Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails?

Op-ed

Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails?

Wikipedia Talk:Requests for adminship, once the most lively forum on the project with the exception of ANI, is becalmed. The babble of noise at peak times akin to the background din of a noisy Manchester pub on a Saturday night has dropped not just to a whisper, but to a stony silence. It's become an empty space. Walk through it and you'll make conspicuous footprints in the dust gathering on the floor. Your footfall echoes in the deserted room, "Is there anyone there?" you call halfheartedly before turning round and going back outside into the sunlight. In the street there is also little activity. A kid sits on a doorstep poking vandalism into K-Pop music bios through his cheap Chinese smartphone. A bunch of teenagers sit round their Samsungs seeing who can tag the most new pages in sixty seconds.

The whole place has the feel of a deserted Wild West film set. Across the almost traffic free road, you enter a half open door with a dilapidated sign hanging on one nail: Café Anna it announces in sun-faded coloured letters. Inside the pretty room with many colourful interactive pictures on the wall, there is a stuffed effigy of 'The Founder' in an armchair, but there is no busy bustle in this place either. There's a lady editing an article about a golf complex in Hainan. The article is almost as complete as the complex. She's looks startled when you enter – she obviously wasn't expecting anyone. "Yup, it's kinda quiet here," she says. "April's customers are down to a fifth of the usual month's average."

This month another five admins tacitly lose their tools

Cenarium joined Wikipedia November 2007 and made ~27,700 edits. RfA (42/2/2) 20 June 2008, abruptly stopped editing April 1, 2017
Al Ameer son joined Wikipedia March 2007 and made ~55,000 edits. RfA (85/1/3) March 2009, abruptly stopped editing April 24, 2017
Lupo joined Wikipedia December 2003 and made ~25,310 edits. RfA (17/0/0) August 2004, abruptly stopped editing April 19, 2017
AliveFreeHappy joined Wikipedia December 2003 and made ~20,600 edits. RfA (44/1/2) December 2007, abruptly stopped editing April 27, 2017
MichaelBillington joined Wikipedia March 2006 and made ~18,000 edits. RfA (89/1/1) 24 March 2007, abruptly stopped editing April 25, 2017

These admins were all quite active until they suddenly stopped. None of them placed a retirement notice on their user pages. We hope they are well.

The admin corps have lost 39 members a year on average since 2012 (that's net, counting the 20 created annually via RfA). But as everyone knows, averages are a weak metric and the actual rate of attrition is increasing: down 50 in the last 12 months. The rate of loss greatly exceeds that of replenishment and is steadily getting worse – only 3 new admins this year and we're nearly halfway through 2018. We aren't at the crisis point yet, but at some time in the not too distant future we will be.

We are not alone

In a Signpost special report in 2012, Jan Eissfeldt – now Lead Manager, Wikimedia Foundation – describes some RfA reforms that were made on the German Wikipedia, but that was six years ago. Otherwise noted for its exceptionally dynamic chapter infrastructure, its Administratoren system now also seems to be stuck on a sandbank. In a 2018 12-frame presentation Admins Wnme and SDKmac attempt to explain why the wind has gone out of the sails of the central European sysops:

"Why is admin work so unpopular?" they ask.

There are fewer and fewer users to choose from
Too much responsibility
High pressure
Expectations of the community
Old things are dug up, "mud slinging"
Always exposed to big discussions when controversial – increases fear of doing something wrong when making decisions

Causes of admin decline

More and more admins are stepping back
No more desire
Too stressful
Boring discussions
Focus more on real life
Takes too much time
Inactivity

Solutions

Address and encourage experienced users
Suggestions in recent surveys on the administration system:
Separate voting and commentary phase
Abolish AWW system (Administrator recalls) and introduce recurring admin elections

Conclusion

Even small modifications to the admin election system could defuse mud slinging and encourage more users to vote – initiate RfC?

Does that all sound familiar?

At the English Wikipedia we went through this introspection seven years ago in a massive 2011 research. None of the posited solutions were proposed to the community for debate.

How it all began: In this discussion from Wikipedia Nostalgia on creating a corps of Sysops, although some of the speakers were aware of a need for controls, they were not expecting the English Wikipedia to become what it is today and needing over two thousand admin accounts to be created over the course of time.

Years later in the January 2013 issue of The Signpost, The ed17 produces a very accurate exposure of the situation five years ago.

“

Perennial proposals may sum it up best: "While RfA is our most debated process and nearly everybody seems to think there's something wrong with it, literally years of discussion have yielded no consensus on what exactly is wrong with it, nor on what should be done about that." Reformist editors are therefore swimming against a strong current to even stay afloat, much less find concrete proposals that may garner support. ... Still, even if [the community is] ensuring that only qualified candidates are applying, then there is clear evidence that the number of qualified candidates is falling. The administrator corps is currently in decline through attrition and a lack of new blood. Whether RfA is 'broken' or functional, it seems to not be fulfilling its intended purpose of at least maintaining the number of administrators.

”

However, it is debatable whether the intended purpose of RfA is at least maintaining the number of administrators; the candidates need to be ushered in from somewhere else first. Nothing changed except the slope of attrition got steeper and the mud slinging continued. Following an extremely complex system of low-participation RfCs at Reform Phase II in December 2015 (see screenshot), the number of RfA voters was doubled by allowing additional RfA publicity, and the pass mark was reduced. And still nothing else changed except the slope of attrition got even steeper and the mud slinging still continued.

The most recent serious discussion Planning for a post-admin era begun by Hammersoft on 16 December 2016 about the vanishing of admins and expected qualifications for candidates went on for eight days and ~70,000 bytes, probably because an unusual cluster of five RfAs was taking place in the same month:

“

We need to begin considering how to respond to the coming situation; what to do when we do not have enough administrators. How do we respond to that? What processes do we come up with to fill the gap? What bots could we create that would assist us? Etc.

– Hammersoft^[1]

”

Bearing in mind that we are now reading this in mid 2018, it's interesting to note that he went on to say "...the decline in active admins, overall admins, nominations to RfAs, successful RfAs, and re-sysoppings shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, all factors are arguably getting worse. We may see some dead cat bounces, but given declines showing consistency over these last many years, it seems unlikely to change".

More recently in one of the increasingly rare threads at RfA Talk one user, admin SoWhy, claims "RfA is a discussion, not an election, so disagreements should be discussed. That said, if ten people have already raised the same criticism of a certain !vote, one does have to consider whether they really need to add another response." while the reply from SMcCandlish is almost the antithesis: "Except that it is actually an election, with numeric cut-off points for pass and fail, and even 'crats acting as sort of electoral college for grey-area cases. RfA is both an election and a discussion, and no amount of Wikipedian distaste for vote counting is going to change that." Whoever is right, today's RfAs are generally passed (or failed) on such a large consensus that messing with the math in any section is not going to change anything. The bureaucrats rarely intervene because there's nothing for them to do without taking some flak themselves. As long as they can be fairly sure that their action won't change the outcome, they won't do anything either. And the mud slinging will continue.

Interestingly, Wikipedia's two greatest RfA success stories happened within a few months of each other in the second half of 2017. In 227 edits comprising 133,277 bytes the talk page of the second most successful RfA Megalibrarygirl (Susan Barnum), librarian and mother, saw what has probably been the most lengthy dispute over voter behaviour. At 282 supporting votes against only 3 in the opposition section, the candidate has been accused of incompetency and sexism to an extent that leaves one wondering just how much gender bias or even blatant misogyny is indeed embedded in this male dominated database.^[2] Barnum and her Wikipedia work were featured on Web Junction and in LibraryJournal in March this year.^[3]^[4]

On the most successful RfA of all time, the reluctant candidate who had to almost be dragged kicking and yelling to the process, one of the two opposes was based on the very civility and sensitivity that has made Cullen328 such a well liked editor. Perhaps his user name was an unintended premonition of the number of support votes his RfA would reap. Certainly his nominator's predictions were not wrong. One of the three neutral votes came from a well established user who finally admitted they confused Cullen328 with another editor.

Conclusions

The underlying main cause for the reluctance of candidates of the right calibre to come forward, despite claims of exaggerated demands for tenure and/or experience, appears to be the environment at RfA itself. Some oppose votes are a death’s head at a feast, deliberately spoiling an otherwise immaculate run for the bit. It's borderline vandalism like sauntering down the street and throwing mud at someone's freshly hung out clean washing; the actual rationale for such votes is often contrived. Sometimes they arrive with a totally inappropriate question, and when that doesn't shake the candidate, they think up some other reason to oppose. While a lone vote like that isn't going to make any difference to the outcome, the community has the right to show their distaste of it, but it causes a long discussion on the talk page where passions run high and otherwise constructive byte time is wasted. Due to its tradition of being the one place where our 5th pillar gets struck off its plinth with impunity, RfA sometimes brings out the worst in our best editors.

It has been suggested that the community's fears of 'adminship for life' allowing admins to perpetrate their perceived tyranny forever, is a contributing factor to the exaggerated criteria, but it has also been posited that this aspect is the least thing users have in their minds at the moment of posting their votes. A close examination of the oppose sections of RfAs demonstrates that a large number of the votes are one-off aggrieved users who have correctly been warned or whose work has been correctly reedited by the candidate, or often simply bad faith that causes a "category 5 hurricane in an industrial-sized tea urn".^[5]

Solutions

Sanctions as a solution or even as a deterrent have proven ineffective. Partial T-bans (allowing a vote but no further commenting) have been suggested as a remedy and just two in all the years have been enacted. Punitive? Maybe, it's like being slapped in the face in public: the sting to the pride, especially to that of a prolific FA editor, for example, is far more severe than the sting to the flesh, and the shame lingers longer, but admonished users risk becoming even more irascible towards candidates and other admins even to the point of unprovoked harassment.

Restricting participation to users who meet a minimum threshold for voting, such as the practice on the German Wikipedia, may not help. It may contribute towards more objective voting, but the disingenuous votes and personal attacks seem to come from seasoned editors who seem to be fairly sure of themselves knowing that they can get away with saying anything they like. Clerking by abstaining users; clerking by abstaining admins; clerking by bureaucrats; splitting the RfA page into two distinct sections like the German model, with numerical votes on one page and threaded comments on the talk page only; secret poll every 3 months on the Arbcom model with its 'voter guides' and questions, with all candidates reaching a certain score being accepted. These are all ideas that were discussed in 2011. In fact looking back, it seems as if every imaginable solution was at least mentioned.

Often cited as a remedy: "Fix the voters and RfA will fix itself", Risker, an influential editor and former long-term Arbcom member, indeed states:

“

I'm pretty close to saying it's time to create voter criteria and restrictions rather than candidate criteria.

”

Qualifying her opinion further:

“

I'd suggest that anyone with more than 50% oppose votes should be restrained from voting for a minimum of six months; either they're way too focused on RFA and are jumping in early all the time, or they're operating under wrong assumptions about adminship.^[6]

”

It's a detail that has not hitherto been discussed in depth. "Nobody should have more than 50% opposes" she adds.^[6]

Where it stalls however, is the paradox that where no official entry point exists for admin candidates, one can hardly impose regulations on those who vote. It's a Catch-22 question. The English Wikipedia is the only major language project not to operate such restrictions. But until it happens, the mud slinging will continue...

In comparison with the number of admin actions carried out daily, issues regarding admins actually appear to be rare, but they are significant enough to discourage candidates from coming forward. Leading towards new, positive reforms, maybe another 'dead cat bounce' is needed in the dialogue surrounding RfA and adminship issues.

In next month's issue, we'll be taking a closer look at what the actual work of an admin entails.

Notes

^ WT:RFA, 16 December 2016 (archive 245)
^ Oppose #2, Talk:RfA Megalibrarygirl
^ "Susan Barnum Named Library Journal Mover & Shaker for Librarianship on Wikipedia". Online Computer Library Center, Inc. 28 March 2018. Retrieved 19 May 2018.
^ BJ (12 March 2018). "Susan Barnum: Movers & Shakers 2018 – Advocates". Library Journal.
^ Oppose #3, Talk:RfA Megalibrarygirl
^ ^a ^b Risker, RfA talk 19 December 2016 (archive 245)

Comments are welcome on this article, but concerned users may prefer the dedicated venue. Pull the curtains back, let the light in, remove the dust covers from the furniture, bring your own drinks, packets of crisps and pork pies; or if you're from Germany, Bierpullen, Kartoffelsalat und Salzgurken.

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In this issue

24 May 2018 (all comments)

Op-ed

Discuss this story

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Just a personal opinion, but I'd speculate that there is a real reluctance to apply for Administration for fear of epic failure. Any missteps made early in one's editing career will be brought up again for defense. An editor's contributions might be limited to a few subjects and the consensus might consider that too narrow a niche for access to the Admin tools. And there is the expectation that one will be active on the encyclopedia daily. (A resonable expectation as what is the point of being an Admin if one isn't here to act as such?) It's a conundrum. You need active administrators who understand and respect the power that they have been given. But is the process so onerous that otherwise qualified editors will see no point of putting themselves through the RfA process? Blue Riband► 16:05, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have always imagined that if the situation became severe enough, the tools would be unbundled in much the way as other standalone permissions. This is not a new idea and certainly not without its own problems, but I have always thought it was one of the more realistic changes that would be taken under consideration. One of the biggest issues and something I attribute the increasingly high standards put upon candidates has been the wide range of functions included in the sysop toolkit. The community seemingly requires demonstrate-able expertise from candidates in a vast number of areas to show they can be trusted, despite candidates often expressing an interest in only a few areas or tools. The common argument is that they are given the full tool set and may freely explore other administrative areas at any time. Therefore community has insisted that candidates should be almost over-qualified in all aspects of adminship as a safeguard. Separating the blocking tools from something such as the page protections tools may allow experienced editors to help distribute the workload without requiring those editors also be vetted for tools that require a relatively higher degree of responsibility and care. Mkdw ^talk 16:09, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Throughout the years, we have seen some tools that were originally given exclusively to administrators unbundled and given to other editors: e.g. rollback, file mover, page mover, template editor, edit filter helper, and most recently, event coordinator. There have been many, many unbundling proposals over the years; these were just some of the ones that were successful. As I've read through and participated in these discussions, what I seem to perceive is that there are three fundamental rights that most editors seem to agree belong solely to administrators. They are the ability to (1) delete, (2) protect, and (3) block. These rights seem to be intimately related to each other. An admin sometimes has to weigh these three responses and choose which one (or which combination of the three) is the most effective response to disruptive editing, so by giving a user one right and not the other two, that biases the user to apply the response they are technically able to perform over the most effective response, which the user might not have access to. Mz7 (talk) 21:30, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re: "Address and encourage experienced users": OK, I am an experienced user. "Address and encourage" me. Give me a single reason why I would want to go through the hell that is RfA in order to gain the dubious privilege of doing some of the most disagreeable work I can think of, all for zero pay, zero credit, and pretty much zero thanks. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:10, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Why do I have this feeling that nobody will be willing to try to give me a reason why anyone would ever want to become an admin? --Guy Macon (talk) 18:44, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - I honestly think this is a larger part of the issue then we let on. If you enjoy content creation, sysop tools will not help you and will only distract from that. If you want to do the dirty clean up work around here, then sure, but I imagine plenty of folks, as you intimate, do not. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:42, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'll have a go: you might want the tools for the quotidian ways in which it would make your own editing easier or occasionally enable helping another editor, like dealing promptly with a vandalism-only account or grossly degrading material you come across; checking the text of a deleted entry; handling uncontroversial page moves or house-keeping deletions; adding or decreasing low-level page protections. These are just examples I've had in the last few weeks, so adjust as applicable to your own case, but mainly to say there are some kinds of streamlining it would offer without requiring you to reorient extensively toward mopwork, nor to delve, necessarily, into areas that introduce gross unpleasantness; WP:VOLUNTEER would still apply.

Now, whether those conveniences would be worth running the gauntlet; or, whether RfA voters would even consider a candidate who only wanted to do those things: these are entirely separate questions for which I got nothin. Innisfree987 (talk) 20:55, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It is unreasonable to expect a volunteer admin or editor to put up with any sort of harassment or other form of bullshit, and being an admin and taking admin actions -- no matter how correct -- increases substantially the probability of being harassed. I didn't become an admin to be harassed, nor to become caught in the crossfire of several real life issues or to be subject to stressful situations. Wikipedia is a hobby, not work, and is supposed to be enjoyable. MER-C 17:18, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The unbundling of WP:Page mover (221 holders) and WP:Template editor permissions (167 holders) seems to have worked. WP:Extended confirmed protection is not a tool issue but it does separate out a group of people who are more trusted. Separating protection ability from blocking might be harder. Oftentimes the admin trying to think about an article problem will have both protection and blocking as alternatives. But it's a fact that protections are less controversial than blocks. EdJohnston (talk) 17:44, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I see few reasons to go through the RfA process. I would be happy to do the housekeeping work that sysop tools allow, but the harassing process of RfA isn't worth it. I'll keep tagging things and listing the work needed to be done on the appropriate message board for a sysop to come along later and do. There are many other things I can do on Wikipedia. The benefits of adminship are few (sense of accomplishment? pride?) and the drawbacks are numerous. Natureium (talk) 18:46, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- One possibility would be to separate the tools into two bundles: things that involve controlling the behavior of other users and things we only allow admins to do because they have a large potential for screwing things up. The first bundle requires people skills, the second requires technical skills, and both require a good knowledge of policy (not necessarily the same policies, though). --Guy Macon (talk) 18:54, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - There is a strong reluctance by some sysops to give any tools. I applied for the page mover perm and was turned down. I fulfill all the criteria, I've moved 188 pages with no issues, and I'm a regular at NPP, so I move pages to draft and dr-r2 them, but I was told I have no need. Ok, I guess someone else can deal with that. Not my problem. Natureium (talk) 19:13, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- As noted above, not a new idea, but without getting into whether it's a good idea or not, the immediate sticking point is which tools and into how many bundles. Your second bundle seems sort of like the editinterface idea, or at even template editor. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:51, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would put myself forward but as mentioned above, its just that fear that all your dirty washing from the past is going to be brought up and held against you and not to mention the fact that you could face a wall of "Nos" as a result. In my case, I edit in controversial areas and work a lot on DYK. The thing that holds me back, is thinking that people could bring up stuff from the past to be used against my nomination in the present. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 19:26, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't any new ideas to offer at this time, but I found this thorough overview to be very usefully informative about what needs to be considered. And a pleasurable read to boot. Thank you Kudpung. Innisfree987 (talk) 19:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This op-ed fails because it confuses the rash of successful RfAs back in the wild west days when anyone could become an admin with our present rate for handing out the mop. Wikipedia, as a website, drew a lot of editors back when it was new and there were very few rules. Since then, we've clamped down and admin expectations have risen. Accordingly, the number of admins elected has decreased. I have far more confidence in the admins we elect now compared with those admins still kicking around who were promoted back when it didn't matter. Acting as if 2007 was the good old days probably mis-remember what this site was like back then. Don't ask me, I joined after Wikipedia stopped being a thriving community. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:06, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sceptical that the one or two silly oppose !votes on an otherwise immaculate RfA are really the biggest concern around the process. I think if any of us thought we were going to get a 150/5/5 result when we set out on the journey, we would sit back and feel content, because whatever the 5 said, you can be sure that many of the 150 would have read it and decided it wasn't relevant. So the overall aura of Wikilove remains. It's the seeds of opposition that proceed to grow into full-grown thorn bushes, as we saw at the most recent RfA, that will be of greater concern to prospective candidates. And sadly there's no way to know which way it will fall until you dive in and do it, and then you're in for a full rollercoaster. — Amakuru (talk) 20:59, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- In my mind, it's because it seems more like a political exercise in that you have to convince everyone that you are suitable, while you answer questions for a week about that one time two years ago that you got into a talk page disagreement with a bone-headed editor who insists that someone is the reincarnated Buddha, respond to hypothetical usernames, and have people discuss whether to oppose you they think you are too deletionist. Natureium (talk) 21:42, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - That most recent RFA (GreenMeansGo) was a perfect example of why RFA is broken. GMG would be a fine administrator; he is eminently more sensible, active, civil, and competent than plenty of people who already have the mop. But there's a habit among some admins / experienced editors of pulling the ladder up behind them by digging into a user's history and finding a mis-step they may have made years earlier. And then the lemmings all pile on, because there's this weird attitude that one must be flawless to be an administrator. It's self-defeating and is going to eventually result in us running out of administrators. And many of the worst offenders for petty mud-slinging at RFA are also the worst offenders for complaining about backlogs. Me, I'd drop the pass mark to 50%, and discount any oppose votes that say nothing other than 'per X'. Maybe we need to make a list of all Wikipedians with over 10,000 edits who are not admins, and give all the non-insane ones the permissions without going through "RFA". Fish+Karate 08:54, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    - Or experienced administrators and bureaucrats actually had an issue with some of the views he had on how the site should be run and advocated against it in good faith, even after having originally supported... I don't consider that broken, and for the record, I had been trying to get him to run for RfA for months at that point. I don't want to dredge up the old wounds of that RfA, but no, I think the 75% pass mark and 66% discretionary zone works fine. The number of people who are drive-by supports is far more than that of the drive-by oppose, and it is more difficult socially to oppose anyway, which is part of the reason why a higher passing standard is good. I say this as someone who normally comments '''Support''' not a jerk, has a clue ~~~~ in every RfA where it is a serious candidate. Anyway, to pick up on my comment below, I also think it is a good example of why having good and experienced noms is the most important part of the process currently: it allows 3rd parties to respond to criticism and opposes, which likely would mean GMG would be an admin now if you look at this history of that RfA. TonyBallioni (talk) 11:34, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    - I support Fish+Karate’s proposal. The 75% threshold to autopass leads to candidates having to be “perfect”, and that’s not how RFA should work. — pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 17:08, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve said this before off-wiki, but currently the single most important factor in RfA is the choice of nominators (whether or not this should be the case is another matter.) If that’s the case, which I think it is, I really think that more admins should be approaching users they think should have the tools about RfA. We all have a few in mind. Talk to them about it. People are often hesitant because they don’t know people see it in them. If we have more people talking about it and a larger number of admins willing to recruit and nominate, we’d have more successful RfAs. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:56, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@TonyBallioni: I remain skeptical. I think that's an important factor, but it really comes down much more to whether the candidate has spent the last 1–3 years being very, very nice to everyone, avoiding controversy, and racking up deletion-related and other "adminish" stats. These are the reason RfAs pass or fail, almost all the time. I do agree with you that respected admins should be going out of their way to nominate people (having three+ long-term and uncontroversial admins behind me is the only way I'd ever consider it, even if I wanted to, which I really don't). But you also have to realize that many of us who respond to RfAs do not even read the nominator statements. We get directly into the Q&A section, review the supports and opposes that are not "me too" fluff, and start digging into history ourselves (both to examine critical claims and to get a broader sense of the candidate, not just the snapshots that someone impressed by something or angry about something highlighted for us). We all know that the nominator statements are puff pieces, and are going to tell us why they think the candidate is great while avoiding any hint of what their weaknesses may be. So, it's a two-way street: A candidate is helped immensely by multiple, well-liked nominators, but it's just a "does anyone we trust have trust in this person?" sanity check, the actual content of which doesn't matter much. It's just part of the "who you know matters more than what you know" popularity-contest human politics of the matter. Knowing that, I've sometimes supported self-nominators and opposed candidates with respected nominators because I judge the candidate on their own merits. I'm not alone in this, at all. Many of us want to see demonstration of commitment to the encyclopedic mission, an even keel, and policy competence more than any other factors like who has their back, what their numeric stats are, whether anyone's ever gotten mad at them, whether they've ever screwed up, etc. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:15, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There is an underlying assumption to both this op-ed and to many of the comments in response that I think has not been adequately tested: that lower numbers of admins actually means lower amounts of administrative activity. The desysopped admins listed in the article are actually good examples of those who had constructively abandoned their admin bit before they stopped editing. In some cases, long before. Looking at the logs (and recognizing that there is a small set of admin activities that are not logged), Cenarium last had a burst of deletion activity on New Year's Eve of 2016 and then petered out in February in 2017, two months before they stopped editing altogether. Lupo had all of 13 admin actions logged after October, 2011 and AliveFreeHappy had a mere three since April of that same year. MichaelBillington's admin log is even more sparse, having a grand total of 16 logged actions after April, 2008 which means that his active administrative career was slightly more than a year long. These were not substantive losses to the admin corps since they weren't actually part of addressing problems that only admins can address. In the meantime, do we have good evidence is there that admin work is going undone? For example, while the "[X] Noticeboard is backlogged" messages on AN are a long-standing issue, does anyone have any statistics that they gotten more frequent? I think what is happening with the losses is that a group of non-contributory hat-collectors that got the admin bit back ten or so years ago, mainly in poorly-attended RfA's that read like high-school student council elections, are dropping out. Is that a bad thing? I'd say no, and that there are a few more from those time who, as Chris troutman says above, "...were promoted back when it didn't matter." We shouldn't confuse their loss with a loss in the functionality of the administrative corps. It takes something more than raw numbers of admins to demonstrate the latter. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:18, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The 2015 reforms may not have been a complete and final solution, nor were they intended as such. However, after years of discussion, it was the first time ever that editors agreed on any concrete changes to RfA. I will always take some pride in at least making it that far. There was no doubt that much work remained, though. It's fine to look back and point out what hasn't been successful, but the hard part is coming up with actual ideas that will work. And it seems as though everyone has run out of real ideas.

I think me and Kudpung agreed in principle on most things, although we often differed with respect to method. (My tendency is to take a very bold approach to reform, in contrast to his seemingly more gradual approach. I'm afraid that has led to several unfortunate and regrettable misunderstandings.) I especially supported the idea of separate clerks, but every comprehensive clerking proposal has been rejected. I remember someone, maybe Montanabw, suggesting restrictions on the length of vote rationales. I didn't comment, but I, as well as Kudpung, thought it was a good idea. Perhaps someone could take that up.

Personally, I decided a couple of years ago that I would not spend any more of my time here proposing RfA reforms, and I haven't said much since then. I'm satisfied in the sense that I at least passed something for the first time. I did the very best I could. But again, those reforms were not perfect. If anyone can propose something better and get it through an RfC, that would be great. I would vote for it. But actually passing something (anything, for that matter) is incredibly difficult, to say the least. I applaud anyone who is willing to take up that challenge anew. Good luck. Biblio (talk) 00:14, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder how much the slide in admins is also reflected in the slide with the number of active editors. The preparation to negotiate the RfA process drives the contributor beyond their peak contribution point, when we need to capture people on the incline of their contributions. What we need to come back to is the little thought of policy WP:AGF, RfA is trying too hard to distil the prefect sysop from imperfect people. Gnan garra 00:44, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My default attitude is that an admin is dishonest and/or corrupt. An individual admin has to prove themselves to be otherwise. So maybe their reputation is so slimy that it's hard to recruit any more. Tony (talk) 02:06, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I continue to believe that the apparent lack of new admins is a symptom of both the decrease in new editors and unrealistic expectations from the glut of 2007-era admins. Also, I don't particularly see admin backlogs as being significantly worse than devolved-permission backlogs. If anybody strongly disagrees, they're free to nominate me at RfA (though I'd prefer to wait until Government is a GA before running the gauntlet again). power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:47, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @Power~enwiki: I'd be happy to nominate you if you want someone to do so. Why 6 months of extreme competence on Wikipedia is deemed 'insufficient' to become an admin I'll never know. The average person passes their driving test after 45 hours of lessons. One can train to become a helicopter pilot in 6-8 weeks. You can become a certified PADI scuba instructor in 6 months You fuck up while doing any of those and people die. Whereas if an admin fucks up, they can't really break anything anyway, it's all undoable, and their permissions can just be removed. The attitude amongst Wikipedians that having sysop permissions is a big deal is straight-up narcissism. Fish+Karate 09:07, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the offer; unless it's likely to pass and will help to prove a point, I'd rather wait until September when I expect to have more time for the project. power~enwiki (π, ν) 16:27, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

First, let me express my appreciation for those who are keeping the Signpost alive. While action at RfA has slowed down considerably (again), I thought I'd point out that if there has only been a dead cat bounce in the number of active admins, it has been quite a long bounce. Per Wikipedia:List of administrators, there hasn't been much motion on that front in a while:
- 11:15, May 24, 2018‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,428 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)
- 11:15, March 13, 2018‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,428 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)
- 11:17, December 24, 2017‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,428 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)
- 11:18, October 25, 2017‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,428 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)
- 11:19, July 14, 2017‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,419 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)
- 11:18, May 22, 2017‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,419 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)
- 11:18, December 26, 2016‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,421 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)
- 11:18, October 6, 2016‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,421 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)
- 11:19, June 16, 2016‎ Rick Bot (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (4,446 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Daily update, 536 active admins) (undo)

So it doesn't seem to me that there is any particular crisis at this point, even as the total number of admins is still in decline. Dekimasuよ! 05:13, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

~~I think there's something wrong with Rick Bot's edit summary if you look at the actual chart. Mkdw ^talk 15:30, 25 May 2018 (UTC)~~[reply]

The chart (posted above) from User:Widefox/editors tells a fuller story. The green solid line "active admins", is probably the one to be concerned about. I remembered this from the last discussion we had, in the responses to Signpost 2018-02-20 News and notes. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:49, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I was looking at Wikipedia:List of administrators/stat table but I realize Rick Bot does a daily count. Mkdw ^talk 16:25, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The graph tells a different story, as a result of its extended timeframe. Things might seem much different if the data was based on the period 2014–present or 2015–present, say. This would also seem to be a reasonable timeframe; we can't expect any year to look like 2007 again. Based upon the monthly averages at the link given by Mkdw, we've been between 523 and 613 every month since April 2014. I have my doubts that we will be below 500 at the end of this year, as would be expected by the graph. Dekimasuよ! 19:20, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Wikipedia might like to rethink its approach to the administrator model. Becoming an administrator seems to dump a lot of responsibility and process on an individual at once. Why not create administrators over time using the rbac process? For instance, editors may identify vandals very quickly and sometimes it is frustrating to report such activity and wait, sometimes hours, for it to be dealt with. Maybe have a look at those reporting vandalism, their statistical success (based on resulting blocks) and invite the 'high performers' to be provided with initially limited block capability. For example, block only obvious vandalism and time-limited to four hours. Such 'sub-admins' would, I expect, take their responsibility seriously. As competence builds then add to the users 'admin' capability. Over time these users build their skills and, if they desire, become full admins. The learning process with new responsibilities creates engagement for the user and the management of the process by admins gets away from what seems to me mostly negativity that admins typically get involved in, and I would guess, causes many to walk. Before I started on this I though someone would come back and say, 'yeah, we already do that, admins don't just drop out of the sky", however reading through documentation around admin provisioning and responsibility this does not appear to be the case. My 5c worth. Neils51 (talk) 13:52, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
IMO there are two reasons we are short of admins. The first is the RfA process itself. There is no way it is ever going to be repaired. It needs abolishing and replaced with something entirely different. I am not surprised people don't want to go through it. It is like the worst job interview of your life. I have been through some terrifying job applications with large numbers of people on the panel, but never anything like Wikipedia's RfA where the entire "factory" can turn up, ask random questions, and oppose you for trivial or entirely irrelevant reasons. It's more like the election of a political position than an appointment to a functional role. We should appoint admins through a small board of trusted editors in a rather less grand, and rather more friendly atmosphere. Sure, that board can be appointed through a "political" process for a limited tenure with the whole community taking part, but once appointed just let them get on with the job until the next election.
The second reason is that admins have exactly zero authority to settle content disputes. Nor is there any process on Wikipedia that can authoritatively settle content disputes that an admin can shovel them to. It is soul destroying as an admin to watch these disputes in progress knowing that any action has to be to warn all parties or block all parties no matter how dumb or biased one side is being. Again, I think the solution is a small group of trusted editors; an editorial board. They should certainly be given control of the MOS which has become a toxic minefield for outside editors and a place where no real change or improvement can now ever take place.
Now I know both these ideas will be shot down for giving too much power to a small group, and every small time editor here wants to jelously guard their perceived rights. But hey, you can always vote them out next year. And that's how it's done (not the voting) in every journal in the world, in every encyclopaedia, in every newspaper. If you want something done, you have to give someone the authority to go do it. SpinningSpark 23:29, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- We elect the Arbitration Committee; why not elect a New Administrators Committee? (Members would already have to be an admin, of course.) The committee would accept nominations, and do a preliminary screening; candidates who passed that screening would then go through an "open comments" process, concluding with a committee vote. The open comments process would allow only substantive comments - that, is, comments which point to specific actions taken by the candidate that the commentator considers problematical; rebuttal would be allowed but not "I agree" or "Horrible" or "Not a big deal" or similar comments that don't add value. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:34, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - except for focusing on problematical issue, it sound like a workable concept. why not start building a proposal. Gnangarra 02:56, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    - It never hurts to propose something new, but please be aware that there have been hundreds of previous proposals, all of which demonstrated the following: [A] Pretty much everyone agrees that the current system has problems. [B] no individual proposal for a solution, ever, has managed to get even 10% support. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:34, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Probably wouldn't float. Detractors would argue that it would put too much more power in the hands of admins. As one commentator on this page stated: "My default attitude is that an admin is dishonest and/or corrupt. An individual admin has to prove themselves to be otherwise. So maybe their reputation is so slimy that it's hard to recruit any more." So quis custodiet ipsos custodes? That said, there's no harm in trying, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Design your project in every minute detail, launch your RfC.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:53, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it would float, either. One of the problems that has been alluded to is the poor reputation that some admins have with non-admins. I doubt that having a committee responsible for admin promotion which consisted solely of admins would be acceptable to many non-admins. --RexxS (talk) 00:31, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

if its an election process like that of ARBCOM then it may not need only admins providing the group was sufficiently large enough and the process clearly defined including those action which with xx period of time & xxxx number of edits immediately exclude someone. The big thing will be clearly defining the characteristics we want from admins, and where the committee has discretion to make judgement calls. It'll be a rocky start but once its running smoothly we could also look at the removal of tools from those not using them, with the bonus of there being somewhere to go should an admin go off the rails. Honestly not everyone is going to agree with and most admins get a "bad reputation" because they doing what is expected from them Gnan garra 23:36, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I will remain unconvinced that declining admin numbers are prima facie harmful until there is more proof of trending hardship in vital admin areas. WP and its emphasis on consensus, despite its best detractors, is a hostile environment for ostentatious process, so let technology and necessity further automate and consolidate admin processes. Let time cull the inflated admin numbers of dubious worth from the late 00s. The above statements of Chris Troutman, Eggishorn, Power on quality since 2007 are on point and I've seen similar arguments for article quality: Instead of looking at the late 00s as ideal or shooting for that type of boom/bust growth, it is healthier (and better suited for enwp) to establish whether admin necessity matches our admin carrying capacity. How is +20 solid admins a year unhealthy? Look, I get the perennial hand-wringing about the "pain" of RfA, which I myself went through before the last set of reform, but in the time since, I can't help but see positions such as the author's as another plank in the grand narrative of the "decline of Wikipedia", that numbers declining from a period of spiked growth somehow indicate some vague, insidious fear that outweighs the fact that years later we uphold better quality standards by having tossed much of the junk written during the boom. So it is with admins. Let's discuss and improve the necessary areas that suffer for participation. RfA will remain intense because Wikipedia is important and some editors love a stage. RfA is our greatest sanity check on our direction as an encyclopedia in the absence of token thought leadership, and so RfA has an obligation to criticality. I think our reform discussions have borne this out, addressing more the sting of standing trial by one's peers than demanding some overhaul of its entirety. Praise be to the editors who coach others through the fires, as I can hardly think of a better reform for RfA than open solidarity with fellow editors. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 13:41, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hear, hear. This is it in a nutshell: "admin numbers are[n't] prima facie harmful until there is more proof of trending hardship in vital admin areas ... so let technology and necessity further automate and consolidate admin processes" (i.e., maintenance processes, not admin-selection ones). Between better tools, and having no choice but to unbundle that which really isn't going to make the sky fall if non-admins do it, WP will be just fine. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:32, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that admin numbers dropping necessarily means that things won't be done. Sure sometimes (when the Americans are asleep) AIV is a bit slow, but they still get it done. Personally I'm not against the idea of more admins, but to say that this is a catastrophe is a bit over the top. Furthermore, the feeling that I get from RfA a number of times is that users tend to take criticism of others whether it be constructive or not as things that they need to work on, when they frequently don't. Other issues that I found including personal bias against a particular editor, or ad hominem attacks with no real basis. In my opinion there should be a "trial" period for new admins, or people who have made mistakes in the past but is still a suitable candidate, such as in the case of GMG, where despite having 169 votes in support he withdrew after being pointed out that he is a "deletionist" and having supported editors who has no real merit to be supported. In this case he could've been accepted into adminship on a trial period, where he could demonstrate his understanding of admin tools, and how to solve problems, without being criticised to the point that he withdrew. Dark-World25 (talk) 01:14, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
With the advent of advanced machine learning methods and cheap computing power, the future solution is to automate admin tasks. Successfully reforming RfA is a temporary solution. It may get some more editors to run, but there are only so many editors until there are no more admins to appoint. As the amount of content on Wikipedia grows rapidly, there will always be a growing backlog.

Editors have very high expectations for automated tasks, and thus feel uncomfortable with a seemingly complex task being automated. However, a bot does not have to be perfect. It just has to be equal to or better than manually doing the task. For example, ClueBot reverts about half of all vandalism while only wrongly reverting less than half of one percent of non-vandalistic edits. This is despite it using a relatively simple machine learning algorithm compared to the algorithms that exist today (i.e., Bayesian classifiers and primitive neural networks). A bot that uses the state-of-the-art machine learning methods can achieve great accuracy in tasks more complex than vandalism reversion, like detecting articles that meet CSD criteria. In addition, these algorithms generate a confidence level in their decisions, so the edge cases can just be delegated to admins for manual review. Esquivalience (talk) 01:23, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

- there are only so many editors until there are no more admins to appoint Are you saying at some point every editor will be an admin? I don't think there's any danger of that happening. Natureium (talk) 01:27, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, in order for there to be new admins there has to be editors, and only a small number of those editors would make suitable admins, and a smaller number who wants to be admin. Improving RfA may get a few more to run, but eventually all those who want to run will have run and we are back to where we started. Esquivalience (talk) 01:30, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You are putting a lot of faith in our collective ability to pull off several AI projects. So far the track record ain't great. Color me skeptical, not because I think the technology isn't up to it (I do), but the surrounding organization, management, funding, etc. Not to mention another uphill battle against commmunity inertia just to get such a beast authorized to run. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:31, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Heya Bri, have you been keeping up with the progress of ORES? Here's a demo from the recent hackathon where machine learning can offer suggestions for something like category suggestions with a "topic" model as an example. Other models can be added and made available to ORES consumers (tools, editors, etc). The code is on-wiki if you want to play with it. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:24, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I have only peripherally been involved with ORES -- some folks were looking for tagged training datasets for conflicted/paid editing, which I helped with. Thanks for bringing the phabricator item to my attention. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:01, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The reason for the ongoing administrative attrition is pretty simple, albeit convoluted. We see a steady upward creep of "minimum" standards — from the NOBIGDEAL of days of yore we have devolved into a REALLYBIGDEAL world, in which you might as well forget it unless you've been around three years and amassed 50K edits without ever losing your temper and going off on anyone while authoring multiple Feature Articles™® and being willing to play 20 questions with any trivia quizmaster that comes along (not to forget the need to score 100%+++ in the game) all the while having your entire edit history picked apart. Guess what: there aren't many people willing and able to endure being buried beneath a twenty foot high wall of pyroclastic dogshit for a week to gain the luxurious ability to perform unpaid site maintenance for a multimillion dollar corporation while gaining the enmity of anyone whose wikipedia ox has ever been gored...

Nothing is going to be fixed until the crisis comes, and as long as there are a few hundred more or less serious administrators to get the work done, the crisis isn't yet arrived. But it is coming, make no mistake. Then we will see some combination of (a) a serious discussion about loosening standards; (b) WMF taking over more and more administrative duties with paid staff.

The best idea in this thread is that there should be an elected "Administrative Committee" to co-opt qualified candidates, thereby foregoing the wretched, overdramatic, gotcha quiz of overqualified candidates that continues to put up failing grades, year after year. You administrators are yourselves the cause of the lack of administrators. You and your exclusive club... When there's actually a shortage of administrators and you're ready to get serious about actually fixing the problem, let us know. Carrite (talk) 02:29, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some years back I opined that the RFA process had finally collapsed into itself like a neutron star, and so it has come pass. I am not terrible surprised to find that the process is dying. Its for me indicative of a greater sense of loss of community. We turned the english wikipedia into a gated community years ago because all the isp editors creating articles, and as i predicted back then its killing us. You need to foster curiosity if you are going to bring the next generation into the fold, not snuff it out, yet that's what we've done here time after time. If we all agree that RFA is a broken process that it should be shut down so we can get some damned traction in the evolutionary development of the system, but since thats a good idea it'll never happen. We could unbundle the tools, or set voter minimum standards - we could even automate parts of the process, but again these are good ideas and therefore will never come to pass. I've been an editor for 14 years, and an admin for not quite 10 years. Back in the day when adminship was no big deal people nominated other people and flocks use to post messages on there talk pages and projects use to bolster the odds by notifying there members with a simple message on the project talk pages. Now its all gone because everyone gave up on it. The only notices anyone gets now are those on watchlists, if you use a watchlist, and those tell you nothing of value. Back int he day we had editors you use to watch other editors work through backlogs and participate in discussions and they would encourage you to try if they thought you had it in you to be an admin - notably, I've been on here long enough to remember when Balloonman and his guidance accounted for something like half the admins that came out in a month. Now, no one encourages anyone to take on the process because its grown into one massive logical bomb - a circus a freaks and there absurd questions. I remember a time when admins worked with the community and were thanked by those who contributed, and now its a never ending cycle of whining and complaining that we generally put up with from disgruntled and vengeful editors who give us no chance to teach, only to only to enforce. There was a time here when the community use to guide and nurture editors, to encourage them at RFA in meaningful ways - I even have proof that it happened once :) But in the here and the now we are so far past caring that even these interesting moments aren't looked at fondled, they're looked at as mistakes we made to get to where we are. Now all editors see is over burdened and battle wear admins who do a thankless job. Do you know that in the nearly 10 years I've been an admin I've never gotten an admin's barnstar? Its part of the problem too: admins get no love. Its also true that some of us are likely clueless about all the tools and gadgets we have at our disposal? I've no idea how to do rangeblocks, and I couldn't tell you the difference between protection levels for extended confirmed and flagged and so forth so I simply don't use them. There's no place for us to live fire our equipment, and no academy courses for what you've going to get or have already gotten if you admin. Honestly, while this makes a good topic of conversation its not really news since this has been ongoing for years and we've all just decided to ignore it or do nothing about it. Apathy for the win, I guess, but when the time comes that changes is needed it will not start with us, it'll be forced onto us because that's the only way anything at RFA is going to be fixed - assuming you can fix it, for which I have learned the hard way that it can not be done. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:11, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I once suggested to thank admins for admin actions like protections etc; this was taken by a group of editors against me to prove I am not fit to be admin. (One editor said this is childish, and another one would ping me any time there was a backlog anywhere claiming that I like clearing backlogs).--Ymblanter (talk) 19:01, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ymblanter:, @Ymblanter:, @Ymblanter:, @Ymblanter:, there is a backlog at WP:RM, WP:AIV, CAT:RFU, CAT:CSD, and CAT:RD1. But anyway, that's silly. Recognizing people for the work they does not mean they are only doing the work in hopes of recognition. Natureium (talk) 19:15, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is of course now possible (for protections and deletions, not blocks). ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:40, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For most of the blocks an admin has to leave the block message, and one can thank the admin for this edit. But I indeed specifically had in mind backlogs such as RFPP and XfD where one can thank an admin directly.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:50, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am really glad that someone else finally pointed out what I've been thinking for years (namely that WT:RFA seems all but completely moribund nowadays, which is weird, since you'd expect there to be much more discussion happening there). Every morning (there's a halo...) 00:56, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Some stuff I've said before in various prior discussions, gathered all into one list:
1. Adminship decline is part of editorial decline; you can't have more people wanting to be admins where there're way fewer people in the first place. This is not a disaster or a sign that WP is failing. It's a natural part of the organizational life-cycle, and of the life-cycle of any project with clear and reachable milestones. Most of WP's work is already done. That is, we already have millions of articles on key encyclopedic topics. In 2004, we did not, and getting to this point seemed both barely possible and an exciting challenge. WP was "sexy" (especially to the nerdy SlashDot crowd who formed the bulk of the earlier editorship). Now, it's just rote work, and of a much more diverse nature (all the nerdy topics already have articles, often way too many of them that we have to keep deleting or merging). The work today is filling in small gaps (an article missing for WP:Systemic bias reasons; fleshing out stub pages into proper articles; polishing the chrome on GA or A-class articles into FAs; or adding new topics that only became notable this month). Compared to the kind and level of work that needed to be done a decade ago, it's skeleton-crew stuff. We presently are approaching a skeleton crew in both editorial and admin levels, and yet the project is just fine. We're better trusted as a resource today than we were 3 years go, when we had more public buy-in than we did 3 years before that, and so on.
2. Unbundle, unbundle, unbundle. Every single time we've unbundled an admin tool, nay-sayers have prophesied doom and howled like rabid wolves that it's going to be a disaster, yet nothing bad has come of it at all, the editorial community has become more (and more broadly) competent and getting tedious work done, and it's being done better because more people are doing it incrementally instead of a few diehards trying to do it all and burning out. The stark, obvious answer to "what if we don't have enough admins by 2020?" is (duh!) offload the work to the whole editorial pool who are willing and competent to get it done. Same as in any organization or project. There really is no other solution. The entirety of human history tells us this. E.g., if your army needs a road, the army builds the road; the soldiers don't get to whine that they only signed on for spear-wielding, and plenty of them will find they prefer digging and moving some rocks around than having arrows shot at them anyway.
3. Only one bit of adminship is really all that serious, and better handled by the community than individuals. The three main areas most of us still seem to think require nearly super-human levels of trust – blocking or otherwise restricting editors, protecting pages, and deleting pages – are not at all as intimately related as some suggest above. While, yes, an admin may be faced with the choice to crack some disruptive skulls, lock a page down until both sides STFU, or remove something that's an unencyclopedic drama factory that should never have been here in the first place, that says nothing about the trust level required for any of those things on their own. There is no reason at all that any competent, experienced editor shouldn't be able to temporarily protect any page at which they don't have a WP:INVOLVED problem. Spin that tool out into a page-protector bit, with permissions requirements and a revocation procedure just like all the other spun-off tools, and all will be well. For deletion, we have quite strict and very well-established procedures. All admin candidates are expected to have mastered them before becoming admins. Ergo, logically it is not and cannot really be an admin-level matter, but a particular and narrow form of competency, comparable to template-editor and page-mover. Exercising that power doesn't even have serious consequences; any admin (and in this model any page-deleter bitholder) can undelete a page. The only odd one out is the banhammer. The obvious solution here – especially given what a total F'ing shitshow that discretionary sanctions have been, just an abject failure on every level – is to formalize disciplinary matters more. One simple way to do this: divide WP:AN/I up in some manner (not by subject area but by issue type, probably), merge WP:AN and WP:AE into it, and have no sanctions issue without community approval. Adminship is such a minefield because we're issuing them wikiguns and license to wikikill, with virtually no community oversight, then hanging the admins if we don't quite agree with whose head they blow off and why. It's stupid and we all know it.
4. No more lifetime adminship. Make it a 1-year or 3-year or whatever term, with a reconfirmation RfA, which would just be a show of confidence in most cases unless the admin in question had been a real loose cannon. This would much more expediently and fairly deal with problem admins. Our present situation is that "badmins" cannot be dealt with at all until they get so bad (often not realizing they're being bad) until it goes to WP:RFARB. This is because WP:ARBCOM is the only body that can desysop at present, and what has to be presented in that venue is an all-or-nothing case: either have a pile of ironclad proof of abject wrongdoing (and spin it very carefully to demonize the admin under scrutiny without seeming to be demonizing), else absolutely nothing will happen to restrain the admin being questioned, even if everyone knows that something needs to be done. This is like having a legal system where you're either innocent, or you get the death penalty no matter what the crime was. It does not work. The workable solution is for desysopping to be no big deal, since that's why adminship has become a big deal and re-adminship nearly impossible. Just defuse it all. If someone can be removed from adminship for a year on the basis of a general community sense that they're doing a shite job, then it'll also be no big deal for them to get the tools back later after showing they've resolved the issue(s) raised.

I could add a few more points, but these are the key ones. If admins have less to do in that supra-editorial role, because stuff that's not really dangerous is delegated to a broader range of competent editors, and we no longer expect admins to be godlike in their unimpeachability, yet being impeached for screwing up only has temporary consequences anyway, then it literally will not be possible for there to be a crisis of too few admins.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:59, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I can get behind these proposals and would be curious to hear counterarguments czar 00:23, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I hate unbundling because all of these people should just be admins in my strange ol' perfect world. With only a couple of exceptions, every single template editor, page mover, etc should just be an admin - and probably would be if they joined Wikipedia a few years earlier. But you're completely correct when you identify "block" as the big stopper here. I'd be fine with unbundling everything but block-related permissions from adminship, and giving them out based on the PERM process. Because you're right - while there is a lot of overlap over using block/protect/delete (especially around counter-vandalism), they do have separate uses. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 00:32, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. It's a toolbox. It takes training to use a tablesaw safely. It takes no training, just common sense, to use a hacksaw safely. Treating the tools as exactly equivalent and both requiring the same competence before someone can pick them up is a mistake, and is still a mistake when one says "Well, a professional carpenter often has to choose which tool to use while on the job." The fact that such a choice is made in that particular context is irrelevant to the underlying tool safety question. That logic problem is what led me to post about this again here. Moving on to your actual points instead of recapitulating mine: I'd agree that generally people with advanced bits should just be made admins after some amount of time if no issues have raised about their tool use. Hell, we'd probably have no backlogs if this were the case. But WMF insists that there's a legal reason they have RfA and that it's can't be automatic. They say that WMF's liability would shoot up if the site weren't administered by people who've been through a non-trivial vetting process. IANAL, but I'm not sure I buy this. I think the same legal shield could be in place already, because any administrative decisions can be overruled by ArbCom, and that body is directly elected with even more scrutiny than admins. At any rate, there's likely a middle ground, e.g. a confirmation mini-RfA, that would work. "I hate unbundling because all of these people should just be admins" is kind of spiting one's own face, though. We have to do what we have to do to get the job done. If the old process is damaged, work around it. I hate that I have to take a bus to get to the grocery store, but I won't starve myself in protest, I'll buy the bus ticket. >;-) PS: I agree with your "a couple of exceptions" caveat; there are some (probably under a dozen) people with the page-mover bit who should not have it because of a demonstrable track-record of WP:SYSTEMGAMING at WP:RM, but they got the bit before the requirements and scrutiny level were tightened. That sort of thing is another reason to have some kind of confirmation process rather than a literally automatic sysopping. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:55, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WMF requires a "community selection process" for access to view deleted revisions. No such requirement exists for the actual delete/protect/block permissions. So we could either have a "deleter" group without the ability to view deleted revisions, or require requests to stay open for a few days of public comment. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 03:36, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, yes. Either of those could work, or just create another community selection process for a combined deleter-undeleter bit. WP:PERM processes really already are a community selection process, just less dramatic and awful ones than RfA is. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:31, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't the sanctum sanctorum of unbundled privileges referred to by Ajraddatz – viewing deleted revisions – actually be undeleting, not deleting? ☆ Bri (talk) 05:58, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From a legal perspective (or at least the WMF's legal perspective) yes, but from a community perspective I think blocking is the big one. Blocks have the most potential to cause drama out of those three groups of permissions, especially when used against established users rather than vandalism-only accounts and IPs. As an aside, compared to the other two protection looks to be so benign that I'm surprised it hasn't been unbundled already. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 14:51, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. With some clear ground rules, and after a few removals of the permission from people who don't follow them, it would do a tremendous amount to reduce stupid, time-sucking drama at this site: any uninvolved, competent, long-term editor could temporarily shut down an obvious editwar, and that would more often than not be sufficient time for the squabblers to come to their senses (if they don't, we have ANI and ANEW). This should at least be enabled for mainspace. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:49, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Having terms of service would be a hassle because we'd constantly be electing admins. There are a thousand of them for goodness sake. I favor the tactic of lower the requirements of desysoping. If an admin isn't abiding by the community standards, it shouldn't require an act of ~~God~~ ArbCom to remove the permissions. Making desysopping no big deal is the most obvious way I can see to make adminship return to being no big deal. This is not a tenured professorship where we are awarding trusted users freedom to be as crazy as they want once they pass muster. Admins shouldn't be able to go around edit warring and accusing people of being KGB members just because they were seen as competent years ago.

There's a currently running RfA, and some of the oppose votes give the reason that he wants the tools for one project and there's no way to ensure he steps down at the end. While I don't really see the point (if he's not causing disruptions with admin tools, why should he need to give them back because he no longer is working with portals?), I think the ability to remove tools if a new admin proves to be a bad choice would make community members less hesitant to confirm admins. Other perms come with the condition that they'll be revoked if misused, so why should sysop perms be any different? Natureium (talk) 21:20, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have to disagree with the base premise for multiple reasons. The general community impression and complaint is that RfA used to be an always-on process of community engagement and decisionmaking about it's "leadership" to use a not entirely applicable word, while now RfA is charactered as a "ghost town" and on the verge of just being abandoned. Can't have it both ways. Either we want it vibrant again, or we want it tagged {{Historical}} and shut down. The consensus clearly leans strongly toward the former. Second, reconfirmation RfAs would probably be considered to pass at a lower threshold (e.g. >50%). Third, the other hue and cry about admins is that there's an increasing caste-like disconnect between the "admin class" and "everyday editors". The only way to fix that is for more (percentage-wise) of editors to become admins, and admins who do not represent community expectations to get removed. I don't see any other way to get there but non-forever adminship plus a review process, since it would defuse adminship "seriousness" drama and make the reviews actually happen. PS: I haven't seen a single person make the "no way to ensure he steps down at the end" argument you've suggested; rather, the concern is "no way to ensure he does anything useful with the tools after the end" of that cleanup run, plus questions of whether the candidate is actually experienced or interested enough to try. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:15, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose -- However, I would move to Support if he pledges to resign adminship when he finishes the project. –User:DonFB. I think that's the specific phrase I was remembering. Natureium (talk) 14:10, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We've taken unbundling of the more minor administrative tasks about as far as it can go. Page-mover is a kludge because most of the time round-robin moves are inferior to moving the traditional way, and leave unnecessary clutter in the logs. Non-admin closes seem to be growing more and more common; these trends all deprecate the need and respect for administrators. Take this trend to its logical conclusion by unbundling page protection and then administrators won't really be administrators any more. "Only one bit of adminship is really all that serious, and better handled by the community than individuals." So then the answer is to unbundle the elephant from the administrator's toolkit. There is no real need for administrators to unilaterally impose long-term blocks. Set the maximum block in the admin kit at seven days. Make longer blocks available to the Arbitration Committee only, or to a select group appointed by the ArbCom, similar to the checkusers. I've never really been comfortable with wading into "discretionary sanctions"; I think that represents ArbCom delegating their job to rank-and-file administrators. The Committee should (wo)"man up" and take on arbitration enforcement themselves, rather than delegate it to (potentially) a single "cowboy" administrator. wbm1058 (talk) 11:12, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This one is a non-starter. We have so many vandalism-only accounts, socks, and WP:NOTTHERE accounts, that it would be a waste of everyone's time to bring them to the Arbcom. With some modifications - for example, no blocks of the users with more than 1K edits, or excluding certain block reasons - it might have a chance.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:36, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"NOTTHERE" is a blocking rationale that I'm not keen on... the rationale should be specifically based on what the editor was "there" for, not what they generically "weren't there for". Yes, a good start would be to exclude blocks of extended-confirmed users for more than 7-days from the admin kit. wbm1058 (talk) 12:36, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My personal experience with WP:NOTTHERE (which might be different from the experience of the others) is that this reason (which is in the drop-down menu) is used for new users who edit in contentious areas, come to Wikipedia to push for their POV, and are not interested in neutrality or using reliable sources (or, often, any sources). Another category are users coming here seeking self-promotion. There are of course cases when users with dozens or hundreds of edits get blocked per WP:NOTTHERE (especially if they managed to find an article where they are not instantly discovered, and can go on for some time), but most of them get blocked pretty soon in their Wikipedia career.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:45, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Then you should state that POV-pushing, or self-promotion, is your rationale for blocking. wbm1058 (talk) 12:48, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Now I am not admin anyway, but in anycase the drop-down menu must be aligned with WP:BLOCK. If you think there is a problem here it should probably be raised in an appropriate venue.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:37, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There are a dozen specific rationales listed under that link. What I'm saying is I don't think that drop-down should be a standalone rationale, as in, "not here, can't be more specific because BEANS". It's fine if the blocking admin provides a supplemental explanation with the drop-down. I don't follow blocking activity much at all, so I don't really know whether there's a problem here. The reason for discussing this here is that I sense there may be reluctance on the part of voters to promote because they fear the potential for "beans-blocks". wbm1058 (talk) 15:44, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to raise much the same sort of point, Wbm1058. I know of admins who just whack down an indefinite block on the basis of a one-edit insertion of possibly promotional or spammy material. I'd like to know where the policy or guideline is spelled out, that WP:NOTHERE is a valid block reason on such short evidence, because it certainly flies in the face of WP:BITE, and for all someone came here with the intention of promoting something, one or two of them might be persuaded to contribute in other areas. — Amakuru (talk) 15:35, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

An impressionistic response to the whole block of comments: Yes, the frequent necessity of having to deal with vandals and others that we don't need to have a protracted discussion about probably means we'd still need admins of some sort. I didn't mean to suggest that, and was just unclear in my idea of offloading disciplinary matters to community consensus. I meant disciplinary matters we actually need to bother to talk through, not "speedy blocks".
That said, from a historical and organizational perspective, an observation like "administrators won't really be administrators any more" and might not be needed (in theory) isn't wrong, nor alarming. All sorts of old roles no longer exist in the real world, or have mutated unrecognizably into something else. When's the last time you encountered an armored knight? And is the the US going to collapse because it lacks a knighthood system like the UK's (one that has no resemblance to the medieval one)?
Troubled modern organizations fairly often and sometimes with great success completely re-do their organization charts and role structures. They often find that many roles are not needed and that the work they were doing is better decentralized; that many formalized relationships and hierarchies are faulty impediments to workflow, based on assumptions of how things "should" work rather than metrics of what actually works well; that much dysfunction goes away when unneeded hierarchy, division-forming, role-fencing, etc. are thrown out; and that people in the organization will generally rise to the challenges of new responsibilities they can [or, in real workplaces, are often ordered to] take up, while there are replacement people in the workforce if a particular individual fails at this.
Further, the fact that adminship could theoretically be reduced to one or a few functions isn't inherently problematic in any way. Many roles in many organizations have this character, and we already have some, e.g.: bureaucrats, stewards, oversighters, and arbitrators (and less formal local-consensus ones like editor-in-chief of The Signpost, decision making "authority" at WP:ITN, coordinator positions at large wikiprojects, etc. – mostly leadership by example and by tacit agreement to follow along, though a few wikiprojects actually have elections for some roles).
In the end it's theoretically feasible to eliminate the "admin" category, if we wanted to do. But the community probably wouldn't want to. One re-org lesson is also that many dysfunctional roles in an organization can simply be fixed by reducing their workload/scope, splitting them, or changing/reducing hierarchy structures. That's all compatible with the idea of unbundling most of this stuff, and letting the community hash out disciplinary matters that aren't yet-another-vandal/troll cases, while reserving undiscussed blocks of those kinds of NOTHERE types to elected admins with a lighter workload (but also less hierarchical weight to throw around).
Part of why our adminship system is so screwy is that it's a conflation of unrelated roles of "administration" in the business sense, which involves making and enforcing rules, and "administration" in the sysadmin sense of doing a bunch of complicated geekery that if done incorrectly will screw things up. There's really no sense in commingling these things, but it happened because WP was founded by people from the software-startups world, populated by nerds starting companies and business people entering them having to also get into the nerdy stuff. Almost everything dysfunctional about WMF, from the board to the staffing to the corporate decisions to the community bias, is because it's all topheavy with tech-industry people thinking in terms of a product with a userbase, instead of nonprofit organization people thinking in terms of a mission with a constituency. I've seen this all before, at other tech-connected nonprofits I worked at (where I helped one, the EFF, go through the transition, but left I another because it would not accept that the transition had to happen; that one later imploded despite good and important work it was doing). The problem and the cascading sub-problems that come from it are resolveable, but the process of getting there can be painful and slow, and some people inevitably storm off in a huff – often causing a net increase in productivity because their stonewalling obstructionism goes with them. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:07, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This feels like a climate change conference. Scream, 'there's a problem, random solutions !!!!' but nothing actually gets done. Every time. Why do I feel that we may just have to slip into the darkness with this, and find a solution at the bottom? I feel like some things are meant to fall into crisis, and from that point there will be clarity. talk to !dave 19:51, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps change is afoot. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Pbsouthwood, which just closed. We have a new admin, who specifically wants the tools for a single rote cleanup project of finite duration and didn't even have any other admin work in mind for the future. This RfA would not have been successful even just a couple of years ago. Perhaps the community is more apt to reconsider, finally, whether we need to be considering all these tools in light of what someone might do with the most dangerous one, the ability to block people. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:34, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Two years ago this would have ended the same way. The new approach to RFAs is about three or four years old now, even though there are still some people stuck in the old mindset. Before I ran for RFA in 2016, I asked for some advice at WP:OPTIONALRFA, and was told I might have difficulty because although I had a lot of RM experience, I didn't have much AFD experience. But in the end I passed very easily. 2010 to 2014 was probably the lowpoint in terms of RFA ugliness and it's possible that myself and Pbsouthwood would have struggled then. — Amakuru (talk) 21:45, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

" to an extent that leaves one wondering just how much gender bias or even blatant misogyny is indeed embedded in this male dominated database" FFS, how about 1 in 300 votes? Nergaal (talk) 10:41, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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