User:ජපස/sandbox

=Wikipedia Administrator's Best Practices=

Wikipedia administrators are advanced permissions holders sometimes anachronistically referred to as sysops in deference to website and programming development of the previous millennium. The full accounting of what administrators are able to do is given here, but from the perspective of those who are not admins, there are three big things that the administrator tools can affect the normal editing of the non-adminstrator Wikipedian. These three tools are preventing user write access to certain pages (page protection), preventing user read access to certain pages (page deletion), and preventing user write access to nearly every page on Wikipedia (blocking).

This best practices guide is written from the perspective of non-administrator users who have been active for years at Wikipedia and have experienced first-hand the problems that can arise when administrators use these tools either intentionally or unintentionally to upset users with whom they are in a dispute.

Evolving role
Having an open write access to the Wikipedia database for nearly the entire internet was a pretty novel idea for a normal webpage that had obvious security issues. You don't just give someone you don't know write access to your servers and then sit back and hope for the best. Early on, it was realized that certain access rights would have to be restricted to prevent vandals and trolls from running amok. The sysop rights for the wiki then were awarded to users who had been around long enough so that they could be trusted not to destroy Wikipedia with their ability to change the meta-code, delete pages, and so forth. Initially, the idea was that administrator access would be granted to just about anyone who showed that they weren't obviously destructive and this proposal became codified into a philosophy still reflected in the policy pages of Wikipedia to this day.

A process was invented in classic Wikipedia style to formalize the ways in which a user could convince the community that they were trustworthy. This process now is much decried as being exhausting and aggravating especially as it is essentially a good rule of thumb that administrator rights should be granted only if more than approximately 75 to 80% of the users who bother to vote support the candidate (note that Wikipedia is officially allergic to voting, but that's a story for another time). This level of support is considerably higher than, for example, the the percentage of votes obtained by Vladimir Putin in 2012.

It's little wonder then that after exposure to such a grueling star chamber that the Wikipedia community defers to administrators as more than just holders of the tools, but rather authority figures who have been overwhelmingly elected by the community. One aspect of this is that it has lately been declared that administrators are the users who should decide what the consensus is when controversial discussions about Wikipedia have run their course. Try to close a controversial discussion without having passed an administrator gambit and you'll probably be given a stern talking to.

As such, like it or not, administrators are basically the face of authority here on Wikipedia. They enforce rules, hand out punishments (in the form of blocks and bans), declare what the status quo is, and generally are given a status which affords them more protection than other users. Administrators are less likely to be subject to restrictions on editing, are rarely blocked by fellow administrators (and when they are, it's usually a lot of WP:DRAMA), and are generally given the benefit of the doubt when there is a controversial use of their tools. There is currently no agreed upon way to remove administrator rights from an account except by appeal to the arbitration committee, a process which itself is Byzantine and confusing enough that only the most experienced editors are likely to make any headway in such an endeavor and, even then, more often than not requests for removal of sysop rights tend to be unsuccessful.

So if you are one of the few, the chosen who become an administrator, you have been elected for life to a position where you are going to be able to exercise authority over most of the other users you encounter in Wikipedia. It's worthwhile then to outline what those of us who do not have access to your tools think about how you should use this considerable power.

Higher standards
The pseudonymity afforded in internet culture and at Wikipedia in particular means that mean and nasty behavior is often more common than pleasant exchanges of social niceties that occur in real life. Perhaps lamenting this situation and wanting to turn the tide, Wikipedia policy has tried to incorporate (even to the extent of enshrining it as a foundational principle) civility as a necessary feature of activity at this website. Users who engage in personal attacks against other users are considered in violation of this code of ethics, the details of which have caused never-ending controversy. The result of this code is that Wikipedians tend to write commentary about other users in veiled or vague terms, often never coming right out and declaring what they think of their adversaries lest they be accused of violating these core precepts. This beating around the bush can lead to passive aggressiveness and, ironically, escalating conflicts, but that's the price we pay for these rules intended to keep conversations running smoothly.

Administrators are often claimed to be held to a "higher standard" than the regular user in matters relating to this. Owing to the added power administrators have to prevent users from interacting in the community, it is small wonder that this is so. Nonetheless, it seems that certain administrators often succumb to the temptation to plainly describe their adversaries and identify their adversaries according to their attributes as a means to bring clarity to disputes. Administrators are more protected from the negative consequences (i.e., community sanction) for behaving this way and, thus, it is best practice to be aware of this and try to avoid it when possible. Erring on the side of self-censorship as an administrator is preferable in many cases to reproving regular users from having the same mistakes. As members of the constabulary, try to keep in mind how tempting it is to attack others on the internet and while you try not to do so yourself, a good administrator will recognize that when this behavior is seen in others, the milder reproof and the gentler touch is often what will yield the most harmonious results.

Administrator powers most likely to frustrate normal users
When administrators use the following three tools, they run the risk of upsetting users:


 * Page protection
 * Deleting certain pages
 * Blocks

Additionally, the imposition of administrator authority in the form of bans is something that is generally occasioned with indignation. We discuss each of these instances below.

Page protection
Administrators may use page protection as a way of stopping an edit war or preventing unwanted edits from occurring. There are various levels of page protection that are possible which range all the way from preventing IP edits to preventing all edits but those made by an administrator (effectively changing the write permissions on a given page). Protecting pages are usually one of the less upsetting events that an administrator can do when they are in conflict with a non-admin user, but there are instances where this action can be really upsetting:

WP:WRONGVERSION: When the page is protected in a form that is not preferred by the user. It is, of course, possible that an administrator may do this innocently in order to stop an ongoing dispute between two other parties. This is especially the case if the administrator is acting on behalf of a formal request. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that one of the aggrieved parties will not see it that way. By protecting the page, the edit war has been effectively resolved in favor of the side that had the last edit for the length of time that the page is protected, whether or not that was your intention. Experienced Wikipedians know that this is a good way to achieve a victory in their dispute, and what often occurs is the "winning" side thanking and lauding the administrator who protects the page while the "losing" side decides that they have a new enemy. It's easy to buy into that side-taking. If you do, you open yourself up for future issues.

Cutting off discussion: Strangely, it sometimes happens that when a page becomes protected, discussion on the talkpage ceases. This is because experienced users know that edit warring without talkpage discussion will result in harsher disciplinary action owing to Wikipedia culture. Therefore, while the edit war is ongoing, there might be furious back-and-forth on the talkpage. As soon as protection happens, then, no more discussion happens since there aren't any controversial edits to defend or attack. The problem, then, is that page protection can end up kicking the can down the road and the unresolved conflict simply lurches between one preferred version and the next without having a meaningful resolution. It is a good idea for an administrator to look out for this behavior. If page protection is being gamed, then it may be a bad idea to protect the page.

Indefinite protection: If you decide to indefinitely protect a page that has been subject to edit warring, expect quite a bit of pushback unless there is some scheme in place whereby new edits will be allowed through either edit requests or some other process. Note that this kind of harsh imposition of a lockdown is liable to win you at least some enemies as what has essentially happened is that administrators are the only ones that are then allowed to make any edits to the page. This sets up an obvious power hierarchy that can only be reversed by the people in power. If you are considering indefinite protection to stop an edit war, it is a good idea to have a discussion about it with the people involved and get some outside input besides.

Deletion
Most of the time, deletion happens in the context of well-defined rules such as speedy deletion, proposed deletion, or articles/miscellany/categories deletion discussions. In these scenarios, the administrator's job is just to interpret the vague consensus of the discussion and carry out the deletion. You can just pass the buck to deletion review if someone complains. Where things become trickier is when administrators start to selectively delete edits from particular pages at the behest of other users. There might be completely reasonable explanations for why this is an appropriate thing to do, but one of the challenges associated with this action is when another user who is not an administrator objects that such an action might be hiding embarrassing or implicating edits for political purposes (e.g. before a non-admin user has had a chance to put together evidence for an arbitration case). The criteria for which diffs can be deleted from the history can be interpreted to be rather broad, and so it is understandable that the use of this feature can be quite controversial. This is an incredible amount of power that administrators have, equivalent to the ability to memory hole unsavory history. Use this tool sparingly, please.

Blocks
No one likes to be blocked. For the user used to being able to interact with the "encyclopedia that anybody can edit", it is an extremely disempowering feeling to realize that almost any other person in the world has the permissions to change the content on Wikipedia, but you are not.

The first impulse for users who have been used to using Wikipedia freely upon being blocked is to look for a way around it. Users who are unaware how blocking works may try logging out and trigger the IP block mechanism which is even more unsettling. Trying to get unblocked through the bureaucratic methods outlined at the page dedicated to that sort of thing is essentially not forthcoming in any immediate sense. Even if you write in your unblock proposal exactly the right thing to convince an administrator that you're okay, it is very likely that you will remain blocked for an hour or two owing to backlogs and general administrative disinterest in "bad seeds".

Blocking should be considered a last resort for any user. The problem is that in normal vandal patrol and in many cases of so-called "unambiguous" disruption, revert, block, ignore is the standard operating procedure. When applied to a good faith user, this standard technique is devastating. From the perspective of the poor sap being blocked, you've been accused, tried, convicted, and sentenced for a violation of some rule on Wikipedia and the most straightforward avenue of appeal, discussing the situation with the administration who blocked you, is simply not happening: you can't just hop over to the administrator's user talk page and leave a message. All that is left is a cry for help from your own user talk page, and hopefully the administrator is listening and has a heart, but this is often not the case. (Forget IRC appeals, they might as well be scrapped from the instruction page and UTRS really only works for special long-term indefinite block situations and will take a long time to work through the system in most cases). It is startling how often a blocking administrator will block and then sign-off for a time leaving other administrators to deal with the unblock request and try to figure out what went on without, hopefully, starting some sort of wheel war. Try to make it a goal to be the administrator who unblocks all the accounts you block.

It is somewhat surprising how often blocks happen without any attempt to discuss the rules violation with the user. As an administrator, starting a discussion on a user talk page that says, "Hey, I'm going to block you if you keep doing this or that" is a technique that seems to be rarely employed on Wikipedia. That's something that should change. It's also really not good enough to simply template the users with any of those catch-all templates if you're planning to block them. Any user can slap a template on another user's talkpage, and this is often done as a means to escalate disputes. It is not at all clear from the perspective of a normal user when a template is meant to indicate simply a barb and when it is a serious threat. It's a lot easier to understand what's going on if an administrator who has the power to block says that they will block if a certain action continues to happen.

At the end of the day, the whole point of blocks is to stop problematic editor behavior. It's not to show the user that they were wrong. It's not to get them to change their minds. It's not to force them to change their behavior. A user should only be blocked when they've been explicitly told not to do something and they continue to do it. Please don't make the assumption, written or unwritten, that because the user has been around for a long time, they should "know better". Such commentary is demeaning and assumes that your interpretation of Wikipedia's rules is the only one that is correct. It is possible that you are wrong (or, really, that the community has a different standard for what's appropriate than you have), so exercise a little humility and acknowledge that your use of power is just your judgment call and nothing more. If the user agrees to stop the behavior for which they were blocked, and you have no reason to believe that they are being untruthful in their agreement, please unblock them. Dispense with the extended lectures, it's bad enough being blocked without having to read some extended treatise on right and proper behavior from the pseudonymity of another Wikipedia account.

It would be a good idea for administrators to experience what it is like to be blocked before becoming administrators, in much the same way that it is a good idea for police officers to experience what it is like to be tased before being issued a taser.

Bans
One of the more authoritative (non-tool-based) techniques employed by the Wikipedia power structure is the use of bans from certain Wikipedia pages or activities. (Note that this is different from complete bans from the site). These come in many forms, and typically administrators are only allowed to impose them in the instance of discretionary sanctions. Imposition of these bans, however, tend to be done rather haphazardly. For example, topic bans have been enacted as "broadly construed", but this requires a kind of judgment as what exactly is meant by "broadly construed". Ideally, a ban would be enacted in such a way so that a list of banned articles would be given, but, of course, typically the ban is being enacted against an editor who is close to an expert in the peculiar ins-and-outs of the particular subject while the banning authority is likely a person or a group of people "uninvolved" in the problem. Thus, the banned person will skirt around the edges of the topic ban while the banned person's adversaries are likely to cry foul to the powers that be, and it is difficult to figure out when this behavior is due to subject-matter interest or malice. Interaction bans are even worse and, when enacted, tend to cause ridiculous turf wars between the two users affected. Thus, bans tend to act as a kind of honeypot for encouraging bad behavior on pages that appear to many to be unrelated but become ever-growing extensions of the dispute. Why shouldn't that be the case, after all? Most of the time, these bans are enacted because the user is passionately involved in a subject. Telling them to "stop" is about as effective as telling a junkie to "Just Say No".

If you are going to ban a user, a good way to do it is to be explicit about precisely where the user can and cannot edit. Be incredibly specific and, if you think the user is gaming the ban, simply expand the ban to other pages. Start a list and add to it (this practice is almost never done, but almost every user who has been banned indicates that it would be preferable to the typical vagaries of "broadly construed"). Have the affected user help you curate it, and, if there is a disagreement, get some outside opinions on the matter. Does that sound like a lot of work? If so, then maybe you should consider not getting involved with bans.

Alternatives to using admin power
Hopefully, you've come to terms with the idea that as an administrator, you are in a position of authority here at Wikipedia. As a person in authority, the temptation is to act like an authoritarian. Please consider some of the following techniques instead:

De-escalation. Typically at Wikipedia conflicts tend to escalate and become more and more heated and anger-inducing until regrettable incidents occur. Recognizing that this is occurring is certainly a useful administrator skill, but, more than this, seeing what responses may calm such situations is an undervalued trait at Wikipedia. The typical appeals to the dispute resolution processes are discussed elsewhere (and are not without their own critiques), so rather than appeal to those canards, here are a few resources about de-escalation from outside sources that, at least in part, address personal interactions specifically: NASW, AAEP, SJSU

Discussion. Startlingly, many administrators do not start discussions with users against whom tools they act as administrators. Even when there is attempted engagement, too often typical administrator response on a user talkpage is a litany of didactic prose (often using a template) with almost no questions. Understand that you are in authority and so asking questions about what the user is doing and why is a good way to get the user to explain what they were doing and find out if they understand the concerns you have. If you want a user to do something, try explicitly asking them to do it before using any tools.

Ask for outside opinions. Unsure about an action? Feeling a little upset? Don't like it that a user has questioned your authority? Take a step back and see if maybe there are other administrators who can help you out. There are plenty of noticeboards you can post to if something seems problmeatic.

Periodic voluntary reconfirmation. Maybe you hated your WP:RfA and don't want to go through anything like it again. From the perspective of non-admin users, however, the admin-for-life system on Wikipedia can seem problematic. Why not start a WP:RfC discussion on your talk page about whether you should continue to be an admin or not? It doesn't even have to be binding.