Wikipedia:Adminship poll/E

Current performance of admins

(Particularly for non-sysops) Do you feel that admins generally are putting their mop and buckets for the overall good of the project, or are they abusing them for some other purpose? Have they been sufficiently accountable to you in their performance?

Admins are doing a good job overall

Of course! ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 20:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The janitorial crew has, for the most part, used its tools well. --Wikiacc (¶) 21:01, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Andre (talk) 05:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like I'm in the minority on this one, but I think the term "overall" allows me to !vote here. A vast majority of admins are doing a good job, and I think that is to be expected due to the difficulty in passing RFA. Useight (talk) 16:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
They are doing well in their capacities, however, administrators should look towards more bold futures. By going that little bit further, we'd solve quite a few more crises. Rudget 16:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Admins are doing a good job, but there are some bad eggs that should be removed

Majorly (talk) 19:59, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good luck doing it though. Mr.Z-man 20:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly good, I just don't think I can quite say that every admin should have the tools. J Milburn (talk) 20:12, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, just as in any group of people. - jc37 20:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
bibliomaniac 1 5 20:48, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there are some admins who are abusing the tools, that is for sure. Unless a proper community procedure for desysopping can be brought into place, the bad eggs will not be removed. On a more positive note, there are many admins who are doing a fantastic job. EJF (talk) 20:51, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Captain panda 20:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly true. I wish it was easier to remove the abusive bad eggs though. Wizardman 20:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Harder? - jc37 21:11, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I meant easier, oops. It can't get any harder. Wizardman 21:17, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
the wub "?!" 21:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Admins who behave outside the norms of community conduct are the primary cause of high standards at RFA. The high standards are a defense mechanism, from the community, to prevent more of these admins. It's schizophrenic to say adminship is no big deal, and simultaneously allow a handful of them to behave as omnipotent wikigods. --JayHenry (talk) 22:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with JayHenry and Wizardman here. There are a few problematic folks, and there needs to be a better, easier and quicker way to deal with them. ArbCom does its best, but it sometimes seems like problems linger for long periods before anything's sorted out. Tony Fox (arf!) 23:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not everyone makes a good administrator; Archtransit has taught us that. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Karistaa Usko)} 23:31, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
SorryGuy Talk 23:37, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As always. Daniel (talk) 02:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Any behavior that would keep you from becoming an admin should keep you from remaining an admin. All admins should be be subject to some form of recall when they are disregarding standards of conduct. ArbCom only deals with the admins that have completely lost their minds.--Father Goose (talk) 02:40, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Per Z-man and JayHenry. sho y 03:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Will almost never happen though. Dorftrottel (canvass) 03:35, April 21, 2008
Losing adminship should be no big deal, as someone nearly said. Johnbod (talk) 03:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The vast majority of admins do good work with few problems. There are, however, a few disastrously bad admins who have done unbelievable amounts of damage to the project over a long period of time. We very badly need to develop a way to deal with these people. Everyking (talk) 09:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Splash - tk 12:12, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll not mention any names, but I have at times seen some hair-raising [unilateral and/or speedy] deletions of what are clearly notable subjects. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Like any other organization. - Mtmelendez ^(Talk) 13:20, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately there's not much of a feedback process once you're an admin. I've tried talking to fellow admins who are deleting or blocking inappropriately, but if they don't respond it doesn't do a lot of good.--Fabrictramp (talk) 15:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If it were easier to lose adminship, granting the bit in the first place would be less of a big deal than it is now. Hopefully, it would also be easier to regain the bit after a fall from grace. (Admins for deletion? Deadmin review?)SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 15:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is not just with admins that are abusive, but with a culture that protects them, and a second culture that cries wolf on abuse far to often. It is not just admins, but other regular users often are allowed to be abusive through this culture. _(1 == 2)^Until 16:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Community giveth, the Community should be able to taketh away as well. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 16:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed a few admins who have passed the RfA, and go on to get into edit wars, and get away with it. iMatthew 20 08 16:30, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most admins do a good job. - Philippe 16:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that most do good, but there may be one or two who shouldn't necessarily removed, but put on the right path. Malinaccier (talk) 01:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nakon 01:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Admins do fine overall, I think. However, as with anything involving people, there are a few that need to be corrected. Singu larity 04:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This one's right. It is, sadly, far too hard to remove bad admins. Stifle (talk) 08:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It is inevitable with appointments for life and no effective means to terminate such appointments that we have a number of frankly appalling admins. DuncanHill (talk) 18:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do think that most (if not all) admins are doing a good job. However, I think that it would be better for admins to have more accountability. For example, what if they had to go through RFA again every 18 months or 2 years or something? Obviously, the second RFA (and subsequent RFAs) would be much more lenient, (i.e. ~65% oppose to de-sysop) but I think it would be good if adminship was more of an election than an appointment. J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 21:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I get a good feeling from most Admins, others I believe are incompetent. Wisdom89 _{(_T / ^C)} 23:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do have to wonder how convergent or divergent everyone's mental list of 'bad eggs' actually would be...Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:57, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, I doubt that one would be allowed a page like User:DuncanHill/List of bad admins. DuncanHill (talk) 08:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously, many are good; some were bullies before promotion and continue to be. There should be a time limit for adminship, with indefinite re-eligibility. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Make it easier to get and remove the admin bit. --Stefan ^talk 11:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unclear to me that we could get a concensus on who the 1/2 dozen bad eggs are, though. Wily D 14:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are definitely some admins who shouldn't be admins. Admins open to recall being voluntary is a bad idea. Even removing their sysop privileges for a week or month would be an improvement over the current situation. --Pixelface (talk) 14:52, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most admins I feel do a good job, but it is certainley been made clear by past events there is a minority that don't. Camaron | Chris (talk) 19:28, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most admins that I've seen so far have been doing their job fairly well, but there are some who seem like they're more interested in destroying things than building things or helping other people to build things. Our primary goal is to build an encyclopedia, not destroy one; the regular activities of admins should reflect that, and while it generally does, there are a few that come to mind that are well-entrenched within the editing community that should probably have their bit removed. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 05:09, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This will probably always be the case. James086^{Talk | Email} 08:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
About 5% of admins definitely need removal. Unfortunately, it's just too hard to do. Arbcom will reluctantly remove an admin that just blatantly crosses a line (for instance, proven abusive sockpuppetry) however these cases are very time-consuming for those that try to build them and it's more likely that the accuser will be vilified than the admin. (We're not good at whistle-blower protection around here.) Our larger problem is with the several dozen abusive admins that are weekly doing shabby, unfair or stupid things no one of which is bad enough to provoke Arbcom to act. They can carry on for years poisoning the community despite multiple admonitions from other editors. We have to have a process for the community at large to deal with these people. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:59, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with A. B. , while admin on wiki-FR, I rewritted totally an article on Wikipedia-EN , and went in opposition with -an admin- who perfectly played with the line of the acceptable, reverting with false but credible edit-summaries, doesn't answered on the article's talk page, didn't read my edit summary but reverted either. I quickly discovered that this admit was in fact the former author of this article, and vissibly didn't accept that his work be rewritted. He softly accused me about 5 times of vandalism (calling for other admin involvment, but making biaised statements without stating that I just wanted rewrite "his" article). The 5 times, I had to explain again the situation. The 5 times, others admins agreed to said that it was no vandalisms, and we (this admin and me) should work together. I was not blocked because I'm a skilled user (admin on both wiki-FR and Commons), and so I knew how the things works. But it's clear for me that this admin is able to out/block/make-mad good-will new users and lead them to become vandal -and so to get blocked- as he want. This kind of admin perfectly know how to play, how to make their opponent become crazy, thanks to my experience : I was able to match him, I was not blocked 5 times.
It stay that this admin is still admin : I hadn't the force to start an Arb. request. Yug 18:52, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 09:00, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A few admins are doing a good job, but most of them are not

Admins are doing some jobs well, others poorly

Admins are doing the easy jobs very well. Blocking people who replace George W. Bush with "PENIS" is at an all-time level of efficiency. Similarly for people who make legal threats or start swearing at others. Admins are not doing the hard jobs well at all. They are not providing the supporting role that is required for the community to move forward on the serious issues which affect Wikipedia as an encyclopedia — nationalist disputes, fringe POV pushing, conflict of interest, etc. Due to the nature of RFA, we chiefly promote people who do not raise eyebrows, and are not willing to facilitate these aspects of the encyclopedia — we are electing janitors who avoid the real messes. Since the adoption of WP:BLP there has not been a serious move by Wikipedia on any of the numerous content issues that Wikipedia faces — even when ArbCom has specifically enjoined the community to do so. Part of this blame falls on admins — by and large, they are unable or unwilling to help the community create methods to address these problems. They prefer to focus on easy problems, such as incivility, instead of working with editors to solve the hard problems. This has to change. --Haemo (talk) 22:15, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I think the community as a whole is at blame here, for not expressing its views on such problems. greater general participation of RfCs and other difficult situations is what's needed. The admins can only enforce what they think to be the view of the community. People can not hope to be listened to if they do not speak up in the first place. DGG (talk) 05:45, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Agree strongly with Haemo. You can't speak up against perceived hard problems unless you're an admin yourself, otherwise you get labelled a "troll," a POV-pusher, and a troublemaker by admins, and get ordered to shut up by admins, ending the discussion and the issue. Many admins seem to prefer making 1000 easy decisions a month instead of one decision that might be controversial, or might actually require a few days of discussing and thinking. This means Wikipedia has steadily increasing amounts of near-useless meta-content (projects, task forces, social groups, categories, etc.) while the encyclopedic content on many controversial issues remains stale, non-neutral, and unverified. Blackworm (talk) 20:51, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with above—AIV blocking is usually done OK, dealing with ArbCom restrictions, or civility of "valuable" users (to take a recent example) isn't. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 01:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Things like CSD & RFPP are handled great. controversial things like AE are handled well enough. But the continual backlog at AFD (partially my fault), and the inability to scale up for things like mass DFUI noms, means we're doing a bad job handling those. MBisanz ^talk 01:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
COuld that be because AFD has become so stressful that people a avoid it because they don' need the aggravation? Dloh cierekim 15:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The number of admins available to perform straightforward houskeeping tasks is at an all-time high. The number of admins willing and competent to mediate or intervene in complex disputes is, proportionately, at an all-time low. I think this is a function of the criteria we use to select admins. MastCell ^Talk 16:21, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We've got plenty of vandal fighting capacity, but few admins willing to step up and counteract the culture of corrupt POV pushing and cronyism that still pervades the project in many areas. krimpet ✽ 17:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Except of conceptually trivial tasks, admin-corps as a whole fails despite a good share of admins are good. There is an institutional problem rather than individually problematic admins. --Irpen 22:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
With the exception of a few, AfD closings rarely have a reason given. The general idea of "If you have a problem with it, then ask on my talk page." is garbage. They are the 'trusted' ones doing the closing, state a reasoning right on the AfD so everyone knows when no consensus is ignored. Exit2DOS2000^•T•C• 08:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Other

"wheel warring" (admins undoing the admin action of another admin without consensus) is really bad, and seems quite rare. But that just means there's an amazing amount of bitching going on. People say "It's okay, we're used to the rough and tumble, so our standards are different, we know each other, we know that sometimes people are stressed." I dunno, that seems like a copout to me. There are some really challenging parts of wiki, and those editors (esp admins) will be under attack. Doesn't that mean that it's more important to (i'm not going to say 'be civil') respect another editors edits, even if that editor is a fuck-headed idiot? unless they're vandalising Dan Beale-Cocks 20:50, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Another point - I'm picking on a few visible admins, the fact that there's like a thousand means that most of them are probably doing good work. Dan Beale-Cocks 20:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Out of the 1000< active admins I can name you perhaps 20 and recognise another 40-50. As DanBealeCocks comments, the other 90% are using the tools sufficiently non-controversially as not to raise questions. However, to answer whether they are using the tools effectively is impossible. (That is not to say that the sysops I am aware of are either poor or great in their button pressing.) LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:40, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is a tough one. Obviously there are some folks who appear on AN/I regularly but it is hard to tell sometimes whether it is because they are abusing admin tools as such or are being difficult. The size and scope of the 'pedia mean that conflicts inevitably will arise. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The level of tolerance toward admin behaviour is inappropriate

The community gets frustrated when a greater allowance for poor civility and mistakes is granted to admins by other admins than is granted by admins to the rest of the community; while the community itself seems to expect a higher standard of behaviour from admins than from the community as a whole. These dual standards, more than the tools themselves, result in a divisive hierarchy. SilkTork *^YES! 23:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Grant individual tools on request rather than grant "admin" status with a baggage of tools

I personally have no interest in blocking other users or in having "admin" status - but I would welcome the ability to protect or unprotect pages, to edit protected pages, to move over an existing page, to view deleted material, etc. In the same way that rollback is now granted on request, other specialist tools should be granted to editors in good standing on request, and the position of "admin" should be abolished as divisive and against the spirit of equal co-operation in a community project. SilkTork *^YES! 23:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree only with protection. Deletion and blocking are big issues(deleting=destroying contribution and blocking=stopping contributions), but protection, protects contribution and is therefore not as big a issue. Z gin der 2008-06-03T15:38Z (UTC)