[WikiEN-l] School of Hard Knocks, or, what I learnt from my RfA

Sat Oct 21 01:19:41 UTC 2006

In message 
<f80608430610201737l2ec92722tcc09cfe66b61c03d at mail.gmail.com>, geni 
<geniice-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>On 10/21/06, Earle Martin 
><wikipedia-yIYeTQxHKJFg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>1) ZOMG how dare you not answer the questions??!!1!!1
>
>As an admin you need to be able to provide a reason to do anything. A
>unwillingness to communicate is a bad sign

Personally, I'll reply to reasonable questions about what I've done, but 
have seldom been asked to. The hundreds of IP's I've blocked rarely seem 
to protest their innocence, and if someone claims collateral damage then 
I'll unblock and keep an eye on their activities for a while. I'm glad I 
got my admin flag three years ago when RfA wasn't at all bureaucratic.

>> 2) One has to have "a specific reason" for wanting admin tools. Being
>> generally concerned for the good of the project is not enough to
>> satisfy the razor minds of the RfA voters.
>
>
>Sure we have no shortage of paper admins (you know that 100 admin
>actions per month will put you in the top 3rd of active admins?)
>
>> 3) Editcountitis is actually a mindset of self-improvement, not a
>> pointless obsession. You must have as many edits as is humanly
>> possible before even considering being an admin. ("Storkk" lays it out
>> straight: "390 mainspace edits isn't really evidence of gnoming. I am
>> really looking for something like 3000 - 4000.")
>
>There are gnoming activities where it is trivial to rack up thousands of edits.

1000 good edits should be plenty.

>> 6) Life as an admin is a hellish, Kafka-esque nightmare of continuous
>> inquisition from a swollen, all-powerful bureaucracy. ("[W]hat you
>> experience here is only a taste of what one will face as an admin",
>> comments "Physicq210".)
>
>Sure if you want to be at all active.

I'm reasonably active - I don't do RC patrol very often or run CDVF, but 
I do keep an eye on the 3500 articles on my watchlist, which is plenty 
to be going on with, blocking evildoers and reverting vandalism. So far 
I've avoided the bureaucracy for three years. It's even three and a half 
weeks since my talk page was last vandalised by "Johnny the Vandal" 
(with any luck he may have died).

-- 
Arwel Parry