The history of administrators Options

[Peter Damian]

In 2001 Larry wrote here http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikip...May/000123.html in a reply to Crocker, who had written:

There is no such thing as an "administrator" in Wikipedia in the sense of someone responsible for its content, nor should there be. Nupedia has those (and should); Wikipedia just has us, and we are just as responsible for its content as anyone else. It does have a few folks to set policy, but even they have been very respectful of the community process of content creation and not tried to subvert it by establishing "control" or "ownership". Further, it is obviously impractical to have an infintely scalable content-creation method with non-scalable editing and expect to keep up. Wikipedia CANNOT work unless EVERYONE is an editor and administrator as well as an author. "

Larry replied:

Notice, there is no one claiming to be editor-in-chief or even editor of Wikipedia. A wiki, by its design, doesn't need one. Wikipedia needs people to act as "gardeners" (in Jimbo's metaphor). The reason Wikipedia is so successful at creating content is that there aren't any editors standing in the way of content creation. This means there's a lot of garbage that needs cleaning up, and the whole thing is a work-in-progress, but a lot work *is* done, and we *do* have a lot of very good articles and many that are improving.

It was a little like that when I started contributing in 2003. Quite a friendly place, even.

(1) When was the concept of 'administrator' devised? It seems to be built into the concept of the MediaWiki. Was it part of the original Ward-Cunningham design? Is it related to the administrator concept in computer systems design?

(2) When did the role become important, and when did the divide between editors and admins begin to get bitter?

(3) Who was the first editor to be banned? My research suggests an eccentric IP beginning with '24', who they called '24'.

(4) Who were the first rogue admins?

[Web Fred]

Has there ever been a concerted effort to change the 'job fer life' aspect of sysop to a fixed term (2yrs?)?

[-DS-]

Has there ever been a concerted effort to change the 'job fer life' aspect of sysop to a fixed term (2yrs?)?

I believe so, but I can't find the RFC at the moment.

DS

[Abd]

Has there ever been a concerted effort to change the 'job fer life' aspect of sysop to a fixed term (2yrs?)?

I believe so, but I can't find the RFC at the moment.

DS

Lots of things have been proposed. 2 years -- or any fixed term, for that matter -- is actually a bad idea. No business would hire someone for a fixed term. Sometimes there are employment contracts that provide for severance benefits for "premature termination," to induce someone to accept the position, but this obviously would not apply to a volunteer position. Rather, the problem is that removal was made very difficult. This is part of the more general problem, the lack of reliable decision-making systems.

It's said that administrators should "have the trust of the community," and they should. But an admin could have the *distrust* of a majority of editors, and still not be removable, what matters for that is an ArbComm majority, and ArbComm is composed of, almost entirely, administrators, since the election methods require popularity, just like RfA does.

Again, decision-making structure. It doesn't represent the community, it represents a certain subset of the community. It's possible to set up structure that would represent the *whole community.* Don't hold your breath waiting for it. It will happen if users wake up and create it. Not "demand it." Just create it.

Most of us would rather just complain.

[Fusion]

No business would hire someone for a fixed term.

Which planet do you live on, again?

[Abd]

No business would hire someone for a fixed term.

Which planet do you live on, again?

Contract labor is used in business, which could appear to be a counter-example. It's not. (A contractor who was hired for a fixed term can still be terminated immediately, and their authority to continue to work on the job is immediately ended. They might still have to be paid, that is a separate issue.)

I'm specifically thinking about ordinary employment, and that extends all the way up to company presidents and chief executives. In corporations, they are hired by the board, typically by majority vote of the board, and they can be terminated at any time by majority vote of the board. There may be contractual obligations that survive termination, but the delegated authority of the employee ends immediately.

This is tiresome, Randy from Boise.

[Fusion]

No business would hire someone for a fixed term.

Which planet do you live on, again?

Contract labor is used in business, which could appear to be a counter-example. It's not. (A contractor who was hired for a fixed term can still be terminated immediately, and their authority to continue to work on the job is immediately ended. They might still have to be paid, that is a separate issue.)

I'm specifically thinking about ordinary employment, and that extends all the way up to company presidents and chief executives. In corporations, they are hired by the board, typically by majority vote of the board, and they can be terminated at any time by majority vote of the board. There may be contractual obligations that survive termination, but the delegated authority of the employee ends immediately.

This is tiresome, Randy from Boise.

No, at least in some countries people are frequently employed on one year terms, under which they are employees not contractors. People on such terms can of course be dismissed before the end of that year just as people employed on indefinite terms can. It may be that such practice is illegal in the USA, but i find that hard to believe. Similarly, if administrators were allowed to serve for only one year, as is the case on some WMF wikis, they could still be dismissed for good cause at any time.