this project. On meta, you can give up, ask again, get temporary status, lose or regain sysop power very quickly and painlessly. We just avoid making a big fuss of it. So, I do not think stewards is the problem. Only habits are. Maybe you need to change these habits. ant

Rebecca

11:22 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

On 6/21/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

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I would recommand some rules I proposed more than a year ago on meta. I believe a few projects follow them as well. There are two ideas * an editor is gone, does not edit any more ---> he will be removed sysop status. If he needs them back, he can ask and sysop position is granted back pretty easily. But we do not pretend we have 600 sysops while only 100 are active.

Why? We've never had a problem with an editor returning from hiatus and mysteriously going nuts. This was proposed once before, and turned down very strongly, as it is a solution without a problem.

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* an editor must be lightly confirmed once a year. Without making a big mess of it. If several people question the status, it will just be removed.

This is a terrible, terrible idea, Anthere. The standards at the moment are fairly good for newish users, as a means of working out whether they are trusted enough by the community to become admin users. Anyone who edits in controversial areas, does RC patrol, or is involved in any meta issues at all invariably makes enemies on Wikipedia, with a couple of exceptions who have the patience and diplomacy of a saint (ala Jwrozenzweig or Michael Snow). If you sack an editor as an admin because they had to be voted again at the end of a year and they've made some enemies (as opposed to doing something seriously wrong), you're bound to have a lot of editors mysteriously resigning a little after one year after becoming an admin. I've said it before, and I've said it again - this is a volunteer project. If you punish good, long-term users without very good reason, they will quit. And this is a Bad Thing for the project as a whole. -- ambi

Anthere

5:56 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Rebecca a écrit:

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On 6/21/05, Anthere

<anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

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Why? We've never had a problem with an editor returning from hiatus and mysteriously going nuts. This was proposed once before, and turned down very strongly, as it is a solution without a problem.

If only because rules and habits are no more the same now that they were 3 years ago. There is an expectation that the candidate sysop knows the project quite well, know the people, know the rules... and I believe this is also why there is this requirement of number of edits which the english wikipedia insist so much upon. I do not say it is good or not good, I just observe it. I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... he would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors. Trust, or the way trust is "measured" as changed over the years. If it was not the case, some editors who have been active for more than 3 years on wikipedia, who have been sysops for more than 2 years... would not lose sysophood on the german wikipedia these days.

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>* an editor must be lightly confirmed once a year. Without making a big >mess of it. If several people question the status, it will just be

removed.

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Hmmmm, you have a point. Well, I do think that if someone is doing a *good* job, he can afford to make some ennemies, but still be trusted enough by the community or by a large enough number of the community, so that a couple of votes against him will *not* remove him sysop status. On the other hand, if this sysop has made SO MANY ennemies during his activity as a sysop, so many that he has say 60% of editors voting against him staying a sysop... well, I would say this person should maybe not stay sysop. It might be that it drives him away to remove him his status, which would be extremely unfortunate. But I see no sense in keeping a problematic editor sysop, only to avoid losing him as an editor. This is mostly a question of trust. We can all agree we sometimes disagree with others on some decisions. That does not mean we consider them bad persons or do not trust them. We just ponctually disagree on one issue. If we are a good community, when the time comes for voting, we can decide to agree we trust a person, even though we think he acts as a cowboy sometimes. If we are a good balanced community, good long term sysops will not be "punished". Trust can be gained, or lost. But if it is lost, I see no point in pretending it is still there. It means work for the community to "check" each action of a non-trusted sysop. Imho. Ant

Rebecca

6:39 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

On 6/22/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

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Have we ever had someone return from hiatus and not know the rules - or have serious problems because of changes made while they're away? I've never seen such a case.

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I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... he would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors.

If this becomes an issue, deal with it. As it has never happened before, I'm a bit cynical.

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Trust can be gained, or lost. But if it is lost, I see no point in pretending it is still there. It means work for the community to "check" each action of a non-trusted sysop.

And where's the evidence that this is the case? We've had three sysops desysopped, and even then, I don't recall anyone having to specifically check each of their actions. There's a big difference between angering a small, but vocal bunch of people who hang around VFD and RFA all the time, and having serious issues that actually need action. In the eventuality that that does happen, this is what we have the arbitration committee for. -- ambi

Anthere

10:40 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Rebecca a écrit:

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On 6/22/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

Have we ever had someone return from hiatus and not know the rules - or have serious problems because of changes made while they're away? I've never seen such a case.

I do not know the rules any more. In particular the specificities on the 3R rules :-) I will not use sysop power any more on en.wikipedia but for issues which appear entirely obvious to me; because I think I could possibly not do what is currently supported by the community. Not that it is an issue at all, just a statement.

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I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... he would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors.

If this becomes an issue, deal with it. As it has never happened before, I'm a bit cynical.

Trust can be gained, or lost. But if it is lost, I see no point in pretending it is still there. It means work for the community to "check" each action of a non-trusted sysop.

Hmmm, whatever. I do not want to imply you are wrong and I am right Ambi. Please do not. Only that your certainty in the previous mail that it would be " a terrible, terrible idea, Anthere" is just a tiny bit shaken by the fact already two projects as I know of, chose this way of reconfirmation of sysophood (annually I think, not certain though). I do not list meta within these two, as indeed it is a bit special project, with less chance of edit wars (though there are some). But the point is, some communities on other wikipedia projects chose this path voluntarily. There is no real reason why a community would be entirely right to go one way and another entirely wrong to go another, and vice-versa. I do not know which is the best way and I doubt I could find out alone. But this path was already chosen voluntarily by *consensus*. So, it can't be entirely a terrible idea :-). Ant

Dan Grey

10:56 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Annual 're-affirmation' would be a nightmare on WP - there's, what, 400+ admins? That means we'd need to do _more_ than one of these _every day_. This - all of this discussion in fact - still looks like a solution hunting *desperately* for a problem. Dan On 21/06/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

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Rebecca a écrit:

On 6/22/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

Skyring

11:10 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

On 6/22/05, Dan Grey <dangrey(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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I thought the subject line summarised it well. -- Peter in Canberra

Anthere

11:15 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Dan Grey a écrit:

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Hummm. Right. So to summarize. It all started with Alphax claiming "it takes the intervention of a steward (which I've always thought of as being comparable to a Herculean effort) for someone to have admin priveleges removed". I think this is not an Herculean effort at all. You can reach us any time on meta or on irc. Sorry for abusing your time. I was not "hunting" for a problem, but trying to clarify a false perception. ant

Dan Grey

11:22 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Maybe I've missed something, but what's the big deal? What is this all about? This seems to have all been kicked off by the RickK incident. An admin broke a rule and was treated accordingly, as any other editor who knew the rule would've been, admin or not. Job done. (The fact he threw a hissy fit as a result is neither here nor there. That's his problem.) Then we seemed to make some quantum leap - now trying to put up all kinds of test and hoops for admins to jump through - why, for goodness sake?! Do we have hoards of marauding admins blocking genuine users at will, deleting stuff randomly, and protecting pages when they shouldn't? Er, no, we don't. What we do have in the admins is a community of people who have been recognized as being trust-worthy. They work together and discuss problems and far more often than not come to reasonable, logical solutions. Dan

Erik Moeller

7:14 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Anthere:

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If only because rules and habits are no more the same now that they were 3 years ago. There is an expectation that the candidate sysop knows the project quite well, know the people, know the rules..

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I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... he would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors.

I think it is completely fair to indicate on the list of administrators if an admin hasn't made edits for some months or even years. In fact, this is exactly what we're doing on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrators This helps users to know whom they can contact for help and expect an answer. However, revoking someone's status just because they *might* become active again without knowing the rules seems to violate the "Assume Good Faith" principle. If an admin pauses for 6 months and then goes back to performing admin operations, I expect them to make an effort to look at what's changed first. If they don't make such an effort themselves, again, it is not our duty to punish them, but to revert actions which have been made accidentally in violation of newly established rules, and to educate them. Adminship is about trust. If we trust a person, we should know that they will try to do the right thing, even under changed circumstances. Therefore, we shouldn't have to take someone's privileges away just to make sure they don't do anything bad -- because this could indicate to them that we no longer *trust* them. I don't want to send this kind of message to people like Mintguy, Vicky Rosenzweig, April, Salsa Shark, Optim, Mirwin, Maximus Rex, or Zoe. I believe this is especially true if an admin is still active on *Wikimedia*, but just not on the same project anymore. Erik

Anthere

10:53 p.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Erik Moeller a écrit:

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Anthere:

If only because rules and habits are no more the same now that they were 3 years ago. There is an expectation that the candidate sysop knows the project quite well, know the people, know the rules..

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I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... he would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors.

Maybe I need to remind why this rule was instaured on meta. There is an history on it. Which lead me to propose this, while I would probably not agree with it on a project such as fr.wikipedia. There was a time where meta sysops were not elected at all. Anyone who was sysop on one project somewhere, and asked to be sysop on meta, was granted sysophood. It is fine for english editors. Sysops are elected first and we know they are trusted. This is not the case for some small languages, where we give sysophood pretty easily, without any vote or just one support, because the project is so small there is less than 5 people on it. As a result, several very unknown editors were named sysops on small languages, and became sysops on meta automatically. One of the big problem of meta is its multilingualism, which makes vandal hunting doubly difficult. Enough editors (well, no one opposed) considered it problematic that totally unknown and very little involved editors became sysops on meta, as meta has its own community. In this perspective, the reconfirmation and removal of status of editors inactive on meta made sense, and ihmo still make sense. As you say it yourself, adminship is about trust. But when totally unknown editors, never elected, are sysops, there is no trust. Ant

Gregory Maxwell

8:56 p.m.

On 6/21/05, Alphax <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Actually, yes.. and no. Adminship should be granted to everyone who has the ability to correctly use the admin functions correctly almost all of the time. This means never using them as a favor, to add bias, or to slant power in a dispute. This is a pretty low bar and it's the only bar we need over those functions to keep wikipedia working well. I'm not sure that granular access will help all that much as most people who can be trusted to use any one of them could probably use them all without issue (cept perhaps the revert button). For practical reasons we can't just give adminship to all editors and only take it away from the abusers: because abusers would keep inventing new identities to keep getting adminship. But that doesn't leave us with holding a near popularity contest as the only option: We could require that once a user demonstrates a substantial time and effort investment in the main namespace they are automatically admined absent any preexisting strong evidence that they are already a problem editor. (So even if a troll wants to keep getting adminship to abuse it, he must do a kiloedit or two to the actual articles, ... sounds like a fair trade even it means occasionally we get a troll admin that causes a little damage before we deadmin them). We could control the influx of new people causing a lot of work for those monitoring their behavior by only adding a fixed number every month, selected at random from the top 10% by edit count of eligible nonadmin users) . I know many think that edit count is a poor judge, but if you only count the main namespace I think the sort of people who will make good users of the admin fuctions will tend to rack up the edits (by doing rc partol and such). Once a user abused their administrative powers, it should be revoked... with the usual allowances for minor screwups and human nature. It has been pointed out elsewhere, that adminship shouldn't be a wonderful award. As a result we probably should deal with adminship behavioural burps by temp-deadmining, but rather by a temp block. I think there is also the room for setting aside special titles and roles to recognize our appreciation of substantial contributors of all forms... But it is silly of us to conflate this honor with the award of some technical functions.

Erik Moeller

6:14 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

michaelturley(a)myway.com:

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If adminship is meant to be no big deal, there are a number of things that should be changed, I think. * Rename adminship to "trusted users" and greatly relax the criteria for becoming a TU (certainly in terms of minimum number of edits, which is getting excessive) * Make all TU actions reversible, and possibly require quorums for some * Make privileges individually revokable (banning, deleting, protecting etc.) in case of policy violations * Decrease technical dependency on admins for tasks like deletion and protection - see http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DevolvePower * Have fast procedures in place for revocation of privileges, but only in cases of proven repeated and persistent violations of policy. Getting adminship is like an initiation rite, and that makes it special to anyone who goes through it. Some even go through it repeatedly. It's a judgment call on the contributor's "worth" as much as on whether they are trusted. "Not enough edits!" "Writes insufficient summaries!" "Doesn't use preview enough!" It's also a big deal because "administrator of Wikipedia" is a nice title. I think the name "bureaucrats" is very clever in comparison. Someone who goes through the RFA process is often likely to feel that they *deserve* to be treated specially. They are now part of the core group, after all. If you slap them repeatedly, that's not going to make things better -- it will only generate friction between the slapper and the slappee. :-) Let's not limit ourselves to thinking with a fixed set of parameters, especially those related to punishment. Hurting some people in order to help others may sometimes be necessary, but if you feel the need to do this frequently, step back and analyze the system itself. I believe that the way to make adminship "not a big deal" is to flatten the power structure of Wikipedia tecnically and socially and to atomize privileges. Erik

Andrew Lih

6:42 a.m.

New subject: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

On 6/21/05, michaelturley(a)myway.com <michaelturley(a)myway.com> wrote:

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"If you violate the three-revert rule, after your fourth revert in 24 hours, sysops may block you for up to 24 hours."

But that's my whole point - folks are saying, "Well that's the law, and no one is above the law." It's not consistent application of a "law" by any stretch. As an admin, I've seen plenty of 3RR violations, but I try to protect the page rather than imposing an abrupt user block. I would like to see article protection as a preferred first step before blocking someone over 3RR. The 3RR would be better if it required this. And as much as people say, "It's just a 24 hour ban, get over it," most would consider it a stain on their reputation within the community if they were blocked. As we can see from the RfA votes, these things do get dredged up.

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Certainly you cannot be upset that an administrator used his own independent judgement and chose to use the authority granted to him by the community at large in a way prescribed by formal policy?

In terms of "authority," if you look at the Wikipedia:Administrators page, this is what it says: "Administrators are not imbued with any special authority, and are equal to everybody else in terms of editorial responsibility." Either this page or the 3RR page should be changed to be consistent. -User:Fuzheado

Gregory Maxwell

8:32 p.m.

On 6/21/05, michaelturley(a)myway.com

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I don't agree. Admins non-admin activities should be kept to the same fairly low standard that user edits are usually held to.. we can't fit human interaction into nice little boxes, so there isn't a good way to define how people should behave for regular users or administrators. So an admin should be blocked in the same way we'd block any other contributor, ... a fairly infrequent event for substantial contributors as all admins are... only dished out when it's clear they need to cool off. Now, there are cases where adminship itself should be revoked. But that should only happen in cases of specific abuse of those abilities. Administrators are just regular users, there is nothing wondrous and mysterious that admin power grants.. only the ability to edit protected pages, to protect pages, to block and unblock, to see deleted content, restore deleted content, and delete content, and the autorevert button. All of these activities leave a written record. It would be nice if all users could have access to these abilities, but due to the potential of difficult to correct abuse we must limit these abilities. It is highly likely that after mediawiki 1.5 is in use we may being to issue and remove admin powers in tiers as well. There are some administrative actions which should be unacceptable and result in quick deadminship with little judgement applied, for example unblocking yourself. There are other activities (admin action revert wars) that should indicate administrative cool offs like 3rr, but it's not easy to achieve that today due to technical limitations. Standard blocks might be acceptable in the same role. I think we've complicated adminship by imposing additional unspoken requirements on the position. Technical adminship should remain as it was intended: will you use the admin functions to further the ends of wikipedia rather than your own personal agenda? If so you should have access to them. We should have another class of users if we wish to award kindness, respectability, community involvement. The two groups don't always map 1:1 and the requirements to keep the positions shouldn't be the same. We shouldn't remove admin functions for someone who is a jerk but almost always uses the functions correctly (i.e. avoids using them in their own disputes), but I don't want to send new users to go talk to them. In the case of RickK, not only did he cross the line we set for all editors by excessive reverting of a disputed issue, but he abused his admin powers by blocking the party that disagreed with him and then protecting the page when additional editors engaged. A 24 hour cool of was appropriate if not for the 3RR than for the sloppy use of admin functions.

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participants (12)

Alphax
Andrew Lih
Anthere
Dan Grey
Erik Moeller
Gregory Maxwell
JAY JG
michaelturley＠myway.com
Ray Saintonge
Rebecca
Skyring
Tim Starling