subject:"\[WikiEN\-l\] declining numbers of EN wiki admins"

At 11:17 AM 6/1/2010, Carcharoth wrote:
>On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 2:57 PM, Risker  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

At 10:01 AM 6/1/2010, you wrote:
>On 1 June 2010 14:30, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  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 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 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

2010-06-01 Thread AGK

On 1 June 2010 16:17, Carcharoth  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

2010-06-01 Thread Carcharoth

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 2:57 PM, Risker  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 David Gerard

On 1 June 2010 15:45, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen  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

At 09:07 AM 6/1/2010, David Gerard wrote:
>On 1 June 2010 05:56, Durova  wrote:

>>  [...] It is hardly surprising that, in this weak economy, wise 
>> editors have been > declining offers of nomination.

>This is IMO asymptom of there being insufficient admins.

Yes.

>And again, this is because of ridiculously ratcheted-up requirements 
>by serial objectors at RFA that have no reasonable threat model attached.

I just opposed a call for adminship that I would not have opposed if 
it were easier to modify the behavior of abusive administrators. The 
editor might make a fine administrator and was merely naive about 
blocking policy and how free of abuse it is.

>The way it's done at RationalWiki is that sysophood is inflicted on 
>almost all regular editors without their asking. The criterion is 
>"mostly harmless." That way, it really is "no big deal."

Yes. The power gap between editors and administrators on Wikipedia is 
too great. It was, perhaps, a decent first attempt at addressing the 
problem of how to manage the project, but it became frozen.

>Of course, that's a wiki with 1/1000 of the activity of en:wp. (Some 
>powers that sysops have on en:wp, such as editing interface text, 
>are reserved to bureaucrats. I realise this just puts the problem 
>off another level.

Levels are good.

>But then again, the cycle of heavily active participation is 18 
>months anyway, so changing everything every couple of years keeps 
>the system fresh.)

In my view, that cycle should be building a large body of 
editors-in-reserve, people who may only occasionally edit but who 
will contribute great value when they do. That would require some 
kind of superstructure that connects inactive editors and brings them 
in when they are needed. Part of the proxy concept is that proxies 
would serve as links to those they represent, would understand and 
know their special interests and expertise, and would, say, email 
them when it was needed. "Proxy" is a bit misleading. There has been 
no proposal that proxies would exercise actual voting power, for 
example, but only that it might be possible to estimate consensus 
more efficiently if we have some designations of personal trust.

The proxy is really a node in a communications network, in delegable 
proxy systems. It works, I've seen that. Value is gained from even a 
single proxy designation, for the proxy and client.

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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

At 12:56 AM 6/1/2010, Durova wrote:
>Let's not mince words: Wikipedia administratorship can be a serious
>liability.  The 'reward' for volunteering for this educational nonprofit can
>include getting one's real name Googlebombed, getting late night phone calls
>to one's home, and worse.  The Wikimedia Foundation has never sent a cease
>and desist demand to the people who have made a years-long hobby of driving
>its administrators away.

Durova's history is a classic example. She was hounded by a screaming 
mob when she made a mistake, even though she recognized the error and 
undid it within an hour. She might have been desysopped had she not 
resigned, but that would have been a miscarriage of wikijustice. She 
should have been defended, but was not. And why? I've never really 
studied that.

While I've studied and have dealt with administrative abuse, the 
people who are most abused by the Wikipedia system are 
administrators, and that is probably a major source of abusive adminship.

I've argued for clear and strong rules for admin recusal, but what's 
often been missed is that this *protects* administrators from 
becoming over-involved in the mudslinging contests.

I've been a meeting chair, and a good chair rigorously stays away 
from involvement. So the chair is obligated to rule on matters of 
procedure, and perhaps a member stands up and starts shouting about 
how stupid a ruling was and how the chair is biased. What does the 
chair do? Argue?

No, the chair puts the ruling to a vote, immediately (that's the 
substance, there are details I won't go into). The chair is not 
actually in charge, the membership is, at all times. The chair is 
just a servant. A chair who doesn't understand that and who becomes 
attached to control can make quite a mess, and the belief of some 
that Robert's Rules of Order is some kind of oppressive document have 
probably experienced a chair like that. But even a few members in an 
organization who understand the rules and know how to use them to 
guarantee that decisions are adequately deliberated and that 
democratic decision-making is maintained efficiently can handle even 
a poor chair.

But there is no power that can avail against a stupid and active 
majority, and when that happens, it's time to consider leaving. 

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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 05:21 AM 6/1/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
>I think this is something to untangle. We need to get to the bottom of
>the community's fears about "overpowerful" admins, by talking through
>and delineating what a single admin can expect to face in awkward
>situations.

Yes.

>I've never been in favour of restricting admin discretion,
>which is really what is being proposed.

It's not what I'm proposing. Discretion should be almost unlimited as 
to primary action; however, there should be much better guidelines so 
that admins can know what to expect. WP:IAR is a fundamental and very 
important principle, but that doesn't negate that if one ignores 
rules, one should be prepared to face criticism and be required to 
explain why or face warning and possible suspension of privileges.

>We can't anticipate the
>challenges the site will face (even though it may appear that there is
>little innovation from vandals and trolls).

There are structural devices which can make vandalism and even 
editorial review much more efficient, and there are trends in that 
direction. When Wikipedia starts valuing editorial labor, and sets up 
systems to make it more efficient and reliably effective, it may get 
over the hump. I've suggested that it may be appropriate to start 
channeling labor into what I've called "backstory," i.e., 
documentation of why an article is the way it is. Then, if a new 
editor disagrees, that editor can quickly come up to speed on the 
history, see all the arguments and evidence organized, and would not 
be imprisoned by that, but rather might be encouraged, if some 
argument there is defective, to show that, to expand the consensus 
there. And then that can be taken back to the article. Articles 
should not slide back and forth, that is incredibly wasteful. They 
should grow, such that consensus is always that they have improved by 
a change. Flagged revisions is a piece of this puzzle.

>  I do think admins can be
>held to account for their use of discretion. Right now it seems that a
>piece of the puzzle is missing: admins don't know clearly how they stand
>in relation to the actions of other admins.

I developed, early on, a sense of how Wikipedia worked, and it made a 
great deal of sense in terms of the organizational theory I was 
familiar with. And then I discovered that only some administrators 
seemed to understand it. Others believed that the structure was 
something else. I saw no disruption coming from administrators who 
understood the concepts that seemed obvious to me. It came from the 
others. Recusal policy should be far more clear. But that's not the 
first priority. The first priority is establishing consensus process 
that is more efficient; the inefficiency discourages participation 
and causes proposals that might actually help to go nowhere. "No consensus."

That should be a clear suggestion for "refer to committee." That's 
what successful organizations do when faced with a problem where the 
response is not clear. (And then committee composition and rules and 
process become very important.) 

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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 12:45 AM 6/1/2010, David Goodman wrote:
>Neither they nor anyone else   knows how to do this at our scale in as
>open a structure as ours.

While I understand the opinion, how do you know that? Isn't it a tad 
limiting to believe that nobody knows how to deal with our problem? 
Perhaps the expertise exists, but we haven't been looking for it or 
connecting with it, or, worse, rejecting it when it's suggested, out 
of a *belief* that it couldn't work, but without actual experience.

The model I know that worked, and spectacularly, was Alcoholics 
Anonymous. Grew rapidly. The scale became *very* large, particularly 
in terms of active members, most registered accounts on Wikipedia, I 
suspect, are inactive. Now, AA certainly is also different.

I merely suggest that, with AA, some specific organizational concepts 
were developed, from the study of the history of organizations, and 
were expressed and became solidly accepted traditions that are 
actually practiced, and the result was a highly unified organization 
without central control. Branfman et al call these "starfish 
organizations," because you can cut them up and they re-form from the 
pieces, and he distinguishes them from "spider organizations," where 
if you cut off the head, the organization dies.

Most of the recent thinking in this area looks to hybrid 
organizations. AA, as an example, has a central office, which is 
operated by a nonprofit corporation with a board that is partly 
elected by the World Service Conference and partly self-appointed. 
The analogy here would be the WMF, Inc. However, to take this analogy 
further, Wikipedia would be a collection of independent "meetings" 
that voluntarily associate, and membership in each meeting would be 
open, self-selected. The resemblance stops when people who are *not* 
members of a meeting impose control over the meeting. That isn't done 
with AA. Period. Yet, without any central control, people can go to 
an AA meeting almost anywhere and will *mostly* find the same 
consensus, but it's not an oppressive consensus (usually! AA members 
are still human). Members are welcome to disagree, and express the 
disagreement, and they won't be kicked out. Unless they actually 
disrupt the meeting directly, and I've not heard of it. I'm not an 
alcoholic, though, so I've only been to open meetings, not to closed 
ones, only open to alcoholics.

>Most ideas tend to retreat towards one form
>or another of centralized control over content or to division of the
>project to reduce the scale.

My own work suggests continuing the ad hoc local organization that 
does, in fact, work very well, but moving away from centralized 
control imposed coercively, distributing control, perhaps to a series 
of "Volumes" that are organized by topic area. But what I really 
propose is that process be established for the development and 
discovery of consensus with efficiency. It does require that 
discussion be reduced in scale, and there are lots of traditional 
ways to do that, known to work. I.e, discussion takes place in a 
hierarchy of discussions. Classically, a committee system. The 
committees merely collect evidence and argument, organizing it and 
making recommendations, they do not control. But if they do their 
work well, their reports will be adopted centrally by whatever 
process exists there, or, if something was overlooked, it will be 
sent back to committee for further work in the light of what happened 
"higher up."

The ad hoc Wikipedia process does this, but with informality, for the 
most part, and the structure that it would fit into has not been 
completed. Probably the "top level" would be an elected 
representative body, and for that to function to maximize consensus, 
it needs to be thoroughly representative, and my work with voting 
systems leads me to understand how to do that efficiently and 
thoroughly. It could be amazingly simple.

 From the AA analogy, this body is actually only advisory, not 
exercising sovereign control. It would advise the community and the 
WMF. The WMF has legal control over the servers and the name 
"Wikipedia." But advice developed through consensus process is 
probably more powerful than centralized control.

>  That it is possible to organize well
>enough to do  what we've done on our scale, is proven by the
>result--an enormously useful product for the world in general. That we
>could do better is probable, since the current structure is almost
>entirely ad hoc, but there is no evidence as to what will work better.

I would not say "no evidence," but I'll certainly acknowledge that 
there is no proof. One of the problems is that the current structure 
has become so entrenched and so self-preserving that experiments, 
even conducted in ways that could not do damage (other than perhaps 
wasting the time of those who choose to participate in them), are 
crushed. WP:PRX was simply an experiment, it consisted only of a file 
structure, and established no control at a

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  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 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


(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 ha

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 31 May 2010 20:00, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  wrote:
> Interesting, AGK. Are the ideas important, or the personalities?
> Here, you just demonstrated my concern even further.

Now I understand why you are able to write at such length. Rather than
make your arguments based on facts, you run with guesswork and
assumptions. Instead of stating what my position and opinion is and
then outlining why thinking so makes me a terrible administrator, try
actually asking me a question?

I won't comment any more on your remarks against my history as a
contributor, because they are largely irrelevant to the main topic of
this thread. But needless to say, yes, the manner in which a point is
made does count; in this instance, you acting like an insufferable
jerk turns people off and makes your e-mails increasingly less
appealing to read.

Derailing meta-discussion with criticism of specific users stinks of
axe-grinding.

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

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

Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins

2010-06-01 Thread David Gerard

On 1 June 2010 05:56, Durova  wrote:

> Let's not mince words: Wikipedia administratorship can be a serious
> liability.  The 'reward' for volunteering for this educational nonprofit can
> include getting one's real name Googlebombed, getting late night phone calls
> to one's home, and worse.  The Wikimedia Foundation has never sent a cease
> and desist demand to the people who have made a years-long hobby of driving
> its administrators away.
> It is hardly surprising that, in this weak economy, wise editors have been
> declining offers of nomination.

This is IMO asymptom of there being insufficient admins. And again,
this is because of ridiculously ratcheted-up requirements by serial
objectors at RFA that have no reasonable threat model attached.

The way it's done at RationalWiki is that sysophood is inflicted on
almost all regular editors without their asking. The criterion is
"mostly harmless." That way, it really is "no big deal." Of course,
that's a wiki with 1/1000 of the activity of en:wp. (Some powers that
sysops have on en:wp, such as editing interface text, are reserved to
bureaucrats. I realise this just puts the problem off another level.
But then again, the cycle of heavily active participation is 18 months
anyway, so changing everything every couple of years keeps the system
fresh.)

- 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 Charles Matthews

David Lindsey wrote:
> What we need, then, is not a way to desysop more easily, but rather a way to
> delineate highly-charged and controversial administrator actions, and the
> administrators qualified to perform them, from uncontroversial administrator
> actions, and the administrators qualified to perform them.  I will not
> presume to provide a full criteria for what separates controversial from
> uncontroversial administrator actions, but I would suggest something along
> the lines of the following.  Controversial: Arbitration enforcement actions,
> blocks of established users for any reason other than suspicion of account
> compromise, close of AfDs where the consensus is not clear (this of course
> becomes itself a murky distinction, but could be well enough set apart),
> reversal of the actions of another administrator except when those actions
> are plainly abusive.  Non-controversial: All others.
>
>   
In other words, a two-tier system of admins. Against that, I really 
think there is an area that should be thought through, just alluded to 
there. The criteria for reversing another admin's actions do matter, and 
it seems to me matter most.

Admin actions that can be reversed (i.e. technical use of buttons, 
rather than interaction by dialogue) lack the sort of basic 
classification we need: into situations of urgency and situations that 
can wait; situations of key importance to the project (such as involve 
harassment, for example), and those that can be treated as  routine; and 
into situations where consultation should be mandatory and those where a 
second admin can use judgement to override. The fact that some people 
might conflate those analyses illustrates the need to be more careful here.

I think this is something to untangle. We need to get to the bottom of 
the community's fears about "overpowerful" admins, by talking through 
and delineating what a single admin can expect to face in awkward 
situations. I've never been in favour of restricting admin discretion, 
which is really what is being proposed. We can't anticipate the 
challenges the site will face (even though it may appear that there is 
little innovation from vandals and trolls). I do think admins can be 
held to account for their use of discretion. Right now it seems that a 
piece of the puzzle is missing: admins don't know clearly how they stand 
in relation to the actions of other admins.

Charles

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Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins

2010-05-31 Thread Durova

Let's not mince words: Wikipedia administratorship can be a serious
liability.  The 'reward' for volunteering for this educational nonprofit can
include getting one's real name Googlebombed, getting late night phone calls
to one's home, and worse.  The Wikimedia Foundation has never sent a cease
and desist demand to the people who have made a years-long hobby of driving
its administrators away.

It is hardly surprising that, in this weak economy, wise editors have been
declining offers of nomination.

-- 
http://durova.blogspot.com/
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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

Neither they nor anyone else   knows how to do this at our scale in as
open a structure as ours. Most ideas tend to retreat towards one form
or another of centralized control over content or to division of the
project to reduce the scale. That it is possible to organize well
enough to do  what we've done on our scale, is proven by the
result--an enormously useful product for the world in general. That we
could do better is probable, since the current structure is almost
entirely ad hoc, but there is no evidence as to what will work better.
Intensely democratic structures have one characteristic form of
repression of individuality, and controlled structures another.  The
virtue of division is to provide smaller structures adapted to
different methods, so that individuals can find one that is tolerable,
but this loses the key excitment of working together on something
really large.

My own view is that we should treat this as an experiment, and pursue
it on its own lines as far as it takes us.

On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
 wrote:
> 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.

-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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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 07:34 PM 5/31/2010, you wrote:
>On 31 May 2010 23:17, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  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.

I'm glad that Mr. Gerard understands and accepts what's happening, 
because it will make it much easier for him.

I have an obligation to share my ideas, but none to try to make 
people adopt them. Inna maa al-balagh, is the Arabic, "the obligation 
is only to convey." I have limited capacity, so I do what I can.

>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.

Lucky guess. After all, I'm an old dog. You want me to learn new 
tricks? What reward are you offering? What's the advantage for me to 
take the time it would take to boil down what I write? People who 
don't understand the process that I go through to write seem to 
imagine that I could just "write less, just the important part," not 
realizing that this is *far* more time-consuming. I do it when it's 
needed. To just reflect on some concepts on a mailing list, to 
discuss as distinct from trying to convince, no. It's not worth it.

I've been an editor, professionally. I know how to do it. But I was being paid.

I certainly edit article content! You'll seek in vain for "walls of 
text" in articles.

Part of the Wikipedia problem, in fact, is rejection of extended 
discussion. My solution would be to move part of that off-wiki. In 
theory, people could largely ignore Talk on-wiki, but perhaps it's 
better if on-wiki Talk is given more importance (don't revert a 
change if it was justified in Talk and you haven't read that!), and 
that more general discussion and background therefore moves off-wiki. 
On the other hand, more use could be made of subpages, collapse, and 
other techniques for organizing discussion.

That genuine consensus could arise with difficult topics without 
massive and deep discussion, though, was a fantasy. In that kind of 
deep consensus process, "tomes" can be more efficient, not less. 
Skimming them might be just fine, but allowing more complete 
expression is essential. It's not necessary for everyone to 
participate in such deep discussion, just those who are interested.

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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 I"ve 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

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

On 31 May 2010 23:17, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  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

At 12:11 PM 5/31/2010, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
>On Sun, 30 May 2010 21:49:49 -0400, Abd wrote:
>
> > And I feel that I did. I've watched the community, in a few cases,
> > adopt as consensus what I'd proposed to jeers and boos, there is
> > some satisfaction in that
>
>Maybe the initial reaction you get to your proposals, even ones that
>eventually become community consensus, is due in large part to your
>personal style, such as your tendency to overwhelm people with huge
>walls of text, and to be negative in tone to everybody else involved
>in the issues you're discussing?

Sure. But I don't agree that I'm "negative in tone to everybody else 
involved in the issues." Isn't that a bit extreme? As it happened, 
here, I didn't particularly respond to posts that I agreed with, and 
there were quite a few.

Tell me, was Socrates condemned to death because of his "personal 
style"? It certainly could be said to be so. He surely knew that what 
he was doing was irritating.

As to huge walls of text, that's relative, and whether or not this is 
a problem depends on context. Obviously, if someone doesn't read 
them, they are not negatively impacted. What I've seen is that 
*usually* -- but not always -- the "wall of text" as a complaint 
comes most vociferously from those who are really objecting to the 
content, and, in my experience, when I'm more compact, which takes a 
lot more time -- not less! --, they become even more upset. It's a red herring.

Then there are others, friends, who think that I should abstain from 
writing the walls of text. Do they realize that this may represent, 
in practice, that I'd simply abstain entirely. After all, that's what 
I usually do!

I would have accepted, with no problem at all, as an example, if 
ArbComm had ruled that a bot could be set to automatically revert any 
contribution of mine over some certain length, and that could have 
been quite short as to Talk pages! (And I had no problem with 
logorrhea in article space.) Or had ruled that anyone could revert 
such a post. But, of course, that, then, it could be brought back in, 
or quoted or referred to by any other aditor agreeing that it was 
worthwhile in some way.

I also consented to the editing of my posts by certain friendly 
editors, who did it. And guess what? Those who were trying to get me 
banned objected to that!

Dan, please consider this: Either I'm writing something of value or 
not. If it is not of value, for me to take time to boil it down would 
be wasted. People who don't expect my writing to be of value learn 
quickly not to read it. Or do they? If they understand that I write 
garbage, but they read it anyway, who is to blame for their suffering?

But if it is of value, why not quote what is of value in a response, 
commenting on it? That way, with your choice and editing, you'd be 
contributing value to the coversation. Otherwise, telling me what 
I've heard hundreds of times from hostile writers, and dozens of 
times from friends, is wasting your time and the time of the readers 
as well. *Of course* the initial reaction is at least somewhat 
related to the length. And there is a reason for that, and if I were 
to explore that, there would be even more wall of text. It's not like 
I've never thought about this stuff!

Do you think I"m going to bother to reply on this list every day? 
It's become unusual, and it will, I assume, stay that way. 

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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  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

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 wrote:
>
>> 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

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

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 03:28 PM 5/31/2010, David Gerard wrote:
>On 31 May 2010 19:46, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  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

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  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_Page&action=historysubmit&diff=38894158&oldid=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 ab

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

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_Page&action=historysubmit&diff=38894158&oldid=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 comes from a compromised account or a higly
disaffected administrator, and neither of these possibilities can be headed
off by any level of standards at RfA, however high.

Why, then, has adminship become a big deal? Because in addition to the
purely technical functions of adminship, administrators also have a
political function. Administrators are often compared to janitors, but the
metaphor is highly flawed. Janitors empty the wastebins, but they don't
decide what should go in them. Many of the functions of adminship do not
carry a significant political component: blocking obvious vandals, most
instances of speedy deletion, fixing cut and paste moves, deleting old
userpages, straightforward AfD closures, etc. are simple instances where a
trusted user is needed to perform a technical function.

On the other hand, there are cases were administrator functions become
highly charged and political - in closing controversial AfDs, blocking in
many 3RR situations, and above all, in cases where some sort of intervention
is necessary against well-established users who have engaged in some sort of
unacceptable conduct. In these cases, the role of the administrator is
fraught and ambiguous. He is faced with highly political choices about how
to judge consensus, what course of action to take, etc. It is customary for
relatively new and inexperienced administrators to stay out of these
situations and leave the decision up to an administrator who has more
experience and, for that matter, for political weight within the Wikipedia
system.

The problem, though, is that there is no formal guidance of any kind as to
who should actually make such decisions. From a policy perspective, an
administrator sysopped last week has the same standing as someone with years
of service. More importantly, a long-standing administrator with a
reputation for more questionable judgment has exactly the same standing as a
long-standing administrator with a reputation for impeccable judgement.
There is no drawn by the community, except in the various most informal way,
to separate administrators who should intervene in highly controversial
situations from those who should not.

It is intervention in the highly controversial cases that causes problems
and allegations of abuse. Our concern is, or at least should be, primarily
in who is making highly controversial administrator judgements and on what
basis, not who is carrying out F5 speedy deletions or blocking obvious
vandals. Concern over these highly controversial judgements, because there
is no line separating those administrators who engage in them from those who
do not, is what has driven steadily escalating standards at RfA. We are
less concerned that a newly-appointed admin will prematurely block a vandal
without any warnings tomorrow, than that he will, in 12 months, block a
well-established user for the wrong reasons after a heated debate at ANI.
In other words, the problem is that RfA is being asked to make a judgment
that should not be made at RfA.

What we need, then, is not a wa

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  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 Charles Matthews

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

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

>On 31 May 2010, at 18:21, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
>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

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.

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. Some of these will have 
revealed this in their editing patterns, others will not. Some have 
been vanished editors who returned, knowing now how to behave so as 
to be approved. It's not at all difficult. And then there are others, 
probably the majority of problem admins, who started out with the 
best of intentions, but, quite naturally, developed their own idea of 
what is best for an "encyclopedia." That idea isn't the problem, it 
is when the admin starts using tools to enforce it and control others 
to that *personal* end. Definitely, it's hard to tell this apart from 
"enforcing" consensus. However, one difference is that genuine 
consensus doesn't need personal enforcement. When an admin starts to 
think of himself herself as the lone stopgap against a wave of 
POV-pushing and fancruft, for example, there is a sign that it's not 
consensus being enforced, but a personal view.

If the administrative community were not so ready to circle the 
wagons to defend individual administrators against charges of abuse, 
almost knee-jerk, just because they are administrators, and if 
"sactions" on administrators could be efficiently determined that 
would not toss out the baby with the bathwater, it wouldn't be such a 
problem. How many times has the community effectively told an 
administrator to avoid blocked a certain set of editors or using 
tools in a certain area? ArbComm does it, but that's a high-level 
remedy and unworkable, it should be reserved for cases where there is 
a genuine split in the community.

>  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.

And there are administrators who do this even more effectively. I 
find it difficult to understand how an "editor" or even an 
administrator on the site could make my life "miserable." An admin 
can block me, and that has no power over my "life." Genuine off-wiki 
harassment, sure, but often what has passed for that has been mere 
criticism. To "make the life of an administrator miserable," on-wiki, 
requires visible actions. Why would we assume that this would be 
invisible, but the complaints against the admin would be visible?

One of the problems is that issues get linked, instead of being 
resolved separately, even though separation is possible. Admin A 
blocks editor B abusively. B complains, and then what is considered 
is if B was violating guidelines, not whether or not the block was 
abusive. If editor B was violating behavioral guidelines, B's 
behavior should be examined through normal process for that, and 
blocking is only a temporarily protective measure. An abusive block 
is not an "incorrect" block, it is one that is done in a disruptive 
way, most commonly because the admin is actually involved in a 
dispute with the editor. For one side of a dispute to block the other 
side is disruptive and, indeed, it creates enemies, and sometimes 
causes whole factions to beging fighting. Incorrect blocks can be 
easily fixed. It's abusive blocks that are the problem.

>  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.

Sure. That's true everywhere in life. We expect administrators to 
understand how to use their tools without involvement. If they fail, 
they should be corrected. If they refuse to accept the correction, or 
show that they don't understand it, and are therefore likely to be 
disruptive in their use of tools, then the tools should be removed. 
General wiki principles would make this easy, with escalation to 
broader consideration when conflict persists.

One of the blatant manifestations of the problem is that there are 
administrators who have openly argued against recusal policy, and who 
have defended administrators who clearly violated it, and, even 
worse, who have attacked editors who challenged recusal failure. 
Those are administrators who are violating community consensus and 
ArbComm decisions, which have many times confirmed recusal policy, 
and they cannot be expected to voluntarily abstai

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  wrote:
> On 31 May 2010, at 18:21, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
> 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

2010-05-31 Thread AGK





On 31 May 2010, at 18:21, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax   
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.

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

2010-05-31 Thread Charles Matthews

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

At 10:34 AM 5/31/2010, AGK wrote:
>On 31 May 2010, at 00:39, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
>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

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

2010-05-31 Thread Daniel R. Tobias

On Sun, 30 May 2010 21:49:49 -0400, Abd wrote:

> And I feel that I did. I've watched the community, in a few cases,
> adopt as consensus what I'd proposed to jeers and boos, there is
> some satisfaction in that 

Maybe the initial reaction you get to your proposals, even ones that 
eventually become community consensus, is due in large part to your 
personal style, such as your tendency to overwhelm people with huge 
walls of text, and to be negative in tone to everybody else involved 
in the issues you're discussing?

-- 
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

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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 Charles Matthews

David Gerard wrote:
> On 31 May 2010 13:42, Marc Riddell  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