Politics 101: Remedial or Virtual? Options

[Peter Damian]

Volunteer Marek (our Radek, I think) makes some great points at the current RfA talk. Read it for yourself. There should be a theme of the proposed book, which goes something like this: once upon a time, some IT geeks got together to build an encyclopedia. They knew a lot about bandwidth and html and networks and load balancing. They didn’t know much about stuff people learn in humanities departments but, hey, that didn’t matter, because the magic pixy-dust of technology would sort everything out, and all that humanities stuff was just the old way of doing things, and technology was the new way. What is a humanities department, anyway?

Ten years later they are faced with some pretty fundamental problems. And, er, these are the very problems that people who studied political science have known about for a long time. And there are some pretty straightforward answers. But no one asked, of course.

The thread also illustrates pretty well the famous stupidity of Wikipedians.

I am explaining this in detail here but honestly, this is like old school stuff. This is why almost pretty much every single position in the real world is subject to term limits. This is like Political Science 101. This is why I said that term limits are fundamental to any kind of meaningful RfA reform. You cannot even begin that conversation seriously without considering them. And these convoluted proposals for weird-ass term limits structures or what have you just distract folks - and hey, we all like to give our opinions about convoluted meaningless proposals - but let's keep it simple.
The only meaningful question here is actually how to deal with existing old-time administrators, given that we reasonably impose term limits on new ones. Do we keep the old guys? Do we make them go through it again? If so how? Etc. THAT is what the conversation should be about. Not this "if .0485 of voters express dissatisfaction then we move it to a committee which then decides whether to send it to an RfC for comment blah blah blah" crap.
There's no RfA reform without A-term limits.
Term limits first, details later. Volunteer Marek 06:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

“How can getting rid of all the admins (for their terms will all eventually expire) help the project? I think what you really mean is that wikipedia must move beyond volunteer editors. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:46, 11 November 2011 (UTC)”

“Ok. Stop. Think. Stop. Think. ... are there any Senators in the US Senate? Do Senators terms expire? Yes? Are there still Senators in the US Senate? See what's wrong with what you just said? Volunteer Marek 06:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=460102419

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Ottava]

Just wondering, but in what country do police have "term limits" and are voted in?

Admin aren't crafting policies (laws) so why is this even a discussion?

[Zoloft]

Just wondering, but in what country do police have "term limits" and are voted in?
Admin aren't crafting policies (laws) so why is this even a discussion?

Fuck it. I can't stay quiet in the face of such idiocy.

Officers in clubs, like the garden club or the art association, often serve terms of one year after election, subject to reelection. There's your model. The model airplane club. Rocketry club. Anime club. Whatever. Transition period for previous admins? Use the calendar date of their old RfA as the new RfA, starting one year from now.

Done.

Now I'm finished posting until the end of the month. Enjoy the respite.

[radek]

Just wondering, but in what country do police have "term limits" and are voted in?
Admin aren't crafting policies (laws) so why is this even a discussion?

Fuck it. I can't stay quiet in the face of such idiocy.

Officers in clubs, like the garden club or the art association, often serve terms of one year after election, subject to reelection. There's your model. The model airplane club. Rocketry club. Anime club. Whatever. Transition period for previous admins? Use the calendar date of their old RfA as the new RfA, starting one year from now.

Done.

Now I'm finished posting until the end of the month. Enjoy the respite.

Actually, to give credit where it's due, NewyorkBrad (damn that guy, always making reasonable objections to perfectly awesome proposals) did point out a legitimate logistical problem with reelections - it'd be like 8 or 9 per week.

I don't think it makes re-election/fixed terms nonworkable just that there'd need to be a different system in place to handle it. And yes, honestly I've been a bit radical in my advocacy for fixed terms (I'm perfectly aware that it wouldn't be as easy as slapping them in place and saying "here we go!") but that's because the opposition to ANY kind of meaningful reform is so entrenched that it needs to be repeatedly slapped upside the head. Like I said, put terms on the table first, then we talk details.

[Catfish Jim and the soapdish]

Actually, to give credit where it's due, NewyorkBrad (damn that guy, always making reasonable objections to perfectly awesome proposals) did point out a legitimate logistical problem with reelections - it'd be like 8 or 9 per week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lis...strators/Active lists 726 active admins, so it would be just shy of 14 reconfirmation RfAs per week, assuming an annual reconfirmation. Add to this the 228 inactive admins (no edits in the last 3 months) and the 556 semi-active admins (less than 30 edits in 2 months) and it quickly becomes a logistical nightmare.

Having said that, I can imagine there would be a fairly large proportion of admins who would not subject themselves to a second RfA in its current form. It can be a brutally unpleasant experience, one which can lead to people leaving WP altogether.

[jayvdb]

Actually, to give credit where it's due, NewyorkBrad (damn that guy, always making reasonable objections to perfectly awesome proposals) did point out a legitimate logistical problem with reelections - it'd be like 8 or 9 per week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lis...strators/Active lists 726 active admins, so it would be just shy of 14 reconfirmation RfAs per week, assuming an annual reconfirmation. Add to this the 228 inactive admins (no edits in the last 3 months) and the 556 semi-active admins (less than 30 edits in 2 months) and it quickly becomes a logistical nightmare.

Having said that, I can imagine there would be a fairly large proportion of admins who would not subject themselves to a second RfA in its current form. It can be a brutally unpleasant experience, one which can lead to people leaving WP altogether.

We had a discussion about this at WT:RFA. The logistics are less of a problem if we start with a six or seven year reconfirmation window, and/or only push subsets of sysops through the reconfirmation process (e.g. less than 40 voters at their RFA, or lower than 75%).

Regarding it being a brutal experience, sensible sysop who didnt want to endure what they anticipate as being a difficult reconfirmation could hand back their tools before it.