Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-30/Op-ed

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• What a good coverage of a very complex and contentious subject. I might add one other factor that exacerbates the "admin shortage" and that is that we seem to be returning to a growth in the editor corps. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:49, 3 October 2015 (UTC).
  
• I read in several RfAs that a user was not trusted with the block button. Someone blocked is not dead, it can be reverted, - where is the danger? Can we lower the requirements - 66% percent support seem still a lot - but demand that for the first 6 months a new admin should not block without consulting a more experienced one? Same for other admin actions: more training on the job. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:50, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

• That seems far too restrictive. If the block is obvious the block needs to be applied. What about vandalism-only accounts or people making legal or personal threats? An admin should never have to ask a second opinion regarding blatantly obvious instances. In addition, blocks are always up for review with {{unblock}}. If a block is contentious there are avenues already set up for review and reversal. --Stabila711 (talk) 22:08, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

• It's a good overview of the situation, but it does not get to the heart of the matter. Lowering the bar will only get us more of the kind of admins the anti-admin brigade (especially the prolific content providers) is always bleating about. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:02, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

  There is no evidence that performance as an admin is related to or predictable from RfA score. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:09, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

  I have addressed your comment via the email thread. Thanks, --Biblioworm 02:24, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• Great that this came out after another month without a new admin voted in. The day we actually fix RfAs would be something else. Don't know how that'll happen, though. GamerPro64 22:06, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

• I still think it's ridiculous that your RfA failed- you run FT, one of the featured processes! What kind of admin process turns down the people who actually run areas of the project?! I know I wouldn't pass if I ran again today- I've made at least one intemperate remark, spend too much time doing editing work instead of faux-admin work, and I can't explain without first looking it up how to do a history merge while simultaneously blocking socks for the exactly correct amount of time. --PresN 02:53, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• I am more concerned about the "requirements" some editors have that have absolutely nothing to do with adminship. For example, people who insist that an admin have good or featured article work under their belt. Does having those things in any way affect an admin's ability to do their job? No. It is a plus for Wikipedia but should never be the deciding factor in an oppose !vote. Then there are those that require an admin to have a particular percentage of Wikipedia/Main/Talk posts. I have seen plenty of oppose !votes because the candidate has "too high a User Talk space percentage." That is nonsense. I could rack up hundreds of those posts in a Wikisession doing anti-vandalism tasks. RfA should never be a numbers game. It should not matter the number of posts to a specific section, but the substance of those posts. --Stabila711 (talk) 22:08, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
• A useless article, as it fails utterly to grasp the extent to which the RfA process has been affected by the difficulty of removing inept or misbehaving admins. Until that problem is addressed, RfA will continue to be a trial by fire. Coretheapple (talk) 23:35, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

  There is no evidence for this either. It's really way past time for the people who think we're drowning in bad admins to do something about their allegations. Pick a few of the supposedly inept or misbehaving admins and drop them a note describing your concerns. If that doesn't help, take it to ANI. If that doesn't help, take it to Arbcom. Show them your slam-dunk case for desysopping and let them prove your hypothesis by not doing it. If the greatest effort anyone is willing to expend on this problem is carping about it in comment threads, that is itself evidence of the seriousness (or not) of the issue. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:09, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Of course there is no evidence. One cannot provide evidence for something that has not happened. But there are strong arguments that if the mechanisms were in place , there might have been a lot more admins desysoped or reprimanded - or the regular bleating plaintiffs sent off with a brightly coloured boomerang for all to see. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:12, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• I will reply once, and only once, to your comment, since I do not wish to get into any sort of prolonged argument. Of course, I expected these sorts of comments; it would have been plain foolish of me to have expected all glowing comments about an op-ed concerning such a controversial topic. However, to address your complaint, I dedicated an entire section to this issue. I will further elaborate on my position. Holding admins accountable is actually possible, if someone is willing to do it. The issue is that people are not willing to do it. First of all, not all instances of incivility and/or tool misuse by an admin requires a desysopping. They can indeed be blocked, either by a single admin using his personal judgement (ideally for very obvious cases) or by community consensus at ANI. There is historical precedent for blocking admins; they are actually at the same level as any other user when it comes to the issue of being held accountable for their on-wiki activities. So, the issue is not that it is impossible; rather, the issue is that some users have an irrational fear of attempting to hold admins accountable. Secondly, if there is a pattern of abuse, there is always ArbCom. If there is good, solid evidence that the admin is misusing the tools, and if you show that you have unsuccessfully attempted to resolve the issue elsewhere, they will very likely at least pay attention to you. Sometimes, in very egregious incidents, they deal with a case by motion; otherwise, they prefer to launch a full case. Off the top of my head, I can think of several cases where ArbCom dealt with a user who was unfit to be an admin. Sometimes, abusive admins are also pressured into resignation or even retirement, so sometimes official action is not even needed. Now, I would prefer a community-based process, so I agree with you on that issue, but even though we don't yet have that it is at any rate possible. And, as Opabinia mentioned above, please feel free to propose a good method by which admins will be desysopped. If the reply is, "all proposals fail", then we get into an endless circle which renders discussion pointless: We need a desysopping system → Without a desysopping system, RfA will be a trial by fire → But we will never get a desysopping system. Therefore, the logical conclusion is the RfA is unfixable and will irreparably and eternally be a trial by fire. In a sentence, the heart of the issue is not the impossibility, but rather the unwillingness of users to take action. I feel that I have addressed your objection to its heart here, so I will not in any way engage myself in a long discussion about this. --Biblioworm 02:23, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• I was stunned to learn that 65 admins were desysopped this year. This is a huge number compared to the number of admins and, especially, the number of active admins. The processes in this area are working just fine. Gamaliel (talk) 02:18, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

The processes are working Gamaliel, but to avoid any misunderstanding I think we ought to clarify that only 5 were actually desysoped for cause. The rest were natural attrition and the majority were absolutely not active. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:56, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• I would like everyone to also realize that this op-ed is far from the end of my efforts to contribute to RfA reform. A new series of discussions (and eventually RfCs) will begin in the order I specified in the last section of the op-ed. --Biblioworm 02:33, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
• While I've only been with Wikipedia since spring of 2014, here are a few ideas that may or may not be helpful additions to this RfA discussion.

• Suggestion: At the March 9, Tip-Of-The Day and (Sept. 9) Becoming an Administrator it mentions three key Admin functions: Deleting, Protecting, Blocking. So could there be created 3 Admin-sub-functions rather than just one Admin with all these rights?

• Suggestion: since Wikipedia already has in place to help new editors the Welcoming committee and Wikipedia:Co-op for mentoring, would it be possible to create similar for Admins? And perhaps a new title such as "Adminstrator-Trainee"?

In the past, I had attended a "Creative Problem-Solving" session where they mentioned that there is no such thing as a dumb or stupid idea. I'm hoping the above are neither and invite discussion of these ideas. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 03:14, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• I agree that expectations at RfA re edit count and content creation have risen sharply over recent years, and as regards at least the first of these are now much too high; expecting FAs is also ridiculous (speaking as someone with almost 150K edits and 15 FAs). One practical measure that it should be possible to agree is for the community to set benchmark levels expected at RfA for these two factors. Rather than opposers just saying "too few edits" they should then be expected to talk in terms of the benchmarks. I know automated edits and other factors complicate these counts, but there are ways to quantify what the overall community expects. I don't really like lowering the pass % much - though I seem to see this is slowly happening anyway. Johnbod (talk) 03:59, 4 October 2015 (UTC)