User:Inter/Admin

I very rarely vote on candidates for adminship. This is for the most part in the interest of absolute neutrality. Being a mediator, this is something I strive for. Exceptions happen and have happened rarely in the past when I feel I can allow it. I still have a few thoughts on what I personally feel consitutes a good admin candidate.

This text is somewhat modeled after Blankfaze's admin criterions in structure. All the text here is mine.

Edit counters
This is a controversial subject for the most part. Many people do not agree that there should be any reason to count edits at all. For them, community involvement, general conduct in dealings with others and other such factors tend to be the most important. I fall somewhere in between; why will be explained. The amount of edits do not really concern me, it is the quality of the edits already done which is of interest. However, the problem with this is that I cannot observe the behaviours I look for sufficiently if the edit count is lower than say 500 edits. So generally I will look for the 1000 mark and above.

Now the problem with looking at edit counts alltogether is that it describes very little about a person. The person may be very actively involved in many articles but have almost no interaction with the rest of the community. Hence that person will probably have limited knowledge about Wikipedia policies, Wikipedia etiquette and Wikipedia dynamics. If this is apparent by looking at what edits contain, many would say that the candidate lacks Wikipedia experience. I generally agree with this sentiment, however I do feel that if you would look to all factors, you would never get anything done. People are different, and so they focus on different things.

This does not mean that I support candidates who have limited experience with the community. Being a sysop (or higher) requires interaction by default, and hence a candidate should be good at it. As a mediator I tend to focus most of my energy on understanding why people do what they do, not on the way they do it. When one becomes an admin, the way people do it changes as more tools are available to them.

So what is my verdict? All these contradictory sentences I have written above may indicate I am a conflicted person on this issue. An observant would be right in reaching this conclusion. Edits count for an indication of what the user is doing on Wikipedia. Not what the user actually does. Which itself is contradictory as edits indicate exactly that.

Time
Generally there should be quite some time before even a nomination is made. There are some exceptions to this e.g as you can see from my first nomination here. But that is certainly not the point. The important things to remember about time elapsed from a user has become active till an eventual nomination are as follows:


 * The user's edits should reflect on why that user should become an admin.
 * Is the user involved in the community, on what basis and for how long? What sort of disputes have the user involved themselves in, or created on their own?
 * Do a user come off as harsh, or the mediating type? For how long?
 * The user's edits to the main namespace have some impact; there should be a considerable amount of interaction there over a period of time.
 * Trust is important when choosing admins, and trust cannot be obtained over a very short amount of time. Many people are wary of new people and will take some convincing to understand that the new people are trustworthy. So to establish trust, a user needs to be active, involve themselves in the community and discuss articles. Without this evidence of trust, how can the rest know?

All these points apply to all the rest of the sections in this document.

Generally a certain amount of months should pass before a nomination (or self nomination) is made. It doesn't really matter that much whether it is a self or a normal nomination as both are equally viable and both ways of doing it have their strengths and weaknesses. An editor may do 4000 edits in 3 months or do 2000 edits in a year, what is best? It is a combination of the quality of edits and in what time frame they are spread out in.

As for a hard number, I am wary to make any predictions as trustworthiness can take a long time. I will probably not consider a candidate if the user has had any less than 3-4 months under their belt, but trust is a variable thing.

Types
There are a few types of admins, and many editors fall under these types as well. I will try to convey my opinion on the different types of editors and how administration of Wikipedia co-exist with their style of doing things. Notice that this is very rough as users do a lot of different things. It is merely a guide.

The Editor
A user who primarily writes content for Wikipedia. Does not really involve themselves too much in the administrative side of this thing and so is not too familiar with administrative policies. They do however contribute sometimes vast amounts of work to articles which needs it and that is very commendable. When it comes to actually having admin tools, I have not really researched too much what it means for an editor to have them to make much of a comment.

The way I see it when it comes to nominations of more or less "pure" editors is that I ask myself the following question:

Do they need the extra tools to do what they have always done, or would it take away some of the creative effort and put that effort into more administrative tasks?

This worries me a great deal. The problem here is that I feel effort would more be spent on things we have enough admins to do already, than actually writing and improving articles. There is no doubt that having extra tools will naturally open up new areas or aspects of Wikipedia, but at a loss of editorial effort. This is bad. On the other hand, if the user is promoted and retains his or hers routines: writing articles and tidying them up, will the admin tools help them in that task or hurt the task?`

Not everything is negative though. I do not see a problem in a shift of priorities as necessarily a bad thing and certainly many editors (especially editors who regularly edit controversial content) find the admin tools very useful when battling vandalism in their field of articles. Any editor type must find that balance, so to as not discarding too much editorial effort and focus too much on administrative tasks. Therein lies the dilemma for the administrative editor.

The Janitor
A user who primarily keeps Wikipedia tidy, clean and free of vandalism. I am going to be perfectly frank and say that personally I like to see this. Being a janitor/mediator myself, I have a soft spot for janitors who do a great job. This is not to mean that I will vote on a janitor for being a janitor exclusively.

Points of concern when a janitor nomination is made:
 * Has the janitor been active in the community, talking and interacting with people?
 * Has the janitor done much editing in terms of adding content to Wikipedia?
 * What sort of janitorial tasks are he or she doing?

A person nominated for adminship should have certain qualities to him or her that qualifies for a nomination in the first place. A person should have interacted with the community in some way. More on this below.

What sort of editing has the janitor done? There should be a balance between janitorial tasks and content additions. There are also certain janitorial tasks that are more important than others. If a candidate sits day in and out on VfD I do not qualify that as being a janitor, at least not on that alone. VfD does help me to get a picture of the janitor and if they have knowledge about Wikipedia policies or not. Actually it is a pretty good place to learn about that aspect. The point here is that it is pretty easy to do "bot work" more than work that requires alot of attention. This type of work is good up to a certain point, but no more. Variety should be something a janitor should strive for.

POV
This is bad. There should be no POV editing in a users edit history, regardless of what type of user they are. Editors who have their own personal agendas or the agenda of a belief and cannot separate this from their editing have no business in being a Wikipedia administrator or even an editor. This will not only hurt the community in the long (and short) run, but it also hurts Wikipedia as a whole. Everyone is entitled to their opinion of any content, but leave it at the door when you visit Wikipedia. We strive for neutrality and that's that. I have no problems with POV on talk pages, as that is what they are for.

If an editor who is pushing his or hers POV is promoted, this user can much more easily enforce their opinions compared to other editors by protecting pages which favour their POV etc. Maybe this is the most important criterion for the whole adminship voting process to remember.

Disputes
Being a mediator myself, this is an important criterion. An admin candidate should have no to very little edit warring in his or her history. In edit warring, the user shows poor judgement and hot-headness. Being the more mature part is something I would look for. If the user stops editing and rather goes to find somebody to ask for help and/or mediation is a much better practice. Also, trying to talk to the other part on the talk page is of course the very first step everybody should always take.

If an edit war is against trolls, clear POV pushers, vandals or other offenders, the user has shown good judgement and their candidacy should be looked upon much more favourably by not just me, but by everyone. I would however not look favourably upon a user who has been involved in a serious arbitration case (frivolous arbitration cases do not count) or have been blocked from editing unless they have completely reformed over a large period of time.

Bureaucratship
A bureaucrat is largely considered with revere on Wikipedia. They have one extra ability, that of promoting editors to administrators via the makesysop special page. They are also looked upon as difficult decision makers and thus need to have a higher degree of trust than administrators and editors.

Support
During my stay on Wikipedia, I have voted support on the following people:
 * Bumm13
 * Ta bu shi da yu
 * Bishonen
 * Alkivar

Oppose
During my stay on Wikipedia, I have voted oppose on the following people:
 * None