UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard/Archives/De-adminship for inactive admins

De-adminship for inactive admins

I'm gonna start this off by saying a few things.
(A) I am not trying to single anyone out with this.
(B) I am not trying to start a huge flame war
(C) I'm hoping we can all discuss this in a professional manner, instead of just having a bunch of admins come in and shrug it all off, and then have this discussion end up dying and going ignored

Ok, I've noticed we have some good admins on this site, namely Rpeh, TheRealLurlock and Nephele, occasionally Wrye, and sometimes Ratwar, although I barely see Ratwar around. However, we have some people who, despite being inactive for quite some time, still remain admins. Wrye was originally going to be one of them, until I went and did some User contrib checks and saw he was semi-active. '''(I thought we had more admins, but I was wrong, and I've only found 2 who are inactive/semi-active.)'''

I'll start off by listing Ratwar (click his name to view his contribs). He's made sparse edits and only pops up to join in on administrator discussions. He doesn't really help this wikia at all, other than his occasional news post, or voting in an RFA.

Eshe is very inactive, yet she remains an admin. What gives?

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, we should institute some sort of policy or what-have-you for inactive admins, and removing the admins rights if, hypothetically speaking, they do not make an edit for more than __ days, or something like that. Also, a security should be put in place to make sure that if an admin appears to be inactive for quite some time, they cannot simply come back, make one edit, appear to be active, then disappear for weeks on end again. Now, I know we don't have that many admins here, however, this can be counteracted by promoting a deserving Patroller or Mentor to Admin, and then promoting a regular user to Patroller.

Questions? Opinions? Daedryon  00:03, 22 December 2008 (EST)

:We've already had this discussion, it's up a bit under #Things_that_Need_to_Happen. My opinion is a no. The "if they do no harm, leave them as they are" rule seems fine. Unless if they come back and they obviously show that they have no ability or knowledge relevant to the wiki, then we might delete them. As to the people you mentioned, Ratwar is fine. Could be going through a tough stretch, might not care too much, but he is around. He knows what he is doing. I still value his opinion. I haven't seen Eshe since I stopped editing a while back. So I don't know about her.
:As a side note, maybe we should delete them from the list of administrators, or at least put them into a separate group so new members or users needing help won't get confused. --Tim   00:16, 22 December 2008 (EST)
::Nice to get some input from a Patroller. (not being sarcastic, btw). So this has already been suggested? O.o Wow. My bad! My bad everyone! Daedryon  00:21, 22 December 2008 (EST)
:: Hmm. I see now that the Administrator page does show inactiveness. So as long as this is kept up to date, I don't imagine anything will need to change. --Tim   00:33, 22 December 2008 (EST)
:::Why are you surprised by it already being suggested before? It's in the middle of this page, finished in October. There haven't been many other, if any, discussions on the topic prior to this, however (I should know, I archive all discussions). Ratwar should not be de-adminned. He is doing his job. Participating in discussions and watching over the community are admin jobs. Sure he supervises more content than he writes, but he is still "active" (although you can't really see it from the lack of physical "edits" the software records). As he said, you generally only get to know him if you have been acting bad. Despite being a college student (I'm in high school and I still find the work overwhelming at times), he takes the time to check on discussions and recent major events. Eshe.... I haven't seen since she became an admin. I hope she'll drop by and let us know what's up. Also, this is an Administrator Noticeboard. If you are looking for the consensus of the ENTIRE community, including Patrollers, you should have used the Community Portal. Vesna 15:39, 22 December 2008 (EST)
::::Yes, I realized that shortly after I posted this. Daedryon  15:44, 22 December 2008 (EST)

Well, appear to be a bit late to this discussion, but it didn't make it to the active discussion area of the Community Portal, so I didn't see it until now. Plus it never seemed to gain enough steam for it to reach my ears in the chatroom. Still, I feel pretty obligated to defend myself, as my name was not thrown into the discussion last time around.

I am not the most active administrator, but when I do appear, I tend to get things done. Over the last year, I've helped GuildKnight become an administrator, played a central role in renaming the Tamriel Section to Lore, and started some activities to clean up . No, I'm not here every day, but when my opinion is needed, I tend to appear. 

I am not the type of person that can do large number of similar edits. That just isn't my bag of tricks, and this has been compounded by the fact that I had a particularly tough semester last fall. I just didn't have the time for the site. Of course, I would argue that not being here every day is actually a good thing. I can provide an outside position.

Finally, I will reiterate my position expressed above that there is no reason to de-admin inactives. It doesn't protect the site, and can deprive the site of experienced problem solvers.--Ratwar 18:51, 4 January 2009 (EST)

Response to Ratwar and a policy discussion
Mhm, that's a good reason Rat. However, I have something to say about that. If this place had more admins, and actually had more successful RFA's, instead of shooting good editors down, we'd be able to start a policy for deactivating admins if they've been inactive for over...say...4 months or so?. However, on the flipside, we don't have as many good contributors with alot of edits (we do have quite a few with over 1500 edits, as seen in Active Users.), but an RFA hasn't come up yet for some of them. Another thing I have noticed is the inactivity of some of those users. 

Another problem is the edits needed to become an Admin/Patroller/Mentor. It's kinda hard nowadays, what with the Bloodmoon project being finished, and us already having almost everything Oblivion-wise. The only things left that could get an editor the needed edits is the Mobile games. The only thing I can find to do that I'm actually good at would be the cleanups.

With that being said, I think the policy should include vandalism reverts, as that is the one thing on the site that alot of people can actually do. When I put my name on the Mentor list, I included good reasons why I'd be a good mentor, as my knowledge on Oblivion and Morrowind is excellent. However, minutes later, I was shot down by Rpeh, with the reason stating "You only have around 90 good edits, once you remove the userpage edits, the talk page edits and the minor reverts". I found that rather stupid, as I have a good 680+ edits under my belt, and I was going to try for Patroller, except I've only been here around 7 months.

From where I'm sitting, if revert edits aren't allowed, I'm not going to have much of a future here on UESP, and I might as well just quit right now and not sit through several failed RFA's, patroller requests, and/or mentor applications. Some things need to change. We're losing alot of members, because of this problem, and also because of the tenacity and ego of some of our mods.

From : I found the environment here with some of the admin staff on UESP to be a bit....stifling

I have to agree with Hoggwild, even though he hasn't edited since mid-2007, and went and created his own Elder Scrolls Wiki. Sometimes, the staff can be abit stifling, and sometimes even remove some edits based on stupid things like "bad language" (since when is "hell" and "god damn" bad language?). Well, before I bore you to death, I'll end this by saying things need to change.              21:30, 4 January 2009 (EST)

:Truthfully, I don't think an edit # is necessary. I say that administrator and patroller privileges should be given to those who have the ability and the consensus support to do tasks. Administrator rights should be given to people who can appropriately delete pages, block users, create categories and templates, and have the support of the community. I agree with Daedryon that with the ordinary user (those who edit Morrowind and Oblivion) they would have the ability only to revert and maybe add tiny details. So, maybe we need to have a activity policy or even have trial-admins/patrollers to make sure that users are suitable for higher positions. Having more patrollers and admins than are necessary doesn't seem like too big of a deal.
:My reason why I haven't made an RFA (hopefully a Request for Adminship because if not I'm making myself look dumb) is that I don't think I need administrator privileges to make Daggerfall better. However, I do plan on learning some of the stuff that admins need to know sometime between now and when I finish with Daggerfall. Also, dealing with this comment,  "I found the environment here with some of the admin staff on UESP to be a bit....stifling" , I say "Indeed". I remember both Aristeo and Hoggwild leaving to create their own wiki because they felt the administrators were stifling then, but now.... I'd have to say it's gotten progressively worse. There are fewer and fewer administrators and users willing to talk on IRC, and many of the users who I've seen in the room a year ago and two years ago have disappeared. I remember conversations every night, but now, I'm lucky if one person shows up to chat. I have chatlogs to prove this if needed. --Tim   22:28, 4 January 2009 (EST)
::Yeah but see, alot of vandalism happens nowadays, mainly bot vandalism. And tentatively, I don't see any patrollers around usually. I also dont know what tentatively means. We need a good deal of patrollers with rollback nowadays, especially around midnight (-5:00 GMT Toronto, Ontario time) which is when I dont see any administrators online, and is also when most vandalism occurs. I myself am the perfect candidate as I'm unemployed currently, I'm usually always here, whenever I'm not randomly hanging with my friend, and I always revert vandalism. But this isn't about me, this is about the policies and how stupid they are with their requirements, and also the little admin problem.              23:02, 4 January 2009 (EST)

:::Before this just turns into a gripe-fest about events that occurred more than two years ago, would it be possible to first stop and figure out what exactly is being proposed as a change that needs to be made to the current wiki?  Is this about the number of edits necessary to be a mentor?  Or is it about the requirements to become an admin?  Because right now it just seems to me like a lot of completely different facts are being thrown into the blender, leaving me very confused about what exactly is being discussed.  So for now, let me just focus on what I do understand, which is the facts about what current policy does (and does not) say:
:::* The requirements for admins, patrollers, and mentors are different and are independent.
:::* Becoming an administrator does not have any fixed requirement in terms of number of edits.
:::** Only patrollers and mentors have fixed requirements in terms of numbers of edits.  The reasons behind those requirements have been discussed at length on the appropriate pages (, ).  The admin noticeboard is not the place to discuss revisions to those requirements.  Any continuation of previous discussions should be done in the same place where those previous discussions were held.
:::** There is nothing in the current requirements stating that reverts do not count towards either mentor or patroller edit counts.
:::** You do not need to be a mentor to become an admin.
:::* Sorry, but I really have a hard time being sympathetic to a claim that it's impossible to find constructive edits to make to the site.  Especially after I just spent a good part of the last three days doing nothing but followup on recent edits.  There's a Task List with multiple incomplete tasks.  There are categories filled with lists of pages that need to be edited for one reason or another.  Making a constructive edit does not mean creating new articles; it simply means improving an article.  And of the thousands of articles on the site, I'm willing to bet that I could see some type of constructive edit that needs to be made on nearly every one of those articles.  
:::* If the only reason that you're contributing to the site is because you want to become an admin, then you are contributing for the wrong reason.  In my opinion, you should be contributing to the site because you want to improve the wiki.  Improving the wiki does not require that you be an admin.
:::* Patrollers do not have rollback capabilities.  Rollback capabilities are not necessary to undo vandalism.  Every editor on the site has access to the "undo" button used by patrollers to undo vandalism and other inappropriate edits.  If you want to undo vandalism by bots, your help would be welcome.  But you don't need any special tools to be able to do so.
:::* This is a discussion about the wiki.  Participating in IRC is not a requirement to contribute to the wiki; participating in IRC is not a requirement in being made a mentor, patroller, or an admin.
:::So, in the spirit of trying to be constructive, could we perhaps identify what exactly is being proposed and how (or even whether) that proposal is a change to existing policy? --Nephele  00:11, 5 January 2009 (EST)
::::Ok so if Reverts do count, why the hell did Rpeh shoot me down instantaneously, with the reason I gave above.

''I've deleted you from the list of mentors for the moment. One of the criteria is "User must have made at least 200 constructive edits outside "User" and "Talk" namespaces." Once you take out your User, Talk and Image edits, plus those that are "Undo"s and small edits to correct your own mistakes (spelling, forgetting to sign and so on), you have fewer than 90 edits. You'll need to make many more substantial edits to game spaces before you can join the Mentor Program. –Rpeh•T•C•E• 05:55, 1 January 2009 (EST)''

::I know for a fact I've made over 200 vandalism related reverts, or less. Added on with my recent cleanup edits, I have over 200. Therefore, I'm reapplying for a mentor position as I am very wise when it comes to Oblivion. I've actually forgotten about what my main proposal was. Something to do with edit requirements for Patrollers and Mentors, not including reverts, as was told to me by Rpeh.              00:19, 5 January 2009 (EST)