User:Timtrent/Adminship and me


 * I am not now and have never been an administrator here. I do not wish to be an admin, and felt that those with enquiring minds may wish to know why that is.

Why have I created this?
I stood, in December 2015, for membership of Arbitration Committee, a role I felt I could be useful in, and from which domestic reasons caused my reluctant withdrawal from consideration even though voting had started. During that process I was asked questions, as were all other candidates. One questioner was particularly interested in my non adminship. I felt it sensible to set my thoughts out as clearly as I am able.

Why I do not wish to do it
"Everyone ought to aspire to be an administrator, it is a role that helps others."

Indeed it is, but not everyone wishes to do it. And it is not laziness that says that but pure pragmatism. Adminship gives, broadly, the powers:


 * To delete things
 * To retrieve deleted things
 * To block disruptive editors
 * To unblock editors who have given undertakings to behave well

There are a couple of other peripheral "things", too, but those are the most potentially divisive.

It could well be a civic duty to do these things. Only one of them is one that I would like to be able to do, the deletion of one particular class of article. That is the redirect page that stands in the way of moving an article into its place. As a non admin I have to tag it for admin help, thus bothering someone else who could be better employed doing something far more productive

In general, though, and apart from this particular case, I believe that article deletion is a dual key process. If I flag an article for Speedy Deletion I expect other eyes to check my thinking and accept or reject my opinion. I would act no differently as an admin. I am not judge, jury and executioner. I dislike it when I see anyone delete something, however obvious a candidate it is for deletion, if they are the sole person to act. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Dual key working is a safeguard.

I believe that blocking editors is a dual key process, too. My logic is the same as for deletions.

This means that the workload on other admins would not decrease appreciably were I appointed as one.

One can argue that my role would be to act as the second key in other people's deletion and blocking requests, and that is true to an extent, but that area is not where I choose to work in Wikipedia today and does not interest me for the foreseeable future. I am not law enforcement, I am a facilitator.

Instead I prefer to work in areas such as Articles for Creation where I hope I can encourage new editors to do better and to do more than just get their toes into the water. I also do my best to contribute articles and main namespace edits when I feel the mood take me.