subject:"Re\: \[WikiEN\-l\] declining numbers of EN wiki admins \- The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers"

Again, this gets long. If allergic to Abd Thought, or to lengthy 
comments, please don't read. Nobody is required to read this, it's 
voluntary, and you won't hear a complaint from me if you don't read it.

Actually, the mail triggered moderation, the list is set to 20 KB 
max, which is low in my experience, and it was rejected as too long. 
Therefore, instead of only needing to skip one mail, you'll need to 
skip two. This is part one.

At 03:14 PM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
  At 01:35 PM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
 
  Actually, most people who don't apply as an admin just don't apply.
 
  With ten million registered editors and a handful of RfAs, that's
  obvious.
 
   They
  don't generate evidence one way or another. It is a perfectly sensible
  attitude for a well-adjusted Wikipedian getting on with article work not
  to want to be involved in admin work.
 
  Sure. However, there is a minority who are *not* well-adjusted who
  would seek adminship for personal power.

Yes, and the first required quality for being given such power is not to
want it. Etc. But you were the one talking about getting painted into a
corner.

Sure. You were the one implies some argument being applied to one 
side and not the other. What was that?

Barging ahead anwyay, I'd say that anyone sane would not want to be a 
Wikipedia editor unless (1) they have some axe to grind, or (2) they 
are neutral and simply want to help an obviously desirable cause. 
However, when people become highly involved, they naturally develop 
attachments, which is how it comes to be that even a quite neutral 
editor can become an abusive administrator, and this will be quite 
invisbile, for many, when they don't have the tools. The more boring 
grunt work you do, the more natural it is to think you own the 
project. After all, if not for you

I remember reviewing the contributions of an administrator, known to 
all of us here, because of some suspicion that an sock puppeteer was 
really, from the beginning, a bad-hand account of someone, and this 
admin was a possible suspect. What I saw, reviewing edit timing, was 
thousands upon thousands of edits, for hours upon hours, a few edits 
a minute, doing repetitive tasks. The admin was running a tool that 
assisted him by feeding him proposed edits, so what he was doing, for 
many hours, was a few button pushes a minute to accept the edits. I 
was both in awe (at the dedicated work) and in wonder at how this 
could be done without losing one's sanity

In fact, it might have been better if that work had been replaced by 
fully automated bot work, with processes and procedures for reviewing 
it and fixing problems. If he could do that for hours on end without 
error, probably a bot could as well, with only a little error, 
perhaps. But, of course, for quite good reasons, most fully automated 
bot editing has been prohibited. That's changing, to be sure, there 
is now, for example, a spambot that reverts IP additions of spam web 
sites, an intermediate position to blacklisting that allows possibly 
useful but often abused sites to be used by registered editors, and 
edits by the IPs become suggested edits easy to review if anyone is 
willing. And the IP could actually ask any registered user to do it, 
or register and get autoconfirmed

Overall, editorial efficiency has been seriously neglected, because 
editorial labor was not valued. Admin labor has been valued somewhat, 
and some of the disparity between the real rights of administrators 
and those of ordinary editors comes out of assumptions about this.

So, Charles agrees that wanting power is a disqualification, and I 
agree. (You might look at RfA/Abd 2, where I addressed this, I didn't 
want to be an admin, I was merely responding to a suggestion that I 
help clean up the place, and I was quite clear that anything that I 
wanted to do, personally, wouldn't be helped by being an admin, I'd 
just be tempted to use the tools while involved. I'm pretty sure that 
I'd not have aroused serious controversy over the use of admin tools, 
but, of course, those who later were offended by me as an editor seem 
to have assumed that I'd simply have blocked anyone who disagreed 
with me. That would have been really silly!)

But if it's a disqualification at the beginning, then, we must see, 
it should remain a disqualification. If an administrator is 
personally attached to being an administrator, it's a problem. Which 
then exposes the contradiction of the picture being presented: 
supposedly people would not apply to be administrators, or perhaps 
would quit, if they saw that allegedly abusive administrators would 
lose their tools. The fact is that when controversy arises over tool 
use, the best administrators back up and back off, and hardly ever 
get taken to ArbComm, because they don't allow themselves to be the 
focus of the controversy. Rather, say, they blocked an editor, and 
the editor is

Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers


(continuation from Part 1, preceding.)

I never sought the desysopping of JzG, as an example, and didn't 
argue for it for WMC. I argued for *suspension* until the admin 
assured ArbComm that he would not repeat the use of tools while 
involved. JzG's actions had been egregious, and still ArbComm was 
unwilling to ask for assurances. Behind this, I'm sure, was an 
impression that JzG would have considered it an insult. But it should 
be routine. Indeed, ArbComm bans editors all the time when it could 
simply ask for *voluntary assurances.* And even more are community 
banned under a similar failure. Voluntary compliance, negotiated with 
respect, is far less likely to build up sustained resentments, than 
bullying and blocking.

These are all really obvious principles, but it's been amazing to see 
what oppositino they aroused when they were brought up before 
ArbComm. ArbComm remained silent on them, and on what was said in 
response. ArbComm mostly functions as a passive body, but then it 
does something different and becomes very active. It depends on whose 
ox is being gored.

  The problem, as I have defined it, is of negative voting. The
sheer suspicion of those who apparently want the mop-and-bucket. (And
anyway, I obviously was using well-adjusted in the sense of round peg
in a round hole, not as a comment on anything else.)

If it's easy to revoke, it would obviously be easier to grant. 
Indeed, the supermajority standard is a problem. You propose that an 
administrator might avoid being shot at if the admin avoids 
controversial areas. So, to become an admin, avoid controversial 
areas! But, then, we don't know how the admin will behave when 
involved in controversy.

The same arguments that are applied to, say, required reconfirmation 
of administrators, should apply to granting adminship in the first 
place. If an editor has tacked difficulties, the issue should be how 
the editor did it, not how many people were offended. If the editor 
needlessly inflamed the topic, that's a problem, for sure, and could 
betray that there could be problems as an administrator. But if the 
editor calmed the conflict, with only a few die-hards then resenting 
the intervention or involvement, it should be a positive mark. There 
is no substitute for actually examining the record, if the record matters.

In fact, it shouldn't matter much, and here is why: adminship should 
routinely be granted based on an agreed-upon mentorship, with an 
active administrator. I'd suggest, in fact, that any admin who 
approves of the adminship would be allowed to do what a mentor could 
do, but an agreed-upon mentor would be taking on the responsibility. 
So if anyone has a complaint about the admin's actions, they have 
someone to go to for review, without going to a noticeboard and some 
possible flame war there. They can even do it privately, by email. 
That's how WP DR structure is supposed to work, it's supposed to 
start small. I've been amazed to see how few understand this!

Given administrative supervision, with any supervising admin being 
able to go directly to a bureaucrat or steward and request removal of 
the tools, if necessary, there is no reason to disapprove of almost 
anyone, and a discussion would only take place to the extent that it 
would be an opportunity to express objections. The closing bureaucrat 
might, indeed, review those, but numbers would not matter. What would 
matter would be (1) no sign of *likely* abuse, and (2) the presence 
of effective supervision.

At Wikiversity, this is apparently done, though I don't know all the 
details. There is then, after a time on probation, a full adminship 
discussion. (There is no difference in the tool settings between the 
two, an admin on probation has full tools, the only difference is a 
responsible mentor.) But with a more detailed structure, there might 
not be the need for full adminship. I'd say that every 
administrator should have a recall committee, a set of editors who 
are both trusted by the admin and by the community to correct the 
admin if he or she veers off-course. Only when this process fails, 
perhaps because of too-close alignment of the admin and the recall 
committee, would it be necessary to escalate to broader discussions. 
Ultimately, we should go back and set this up for existing 
administrators. This should, in reality, only be a problem for 
administrators who believe that they should have no supervision at 
all. That's a problem in itself. And I'm leaving the details of how 
such a committee would be formed, and how admins who have become part 
of it are replaced as they vanish, as many do, to a later discussion 
and, of course, ultimately, to the community if it ever starts to go 
here. I'm just proposing ideas to show that there might be some 
possible solution, and with no pretense that my ideas are the last 
word. I really do believe in the power of informed consensus, and the 
only kind of consensus that I have a problem

Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-06-01 Thread Risker

Procedural note to moderators:  Perhaps it is time to consider a length
limit on posting?

Risker
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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-06-01 Thread AGK

On 1 June 2010 14:30, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote:
 Therefore, instead of only needing to skip one mail, you'll need to
 skip two. This is part one.

Abd, have you ever considered opening a blog? :)

You could write the lengthy version of your comments on various topics
in a post there, and post a summary comment here on WikiEN-l (with a
link to the concurrent blog post)? Just a thought.

AGK

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-06-01 Thread Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Risker wrote:
 Procedural note to moderators:  Perhaps it is time to consider a length
 limit on posting?
   
While I understand where you are coming from, it bears noting
that some people would like a limit of length both on the short
and the long side, and you would in the eyes of some, fail on the
short side of the limit -- as I do often too, not being too particular
either way. Not passing judgement long or short, but just
noting that both are annoying, even I admit to have rarely done
both...

...And I suspect I will do both again. Do note that the current
person in charge of the staff serving the foundation, very specifically
commended a very long post by Gregory Maxwell that in her view
nicely summarised the situation on commons -- albeit that post was
at the foundation-l.

I don't actually agree with Sue on that particular summary being
all that insightful. (Sorry Greg!) But a lengthy summary did in
fact please Sue in that particular instance. So making the moderators
bar posts like the one by Greg, I think serves no one.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-06-01 Thread David Gerard

On 1 June 2010 15:45, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote:

 I don't actually agree with Sue on that particular summary being
 all that insightful. (Sorry Greg!) But a lengthy summary did in
 fact please Sue in that particular instance. So making the moderators
 bar posts like the one by Greg, I think serves no one.


The 20KB limit on wikien-l used to be a 10KB limit. Deliberately
working around it is antisocial at the least; I would ask that
contributors not do this, and instead take the time to rewrite more
concisely when they get a bounce due to length. The writing will also
undoubtedly improve.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-06-01 Thread Carcharoth

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 2:57 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
 Procedural note to moderators:  Perhaps it is time to consider a length
 limit on posting?

I'm not a moderator, but I've just been skipping those long posts.
They are annoying, but I may one day read those posts if I have
nothing better to do, and sometimes there is something interesting in
there.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-06-01 Thread AGK

On 1 June 2010 16:17, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote:
 I'm not a moderator, but I've just been skipping those long posts.
 They are annoying, but I may one day read those posts if I have
 nothing better to do, and sometimes there is something interesting in
 there.

Now you know how we feel with your posts, Carch :).

(I'm kidding, ofc. Your input is most valuable in part because it's so
detailed.)

AGK

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 09:38 AM 6/1/2010, AGK wrote:
Derailing meta-discussion with criticism of specific users stinks of
axe-grinding.

I criticized an argument with an expression of concern about how an 
administrator might apply that argument. That remains within 
metadiscussion. I specicifically disclaimed any criticism of actual 
behavior. I have no axe to grind with AGK. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 09:57 AM 6/1/2010, Risker wrote:
Procedural note to moderators:  Perhaps it is time to consider a length
limit on posting?

There is a 20K limit. That's lower than usual, my experience. I think 
it's silly, since it is easier to ignore one 30K post than to ignore 
two 15 K posts. But, hey, I have well over twenty years experience 
with this, and there will always be people who want others to 
self-censor so they don't have to bother. Nobody is obligated to read 
any post (except *maybe* a moderator, and that can be reserved for complaints.) 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 10:01 AM 6/1/2010, you wrote:
On 1 June 2010 14:30, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote:
  Therefore, instead of only needing to skip one mail, you'll need to
  skip two. This is part one.

Abd, have you ever considered opening a blog? :)

You could write the lengthy version of your comments on various topics
in a post there, and post a summary comment here on WikiEN-l (with a
link to the concurrent blog post)? Just a thought.

Sure. Now, tell me why I should go to this trouble? Absolutely, if my 
goal were polemic, it would be an effective way to proceed. That's not my goal. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 11:17 AM 6/1/2010, Carcharoth wrote:
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 2:57 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
  Procedural note to moderators:  Perhaps it is time to consider a length
  limit on posting?

I'm not a moderator, but I've just been skipping those long posts.
They are annoying, but I may one day read those posts if I have
nothing better to do, and sometimes there is something interesting in
there.

That's what I do with long posts that don't grab me. Some people like 
long posts, some don't. Some of those who don't want to prevent those 
who like them from receiving them. It is a very old story.

I skip *lots* of posts. But I have no opinion that there is 
necessarily something wrong with them. Obviously. If the writer 
wanted to reach me, then the effort failed. But the post wasn't sent 
personally to me, if it were, I'd be much more inclined to read it.

Now, what I do which could be a problem is to respond to an 
individual, thus luring the individual into reading it, but I'm 
actually exploring a much larger topic. Perhaps if I'm going to write 
something that might be taken as an attack, I should make it brief 
and separate it from the larger commentary -- or not send it at all.


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-06-01 Thread Carcharoth

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com 
wrote:
 At 11:17 AM 6/1/2010, Carcharoth wrote:
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 2:57 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:
  Procedural note to moderators:  Perhaps it is time to consider a length
  limit on posting?

I'm not a moderator, but I've just been skipping those long posts.
They are annoying, but I may one day read those posts if I have
nothing better to do, and sometimes there is something interesting in
there.

 That's what I do with long posts that don't grab me. Some people like
 long posts, some don't. Some of those who don't want to prevent those
 who like them from receiving them. It is a very old story.

Actually, what we have here now is thread drift. We are way off topic,
so anything discussing mailing list etiquette (or even discussing Abd
if anyone wants to do that) should be started in a new thread, and
this thread should go back to discussing, er, let's see:

declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it
easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their
active numbers

But maybe with a shorter title?

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-06-01 Thread Carcharoth

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:47 PM, AGK wiki...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 1 June 2010 16:17, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote:
 I'm not a moderator, but I've just been skipping those long posts.
 They are annoying, but I may one day read those posts if I have
 nothing better to do, and sometimes there is something interesting in
 there.

 Now you know how we feel with your posts, Carch :).

 (I'm kidding, ofc. Your input is most valuable in part because it's so
 detailed.)

I wish I could say I didn't have your comment in the back of my mind
when I posted on-wiki a few minutes ago, but I did and the comments
were slightly longer than usual... :-P

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
 The Wikipedia community 
 painted itself into a corner, and it's entirely unclear to me if it 
 can find the exits, the paths to fix it.
As this discussion illustrates rather well, the argument if you want to 
fix A, you'd have to start by fixing B (my pet gripe) first is 
routinely deployed, making for an infinite regress in some cases, and in 
others the generation of suggestions that are rather clearly 
counterproductive for fixing A, whatever they may do for B. In the real 
world, if you want people to do thankless and time-consuming tasks for 
you for no money, and much criticism, you have to rely on something more 
than be sure that you'll be told if we don't like you and what you do.

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-05-31 Thread Marc Riddell


 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
 The Wikipedia community
 painted itself into a corner, and it's entirely unclear to me if it
 can find the exits, the paths to fix it.

on 5/31/10 2:43 AM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com
wrote:

 As this discussion illustrates rather well, the argument if you want to
 fix A, you'd have to start by fixing B (my pet gripe) first is
 routinely deployed, making for an infinite regress in some cases, and in
 others the generation of suggestions that are rather clearly
 counterproductive for fixing A, whatever they may do for B. In the real
 world, if you want people to do thankless and time-consuming tasks for
 you for no money, and much criticism, you have to rely on something more
 than be sure that you'll be told if we don't like you and what you do.

Yes. And thank you, Charles. Once again this points out the fact that, with
the Foundation, we are dealing with a group of persons who don't have a clue
how to deal with people who they see as being out of their universe-of-one.
In fact, they appear to regard the Wikipedia Community as a necessary evil.

Marc Riddell


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-05-31 Thread AGK





On 31 May 2010, at 00:39, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com  
wrote:
 (1) most legitimate admin work is not controversial to any degree
 that would affect an admin's status in the active community, which is
 what counts. Blocking an IP vandal isn't going to harm that, and it
 will only help it. If the IP vandal then registers an account and
 goes after the admin, sure. But, then, as to proposals that those who
 supported an RfA might retract that, or cause adminiship to be
 suspended pending examination, are concerned, this would be useless.
 Legitimate administration is indeed like janitorial work. Can we
 imagine a good janitor getting into an argument with other employees
 of a school or office as to what should be thrown away? Adminship was
 supposed to be no big deal. When an administrator is asserting
 personal power over an editor, something has gone awry. Police have
 no power to punish, they may arrest on probable cause, but they then
 step aside and let the community make decisions on sanctions or
 release. A police officer who has become personally involved and
 insists on pursuing an individual might well be removed or ordered to
 work in other areas.

Thomas may be referring to any administrator work that is at all not  
purely technical in nature. This work usually involves policing the  
conduct of established accounts (and often long-term editors) in  
contentious subject areas, and will almost always cause the  
administrator to gain enemies.

AGK 

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

On 31 May 2010 13:42, Marc Riddell michaeldavi...@comcast.net wrote:

 Yes. And thank you, Charles. Once again this points out the fact that, with
 the Foundation, we are dealing with a group of persons who don't have a clue
 how to deal with people who they see as being out of their universe-of-one.
 In fact, they appear to regard the Wikipedia Community as a necessary evil.


I urge you to go back and actually read the discussion, and you will
see that you are the only person to mention the Foundation and we're
actually talking about the Wikipedia community here. Then you will be
less likely to post responses that look like keyword-triggered
cut'n'paste.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

David Gerard wrote:
 On 31 May 2010 13:42, Marc Riddell michaeldavi...@comcast.net wrote:

   
 Yes. And thank you, Charles. Once again this points out the fact that, with
 the Foundation, we are dealing with a group of persons who don't have a clue
 how to deal with people who they see as being out of their universe-of-one.
 In fact, they appear to regard the Wikipedia Community as a necessary evil.
 


 I urge you to go back and actually read the discussion, and you will
 see that you are the only person to mention the Foundation and we're
 actually talking about the Wikipedia community here. Then you will be
 less likely to post responses that look like keyword-triggered
 cut'n'paste.

   
Actually, the Wikipedia community is in a sense a necessary evil. 
Without it, WP would be just another underpowered, well-meaning website. 
With it, people who are not natural collaborators work together 
effectively, if not without friction.

But the reply I made was contra being painted into a corner (singular 
issue), and in favour of an analysis of the actual problem. I see 
[[Blind men and an elephant]] is an article. I won't go further in 
Marc's direction than saying that our discussions can seem sometimes 
like a post-mortem to that parable, with everyone saying, you know, I 
still think I was right along. But the remedies - for a bigger picture 
- have the disadvantages of requiring a great deal of investment of 
time. I believe I have tried a number of those, without yet getting a 
complete view of the elephant.

Charles





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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 02:43 AM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
  The Wikipedia community
  painted itself into a corner, and it's entirely unclear to me if it
  can find the exits, the paths to fix it.
As this discussion illustrates rather well, the argument if you want to
fix A, you'd have to start by fixing B (my pet gripe) first is
routinely deployed, making for an infinite regress in some cases, and in
others the generation of suggestions that are rather clearly
counterproductive for fixing A, whatever they may do for B. In the real
world, if you want people to do thankless and time-consuming tasks for
you for no money, and much criticism, you have to rely on something more
than be sure that you'll be told if we don't like you and what you do.

Eh? Is this coherent?

Who is the you who wants people to do thankless tasks?

What is the pet gripe in the discussion?

What is being discussed is declining numbers of EN wiki admins, and 
how to address it. In that, surely it is appropriate and even 
necessary to examine the entire administrative structure, both how 
admin privileges are created and how they are removed.

So A here would be declining numbers. B, then, must be the 
difficulty of removal, which leads to stronger standards for 
accepting admins in the first place, which leads to declining 
applications and denial of some applications that might have been just fine.

There is no evidence that there are declining applications because of 
fear of being criticized as an adminstrator, and the numbers of admin 
removals are trivial, so Charles is expressing a fear that is 
imaginary. If it were easier to gain tools and still difficult to 
lose them unless you disregard guidelines and consensus, there would 
be no loss of applications, there would be a gain. A large gain.

What I'm seeing here, indeed, is an illustration of the problem. The 
attitude that Charles expresses is clearly part of the problem, and 
Charles is suggesting no solutions but perhaps one of ridiculing and 
rejecting all the suggestions for change. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 10:34 AM 5/31/2010, AGK wrote:
On 31 May 2010, at 00:39, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com
wrote:
  (1) most legitimate admin work is not controversial to any degree
  that would affect an admin's status in the active community, which is
  what counts. Blocking an IP vandal isn't going to harm that, and it
  will only help it. If the IP vandal then registers an account and
  goes after the admin, sure. But, then, as to proposals that those who
  supported an RfA might retract that, or cause adminiship to be
  suspended pending examination, are concerned, this would be useless.
  Legitimate administration is indeed like janitorial work. Can we
  imagine a good janitor getting into an argument with other employees
  of a school or office as to what should be thrown away? Adminship was
  supposed to be no big deal. When an administrator is asserting
  personal power over an editor, something has gone awry. Police have
  no power to punish, they may arrest on probable cause, but they then
  step aside and let the community make decisions on sanctions or
  release. A police officer who has become personally involved and
  insists on pursuing an individual might well be removed or ordered to
  work in other areas.

Thomas may be referring to any administrator work that is at all not
purely technical in nature. This work usually involves policing the
conduct of established accounts (and often long-term editors) in
contentious subject areas, and will almost always cause the
administrator to gain enemies.

Sure. However, administrators are, indeed, police and not judges. 
But, too often, they become judges and make conclusions about 
sanctions. An adminstrative sanction is, by design, temporary and 
reversible, and policing a particular user should never become a 
crusade for an administrator; if it does, and if it's allowed, then 
adminship has become the big deal, giving the admin power over the user.

A police officer may arrest me, but cannot keep me in jail (the 
equivalent of an indef block with opposed unblock). Administrators 
who do the police work well will, in fact, not generally gain 
enemies, that will be the exception rather than the rule. But AGK is 
an administrator, and if he expects that police work will almost 
always cause the administrator to gain enemies, I rather suspect 
that some of his work is less than optimal.

If I become an enemy of an administrator if the admin blocked me with 
anything like good faith, because I was engaged in bad conduct at an 
article, or other inappropriate conduct, I've got a problem, and I 
will surely have this problem with other administrators as well. One 
of the biggest errors I've seen on the WikiMedia wikis is admins to 
decline unblock requests when they also blocked the editor. They 
should make sure that the reasons for the block are documented, and 
then leave it alone. When they don't, they very possibly create an 
editor who now thinks of them as an enemy.

Another common error is to gratuitously insult the editor as part of 
the block, or to otherwise behave as if the administrator is in 
charge, owns the wiki. No, an administrator is properly acting in 
expectation of consensus; for admins to act otherwise creates 
disruption for no good reason. Thus an admin, blocking, will always, 
for an inexperienced user, point to appeal process, and will be 
unfailingly polite. Or should be!

And who polices the police?

I've thought, sometimes, that there should be many more bureaucrats, 
and that bureaucrats should not have the ability to block or delete 
articles. But they would have the ability to, ad-hoc, remove admin 
privileges. Police for the police, independent of them. Chosen for 
general trustworthiness. Perhaps they would only *add* tool usage as 
a restoration of what they or another bureaucrat took away, or, even, 
it's possible, the whole RfA process could consist of convincing a 
bureaucrat that you'd be decent as an admin. That's much closer to 
the rest of the way that the wiki operates, routinely. (Bureaucrats 
do this on some of the other wikis. Wikiversity has probabionary 
adminship, which is apparently easy to get, it just takes another 
admin to declare and accept mentorship, and there is a discussion 
just to see if there are objections. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
 At 02:43 AM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
  The Wikipedia community
  painted itself into a corner, and it's entirely unclear to me if it
  can find the exits, the paths to fix it.
 As this discussion illustrates rather well, the argument if you want to
 fix A, you'd have to start by fixing B (my pet gripe) first is
 routinely deployed, making for an infinite regress in some cases, and in
 others the generation of suggestions that are rather clearly
 counterproductive for fixing A, whatever they may do for B. In the real
 world, if you want people to do thankless and time-consuming tasks for
 you for no money, and much criticism, you have to rely on something more
 than be sure that you'll be told if we don't like you and what you do.

 Eh? Is this coherent?

 Who is the you who wants people to do thankless tasks?

 What is the pet gripe in the discussion?

 What is being discussed is declining numbers of EN wiki admins, and 
 how to address it. In that, surely it is appropriate and even 
 necessary to examine the entire administrative structure, both how 
 admin privileges are created and how they are removed.

 So A here would be declining numbers. B, then, must be the 
 difficulty of removal, which leads to stronger standards for accepting 
 admins in the first place, which leads to declining applications and 
 denial of some applications that might have been just fine.

 There is no evidence that there are declining applications because of 
 fear of being criticized as an adminstrator, and the numbers of admin 
 removals are trivial, so Charles is expressing a fear that is 
 imaginary. If it were easier to gain tools and still difficult to lose 
 them unless you disregard guidelines and consensus, there would be no 
 loss of applications, there would be a gain. A large gain.
Actually, most people who don't apply as an admin just don't apply. They 
don't generate evidence one way or another. It is a perfectly sensible 
attitude for a well-adjusted Wikipedian getting on with article work not 
to want to be involved in admin work. There are editors on the site who 
make the lives of those who cross them miserable: and an admin has the 
choice of avoiding such editors, or getting in the way of abuse. My 
expressed fear is very far from imaginary. You put your head above the 
parapet, you may get shot at, precisely for acting in good faith and 
according to your own judgement in awkward situations.

What follows that seems to be a non sequitur. It was not what I was 
arguing at all.

 What I'm seeing here, indeed, is an illustration of the problem. The 
 attitude that Charles expresses is clearly part of the problem, and 
 Charles is suggesting no solutions but perhaps one of ridiculing and 
 rejecting all the suggestions for change.

Ah, but this is in line: Charles's attitude becomes something that 
must be fixed before recruiting more people to stand for adminship. I 
was actually commenting on the thread, not the issue. We should examine 
this sort of solution, amongst others: identify WikiProjects with few 
admins relative to their activity, and suggest they should look for 
candidates.

Charles



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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

On 31 May 2010 18:49, AGK wiki...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 31 May 2010, at 18:21, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com
 wrote:

 But AGK is
 an administrator, and if he expects that police work will almost
 always cause the administrator to gain enemies, I rather suspect
 that some of his work is less than optimal.

 Irrelevant and incorrect. Shame, because I was starting to really like
 your ideas.


Abd has been beaten around the head by the arbcom on several
occasions, and so has an understandably negative view of power
structures on Wikipedia in general - since it couldn't possibly be the
case that he was ever actually wrong or anything.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 01:49 PM 5/31/2010, AGK wrote:

On 31 May 2010, at 18:21, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com
wrote:
  But AGK is
  an administrator, and if he expects that police work will almost
  always cause the administrator to gain enemies, I rather suspect
  that some of his work is less than optimal.

Irrelevant and incorrect. Shame, because I was starting to really like
your ideas.

Interesting, AGK. Are the ideas important, or the personalities? 
Here, you just demonstrated my concern even further.

I did not have in mind that you were an abusive administrator, and 
I've never had occasion to review your work. It takes a lot of time, 
and I've only done it when presented with an abundance of evidence, 
and a simple comment like you made here wouldn't even begin to 
approach what it would take to move me in that direction.

I've certainly seen you make sound judgments, and nothing abusive 
comes to mind. But would I have seen it? I'm suggesting that the 
position you are taking reflects the kind of expectations that would 
arise from the experience of someone who doesn't understand how to 
administer neutrally and with maximal effectiveness in gaining 
voluntary cooperation.

The tipoff is the almost always. This is high expectation, and it 
is almost certainly not true of skilfull administrative work in the 
area of behavioral policing.

AGK, I hope and assume that you were teachable. Or are you too 
experienced to remain teachable?

Hey, I'd love to review your work and be able to say, I was wrong, 
actually, you were very skilled and did everything you could to avoid 
unnecessary bad reaction and disruption, but it usually happened 
anyway. Well, actually, I wouldn't love one part of it. It would 
convince me that the Wikipedia basic design was impossible, doomed 
from the start, if that's the way people are.

My experience elsewhere with organizations, however, leads me to 
think differently. With skill, real consensus is quite possible. It 
takes a lot of work, but once the work is done, it is 
self-maintaining. There is no more battleground. There is a community 
working together, including people who had, orginally, widely 
divergent points of view, and some of who may still retain those 
views, but they have learned to cooperate toward common and shared 
goals with others, and they have learned that when they do this, 
their own personal goals are more excellently accomplished.

Most POV-pushers on Wikipedia want the articles to be what they 
believe is neutral. Some of them, possibly, will be unable to 
recognize true neutrality, they would only be satisfied if the 
article completely reflects their own point of view and denigrates 
different points of view. But those are quite rare, in my experience, 
and real consensus process makes such an agenda quite obvious. Most 
of these will withdraw, it becomes so painfully obvious. The few that 
remain and who continue to argue tenaciously for what has been almost 
universally rejected, this is the group where blocking might become 
necessary. It should always be considered dangerous, and the standard 
I propose for neutrality is a measure, not an absolute. Neutrality is 
reflected in the degree to which all editors agree that text is 
neutral. If you exclude editors from that measure, you warp it, you 
create the appearance of consensus by banning a position. We should 
always know what the true level of consensus is with articles, and 
that may require, even, consensus to be assessed by some means 
off-wiki, or with some kind of restricted participation. Scibaby's 
opinion about global warming should be solicited!

Wikipedia might not please everyone, but it needs to know how it's 
doing. Or it has no way of assessing its own neutrality, and thus no 
way of even knowing if improvements are needed. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
 At 01:35 PM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:

 Actually, most people who don't apply as an admin just don't apply.

 With ten million registered editors and a handful of RfAs, that's 
 obvious.

  They
 don't generate evidence one way or another. It is a perfectly sensible
 attitude for a well-adjusted Wikipedian getting on with article work not
 to want to be involved in admin work.

 Sure. However, there is a minority who are *not* well-adjusted who 
 would seek adminship for personal power. 
Yes, and the first required quality for being given such power is not to 
want it. Etc. But you were the one talking about getting painted into a 
corner. The problem, as I have defined it, is of negative voting. The 
sheer suspicion of those who apparently want the mop-and-bucket. (And 
anyway, I obviously was using well-adjusted in the sense of round peg 
in a round hole, not as a comment on anything else.)

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

On 31 May 2010 19:46, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote:

 These are issues that I've been thinking about for almost thirty
 years, and with Wikipedia, intensively, for almost three years
 specifically (and as to on-line process, for over twenty years). So
 my comments get long. If that's a problem for you, don't read it.


... Has it really not occurred to you that *you're* trying to convince
*us* of something? In which case, conciseness is likely more useful
than defiant logorrhea ... Oh, never mind.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-05-31 Thread David Goodman

Administrators differ in competence, and perhaps even in
trustworthiness, but I think experience has shown that not even the
most experienced and trusted of all will always correctly interpret
the view of the community, and that nobody whomsoever can really trust
himself or be trusted by others to be free from bias. I see no reason
to think that the long-term administrators are any more likely to show
neutrality or a proper self-perception as the newer ones. If anything,
they are more likely to have an over-extensive bview of the centrality
of their own ideas. Consequently, I think there is no other basis
by which any administrator can make a decision except by consensus,
implied or express . For those who are willing to read beyond the
first paragraph:

in general I do not think it is the business of the closer to decide
between conflicting policies. Their job is to discard arguments not
based on any policy, or, sometimes, by SPAs, and then judge consensus.
The questions asked at RfAdmin are enough to identify admins who know
enough to tell what is policy and what is not, as long as things don't
get too complicated. It is not enough to identify admins who
understand all policies well enough to judge which of conflicting ones
to apply, or how to interpret them in difficult situations. A good
thing, too, or we'd have chaos, because none of us agrees for all of
that. The only people here competent to judge conflicting content
policies or how to interpret them are the interested members of the
community as a whole, acting in good faith. It is by the community's
express consensus that BLP and Copyright trump other policies if the
situation is unambiguous. But how the BLP and copyright policies are
to be interpreted and applied in any particular instance is a question
for the community, not individual administrators.

The assumption in closing is that after discarding non-arguments, the
consensus view will be the correct one, and that any neutral admin
would agree. Thus there is in theory no difference between closing per
the majority and closing per the strongest argument. But when there is
a real dispute on what argument is relevant, the closer is not to
decide between them , but close according to what most people in the
discussion say. If the closer has a strong view on the matter, he
should join the argument instead of closing, and try to affect
consensus that way. I (and almost all other admins) have closed keep
when we personally would have preferred delete, and vice-versa. .

When admins delete by Speedy, it is on the assumption that what they
are doing is so unambiguous that the community has given implied
consensus in advance. If someone challenges this is good faith, the
proper response is to simply send the article for AfD, and find out
the express consensus.

If I wanted a place where my view of proper content would prevail, I'd
start a blog or become an editor of some conventional publication.

On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 5:51 PM, David Lindsey dvdln...@gmail.com wrote:
The key is not making it easier to remove adminship. This proposal gets us
closer to the real problem, but fails to fully perceive it as does the
common call to separate the functions of adminship.

The real solution to the current (and relatively long-standing) problems
with RfA and adminship in general is the marriage of the technical side of
adminship with a political side, which is rarely acknowledged. Successful
reform will involve separating these two aspects, rather than the more
common idea to separate some technical pieces from others. The proposal
below is a bit lenghty, but it's the product of years of thought, and I
encourage you to read it. If you don't have the time, well then, the take
away point is that we should create a distinction between those
administrators trusted to intervene in highly-controversial areas and those
not so trusted.

The technical bits of adminship are, indeed, no big deal. With a large
community of administrators and an alert body of stewards, the possible
danger of obvious abuse of the administrator privileges is nearly zero. As
an illustration, in the heat of the recent dust-up on commons, an
administrator there went rogue and vandalized the main page. His edits
were reverted in less than a minute:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Pageaction=historysubmitdiff=38894158oldid=38894141.
Even in an absolute worst-case scenario of administrator abuse (for example,
vandalizing the main page and then deleting a large number of pages with
just less than 5,000 revisions in an attempt to lock the servers, especially
abusive shenanigans in the MediaWiki namespace, or inserting malicious code
into monobooks), the damage done would be reversed in under 10 minutes.
Given this, it is highly improbable that any vandal/banned user would
attempt to gain administrator status solely for the purpose of carrying out
some such abuse. The danger

Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 03:28 PM 5/31/2010, David Gerard wrote:
On 31 May 2010 19:46, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote:

  These are issues that I've been thinking about for almost thirty
  years, and with Wikipedia, intensively, for almost three years
  specifically (and as to on-line process, for over twenty years). So
  my comments get long. If that's a problem for you, don't read it.


... Has it really not occurred to you that *you're* trying to convince
*us* of something? In which case, conciseness is likely more useful
than defiant logorrhea ... Oh, never mind.

It's occurred to me that you'd think that and claim it. I'm not 
writing for you, David. I'm writing for certain others who want to 
read this, and there may still be some left. If I considered it worth 
my time to write polemic, i.e, the useful conciseness that you seem 
to want, I'd do it. I know how to do it. It simply takes about three 
times as much time to cover the same topic in a third of the length. 
And I don't have that time. I really don't have the time to write this

Or to say it more clearly, even:

I don't think convincing you is a worthwhile use of my time.

You are not that important, and your influence is rapidly fading. You 
were not personally the cause of Wikipedia's problems, though you 
typify certain positions that are part of the problem itself. Those 
positions are effectively created by the structure, or the lack of it.

You could possibly be a part of the solution, but you'd have to 
drastically review and revise your own position, coming to understand 
why it is that power is slipping from your grasp or the project is 
becoming increasingly frustrating.

No, I'm writing to this entire list, even if it seems I responding to 
a single post. I know there are some here who get what I'm saying, 
and they are the ones I care about. It's even possible that I'm 
writing for someone who will read this after I'm dead. I'm old 
enough, after all, to see that as coming soon, and I have cancer. 
Slow, to be sure, and I'm more likely to die from something else, 
but it makes me conscious of my mortality. Do you really think I 
care about what you think?

I know myself pretty well, and I'm definitely not trying to convince 
you, I'm not in a relationship with you and I'm demanding nothing of 
you, not even that you read this. I just write what I see, it's what 
I've always done, and there have always been people who very much 
didn't like it. And others who very much like it. I don't normally 
write to this list, but I saw that some were really trying to grapple 
with the problems, so I made some comments reflecting my experience 
and ideas. They have always been unwelcome, largely, from those whose 
positions are untenable when examined closely.

There have been others like me, in some way or other, who did this on 
Wikipedia. If they were unable to restrain themselves, or didn't care 
to, they've been blocked or banned. Wikipedia doesn't like criticism, 
but the *large* consensus is that it's necessary. Unfortunatley, the 
large consensus almost never is aroused, it takes something big to 
get their attention.

To summarize a recent incident:

You can take away our academic freedom, we don't really care that 
much about it, and those were troublesome editors anyway, but take 
away our pornography, you're in trouble!

Same issue, really. But the meta RfC on removal of Jimbo's founder 
flag, based on his action at Wikiversity, was stagnating at about 2:1 
against it until the flap at Commons, when editors started pouring 
in, and it's currently at about 4:1 for removal, last time I looked, 
with huge participation.

And Jimbo resigned the intrusive tools (block and article delete) 
that he'd used. In spite of his prior threat that effectively said 
I'm in charge. Don't assume my position on this! I commented, 
though. I commented on the problem at Wikiversity in a few places, 
and got a confirming email from Jimbo as to what I'd said about it, 
and certainly no flak from him. I neither oppose consensus, nor the 
needs of administrators and managers of the project. I'm trying to 
assist, but, I know to expect this from long experience, there are 
always people who don't want such assistance, because it serves them 
that things are the way they are. If anyone actually wants 
assistance, write me privately. I do know pretty much what could be 
done. But I certainly can't do it alone! and I wouldn't even try, 
other than putting a toe in the water and tossing a little yoghurt in 
the lake to see if it's ready to take.

you never know. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 11:19 AM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
[...] remedies - for a bigger picture
- have the disadvantages of requiring a great deal of investment of
time. I believe I have tried a number of those, without yet getting a
complete view of the elephant.

Right. Sensible. There is a solution to that, which is structured 
discussion and investigation. Deliberative process, where each issue 
involved is examined carefully. Yes. It takes a lot of time, but with 
good structure, it's a collective effort and very practical. Without 
good structure, it's basically impossible. And what we get is one 
effort after another, never completely examined, rejected or fought 
over without ever finding true consensus, which represents, in the 
end, much more waste of time, whereas effort to find consensus, 
done intelligently -- which often requires some skilled facilitation 
or process assistance -- isn't wasted. It builds something that will last.

The blind men can come up with a complete description of the elephant 
if they trust each other's good faith, and move around just a little 
bit, so that each one gets more than one view. It is only when they 
insist that their own experience must be all-encompassing that they 
fail to grasp the truth.

What do you get when you can see from more than one point of view at a time? 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 02:17 PM 5/31/2010, David Gerard wrote:
Abd has been beaten around the head by the arbcom on several
occasions, and so has an understandably negative view of power
structures on Wikipedia in general - since it couldn't possibly be the
case that he was ever actually wrong or anything.

My views of the Wikipedia power structure were expressed long before 
I appeared before ArbComm. I've been a major party for two cases 
only. The first was filed by Jehochman, beating me to it by maybe an 
hour or two, I was ready to file. My case was about admin recusal 
failure, and ArbComm confirmed it. That case was practically a 
complete victory for my position. Later, one finding, very mild, 
was interpreted as some kind of reprimand, though it was actually an 
instruction to more rapidly escalate dispute resolution. So, next 
time, that's exactly what I did.

The next case I filed, and was also over admin recusal failure. This 
time, I was personally involved (I'd been neutral in the first case, 
actually, though I later developed a point of view contrary to that 
of the administrator. My POV wasn't relevant to the charge of recusal 
failure.) Again, ArbComm quite confirmed the complaint.

I was very aware from the beginning that by taking on administrative 
abuse, I was risking topic bans and my account. The surprise, 
actually, was that it didn't happen the first time. But that case had 
been so open-and-shut and uncomplicated that the cabal mostly 
stayed away, even though they had actively participated in the 
preceding RfC/JzG 3. That, right there, was a clue: the RfC was 
narrowly filed, as well, simply showing article and other topic 
involvement, then use of tools for blacklisting, blocking, and 
deleting. But 2/3 of editors commenting supported, instead of a 
confirmation of the problem, that Abd should be banned.

2/3 of editors supported a position that was blatantly against policy 
and the ensuing ArbComm decision.

But with the next case, the cabal was very much aware of the danger, 
and the case wasn't as clear. They knew that if they could claim that 
I was a tendentious editor, dispruptive, etc., they could at least 
get me topic banned. They piled in, and my originally compact 
evidence spun out of control, trying to respond. At the beginning, 
actually, it looked like they'd failed, the first arb to review 
evidence and opine was so favorable to my position that I thought 
that, again, I'd dodged the bullent. But then, quite rapidly, it 
reversed, that arbitrator was basically ignored, and entirely new 
proposals were made, basically reprimanding me for a series of 
asserted offences, not supported or barely and inadequately supported 
by evidence. ArbComm was more of a knee-jerk body than I'd 
anticipated, I'd been fooled by a series of decisions where they 
clearly did investigate, and carefully.

Did I do anything wrong? Of course I did! I also did stuff that was 
exactly right, and exactly effective, and accomplished what many 
editors and administrators thought impossible.

But my personal right to edit Wikipedia meant almost nothing to me, 
and standing up for the rights of legions of editors who had been 
abused, and I'd been watching it for a long time, and I believe that 
this has done and contnues to do long-term damage, was much more 
important. I'm just one editor, I'm nothing compared to them. Someone 
like Mr. Gerard may not be capable of understanding this attitude, it 
would be so foreign to how he'd think. Or is it?

Never mind, it doesn't matter.

ArbComm is not the cause of Wikipedia's problems, it's merely a 
symptom. Fix the basic problems, and ArbComm, or its replacement, 
would become far more functional. The problem is not the fault of any 
member of ArbComm, nor of any editor or faction, though some do stand 
in the way of reform, that's simply what's natural. I ddn't seek to 
have anyone banned, even though there were -- and are -- several who 
by ordinary standards, if their behavior were examined, would be, 
because these people would be harmless or even useful if the 
structure were functional. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the 
founders of Wikipedia did not know how to put together a project that 
could maintain unity and consensus when the scale became large. 
That's not surprising, not many know how to do this! But there are 
people who do, who have had experience with it. Few of them have 
become Wikipedia editors, and Wikipedia has not sought this 
expertise. Indeed, it's blocked and banned people for even suggesting 
solutions.

And, from the beginning, as I became active, back in 2007, I wrote 
that this was expected behavior.

I'd registered in, I think, 2005, and had other wiki experience, and 
was a moderator on the W.E.L.L. in the 1980s and a moderator of 
soc.religion.islam in the 90s -- still am, though inactive --, do you 
think there was any controversy there? And I've handled large 
meetings, an international conference, of people inclined to

Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-05-31 Thread David Lindsey

I'm not quite sure if this responding to what I wrote or to other bits
above, but it seems in part to apply to what I said, so I will respond
accordingly.  First of all, my proposal was not meant, in any sense, to
suggest supplanting consensus with the arbitrary judgement of bureaucrats.
To the contrary, it's meant to help capture consensus.  The fact of the
matter is that, in contoversial matters (which are the ones where admins get
in trouble) it is difficult, by definition, to determine what the consensus
is.  Bureaucrats are a group of users in whose ability to determine
consensus the community has expressed extraordinary confidence.  Thus, they
are ideally placed to find the consensus in these difficult areas.

Secondly, there is often a legitimacy problem (more in user behavior related
areas than XfDs).   If one administrator of no particular standing imposes a
block on someone, it appear less justified than if a user in whom the
community has expressed extra confidence does the same (though, to the
blocked user, both may well look illegitimate).

Third, and unrelatedly, I'd like to point out another advantage of what I
propose.  Term limits on administrators are often proposed, but are utterly
impractical, in large part because we have over 1500 admins (not all active
of course).  On the other hand, the number of people needed to help
determine consensus in particularly contentious areas is not likely to
exceed 50 or 60 people.  It would be entirely practicable to term-limit a
group of this size.

  On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 11:11 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.comwrote:

 Administrators differ in competence, and perhaps even in
 trustworthiness,  but I think experience has shown that not even the
 most experienced and trusted of all will always correctly interpret
 the view of the community, and that nobody whomsoever can really trust
 himself or be trusted by others to be free from bias. I see no reason
 to think that the long-term administrators are any more likely to show
 neutrality or a proper self-perception as the newer ones. If anything,
 they are more likely to have an over-extensive bview of the centrality
 of their own ideas.   Consequently, I think   there is no other basis
 by which any administrator can make a decision except by consensus,
 implied or express . For those who are   willing to read beyond the
 first paragraph:


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

2010-05-31 Thread Marc Riddell


 At 03:28 PM 5/31/2010, David Gerard wrote:
 On 31 May 2010 19:46, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote:
 
 These are issues that I've been thinking about for almost thirty
 years, and with Wikipedia, intensively, for almost three years
 specifically (and as to on-line process, for over twenty years). So
 my comments get long. If that's a problem for you, don't read it.
 
 
 ... Has it really not occurred to you that *you're* trying to convince
 *us* of something? In which case, conciseness is likely more useful
 than defiant logorrhea ... Oh, never mind.

on 5/31/10 6:17 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax at a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote:
 
 It's occurred to me that you'd think that and claim it. I'm not
 writing for you, David. I'm writing for certain others who want to
 read this, and there may still be some left. If I considered it worth
 my time to write polemic, i.e, the useful conciseness that you seem
 to want, I'd do it. I know how to do it. It simply takes about three
 times as much time to cover the same topic in a third of the length.
 And I don't have that time. I really don't have the time to write this
 
 Or to say it more clearly, even:
 
 I don't think convincing you is a worthwhile use of my time.
 
 You are not that important, and your influence is rapidly fading. You
 were not personally the cause of Wikipedia's problems, though you
 typify certain positions that are part of the problem itself. Those
 positions are effectively created by the structure, or the lack of it.
 
 You could possibly be a part of the solution, but you'd have to
 drastically review and revise your own position, coming to understand
 why it is that power is slipping from your grasp or the project is
 becoming increasingly frustrating.
 
 No, I'm writing to this entire list, even if it seems I responding to
 a single post. I know there are some here who get what I'm saying,
 and they are the ones I care about. It's even possible that I'm
 writing for someone who will read this after I'm dead. I'm old
 enough, after all, to see that as coming soon, and I have cancer.
 Slow, to be sure, and I'm more likely to die from something else,
 but it makes me conscious of my mortality. Do you really think I
 care about what you think?
 
 I know myself pretty well, and I'm definitely not trying to convince
 you, I'm not in a relationship with you and I'm demanding nothing of
 you, not even that you read this. I just write what I see, it's what
 I've always done, and there have always been people who very much
 didn't like it. And others who very much like it. I don't normally
 write to this list, but I saw that some were really trying to grapple
 with the problems, so I made some comments reflecting my experience
 and ideas. They have always been unwelcome, largely, from those whose
 positions are untenable when examined closely.
 
 There have been others like me, in some way or other, who did this on
 Wikipedia. If they were unable to restrain themselves, or didn't care
 to, they've been blocked or banned. Wikipedia doesn't like criticism,
 but the *large* consensus is that it's necessary. Unfortunatley, the
 large consensus almost never is aroused, it takes something big to
 get their attention.
 
 To summarize a recent incident:
 
 You can take away our academic freedom, we don't really care that
 much about it, and those were troublesome editors anyway, but take
 away our pornography, you're in trouble!
 
 Same issue, really. But the meta RfC on removal of Jimbo's founder
 flag, based on his action at Wikiversity, was stagnating at about 2:1
 against it until the flap at Commons, when editors started pouring
 in, and it's currently at about 4:1 for removal, last time I looked,
 with huge participation.
 
 And Jimbo resigned the intrusive tools (block and article delete)
 that he'd used. In spite of his prior threat that effectively said
 I'm in charge. Don't assume my position on this! I commented,
 though. I commented on the problem at Wikiversity in a few places,
 and got a confirming email from Jimbo as to what I'd said about it,
 and certainly no flak from him. I neither oppose consensus, nor the
 needs of administrators and managers of the project. I'm trying to
 assist, but, I know to expect this from long experience, there are
 always people who don't want such assistance, because it serves them
 that things are the way they are. If anyone actually wants
 assistance, write me privately. I do know pretty much what could be
 done. But I certainly can't do it alone! and I wouldn't even try,
 other than putting a toe in the water and tossing a little yoghurt in
 the lake to see if it's ready to take.
 
 you never know. 

Abd,

Bravo! And thank you for your honesty - and your perception.

Marc Riddell


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

On 31 May 2010 23:17, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote:

 You are not that important, and your influence is rapidly fading.


No indeed I'm not, and I am most pleased that it is, because I get
annoyed a lot less. However, I hope I can tell the obvious, e.g. that
bringing interesting ideas to wikien-l is most useful for debugging
ideas - in terms of influence, you can only get consensus for changes
on the wiki itself. (Something I point out to Marc Riddell when he's
at his worst, and note his strange reluctance to actually engage
himself with the community he champions so strongly.)

So if you want your ideas to go anywhere in finite time, I would
suggest you would have to convince people on the wiki. And if you want
to run them past wikien-l first, knock yourself out, but epic novels
are likely to get a tl;dr.

You are of course under no obligation to listen to a word of this, and
I fully expect you won't change your behaviour a dot. Ah well.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 05:51 PM 5/31/2010, David Lindsey wrote:
The key is not making it easier to remove adminship.  This proposal gets us
closer to the real problem, but fails to fully perceive it as does the
common call to separate the functions of adminship.

Generally, Mr. Lindsey has written a cogent examination of certain 
aspects of the problem. Let me reframe part of this. What is needed 
is not exactly making it easier to remove adminship, but making it 
easier to regulate and restrain administrative action. His proposal 
is one approach to that, dividing actions into types. I suggested 
something *somewhat* similar in pointing out that bureaucrats were a 
group that might be trusted to make decisions about use of admin 
tools, i.e., to receive and judge, ad-hoc, complaints, and warn the 
admin when it was considered there was a problem, or, in the extreme, 
remove the tools.

Expanding the bureaucrat role is one fairly obvious and reasonable 
solution, and it seems to work like this, with bureaucrats or 
stewards, on the smaller wikis that don't have an ArbComm.

Given clear rules regarding recusal, when it's necessary, and when 
it's not, and what to do if there is any reasonable possibility of an 
appearance of bias, most admnistrators will quite properly restrain 
themselves voluntarily.

However, I'm not necessarily exercised if a long-time user is 
short-blocked, because a long-time user should understand it and see 
it as no big deal. It all depends on how it's done. If a long-time 
user engages in behavior that would cause a short-time user to be 
blocked, what, exactly, is the problem with being blocked? If there 
is a problem, if the user will go away mad, abandoning years of 
effort because of one possibly bad block, there is, right there, a 
sign of a serious problem, ownership of the project or of an article. 
Maybe its time for that user to do something else. If it was a short 
block, he or she can come back any time they want, after the block expires.

Short blocks are very different from longer blocks. Short blocks are 
true police actions, equivalent to a sergeant-at-arms conducting a 
disruptive member of an assembly from the room when they get too hot. 
It's no big deal, and nobody is sanctioned for it, unless they truly 
get violent in the process. If an admin blocks *any* user and abuses 
the user in the process, without necessity, that's a problem, and 
it's a problem even if the block was correct as a block. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

At 06:11 PM 5/31/2010, David Goodman wrote:
The assumption in closing is that after discarding non-arguments, the
consensus view will be the correct one, and that any neutral admin
would agree. Thus there is in theory no difference between closing per
the majority and closing per the strongest argument. But when there is
a real dispute on what argument is relevant, the closer is not to
decide between them , but close according to what most people in the
discussion say. If the closer has a strong view on the matter, he
should join the argument instead of closing, and try to affect
consensus that way.   I (and almost all other admins) have closed keep
when we personally would have preferred delete, and vice-versa.

My argument has been similar on this. Wikitheory would suggest that 
no admin should close a discussion with a result that the admin does 
not agree with, so it does a little further than what David suggests. 
I'd even say that an admin who, after reading the discussion and 
reviewing the evidence, is neutral, *should not close.* If there is a 
consensus, say, for Delete, and that represents true broader 
consensus, surely there will be an admin who agrees to close.

I agree that if the admin has a strong opinion or general position 
making it reasonably possible that the decision will be biased (some 
people can actually discern this!) the admin should instead comment. 
Generally, an admin who comments with a position should not then 
return and close, I've seen this violated only a few times. With a 
ban discussion actually, and it was a real problem, in my view.

And the reason for this is quite simple. The least disruptive way to 
review a deletion is to ask the deleting administrator to reconsider 
it. The theory suggests that the one who closes has the authority to 
change the decision based on new evidence or argument. When an admin 
closed on the basis of consensus purely, we have a closer who will 
often refuse to change the decision because the community made the 
decision, not me.

But when the administrator is part of that community, and closed on 
behalf of that community, the administrator represents it in changing 
his mind, based on new additional evidence and argument. This can 
avoid a lot of DRV discussions! I've seen it work, and I've also seen 
the not my decision response.

The theory of the adhocracy that is Wikipedia depends on the 
responsibility of the executives -- the editors and administrators 
who act -- for their own decisions. No decisions are properly made by 
voting, per se, most notably because there is a severe problem with 
participation bias. If we wanted to use voting, we'd need quite a 
different structure, which may be advisable, in fact, as a hybrid, 
used where it's necessary for voting to represent true community 
consensus. In an organization that is the size of Wikipedia, that 
would almost certainly be some kind of elected representative body, 
and there are ways to do this without actual elections as we know 
them. Simple ways, in fact.

Short of that, we have the efficiency of ad hoc decision-making by 
individual administrators, expected to self-select for initial neutrality.

I've seen closing admins change their mind and undelete based on new 
evidence and argument, and a Delete voter in the AfD discussion got 
upset that the admin was defying consensus. But Ive never seen 
such a decision reversed at DRV, nor by a new AfD with a different 
closer. Perhaps it's happened, but, if the admin was truly following 
arguments and policy, it should be rare. Thus the disruption of 
another discussion is avoided unless someone is really pissed and 
pursues it, and, after a while, this can become obvious, such editors 
don't last long, usually. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers