User talk:Barkeep49/Elite

Thanks for writing this
It might be helpful to talk a little bit about how reaching different levels can impact an individual's standing outside of English Wikipedia (i.e. on the "global" or "meta" stage). Some of the groups you mention will routinely work with people on other projects and develop a more global reputation (stewards and global admins/renamers are obvious, but also checkusers who work on the CU mailing list and often work with CUs from other projects, arbitrators and former arbitrators who are often "head-hunted" for global committees, etc.) Might also be useful to talk about leaders of user groups and chapters, as well as some wiki-projects with more formal leadership practices, and their impact. (Examples here - the folks leading the FA and GA processes; at one point when she was the leader of the FA process, was the most interconnected person on English Wikipedia.)

Just a few thoughts when you're thinking of expanding this. Risker (talk) 04:13, 5 June 2024 (UTC)


 * The most interconnected thingie. It looks like the gist of any expansion would be along the lines of "what does the privilege mean to you".  There was certainly a point in history where being a FAC/FAR/TFA delegate conferred certain gravitas and one's opinions were taken more seriously than they are today, but that hasn't been true for many years now (since about 2013 when an RFC broke up the FA process into three uncoordinated parts).  I could expand on what the privilege meant between 2008 and 2013, but not sure that would be helpful a decade later; TLDR, although FA-process people's opinions carried more weight then than they do now (eg enough to assure smooth sailing for RFA nominations), the position also got me an unwarranted block log after a later "fallen from grace" arb went after Raul and me for being right about a sockmaster that joined with two (or three?) other sockmasters to bring down FAC -- so much for elite! But to the point BK49 is trying to make here, certainly being a participant at any level in GA/FA content makes one part of his "elite" definition. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  12:46, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That's a very interesting graph; would love to see an updated version!  Sdkb  talk 17:37, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I suspect an update would be very different; we used to really talk to each other on talk pages, but now we have the pingie thingie (one reason I hate it -- it made Wikipedia more impersonal). Sandy Georgia (Talk)  18:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks Risker for these comments. I've added something about the social elite you've mentioned - SandyGeorgia is a definite kind of elite that was missing from this before. I think I'm going to leave the other thoughts absent for now - I wrote this with for/with an enwiki perspective and the global nature gets complicated in a way that I think undermines the point I'm trying to make. If anything this should mean I remove Stewards from the list of "wiki celebrities". Thanks again for your thoughts, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:14, 7 June 2024 (UTC)