Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 43

message: I'm confused at the emerging trend of using number of edits per day (or month etc.) as a way of judging the candidate. I notice this for Simetrical and especially EvanProdromou. What does it matter if the edits are good ones? These candidates have both been around for at least a year (3 years in the case of Evan) so I don't feel their commitment to the project can be questioned (Evan is a Developer!). These two candidates want to help the project, so why should we deny them that? Not everyone has the time to contribute for hours a day, but that should not reflect on them as users, nor should it deny them the opportunity to contribute in the way they choose. It's not as if we have a limited number of adminships to hand out or anything. Any reversion of vandalism or clearing of VFD backlog is valuable, however small.
The main thing that worries me about this arguement is that the quality of the candidate's edits is not under question, nor has anyone suggested they are likely to abuse admin tools. We seem to be losing sight of the real issue in RFA's: is this candiate likely to abuse admin tools, or will they put them to good use? Could someone please tell me how frequency of contribution is relevent to this question? Raven4x4x 04:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually it bothers me too.  There's nothing wrong with being a "part-time" vs. a "full-time" admin.  People have lives outside of this web site.  Antandrus  (talk) 04:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: It's also very hard to check 2000+ edits to find out if someone has done something really nasty.  Kim Bruning 04:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Editcountitis is something that I honestly dislike and do not take into account when voting.  Some feel that it is a measure of how well-seasoned an editor is, though; the more they edit the more they are likely to understand and follow official policy. --Vortex 04:32, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Well, I feel that admins should be exactly what the RFA page says: "trusted users who are familiar with Wikipedia policies", who will use the admin tools to make the encyclopedia better, and who are able to work well in discussions with other users. That's what matters in my mind. By the way Durin, I'm interested in those arguements as to why you feel edits per day does matter, just for interests sake. Also, is there anything in my arguement above that you disagree with? Again, I'm just interested.  Raven4x4x 04:54, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Edits per day might matter, I'm thinking, because policy (however you want to define policy) changes relatively quickly on Wikipedia, and a part-time admin might soon find themselves believing in and enforcing an outdated set of rules. Yes, they'll be pointed to the new rules, and it's not a big deal, but the desire to not need caretakers for the caretakers makes some sense. —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 05:00, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Indeed.  I just fail to agree with many that the yardstick must be the number of edits.  It'd be like finding a psychologist.  Do you pick someone for the job who has counselled hundreds of people?  Or someone who appears to be proficient at it?  If you're hiring for a legal firm, do you find someone who's got millions of cases under their belt or who has the skills necessary to win?  Both? Neither?  You see my point.  I rely on edit counts if and only if I can't determine that the user is goig to benefit Wiki by being an admin.  As for what adminship is today -- it depends.  I think that adminship is taking care of custodial duties but also being a more public face than a regular editor.  You decide. --Vortex 05:03, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: [Edit conflict] But adminship is primarily about extra editing tools.  Most admins do not choose an administrative role.  This isn't what adminship is about.  In addition, I don't think that policy does change all that quickly.  AfD might replace VfD, formatting might change, but there are clear instructions on the page.  Someone who was heavily involved in X (say, VFD) who left for a few months might have some initial shock of re-adjustment, but someone who is only a part-time editor doesn't assume that X is done this way because s/he didn't have such deeply ingrained habits.  In addition, of course, someone who reads is not likely to be someone who edits all that much - it takes a long time to work your way through WP:AN or to figure out what's going on in some dispute.  Try reading an Arbcomm case - your edit rate falls pretty quickly if you really want to figure out what's going on.  Guettarda 05:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I mostly agree; I was just trying to answer Raven4x4x's curiousity as best I could. I do wonder what you mean when you say "but adminship is primarily about extra editing tools", though. Except for the rollback button and perhaps the ability to edit permanently protected pages, every other admin ability — blocking, deleting, protection — is tied up in a vast web of policy. —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 05:19, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: [after edit conflict] That's a good point Guettarda raises.  I've spent three-hour evenings reading and not making a single edit, but those were the times I really learned policy.  Edit counts, strictly speaking, remain misleading.  For me there is a minimum involvement threshold where I perceive dedication to the project -- I'm not sure if I can quantify it, I just intuit it from the candidate's history and behavior.  Antandrus  (talk) 05:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I just wanted to point out that your position that there is a minimum involvement threshold and then edit counting doesn't matter is strongly consistent with the past probability of pass/fail RFA. --Gmaxwell 15:20, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text:  Christopher Parham has it pretty close to dead on when he says "unlikely to abuse admin tools" on an RFA. There's not much else to decide. Rx StrangeLove 05:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree with DS1953.  It's about the tools.  The hurdles do not make a better encyclopedia. Tedernst | talk 06:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Well said.  Tedernst | talk 22:50, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, posts per day expresses commitment and time spent on Wikipedia per day.  It does not indicate any kind of familiarity with Wikipedia policies, necessarily; it does not indicate responsibility.  But above all, as noted above, the cost of making someone an admin is negligible if they're any member in good standing.  Who cares how much they'll use their abilities?  Most will use their abilities at least occasionally, the rest are no harm.  If they meet the criteria I mentioned, 99% won't abuse their powers, and the remainder will cause no lasting damage and can be easily dealt with. —Simetrical (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're being serious about your conjecture, then there are quite a few people who fit that thesis of yours, Simetrical. If only it were so simple...Unfortuntely, that's not concensus,a policy, or an requiste for adminship, and I quote again, "that's the way it is....", you know the rest. :) -MegamanZero 22:49, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Nobody is denying that some people do vote based largely on edit rate.  What people are discussing is whether they should.  And no, my counterproposal is not consensus or policy, but neither is judging based on edit rate.  If this discussion is any indication (which it may not be), it seems consensus is substantially against judging based largely on edit rate.  "That" is not "the way it is". —Simetrical (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

text: While I don't disagree with the point, there are a good few existing admins who don't know up-to-date procedures, and who are probably implementing policy as it was rather than as it is. I'm not sure what conclusion, if any, one should draw from that! The Land 14:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I disagree with this point. There is no reason to believe that someone's edit rate is strongly related to their *reading* of policy discussion. I do agree that people engaged in some admin activities need to say current with our policies and practices, but edit rate isn't a good metric there.  Why don't we ask people what admin process related subjects they stay current on and how they keep up with the flood of changes rather than try to guess at their behavior by looking at electronic chicken bones? We also must keep in mind that little of what we do can not be reverted, so if someone does fall behind it is easy enough to correct their mistake and clue them in... We'll have to do that in any case, because people are simple not going to read every single change. --Gmaxwell 15:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Most admins stick to one or two areas so they don't need to know every bit of policy. On top of that not all policy is about admin actions.Geni 11:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: *Even if fully 1% of users trusted according to my lax criteria stated above went amok, they'd still be outnumbered 99:1 by responsible admins.  Sure, undoing their actions would take a bit of time under the current software, but not too much more time than it would take if they went amok in a non-admin fashion (such as by moving pages instead of deleting them).  They would just be slightly more harmful, if the admin were truly malicious (range-blocking the Internet, anyone?).  But either way, I'm not aware of a single admin out of several hundred who have done any such thing so far, and if we went my way and doubled or tripled the admin numbers overnight, I doubt we'd see that rate increase much. —Simetrical (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There has been one case on en where a missunderstanding resulted in an adminin appearing rogue. There have been two cases on other projects. In all cases the admins was delt with in pretty short order.Geni 09:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

text: That's not precisely feedback. An admin can intimidate, bully, or bite subtly without crossing the line into Rfc territory - remember 2 users have to have tried to work the same problem out with the Admin prior to Rfc - and what newbies or even middlebies (yes horrid neologism, late for work humor my bad phrasing) know about it? Feedback implies good as well as bad, positive as well as negative experiences, and does not have to fit such narrow criteria. Once and admin hits Rfc (legitimately) he's often annoyed quite a few people. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 12:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: However it is quite hard for an admin to behave seriously badly without clashing with other admins.Geni 13:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not quite true. If you take a look at the Deletion log, you'll find dozens of articles being speedy deleted each day for reasons which go well beyond WP:CSD. CSD:G1, for example, is applied very liberally by some admins, and when the article is recreated it is promptly removed (incorrectly!) based on CSD:G4, often by the same misguided admin. Actions like that do not result in clashes with other admins, but I know at least one case where it resulted in a loss of a well-intentioned editor; I have no doubt there were many others. This is one of the reasons why I believe bureaucrats on en-wiki should have the power to de-sysop. With over 600 admins, many of which are new, we need a sizeable group of experienced users to watch over their actions, looking for systematic mistakes or abuse of power. I don't see de-sysoping becoming an everyday event, but the presence of more bureaucrats inspecting admin actions, and having the power to desysop, will surely raise admin standards. Owen× ☎ 03:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

text: It is also the case, I have recently found, that 24-hour blocks commented as "vandalism" are unlikely to receive much scrutiny, if any. If an admin were to ignore blocking policy, defining "vandalism" in a broad manner and blocking new accounts without any warning or discussion, the community does not neccessarily pick up on this quickly. —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 04:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits per day: why does it matter? 

message: In my opinion, one of the reasons activity level is important for an admin to be successful is, as others have noted, ongoing familiarity with policy. A part time admin who applies policy could cause considerable problems among users who feel they are following policy, only to find they are violating policy as the part time admin sees it. Policy changes, and rapidly. Anybody...anybody...can change policy. Personally, I think this is a shortcoming of Wikipedia. Policy pages should be protected. Let's have a look at how often policies were edited over the last month: 
*Wikipedia:Account deletion: 0 edits
*Wikipedia:Arbitration policy: 3 edits
*Wikipedia:Assume good faith: 2 edits
*Wikipedia:Banning policy: 5 edits
*Wikipedia:Blocking policy: 34 edits
*Wikipedia:Civility: 5 edits
*Wikipedia:Copyrights: 8 edits
*Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion: 141 edits 
*Wikipedia:Deletion policy: 51 edits
*Wikipedia:Edit war: 11 edits
*Wikipedia:Image use policy: 4 edits
*Wikipedia:Naming conventions: 31 edits
*Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories): 23 edits
*Wikipedia:No binding decisions: 1 edit
*Wikipedia:No legal threats: 3 edits
*Wikipedia:No original research: 11 edits
*Wikipedia:No personal attacks: 10 edits
*Wikimedia:Privacy policy: 3 edits
*Wikipedia:Profanity: 4 edits
*Wikipedia:Protection policy: 9 edits
*Wikipedia:Resolving disputes: 2 edits
*Wikipedia:Sock puppet: 22 edits
*Wikipedia:Three-revert rule: 4 edits
*Wikipedia:Undeletion policy: 7 edits
*Wikipedia:Verifiability: 40 edits
*Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not: 37 edits
*Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary: 0 edits
Of the 27 policies shown above, more than half averaged at least one edit per week. Even if we assume half of all edits on policy were vandalism and reverts, we'd still have more than one third of policy changing on average on a weekly basis. Note that this is just policy as taken from :Category:Wikipedia official policy. This does not show :Category:Wikipedia guidelines. There is a great deal of material that an admin not only needs to be familiar with, but needs to maintain a familiarity with. As many have, it can most certainly be argued that a conscientious and trustworthy admin will not attempt to enforce policy until they read and understand current policy. However, it can also be argued that due to the frequently changing nature of policy and guidelines, an inactive admin is hamstrung and nearly incapable of applying policy in a conscientious manner because of the frequently changing environment. An inactive admin is thus either going to make mistakes in the application of policy or self-prevented from using admin tools..so why have them? This is just one aspect of why an inactive admin candidate is of concern to some people. There are others. --Durin 14:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: While I don't disagree with the point, there are a good few existing admins who don't know up-to-date procedures, and who are probably implementing policy as it was rather than as it is. I'm not sure what conclusion, if any, one should draw from that! The Land 14:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I disagree with this point. There is no reason to believe that someone's edit rate is strongly related to their *reading* of policy discussion. I do agree that people engaged in some admin activities need to say current with our policies and practices, but edit rate isn't a good metric there.  Why don't we ask people what admin process related subjects they stay current on and how they keep up with the flood of changes rather than try to guess at their behavior by looking at electronic chicken bones? We also must keep in mind that little of what we do can not be reverted, so if someone does fall behind it is easy enough to correct their mistake and clue them in... We'll have to do that in any case, because people are simple not going to read every single change. --Gmaxwell 15:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Most admins stick to one or two areas so they don't need to know every bit of policy. On top of that not all policy is about admin actions.Geni 11:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Familiarity with policy

message: * In most of these discussions, I feel uncomfortable when people harp on the point that "all admin actions can be undone and so, it is no big deal." However, the last thing that we want to do is spend time on undoing admin actions as we have several urgent and important things to be done. I guess that is the reason why some voters vote "better-safe-than-sorry" the idea being that it is a cost avoidable. --Gurubrahma 05:26, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *Even if fully 1% of users trusted according to my lax criteria stated above went amok, they'd still be outnumbered 99:1 by responsible admins.  Sure, undoing their actions would take a bit of time under the current software, but not too much more time than it would take if they went amok in a non-admin fashion (such as by moving pages instead of deleting them).  They would just be slightly more harmful, if the admin were truly malicious (range-blocking the Internet, anyone?).  But either way, I'm not aware of a single admin out of several hundred who have done any such thing so far, and if we went my way and doubled or tripled the admin numbers overnight, I doubt we'd see that rate increase much. —Simetrical (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There has been one case on en where a missunderstanding resulted in an adminin appearing rogue. There have been two cases on other projects. In all cases the admins was delt with in pretty short order.Geni 09:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

text: That's not precisely feedback. An admin can intimidate, bully, or bite subtly without crossing the line into Rfc territory - remember 2 users have to have tried to work the same problem out with the Admin prior to Rfc - and what newbies or even middlebies (yes horrid neologism, late for work humor my bad phrasing) know about it? Feedback implies good as well as bad, positive as well as negative experiences, and does not have to fit such narrow criteria. Once and admin hits Rfc (legitimately) he's often annoyed quite a few people. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 12:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: However it is quite hard for an admin to behave seriously badly without clashing with other admins.Geni 13:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not quite true. If you take a look at the Deletion log, you'll find dozens of articles being speedy deleted each day for reasons which go well beyond WP:CSD. CSD:G1, for example, is applied very liberally by some admins, and when the article is recreated it is promptly removed (incorrectly!) based on CSD:G4, often by the same misguided admin. Actions like that do not result in clashes with other admins, but I know at least one case where it resulted in a loss of a well-intentioned editor; I have no doubt there were many others. This is one of the reasons why I believe bureaucrats on en-wiki should have the power to de-sysop. With over 600 admins, many of which are new, we need a sizeable group of experienced users to watch over their actions, looking for systematic mistakes or abuse of power. I don't see de-sysoping becoming an everyday event, but the presence of more bureaucrats inspecting admin actions, and having the power to desysop, will surely raise admin standards. Owen× ☎ 03:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

text: It is also the case, I have recently found, that 24-hour blocks commented as "vandalism" are unlikely to receive much scrutiny, if any. If an admin were to ignore blocking policy, defining "vandalism" in a broad manner and blocking new accounts without any warning or discussion, the community does not neccessarily pick up on this quickly. —Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 04:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Admin actions can be undone, so?

message: Just to make sure: If I nominate myself for the second time, do I enter this into the self-nom box: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Deltabeignet 2 or this: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Deltabeignet_2 or something else entirely? Deltabeignet 03:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repeat noms 

message: I find myself missing out on RFAs that I would care to comment on because the page is just so large that I don't bother to look through it.  Because of this, I decided to create a bot to generate RFA summaries.  So, once an hour a page in my userspace will be updated with information on open noms.  Stop by if you also find the need for an RFA summary.  Dragons flight 10:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope the bot has been approved at Wikipedia:Bots. --Gurubrahma 12:32, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It hasn't got a flag (Special:Listusers/bot) but the bot flag is for bots that are making edits every few seconds, not every hour.  It is intended to stop RC getting clogged up.  No risk of that.  Sam Korn 12:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFA Summary 

message: In case people are interested, we've currently got 743 admins; it's a bit unclear how some votes will go, but one of User:Eliezer, User:Croat Canuck or User:W.marsh will almost certainly be our 750th admin in a couple of days. (This doesn't count those who were admined and have since been de-admined, mind you).
This is a pretty impressive rate - #500, User:FCYTravis, was only made an admin on July 1 this year! Shimgray | talk | 00:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That depends on perspective.  Since the size of the editing community is doubling every ~8 months, one could argue that we are still lagging behind.  Dragons flight 00:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, if anyone is interested, it would be quite possible to model these things... --HappyCamper 00:23, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: According to Wikistats , the total number of users increased 21% (35,946 to 43,531) from July to October (the latest month for which stats are available). The number of users making over 5 edits (in a month) increased 15% (12,713 to 14,434). The number of users making over 100 edits in a month was virtually unchanged (1,821 to 1,854). Carbonite | Talk 00:30, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: So what can we do to increase admin turnout? bd2412 T 03:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Free beer? android79 04:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I mean the frequency of new admins being made, not the existing admins showing up to a party! ;-) bd2412 T 04:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Free beer solves lots of problems. Then it creates more. android79 04:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Free beer has been the cause of 99.3% of my cited incivility.  What I need is a few friends to share it with, to keep me from editing while intoxicated.  (Unfortunately, I can type better smashed than most people can when they're stone-cold sober...)  (For the record, I'm on beer #9 right now...)  Tomertalk 09:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Nominate more people? Actively look through the lists of users with lots of edits to see who should've been nominated months ago?  ナイトスタリオン ✉ 10:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the best way to remedy backlog is to make administrators out of the people causing the backlog on pages. I tip my hat to whoever it was that nominated User:Nv8200p for admin. He's very active on image maintenance, and he would cause so much activity on WP:IFD that it would be backlogged for weeks. Now he still does a lot of work on images, but now he's around to process the listings himself too. I think he's single-handedly maintaining IFD and WP:PUI now. Coffee 15:03, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another milestone 

message: but...seriously...  What's the obsession with crossing out anon votes on RfAs?  Everyone knows they don't count.  Why antagonize anons (review WP:BITE)?  I would like to recommend that people not strike anon votes by non-"proven vandals", as doing so not only BITEs newcomers, it casts unnecessary aspersions on anon editors' contributions to the process.  Yes, we all know anon votes are viewed with extreme skepticism in WP domainspace, but I don't see that anything constructive is gained by slapping anons in the face by striking their votes.  Let's just please trust the bcrats to do the job for which they've been selected.  They can see an anon vote as such for what it is.  That said, I have no problem with people pointing out that "this is X.X.X.X anon's 23rd edit" or "this unsigned vote/comment was made by X.X.X.X", but both of those are immeasurably less hostile than simply striking out comments or votes.  WP:CIV applies in WP domainspace equally as it does in article and article_talk space, and this increasing trend toward slashing votes seems to be a violation thereof.  Cheers?  Catcalls?  Tomertalk 13:23, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  OK, now I'm on beer number umpteenth... 

message: If You ask a lot of users, 4 out of 5 would like a promotion, even by relatively new users.  It's a highly coveted commodity.  Knowing what criteria the folks in charge might help those who attempt this in the future.  Like, exactly how many Support votes (minus Oppose votes) do You need to get that promo? -- Eddie 06:15, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: 75–80% constitutes consensus. That's right there on the main RfA page: "the threshold for consensus here is roughly 75-80 percent support". Problem is, bureaucrats don't just count votes: Wikipedia is WP:NOT a democracy. There can always be mitigating circumstances that allow a 72% support to pass, or a 82% to fail (rarely). —BorgHunter (talk) 06:57, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

text: If I remember correctly, you were unwilling to publicly disclose what IP you made your contributions under during your RFA, making it impossible for the community to evaluate those contributions. —Cleared as filed. 07:35, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's the criteria