Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:12:51 +0100
From: Phil Nash phn...@blueyonder.co.uk
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
- Original Message -
From: Matthew Jacobs sxeptoman...@gmail.com
To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 6:02 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:12:49 -0400
From: Marc Riddell michaeldavi...@comcast.net
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
Agreed. But how could such a mechanism be created given the existing
structure of the Project?
marc Riddell
I've seen a lot of complicated RfA proposals, as well as community
desysop
procedures, and I really think the simplest solution would be for
Adminship
to no longer be a lifetime appointment. Make it for terms of one or two
years, with no limit on the number of terms, and no requirement to
re-apply. It simply means that admins remain accountable to the
community,
giving them an incentive to remain polite and fair, to the best of their
ability. I don't buy the arguments that good admins will never be
re-appointed, as good admins may make a few enemies, but they'll gain
even
more supporters. I also believe that the community could easily adapt to
manage the increase in RfAs.
To be clear, there is no perfect solution, but I think that instituting
admin terms would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, I also
don't think the community will ever accept such a major change, as it's
become far to conservative regarding policy.
This isn't a new idea, and has been proposed, and rejected, more than once:
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Reconfirm_administrators
As you point out, it is open to abuse by enemies the admins may have made-
which is only to be expected if they're doing their job properly, since
some
people, sadly, will never accept authoritative statements of WP policy.
Worse (as in my case), they might receive death threats on a daily basis.
I never claimed it was a new idea. I'm aware various versions are brought
up, though people often try to tinker with it and end up making it more
complicated than it needs to be. I was asked what I think would help fix
WP's issues, and I answered. I also mentioned that I think it's got
near-zero chance of passing, as, for the most part, I don't believe the
community is interested in improving WP at this point, but only protecting
territory.
Any system is open to abuse. My argument is that it better enables the
community to prevent and deal with abuse when (not if) it happens.
Yes, admins make enemies, but they also gain supporters. A good admin will
gain more of the latter than the former.
As you pointed out, you're already receiving death threats, so how is that
an argument against change? If anything, it has the potential to reduce it
somewhat, as they have something they can do about their anger/frustration,
whereas there's little recourse at this time.
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:14:12 +0100
From: WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
Re Matthew Jacobs and the periodic reconfirmation idea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_reform#Periodic_reconfirmation
There's also the point that some of us don't like the idea of admins
becoming a small elite group within the community. OK we are already quite
a way from the no big deal idea of adminship, but one of the downsides of
reducing the admin cadre to a small number of fixed term admins is that the
vast majority of our current 1400 or so admins have insufficient activity
to get through an RFA. Many of the rest are unlikely to want to put
themselves through the RFA hoops again, especially if remaining an admin
means taking on a significantly larger share of the admin workload.
We need to remember that admins are unpaid volunteers doing a bunch of
essential chores on the site.
We also need to remember that the fewer admins there are the more their
scarcity value increases. So fixed terms might be of interest to status
seekers and those exhibitionists who rather enjoy the opportunity of an RFA
to have a public confrontation with their critics. But we'd lose most of
the quiet and uncontentious admins who are active editors who have the
tools and use them as and when they come across a situation that requires
them.
Of course periodic reconfirmation would work if we made adminship a
salaried position. But I'm hoping that we can find other ways to fix the
RFA problem long before that starts to look necessary.
That said RFA is continuing to decline, this year, maybe even this month,
may well see the first month without a new admin since October 2002. With
20 new admins so far this year compared to 52 last year we will be doing
very well in the rest of the year if we manage to kepp the year on year
decline at only one third. There is a real risk that 2012 could see the
