What is Wikipedia's pretension of non-elitism really worth?

It is clear that Wikipedia is currently under the control of an elite, and that the people who created it were never really all that concerned with the evils of elites so much as they were bothered with the fact that they could not share in them. So now they have an elite of their own, and the only problem with their stance on elites is trying to maintain the elaborate pretence that they are standing agin, not in them.

Now, there is a way that they could remedy this hypocrisy, if they really wanted to. They could institute strict term limitations for all ranks of Wikipedia offices, from administrators up through the Imperious Leader himself.

I think that a 1 year term should probably be the maximum. All current administrators and bureaucrats could be phased out over the next 6 months, never to hold office again.

Jonny

Just compacting a bit ... back later ...

Jonny

Picking up a fund of new currency from the MisOps Thread on the Wikienlist, leading off with the inaugural post of Alec Conroy and the follow-up suggestion of Steve Summit, I would like to revive this old proposal of mine that Wikipedia institute term limitations for all of its managerial offices.

It's what your favourite saviour would do —
If your favorite savior were truly non-elitist.

Jon Awbrey

For a long time I've thought admins should be subject to annual RfAs. I think that alone, by keeping admins responsible to the community, would help a lot in discouraging behavior that's hostile or dismissive towards the community, which is a key problem in Wikipedia administration. But I don't think anybody should be barred from continuing to be an admin just because they have been for a certain length of time, if the community still supports them.

And how is that working out for ya ???

Jonny

WIth 1300+ admins, that's like about 4 new RFAs per day. It's not feasible.

Other positions, maybe. B'crats rarely make trouble as (b'crats anyway) though, except for Raul.

Of course it's not feasible in the current regime, where every RFA is tantamount to a Congressional Hearing on a Supreme Court Nomination.

But that is precisely the kind of gawdawful boondoggle that would disappear if the Admin Job were really no bigger deal than being a Janitor-Temp, with no chance of building a personality cult, and with the certainty of losing one's mop on the very first instance of abusing it.

Jon Awbrey

Bold, Yes, But Old, Very Old (BYBOVO)

Jon

WP:PERENNIAL. WP:SNOBALL.

Thank you, Jon. (I didn't say it was an original idea, did I? )

WP:MORTMAINTENACITY

Jon

It's still a good idea, but of course it could never be implemented over the objections of the current core group.

The basic wiki admin rights are delete, undelete, protect, unprotect, block, and unblock. (Obviously there are others, like create user account, grant rollback rights, etc., but those are of limited value content-wise). Any realistic proposal for term-limited admins, if not simply rejected out-of-hand, would immediately be watered down so as to deny some rights to new admins, until their "initial term" expires and they have to pass an additional vote of some kind to get the remaining admin rights.

However, the best way to limit new admins isn't to deny certain rights to them - it's to deny them the ability to use those rights on pages or users who are "established." In other words, new admins would get all the rights they have now, but only be allowed to delete pages/revisions that are only a few days or weeks old, but not those that have been around for several years. (There could be other criteria too, or instead - I'm just using age in this explanation for the sake of simplicity.) They could also block IP addresses and user accounts that are less than, say, two months old, but not those that are established and have lots of edits, yada yada.

The advantage to this would be that the trust standards for new admins could be lowered to the point where the first "level" of adminship really would be "no big deal," as they say. And the additional level would enhance the MMORPG experience by giving the new admins a reason to continue game-play, at least until they reached the next level.

Of course, if you increase the complexity of the system, people will find ways to take advantage of the added complexity to further abuse the system and the people who use it. But since they'll also find ways to take advantage of reduced complexity, that's not a good enough reason in itself to avoid making reforms and improvements.

Sounds like an interesting approach. What can we do about checkusury?

Same thing, actually - if you didn't mind the additional level of complexity, you could (in theory) rig it up so that the more established users could only be checked by second-level Checkuser-people.

Then again, the whole point of the Checkuser feature seems to be to "unmask" established users as other established users, but I suppose it's used enough on "recent arrivals" that the first-level Checkusers would at least have something to practice on.

Personally though, I'd leave the Checkuser setup as-is - there's no way you'll ever have something like that without numerous people complaining, no matter how you try to prevent abuse. If you have two levels of Checkusers, users who get checked by first-level Checkusers will just want to "appeal" to second-level Checkusers, and it would just get too messy. That would probably happen with blocks too, but using IP address data to cast doubt on someone's identity carries substantially more harm potential than a block for someone who's actually innocent of what he or she is being accused of. (IMO.)

Shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic...

You mean they have chairs on this ship!?! I never got out of steerage before they started keelhauling me. I was always an IP editor until it ... not me ... was block for a year of my cult war.

Weird. It is like the Elizabethans hanging a monkey because they thought it was a Spaniard ... these Arbcom people even go about 'punishing' IP address!

But there is genius to Somey's proposal. Its kind of like incorporating a level of MLM (Multi-level Marketing) into the mix ...

You can only dump on those downstream (more junior than you) and you keep out of other people's territory.

I had a virgin kid admin exercise their ban hammer for the first on me not so long ago. It was sweet. Quick. But sweet. Give him a couple of year and will be over here. I mean, how the hell are they expected to know anything when there is no real training or vetting!?!

There is no real training or vetting ... it is just encultation into the religion.

Yes, great idea. It will never happen. Nothing good or even interesting ever will.

Indeed. Adding more layers of bureaucracy only serves to up the ante of the diehard bureaucrats to game the system.

Well, there's almost no question of that, but since they'll all be doing that anyway, that hardly seems like an impediment.

The thing is, most Wikipedians (especially the longer-term ones) have yet to accept their new reality, even though it's been gradually forming for at least 3 years. They're in a difficult position, in that they have to encourage new participants in order to satisfy the WMF fundraising requirements, since the WMF keeps them up and running. But they also have to deal with editor-retention, because proper content maintenance requires experience and reputational capital. Obviously maintenance isn't as much fun as writing new stuff, and over time, being nice to n00bs becomes less and less tolerable for old-timers. So you end up with a kind of two-class community dynamic, leading to various "old vs. new" conflicts.

Having a two-tiered adminship system based on time-in-game and other experiential criteria may seem counter-intuitive, but if you think about it, it actually helps reduce conflict by forbidding newer admins (and by extension, users in general) from screwing with the old-timers. True, the old-timers might screw with the n00bs more than might be considered ideal, but if you reduce first-level adminship requirements and impose term limits on everyone, they should find ways to get along.

There would also have to be a "residual rights" scheme for admins whose term limit has expired - something like making each one an "Admin Emeritus" with the ability to read deleted pages and revisions in perpetuity, unless that right is specifically taken away.

None of this will ever actually happen, but if it did, it could keep the system alive for an extra 2 or 3 years, I suspecky. If you're going to shuffle deckchairs on the Titanic anyway, it's usually a good idea to move them to the stern section, just in case some of the folks have learned how to swim in the meantime.

Burn out is a very common symptom in the voluntary sector (... which the Pornopedia all too often forgets it is and is meant to be in).

Specifically volunteer burnout. It is mentioned in Lih's book. Finkelstein weighs in on Doc Searle's Harvard Law blog about it. The resident Wikipedia Child Sex expert, Erik Moeller, defended it from the Wall Street Journal's allegations of attrition by changing the statistical review of the definition of "editor" from 'anyone' to 'anyone making more than 5 edits' (... disadmitting how many of those making 4 or less were put off my the complexity, inanely aggressive culture of some admins or futility of it all).

In a real NPO, volunteer abuse and burnout to the point of loss is far more visible and measures can be put in place to stop it. On the Wikipedia, it is pretty much encouraged and the system rewards tendencies which in real life could actually be defined as pathic (mental illness) and sociopathic. For example, what other NPO would get away allowing worker to work 16 hour 7 day shifts and more?

Real life NPOs and companies also face H&S limitations and liabilities, e.g. required breaks from working on IT equipment etc. Individuals are moved around to avoid conflicts, enforced rest are made, social rewards given. None of this happens on Jimbo's Plantation.

Let your ADHD work yourself to RSI and you are screwed ... tough ... asshole ... you were not man enough ... and we will delete all your edits anyway.

How much of the friction is caused by simple, unmanaged tiredness? Never mind 'term limitations', 'time limitations' should be put in place for editing ... and then seem them work around that with sock puppets and IP hopping galore! Again, in real life NPOs, volunteer officers generally do face time limits of office and forced re-elections for good reason.

People in positions of power generally go sour and so it is a good idea to rotate them like one would do good compost.

For me, one of the biggest diseases of the Wikipedian Asperger Zone is the "bigir numbaz is betur" approach to the accounting of its apparent "success" typical of the IT world. More RAM, a faster chip, a bigger hard drive you will never use, "it must be better!" ... when what is really needed is the removal of bloat and most of the stuff on it is not needed.

In the case of the Wikipedia, there is no accounting of the real costs (volunteer time etc) offset by the waste and losses. If there was ever to be such a review, I think it would be discovered to be HUGELY inefficient and waste.