On wikia and Wikipedia users can request for adminship. On here we don’t I think we should let users request for rights. Rights should have a community vote and voting also helps the requester know what they need to work on. We should do this so it brings everyone closer in a community and it help users become better editors. ~~~~
Hibou8
2
Here users already don’t have the ability to self-nominate for adminship. An existing admin has to nominate them, because that existing admin has to be willing to “sponsor” them, and sort of help train them.
Interesting proposal. It has its advantages and disadvantages. Quite honestly I’ve always disliked the current manner by which wH elects its admins, because it’s much too secret and separated from the community in my opinion. However, completely giving the community the ability to do this also comes with problems. For instance, things are done exactly as you say over at Wikipedia (if you don’t know that already), but it certainly does not bring the community “closer together”, and just about any other user would agree with me. Go look at Wikipedia_talk:RFA
, and prepare to be amazed. An ideal system would be a committee: half admin and half non-admin, elected by the community, which in turn publicly elects new admins on its own special page that no one else but committee members could edit (community comments could be put on the talk page). This would increase direct community involvement and transparency while hopefully reducing the chaos that occurs at WP.
We could do it publicly and let anyone participate in the discussion and do it on a new page. And let users nominate other users like on The Sims Wiki.
Before adopting trial adminship, wikiHow used to have a nomination system similar to Wikipedia’s system. I can see why some people would want to adopt Wikipedia’s system, but I personally prefer the current system.
Plus, vandals might do some meatpuppetry and nominate themselves as an admin and ruin the entire community.
Ideally my suggested committee would consist of experienced users who could realize who is likely to do this. The current system has the same problem anyway, since a malicious user could theoretically act well, fool the admins, get nominated, become a trial admin, get through the period, and then go on a crazy spree. To prevent this, we could of course keep the current 3-month trial adminship system, after which the committee could vote to confirm the user as a full admin. The main thing that disturbs me about the current system, is, as I mentioned above, the secretiveness of it (e.g., “secret wikis”, private votes/discussions not visible to the community, etc.) It sounds more like an elite club to me.
Marina
8
What’s wrong with the system we have? Why would we go through the trouble to transform this system that’s working fine? And when in wikiHow history has an admin gone on a “crazy spree”? Why are we proposing changes for a hypothetical situation that hasn’t happened when this ones working fine…?
system
9
Agreed. If it isn’t broken… why fix it?
I never said that an admin has actually gone on a “crazy spree”. The point of my comment was that it could theoretically happen with this system, so it’s not really safer than a community-based system as some would like to believe.
We are getting generally good admins out of the system, but as I mentioned above I’m disturbed by the fact that it takes place behind a curtain at some secret wiki that no non-admin even knows the web address of. What is there to hide? Surely the non-admin community, which is affected by administrative actions, deserves at least an indirect say in their election? (Such as via a committee like I proposed.)
system
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A lot of things could theoretically happen. The statement that “it could theoretically happen with this system, so it’s not really safer than a community-based system as some would like to believe” is not substantiated by any evidence and is based purely on speculation and opinion. It doesn’t prove or even suggest that a different system would be better.
Everything having to do with the trial admin system is based on observed evidence and objective reasoning: from the nomination/selection of trial admins, to their coaching during the trial period, and finally to the decision to graduate them to full admins.
One reason it makes sense for trial admins to be nominated by existing admins is that admins are intimately familiar with wikiHow policy and are good judges of whether an editor, based on his or her edits and interactions on the site, would be a good fit for adminship. We aren’t going to allow people who haven’t shown good judgment and knowledge of policy. Again, there have been no examples given of “bad apples” making it to/through trial adminship, so without any evidence, there isn’t much of a reason to change the way we do it. Would we get “better” candidates if we allowed the community-at-large to make nominations or involved a “committee” of trusted users (sounds like a group of potential admin candidates to me) to make these nominations? I see no reason to think so because we are already cherry picking the editors we see with the most promise to be effective in the role.
With regard to the “secret wiki” that seems to be causing some stress: relax. Take off your tin-foil hat; it’s not a conspiracy. We use it to record observations and make notes about the trial admin’s progress. Again, since the existing admins are familiar with policy and the attributes of an effective admin, it isn’t necessary or even useful to divulge this information to other users on the site. There’s nothing to hide.
All that said…if anyone notices that a trial admin (or any admin) seems to be making poor choices, is abusing his or her privileges, or generally seems unfit for the extra responsibilities, they are free to express those concerns and provide explicit examples, and they will be taken seriously and looked into. I suppose that would require actually having valid examples instead of just wild speculation… so in lieu of that - attack the system because it’s somehow broken? *shrugs*
As explained previously in Jack’s forum thread, wikiHow’s community is significantly smaller than Wikipedia’s. This is why, for us editors that are very active on the site, we are all familiar with each other’s names and editing habits. We changed from admin elections to the trial adminship fairly recently, and it works for us, so I don’t see any reason to go back.
If someone was secretly a vandal, and didn’t show it, they could possibly pretend to be a good user, request adminship, and abuse their rights. They would lose them after. This is why users should have enough experience and a good editing history on wikiHow. I don’t think requesting for bureaucrat rights would be a good idea either, since they have the rights of an admin and a few others.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree, then. I could give an answer to everything you brought up, but I really don’t see the point in doing so.
I think the secret thing is private because if everyone finds out, then they’ll be like, “Hey! There’s a new admin! Let’s go ask them LOADS of questions and stuff and more and more and more and more!” What if they don’t make it? Everyone will be going “boo boo boo boo boo boo boo” Well, okay, maybe only new users.
system
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New trial admins are announced in the forums, so it is public knowledge that they are admins-in-training. Krystle’s announcements of trial admins always suggest that users go to the new trial admins with admin-related tasks, because that’s how they get experience: by doing them.
It’s more just that the conversations the existing admins have about a trial admin’s actions or effectiveness aren’t really for public consumption, in that they relate to how the admins are coaching and evaluating their performance.
There isn’t any point to begin with, to be honest.
Admins talk with each other about all sorts of things, and whatever we talk about, whether that be top secret or just general talk with each other does not have to be shared.
Creating an “committee” would in turn make more problems as you’d get people who would not be in that group who would complain because they were not in it.
And as far as the “secretive” way of selecting admins, it’s very simple. Someone of the admin suggests a possible candidate, other admins agree or disagree, and when decided that they are to become a trial-admin it’s let known to the other people on the forums (X is now a trial-admin!)
Basically, there’s a perfectly capable system for selecting admin candidates at the moment. You can agree to disagree, but to me it just seems you’re making a problem out of something that isn’t a problem to begin with.
We’d have lots of admins, and that’d make it harder.
