User:Jaysweet/Why I help out at ANI even though I am not an admin

Hi, if you are reading this you saw that I am helping out at the administrator's noticeboard, even though I am not an admin. I believe what I do is useful, and I will continue to do so unless/until an admin asks me to stop. I created the disclaimer after a user became frustrated that he had filed a report and a non-admin had responded. I think I was helpful in that case anyway, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I now often let people know as soon as I answer an ANI report that I am not an admin, especially if I believe the thread will eventually result in admin intervention.

Here, I attempt to explain why I think this is helpful.

The admins are overworked

Duh. Have you ever filed a report at WP:AIV and seen it languish for ten minutes while the vandal keeps up on their spree? Or requested help with dispute resolution and waited a week without a response? That's because the admins are really busy doing all of these things and dealing with other assorted Wikidrama. If there's anything I can do to offload work from them, I'll do it.

A significant percentage of the problems reported to WP:ANI don't require administrator intervention

I don't have specific numbers to back this up, but I am sure at least 20-30% of the reports on WP:ANI result in one or more parties being warned, and the issue dropped, and that's a conservative number. A lot of these conflicts can be resolved quite easily by just talking it through. If I see a report that would have been better as a Wikiquette alert or otherwise does not seem to require a block or some such at that time, I will pick it up. I will not pretend to deal with a report where a Checkuser is necessary, or immediate blocking is obviously necessary. (At times, I may pick something up, attempt to talk through it, and eventually come to the conclusion that a block is necessary after all, but I do not feel this is wasted work)

Even reports that do require admin intervention don't always include all the necessary information

Even some of the most valid WP:ANI reports sometimes take the form "User:So-and-so is being a big meanie and I don't like it! Make him stop!". Well, that's not exactly admin actionable, is it? Ideally, all of the users bringing reports to WP:ANI would provide diffs to back up their contention, but often they don't. If I see a report like that, I will check the contrib history and/or article(s) in question and see if I can find the relevant diffs. If I don't see them, I will ask the reporting user to provide diffs. It doesn't require an admin to do this. Once the diffs have been exposed, an admin can take it from there.

I'll stop if an admin asks me to

I think what I do is very helpful, but maybe I am wrong. If an admin feels I am doing more harm than good at ANI, I will bow out immediately. So let me know. Thanks, and happy wiki-ing!