Global sysops, A good idea or not? Options

[Trick cyclist]

Does anyone know about this proposal to create global sysops?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops

They seem to be second rate stewards. Are there not enough proper ones? This could have serious implications for small projects where there are say six active admins but there's just nothing needing doing. A global sysop could say "Aha - no active admins" and stick his unwanted nose in.

Still, Ottava's supporters should be pleased that because he's a curator on Wikiversity he could apply.

[Juliancolton]

Global sysops should without a doubt be enabled.

[Kelly Martin]

Sure, why not give yet another badge for the wikigamers to strive toward? There's absolutely nothing of importance on any of the minor projects anyway.

[A Horse With No Name]

Global sysops should without a doubt be enabled.

So, what brand of cigarette do you prefer?

[CharlotteWebb]

Global sysops should without a doubt be enabled.

But in practice we'll get several who are disabled, often severely.

[Juliancolton]

Sure, why not give yet another badge for the wikigamers to strive toward? There's absolutely nothing of importance on any of the minor projects anyway.

Well, nothing of importance is better than a lot of crap.

[LessHorrid vanU]

I had a brief look at the requirements for a global sysop, and the one that jumped out was "active in another language encyclopedia".

I can forsee problems in that from "both sides" - you become a super sysop without going through that language 'pedias internal system, which won't make them happy, and, you get made a super sysop and then get yourself kicked by the existing admins on the project because you don't actually know how the locals do their stuff (yes, the same thing from different perspectives).

I voted yes, and then made clear I was running away from the thing.

[NuclearWarfare]

LHVU, I authored the proposal that's being voted on, and I'm not really sure what you mean. You realize that there is no real internal system at near all of the projects global sysops would have access at?

The sole purpose of the global sysop is for anti-vandalism. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Emperor]

This goes to show the need for projects that are completely outside the Wikimedia galaxy of stars, where they can't be brought under central power and homogenized.

[EricBarbour]

The sole purpose of the global sysop is for anti-vandalism. Nothing more, nothing less.

Seems to me that flagged revisions would eliminate the need for this......

[Juliancolton]

The sole purpose of the global sysop is for anti-vandalism. Nothing more, nothing less.

Seems to me that flagged revisions would eliminate the need for this......

You volunteering to patrol those millions of edits on 700 projects?

[SB_Johnny]

They just need more Stewards. Whomping cross-wiki vandals without CU is a task for sisyphus and robotic armies.

[Nerd]

They just need more Stewards. Whomping cross-wiki vandals without CU is a task for sisyphus and robotic armies.

But to become a steward you need to be over 18. Global sysop allows kiddies to have a go too.

[SB_Johnny]

They just need more Stewards. Whomping cross-wiki vandals without CU is a task for sisyphus and robotic armies.

But to become a steward you need to be over 18. Global sysop allows kiddies to have a go too.

That makes sense.

Is there any evidence to back my suspicion that the "admin class" is getting younger and younger?

[Kelly Martin]

Is there any evidence to back my suspicion that the "admin class" is getting younger and younger?

Nothing with statistical validity; the proportion of admins whose ages we know is small, and there's no reason to believe the ones we do know about form a representative sample.

However, it would not surprise me in the least; Wikipedia is having an increasingly difficult time recruiting mature adults to its editor base, and so their editor base is steadily getting younger as people grow up and leave.

I would have expected the widespread recession to have increased participation in Wikipedia by experienced adults unable to find work, but I suspect the fact that it's difficult to use Wikipedia to build a reputation that can then be leveraged into finding employment has a lot to do with that. If you're a writer and seeking employment on that basis, you'd be better off writing a blog or writing on a site that seeks to showcase, instead of conceal, individual effort. And if your expertise is in some other area, you're better off on an "answers" site of some sort where you can show off your individual knowledge; again Wikipedia's culture of suppressing individual editorial identity dilutes what value it might otherwise have as a professional networking site. Not to mention the impact of its "COI" policy (which, like most Wikipedia policies, has almost nothing to with what it's named) on people whose participation in Wikipedia is determined (rightly or wrongly) to be for "self-serving" purposes.

[Doc glasgow]

Is there any evidence to back my suspicion that the "admin class" is getting younger and younger?

Nothing with statistical validity; the proportion of admins whose ages we know is small, and there's no reason to believe the ones we do know about form a representative sample.

However, it would not surprise me in the least; Wikipedia is having an increasingly difficult time recruiting mature adults to its editor base, and so their editor base is steadily getting younger as people grow up and leave.

I would have expected the widespread recession to have increased participation in Wikipedia by experienced adults unable to find work, but I suspect the fact that it's difficult to use Wikipedia to build a reputation that can then be leveraged into finding employment has a lot to do with that. If you're a writer and seeking employment on that basis, you'd be better off writing a blog or writing on a site that seeks to showcase, instead of conceal, individual effort. And if your expertise is in some other area, you're better off on an "answers" site of some sort where you can show off your individual knowledge; again Wikipedia's culture of suppressing individual editorial identity dilutes what value it might otherwise have as a professional networking site. Not to mention the impact of its "COI" policy (which, like most Wikipedia policies, has almost nothing to with what it's named) on people whose participation in Wikipedia is determined (rightly or wrongly) to be for "self-serving" purposes.

It is a shame that the Foundation has never engaged in any type of psychological and sociological analysis of the motivations for, and attraction in, editing. If it had done so, it might have been able to tweek its interfaces and strategy to make a better product.

Don't get me wrong, the current model certainly works and has produced a remarkable volunteer base that have created a unique and unexpected product. It is just that having stumbled on this formula, Wikipedia has shown little or no ability to work with the engine it has created to better the output. It is as if someone, having discovered that putting sails on a boat makes it go very fast, then utterly refuses to consider the benefits of a rudder, or the advantages of having retractable sails, on the basis that "sails got us where we are today, thus we need to resist anything that impedes or threatens that brilliant breakthrough". So speed triumphs over direction. You get to go somewhere, you've just no control over where. It is a remarkable ideological fundamentalism from a project that supposedly prides itself in pragmatism.

The problem basically is that the Foundation have entirely lost sight of the goal. They don't know what they are for - and that combined with their nervousness about intevening in communities (for reasons of legal liability and ideology) means that the Foundation has become no more than "people who runs wikis" and the only criterion is that the Wikis must embody the initial ideology (NPOV etc) at least in name. If the Foundation had really accepted the Jimbo-Jingoism that they were about creating brilliant reference works for all the world - and that wiki was not the raison d'etre but mearly the brilliant means to an end,then things would have been different.

The best articles are written by a very few people. There ought to be a way to encourage good writers to write an article using their own name, and then offer it to Wikipedia. Sure, the text would need to be released under the GFDL and be editable by others, but there's no reason why the article could not have a line at the bottom saying "this article is based on work provided by John Smith" and then link to the original verson he authored. We do that with articles based on old Britanica articles, so no reason why not here. John Smith can then add the article to his CV - or place it on his blog, with a means of authenticating his authorship, without impeding wikipedia's developement. Something like this already sort of happens on FAs - the best of these are mono-authored - and then tweeked for MOS by others. The pity is that this high-quality writing in configned to obsurantist articles where only one person cares enough to write it.



This post has been edited by Doc glasgow: Sat 9th January 2010, 6:35pm

[Jon Awbrey]

It is a shame that the Foundation has never engaged in any type of psychological and sociological analysis of the motivations for, and attraction in, editing. If it had done so, it might have been able to tweek its interfaces and strategy to make a better product.

You're assuming that they have the same goals as you.

FAIL !!!

Jon

[SB_Johnny]

I would have expected the widespread recession to have increased participation in Wikipedia by experienced adults unable to find work, but I suspect the fact that it's difficult to use Wikipedia to build a reputation that can then be leveraged into finding employment has a lot to do with that. If you're a writer and seeking employment on that basis, you'd be better off writing a blog or writing on a site that seeks to showcase, instead of conceal, individual effort. And if your expertise is in some other area, you're better off on an "answers" site of some sort where you can show off your individual knowledge; again Wikipedia's culture of suppressing individual editorial identity dilutes what value it might otherwise have as a professional networking site. Not to mention the impact of its "COI" policy (which, like most Wikipedia policies, has almost nothing to with what it's named) on people whose participation in Wikipedia is determined (rightly or wrongly) to be for "self-serving" purposes.

Beyond that, there are the problems of it being less "geeky fun" than it used to be, and simply that the rest of the 'net has evolved considerably in the past few years.

In my "hay-days" on the wikis plant and bug geeks like me could hunt down redlinks to species that didn't have an article yet, write a paragraph or two about it, and then watch as people came along and added taxoboxes and additional materials. Redlinks are frowned upon now, and even where they are found it's to extremely obscure topics or people. Yes, I know that most people would consider cottony cushion scale to be rather obscure, but probably not as obscure as 19th century cricketers.

There's also a problem of linking to articles you work on from networking sites like FB and Twitter... you never know if you're sending your grandmother to a page that prominently displays a soda bottle protruding from some guy's asshole.

It is a shame that the Foundation has never engaged in any type of psychological and sociological analysis of the motivations for, and attraction in, editing. If it had done so, it might have been able to tweek its interfaces and strategy to make a better product.

My initial impression was that Wikiversity would be doing a lot of that. Didn't happen.

Don't get me wrong, the current model certainly works and has produced a remarkable volunteer base that have created a unique and unexpected product. It is just that having stumbled on this formula, Wikipedia has shown little or no ability to work with the engine it has created to better the output. It is as if someone, having discovered that putting sails on a boat makes it go very fast, then utterly refuses to consider the benefits of a rudder, or the advantages of having retractable sails, on the basis that "sails got us where we are today, thus we need to resist anything that impedes or threatens that brilliant breakthrough". So speed triumphs over direction. You get to go somewhere, you've just no control over where. It is a remarkable ideological fundamentalism from a project that supposedly prides itself in pragmatism.

Agreed there: WMF has been something of a one-hit wonder. My impression is that they're taking the "don't fix it if it ain't broke" approach, but if it does devolve into just a kids' thing, it will be broken.

[GlassBeadGame]

It is as if someone, having discovered that putting sails on a boat makes it go very fast, then utterly refuses to consider the benefits of a rudder, or the advantages of having retractable sails, on the basis that "sails got us where we are today, thus we need to resist anything that impedes or threatens that brilliant breakthrough". So speed triumphs over direction. You get to go somewhere, you've just no control over where. It is a remarkable ideological fundamentalism from a project that supposedly prides itself in pragmatism.

It is a good analogy for much of what is wrong with Wikipedia. It is a ideological problem as you note. It is the fault of libertarian values that never requires anyone to do anything and permits almost anything. Given this dynamic it is unsurprising that it values sails and disparages brakes.

Where I part company with you, Doc, is your attempt to salvage and separate out some work from the overall sorry mess. Given a system with all sails and no brakes the work of your precious high value content creators is just so much more problems waiting to happen.

[Doc glasgow]

It is as if someone, having discovered that putting sails on a boat makes it go very fast, then utterly refuses to consider the benefits of a rudder, or the advantages of having retractable sails, on the basis that "sails got us where we are today, thus we need to resist anything that impedes or threatens that brilliant breakthrough". So speed triumphs over direction. You get to go somewhere, you've just no control over where. It is a remarkable ideological fundamentalism from a project that supposedly prides itself in pragmatism.

It is a good analogy for much of what is wrong with Wikipedia. It is a ideological problem as you note. It is the fault of libertarian values that never requires anyone to do anything and permits almost anything. Given this dynamic it is unsurprising that it values sails and disparages brakes.

Where I part company with you, Doc, is your attempt to salvage and separate out some work from the overall sorry mess. Given a system with all sails and no brakes the work of your precious high value content creators is just so much more problems waiting to happen.

My point is that a proper pragmatic analysis of "what works well and what produces problems" would lead to a willingness to take the basic engine "anyone can edit" and build in some gears, breaks, and steering. One might examine, for instance, that you do get some good articles on obscure subjects, but that these are often mono-authored, and then ask the question of how you get this type of author to be willing to write a decent article on some edit-warred POV shithole. If you were being truely pragmatic and empiricist, you'd try a few experiments and see how tweeking the model produces variety of results. Some of these would be dead ends but some might produce an evolution in your model.

What happens if you take an article that's been an edit-warred disaster for years, and allow 4 established editors to produce a mono-authored version, allow feedback, and then vote on which article you use? Might be a disaster - might now.

What happens if you allow only established editors to edit BLPs? Try it in a limited way and see.

What happens if you allow two versions of a disputed article - and offer both to the reader? Might this be appropriate for some articles, rather than offering a mess?

What happens with Flagged Revisions? Suck and see, for three months, on all BLPs begining with "A"?

The list could go on. But for a project that began as a bold experiment with people writing rules as they went along, it is now ridiculously risk adverse.

The lesson of technological progress has to be that ideas which don't evolve eventually become extinct?

One of the reasons participation may be dropping is that Wikipedia simply looks tired. Its model and interface have not really changed since 2004 (all that's happened is that it has grown more of the same). Nothing else on the web has stood quite as still in that time. The Web2.0 pioneer has become a bit of a dino.