Admin control, challenges, more evidence Options

[Rootology]

* http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...uss_indef_block
* http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ration_of_Giano

Just goes back to what I said before: the more that newer admins come up, the more that Sidaway's alleged "Core community" will be faced with the fact that the old closed-book way of adminship--that is, people generally unwilling to do what you want (El C: "Do not unblock. I require certain comments from the user first"; Kelly: "Gimmeh sysop! *stamp foot*") won't fly. However, the reaction to KM's RFAR I know in private is a bit testy right now, and El C seems genuinely annoyed that people aren't respecting his decision.

Any other recent examples of the crowds completely out gunning actions done or desired by "core community members"?

Let's use this thread to document such things, in one centralized place. It could be very telling, over time, if the frequency of these events does increase as I predict it will.

This post has been edited by Rootology: Tue 12th June 2007, 8:00pm

[GlassBeadGame]

* http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...uss_indef_block
* http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ration_of_Giano

Just goes back to what I said before: the more that newer admins come up, the more that Sidaway's alleged "Core community" will be faced with the fact that the old closed-book way of adminship--that is, people generally unwilling to do what you want (El C: "Do not unblock. I require certain comments from the user first"; Kelly: "Gimmeh sysop! *stamp foot*") won't fly. However, the reaction to KM's RFAR I know in private is a bit testy right now, and El C seems genuinely annoyed that people aren't respecting his decision.

Any other recent examples of the crowds completely out gunning actions done or desired by "core community members"?

I think you have touched on something important, Root. Much of the increased rancor about anything of importance is a result of growing dysfunction and pathological decay of a social networking community. But there is also something better in there too. It is a more progressive kind of populist response that is feed up with getting kick around and manipulated by the the cabal. The problem is it's often dead wrong on issues and hard to separate from the pathology. This populism will probably be an important part of the effort to keep DB's article. But it is also a part of the righteous anger over JW's handling of Essjay, the Danny RfA, JVM payola, anything Kelly Martin, the DVD hex code nonsense and the BADSITES dramas.

This post has been edited by GlassBeadGame: Tue 12th June 2007, 4:09pm

[BobbyBombastic]

Any other recent examples of the crowds completely out gunning actions done or desired by "core community members"?

I can't think of any specific examples right now, but I know that they have occured. What I am interested in is if you (or GlassBead or anyone) think that this type of nullification of actions done by Sidaway's "core community" is a good thing or a bad thing?

My feeling is that right now, with WP's popularity, it is inescapable for things like this to happen, much to the dismay of the "core community". It only adds to the dysfunctional characteristics that GlassBead aptly describes. It seems that it will go until it collapses entirely. When this happens a fork will be set up or people with experience running organizations will clean up the mess at WP.

Something I read here (or maybe Merkey wrote it on wiki) is interesting for me to think about, in relation to all of this. It was something like this:

"One of these days, google (or a google like entity) will step in and take control of WP and show them how to run a functional community [hopefully for the better]."

As a result, it would be a lot less fun (for some) to edit WP, because there will be less drama, resulting in some (most?) "community members" fleeing.

The good news for nervous Wikipedians is there would probably be a lot less BADSITES.

[Rootology]

What I am interested in is if you (or GlassBead or anyone) think that this type of nullification of actions done by Sidaway's "core community" is a good thing or a bad thing?

Bad thing for them. Here's why:

The Old Guard, Tony's immature and rose colored glasses posturing aside, consists of at most <100 people. Some of them are good; some, not so good. Every from Kelly Martin to David Gerard to Cyde, Slim/Jayjg, Sidaway, DocG, James Forrester, and so on. All those familiar names that tend to hover especially around RFAR issues are the ones that really make up the so called Cabal, which is really just a subsection of smaller Cabals that sometimes lurch along in time with each other. For example, they're all Old Guard, but there are fights there: Kelly/Cyde/James F. doesn't get along with Slim/Jayjg, for example. Each group, though, often dates back to as far back as 2003-2004 in some fashion.

How big was Wikipedia then? How big was Wikipedia in 2005? This is 2007. Where there were, well, 100 admins back then, they got to run the show. They got to make all the major and key decisions, together with Jimbo and the developers, to shape Wikipedia into what it is today, in mid-2007. And they did--don't start in with the Evil crap, please, people--a good job of creating an ultra-successful and viable project. The problem is that there are now, also, 1,100~ admins as of mid-2007. These people have their own ideas and vision of where Wikipedia can and should go next.

The problem is going to be very simple, and I think it will play down like this.

1. The Old Guard will continue on their way, doing things as they're used to doing. Exerting maximum control via any means possible on issues they feel are 'key'. They will successfully hold on to control by playing their social e-drama trump cards... for now. Badlydrawnjeff touched on it here:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...une/074779.html

Equally problematic is the fact that more people are
coming around to this, and the old guard is trying desparately to exert
the old way by nearly any means possible.

"Any means possible" is going to get, with each passing month, less effective. The more they push hard, and aggressively, the more they'll face blowback. Badlydrawnjeff's RFAR is the first major battle in the Coming War of Change.

2. Simple human math, here.

Old Guard: 100~ admins.
Everyone else: 1000~ admins.

Each week we see another 5-10 admins, give or take, empowered. I'm intentionally discounting regular users here, as admins will be the flashpoint for all the major stuff upcoming. They always have been, and always will be. Let's say that even if the 'new' people fall in line ideology-wise with the Old Guard 50% of the time, they'll still be drastically outnumbered. And, let's be honest, it's not even anywhere NEAR that much. How do I know this? I can't offer imperical proof. But if the Old Guard still commanded as much authority, why are they having to fight tooth and nail the past 6-12 months on many issues? Their strength comes from the Old Guard also typically being the most active administrators. This is changing, as well.

3. The Old Guard can muster some frightening consensus weight. Look at the recent BLP crackdown. They bring the weight of a dozen or more admins and ex-admins onto a discussion, and they can drown out all opposition. The problem they're going to face is that each month more people will be fighting right back and challenging them. Where in June 2007 they can bring a dozen to bear, what will happen in June 2008 when just as many (or more) people will push back just as hard on issues? El C's recent smackdown is a prime example of this. It's basically him and JzG vs all. Bastique--the new Danny, for God's sake--got smacked down by multiple admins over the ColScott unblocking. Tony had to come in to try to play Boss in that mess, and he even got reversed out. In other words, "regular" people and admins are starting to figure out, more and more, that they have just as much weight and authority as anyone else. That is, a 1:1 ratio.

4. "Voting is evil". Bullshit. !voting is what Wikipedia has always been, and that's all 'consensus' is. Call it whatever you want to call it. If I want to force a change on Something, and 7 people agree, but 2 disagree, guess what? It's a vote. Quack, quack.

5. Numbers, remember? June 2007: 1,100 admins. 5-10 per week new admins, give or take. June 2008: 1360-1620 admins, assuming that the rate of promotions do not increase--which they will, as it's always ticking up slightly. By June '08 it will not be uncommon for there to be 20 open RFAs at any time unless the system completely changes for RFA.

6. Extrapolation: Let's say the ratio of promotions goes up just 3% per month, flat rate for the year. These numbers, based on these takes, will be higher than what I write here:

June 2007: 1100~ admins today
June 2008: +268 to +536 = 1368-1636 admins
June 2009: +276 to +552 = 1644-2188 admins
June 2010: +284 to +568 = 1928-2756 admins
June 2011: +293 to +585 = 2221-3341 admins
June 2012: +303 to +603 = 2524-3944 admins

Again, that's probably conservative on my part. This is just for en.wikipedia. The "Old Guard" I believe is approximately 100~ users, not counting sockpuppetry. That may be very liberal; it could be well less. They make up then about 9% of the total admin population. That sounds low, but look how much they can do with that 9% working in concert. A *lot*. Each month, each year, their strength from voting is going to decrease. A little here, a little there. It's a process that once began will not stop, and it's clearly and demonstratively begun. Each time a new admin is promoted, the individual strength and value and !voting power of each remaining admin gets diluted. This is good. This is right.

7. This is what scares them and makes them get more aggressive all the time, and especially of late. Where before, if you got outright mouthy and confrontational in challenging an admin... you'd get whacked. Banned. Today, try that, and if you can advertise the injustice in the right place, three admins will rush to unblock you and put the overzealous admin in his place. Their 'authority' is being challenged left and right by regular users, and their own peers. How many times have we seen Ryulong in the past 2-3 reversed, and forced to issue mea culpas? He's an admin of the Old Guard mode--me right, you wrong. The current crop coming up in general is much more level-headed and less gung-ho to use buttons. This is good. This is also destablizing the Old Guard, who in turns looks more and more like a band of zealots.

8. Eventually--I predict sooner rather than later--one of the higher ups in the Old Guard will do business and usual, and get flamed eighteen ways to Sunday, up to and including an RFAR that will leave them deadminned and heavily chastised. MONGO wasn't this--he was an opening volley to remind admins that they absolutely do not get a free pass. ArbCom members (current bunch) do tend to be level headed and reasonable. They don't have time for stupid admin shit, and generally don't tolerate it. As soon as one of them--be it David Gerard, Cyde, Slim, Jay, whomever--appears to be about to go down hard, they'll all come to the defense. It won't matter. As soon as one person successfully either almost wins or does win to stop admin nonsense via RFAR, the precedent will be set:

9. None of them, Old Guard or not, are above reproach, and any of them can be challenged from the Talk pages to the highest levels of E-Court. And for those that also parrot the trite "ArbCom doesn't make policy" like they do !votes nonsense: malarkey. ArbCom decisions become de facto policy, as precedent from seniormost admins.

10. More admins, less immunity, less individual power for any one admin or small group of admins: All the names we know Today will be just another irrelevant face in the crowd by 2010-2012 (assuming Wikipedia is still around then).

[GlassBeadGame]

Root has done some good thinking here. I believe that there is a need to sort out what functions are appropriate for the community and what functions need to addressed by the B/T or their successors. After all the editors /admins are not the only stakeholders. That would be like asking "shareholder democracy" to address issues like global warming. Or in WP's case asking editors to come to a consensus about BLPs.

Once a proper division is achieved I think greater democracy can be encouraged, along with initiatives to curb cabals, end dysfunctional social media game playing, protection of minors and other vulnerable users and a new spirit or equality among editors.

This post has been edited by GlassBeadGame: Tue 12th June 2007, 7:54pm

[Rootology]

Once a proper division is achieved I think greater democracy can be encouraged, along with initiatives to curb cabals, end dysfunctional social media game playing, protection of minors and other vulnerable users and a new spirit or equality among editors.

The problem is that doing so would require the endorsement of the admins. That would mean endorsing a reduction of their worth and value relative to everyone else, and a conscious reduction in even their perceived authority. Not gonna happen. Wikipedia population growth in the end will be the only deciding factor, and there's really not going to be any more end results I can see than this:

1. The populace reaches a true democratic level, where no one is worth more than anyone else. At all. My ideal situation, and the one that benefits Wikipedia the most long-term, since it will be truly a living thing then.

2. Nothing changes, but people keep coming. It will reach heights of anarchy and drama beyond anything we can imagine now. Eventually will transition into possible state of affairs #3:

3. The growth in the end will kill it. Likely cause: lawsuits over BLPs or corporate defamation, running unchecked since no one can keep up with it.

This post has been edited by Rootology: Tue 12th June 2007, 7:38pm

[Rootology]

Let's use this thread to document such things, in one centralized place. It could be very telling, over time, if the frequency of these events does increase as I predict it will.

[GlassBeadGame]

Once a proper division is achieved I think greater democracy can be encouraged, along with initiatives to curb cabals, end dysfunctional social media game playing, protection of minors and other vulnerable users and a new spirit or equality among editors.

The problem is that doing so would require the endorsement of the admins. That would mean endorsing a reduction of their worth and value relative to everyone else, and a conscious reduction in even their perceived authority. Not gonna happen. Wikipedia population growth in the end will be the only deciding factor, and there's really not going to be any more end results I can see than this:

1. The populace reaches a true democratic level, where no one is worth more than anyone else. At all. My ideal situation, and the one that benefits Wikipedia the most long-term, since it will be truly a living thing then.

2. Nothing changes, but people keep coming. It will reach heights of anarchy and drama beyond anything we can imagine now. Eventually will transition into possible state of affairs #3:

3. The growth in the end will kill it. Likely cause: lawsuits over BLPs or corporate defamation, running unchecked since no one can keep up with it.

I think it is possible that a crisis might come where the Trustees (or their successors) would act by fiat against the admins. If needed they would back this up by their control of the servers. I don't know what role the devs might play. The trustees should prepare for a contingency in which devs would side with admins against the Board. The site might even go off line for a few days or even weeks. I wonder how much of "donor support" is in-kind equipment and technical assistance, and what the details of such arrangements might be.

[Somey]

At the risk of throwing a monkey-wrench into the discussion, they could - in theory, at least - buy themselves some time by creating tiered classes of admins, whether it be by seniority or by area of interest. They could also divide the site up into topic areas, almost like a pseudo-university (with a Pokemon Department, a Celebrity Bimbos Department, a Getting Pissed Off About Religion Department, and so on), and give senior admins rights to the entire thing while newly-minted ones have to stay in their "designated zones." There'll be a lot of resistance to the idea, so they might have to grandfather all the current admins... meaning they'll want to get started on it right away, I suspect.

That point about developers taking the side of the admins against the foundation board in a dispute is an interesting idea, too... I doubt they would, though. As the number of admins increases and the number of developers remains relatively small, the developers are going to see the admins as just another unpleasant mob. Either way, they're probably a long way from being that messed up... Give it at least six weeks. (Seven, tops.)

[Robster]

At the risk of throwing a monkey-wrench into the discussion, they could - in theory, at least - buy themselves some time by creating tiered classes of admins, whether it be by seniority or by area of interest. They could also divide the site up into topic areas, almost like a pseudo-university (with a Pokemon Department, a Celebrity Bimbos Department, a Getting Pissed Off About Religion Department, and so on), and give senior admins rights to the entire thing while newly-minted ones have to stay in their "designated zones." There'll be a lot of resistance to the idea, so they might have to grandfather all the current admins... meaning they'll want to get started on it right away, I suspect.

Unlikely. The hippie mentality of "everyone being equal" (except those that are more equal) won't go away.

Now the idea would make sense within the walls of WP, as it would streamline management.

It would also be fun for us, as the usual gang of idiots would have more unchecked power. We'd have SO much more to talk about...

Some change in the structure has to come, if only because of the administrator multiplicity noted by Rootology. The Cabal won't allow themselves to be outnumbered... they'll move to be first among equals, but I don't know that it'll be tiered admins. They'll have to come up with something a little more subtle to satisfy Jimbo's equality-for-all manifesto. It'll be fascinating to see what it turns out to be.

[Rootology]

The Cabal won't allow themselves to be outnumbered... they'll move to be first among equals, but I don't know that it'll be tiered admins. They'll have to come up with something a little more subtle to satisfy Jimbo's equality-for-all manifesto.

The trick is that something of that magnitude of a primordial change in years long operating structure would need to be widely broadcast and advertised--on the level of the ATT poll in the Watchlist notice (thank Denny for that, at least--it was a good idea to do that).

The more attention it got, whatever it would be, if it wasn't fair... think of the backlash. People would riot if it was biased, and people would not hesitate to call bullshit today or tomorrow. The climate isn't what it once was, where the hoi polloi would take it up the bunghole willingly.

[badlydrawnjeff]

At the risk of throwing a monkey-wrench into the discussion, they could - in theory, at least - buy themselves some time by creating tiered classes of admins, whether it be by seniority or by area of interest. They could also divide the site up into topic areas, almost like a pseudo-university (with a Pokemon Department, a Celebrity Bimbos Department, a Getting Pissed Off About Religion Department, and so on), and give senior admins rights to the entire thing while newly-minted ones have to stay in their "designated zones." There'll be a lot of resistance to the idea, so they might have to grandfather all the current admins... meaning they'll want to get started on it right away, I suspect.

So, essentially, Wikia.

[Somey]

So, essentially, Wikia.

Ehh, not exactly, but there's almost no question IMO that the Wikia community model is vastly superior to Wikipedia's, and not just in terms of "scalability." If Wikipedia were to split itself up into smaller communities, there would be vast improvements in both the efficiency and pleasantness of personal interactions.

Obviously there would be technical challenges, chiefly the need for a far more robust interlinking scheme, automatic disambiguation, single sign-on, and some means of marking "definitive" versions of particular articles (which unfortunately would have to include setting up an interwiki committee to decide which versions are definitive, membership in which would become the highest prize sought after in Wikiland).

But as I see it, it's either do that, or continue to have this chaotic mess going on in which the people who really care about the product have to spend all their time defending it against people who either don't care, or actively wish it harm. (Like me! ) That includes deletionists - wouldn't you prefer a situation where people who know nothing about a particular topic aren't always butting in and giving unwarranted opinions about the "notability" and "encyclopedic worthiness" of some article they had nothing to do with?

But then there's also Google to consider. I daresay Alexa would still rank the whole schmeer as one unit, but PageRanks would decrease significantly. The high mucky-mucks won't allow that, not unless someone finally gives them a moral compass.

[Rootology]

Slim concealing content with admin tools, including tracking of "problem" users: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=34104

Undeleting, adding content, then re-deleting so that non-admins cannot view the content. Note that this is similar to the "tracking" that Kelly Martin did on on "L" and "P" files, which the community decided was inappropriate. Creating data files on users without the specific purpose of bringing it to RFAR, RFC, or RFCU is Wikistalking and should be actionable.

As the content is clearly being maintained, and all submitted content on Wikipedia *MUST* be GFDL, would there be GFDL grounds to ask for it's disclosure that has to be honored?

[Nathan]

I would think so, yes.