User:Thorncrag/Hats

More Hats
A common phenomena that can be observed on Wikipedia today is what is sometimes called the gathering of "hats", or sometimes "grabbing permissions". On Wikipedia, each account has what are called "user rights", "flags", or "permissions". These rights grant additional tools to the user for helping maintain and improve Wikipedia. It can also apply to other Wikipedia activities, which require being granted permission, but which is not an account permission.

Frequently, there are users with a vision of perhaps "moving up the food chain", perhaps with hopes of some day becoming an administrator, or perhaps "building a Wikipedia resume", or otherwise fluffing their own egoes. These users come to Wikipedia and in a very period short time make several indiscriminate requests for permissions. While usually driven by genuine interest in improving Wikipedia (otherwise the user would actually be social engineering), the net effect of new and inexperienced users taking on too much too soon is counterproductive rather than productive.

As a general rule, this is highly frowned upon. Besides the already stated net effect of usually damaging Wikipedia, as also already mentioned, it can also be interpreted as an attempt at social engineering by some of the most sophisticated of abusers. Furthermore, users who are here primarily to fluff their ego, or only so, do not generally result in being productive and positive contributors. Perhaps more importantly, users who cannot understand the appearance of being permissions grabby, are perhaps not mature enough yet to be granted them in the first place.

Need versus Want
A less destructive, yet perhaps more poignant symptom of this is the mere requesting of permissions where the user has not sufficiently proved the need for. A clear example of this would be a self-nominated request for adminship, where the requester failed to provide substantive cause to prove his or her actual need for the additional tools. The collection of "hats" in this way without a real need is just as highly frowned upon.

Collection of hats discouraged
In either of the aforementioned scenarios, the collection of hats should be very strongly discouraged. This is not just to protect Wikipedia, but also to protect the contributor, whereas the majority are merely trying to help out. Indeed, given time and presuming their persistence, they likely will be eventually granted the permissions requested.

When are requests legitimate?
Determining whether someone is trying to accumulate hats or not can be very tricky. Many times, a contributor may not even be consciously aware that they are grabbing hats. We can apply some simple questions: If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then it is likely the user is grabbing hats, and should be counseled appropriately or perhaps urged to consider becoming an adoptee.
 * Has the user requested more than one request within a very short period of time?
 * Has the user made their requests all at the same time?
 * Has the user recently acquired permission or access but only exercised it, briefly or even at all?
 * Does the user NOT have any contribution history, having been granted a request, that would demonstrate that they have learned and improved their contribution skills in relation to that request?