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

Tue Jan 3 20:07:41 UTC 2006

On 1/3/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > Here's an example of what I mean.  I noticed that a specific administrator,
> > in the last 12 hours, managed to get into a delete wheel war with another
> > admin, get himself blocked for 3RR, and then unblocked himself.  He then
> > unblocked an obvious troll, without informing the blocking admin, and
> > blocked another editor permanently, accusing him of being a sockpuppet, with
> > no evidence that I am aware of.  My curiousity piqued, I looked at his
> > recent edits, and discovered that *none* of his past 600 edits have been to
> > an article, but do find a comment he has posted today saying that Jimbo is
> > "too busy asking for money" to deal with Wikipedia issues.  I then do an
> > editcount, and discover that of his 8700 edits, only 1800 are to articles,
> > the *exact same number* of edits he has made to his User page.  I look at
> > his User page, and discover *86* user boxes on it.
> >
> > What is going on here?
>
> If you think he shouldn't be an admin, I invite you to file an RFAr
> about it, rather than complaining to the mailing list, which does
> nothing but create ill will amongst contributors.

The reality is that de-admining isn't a simple process and it's only
likely to be successful in clear cases of admin misconduct. In cases
where an admin hasn't blatantly abused his powers, but has made many
poor judgement calls, there's not much that can be done. Even if the
ArbCom accepts the case, it's likely going to cause more problems than
it solves.

The solution (and problem) lies in the selection of admins, which I
believe has become too lax. We need to recognize that adminship on a
top 30 website IS a big deal. Even one admin who's unfamiliar with
policy or who gets into wheel wars can cause major issues. We need
stricter screening of candidates, preferably as soon as possible.

Carbonite