User talk:Tyrol5/Op-ed

fatalism

I first noticed the RFA drought in late 2008 or early 2009, at that point there was a theory that being a Wikipedian was an 18 month phase that people might go through. If that theory had held up we'd have long ago run out of admins. But despite promoting fewer than 500 admins in the five years from 2008 to 2012, in early 2013 we still have 690 active admins so the 18 month theory is clearly disproved as we now know that once someone becomes an admin they will usually stick with us for years. What is less certain is whether becoming an admin encourages people to become more active or stay editing for longer than if they hadn't run.

Having a major annual discussion about RFA does bring forth a cluster of good candidates. Of course what we don't know is whether the extra candidates that these discussions bring are ones who would have emerged anyway and all we have done is bring their candidature slightly forward. My suspicion is the opposite, many if not most of the extra candidates are active members of the community who wouldn't otherwise have run, but it might be worth researching this at some time.

There are other reasons not to be fatalistic about the RFA reform process, there have been several successful reforms, mostly in the unbundling of parts of the admin toolset - accountcreator, Rollbacker, Filemove. Also the biggest single drop in RFAs was actually a community response to the unbundling of Rollback in early 2008 (see User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_stats). However the decline in more recent years has put us in an unsustainable situation, if we can't appoint sufficient new admins to do the things we only let admins do then we need to rethink things. In the longterm we need to either find a way to recruit more admins, or reduce our need for admins by such measures as unbundling the block button and deleting less. ϢereSpielChequers 11:43, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

It's notable that the number of RFAs and, subsequently, the number of successful RFAs seems to increase as a side effect of discussion. We can never know for sure how many of these candidates are running as a result of these discussions, but this might be an interesting topic for a survey in the future. You make some valid points in terms of the successful attempts to unbundle the tools. You say that one of the most substantial drops in RFA was the direct result of the unbundling of the rollback function. I would submit that further unbundling the tools would result in the same trend. From this, it seems the logical conclusion would be unbundling the tools until the sysop set itself doesn't exist (or perhaps just turns into a consolidation toolset for jacks of all trades); but that's merely an observation, not a suggestion.

I wonder if, instead of any far-reaching reforms in the RFA process or administrator toolkit, we should be thinking about publicizing RFA and the need for more active administrators a bit better? It seems that these highly-publicized perennial discussions produces an influx of candidates (which is my main contention in the essay). Would it be possible to produce this effect all or most of the time? As I write in the essay and you contend above, it seems these editors who wouldn't otherwise run but are generally willing to do so when they see how useful they might be are out there and seem to comprise a good-sized chunk of the community. Perhaps the community ought to try working on the other end, by bolstering recruitment efforts. Tyrol5 [Talk] 23:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tyrol, there were a couple of things that distinguished the Rollback unbundling from say Accountcreator. One being scale, we have far more Rollbackers than admins (Less than 1500 admins and circa 4,800 rollbackers). The perception that many vandalfighters only contribute in that way and the attitude of many that any admin should have contributed content. I'm not convinced that you'd get a similar reaction unless you unbundled deletion or blocking, and I can't see either of those happening soon. Remember we have one group of RFA !voters who are concerned about block happy admins and don't want anything that would empower more "civility police" and we have another group of editors such as myself who are worried at the existing level of error in our deletion process and would be loathe to make it easier for people to get the deletion button. In that sense unbundling Rollback was easy because no-one cares for the vandals and the accuracy of identifying vandalism is usually very high. I think that there are some unbundlings that the community might accept, it seems to have accepted the U1/G7 one, and that particular one won't make it harder to get through RFA because I doubt anyone has got through purely to be able to delete their own mistakes.

Yes publicity is important, we need to be able to draw people into the community more readily, One of the conclusions of NEWT in 2009 was that we could reduce the pressure at Newpage patrol by appointing more Autopatrollers, I did a fair few and realised that often when I was doing it I was interacting with the quite productive types who have few interactions with the community, at least two have subsequently become admins, and I think that there is a big opportunity here. Ideally we need to do it for other processes such as reviewing. For example if we started contacting Autopatrollers who've never reviewed articles and asked them their opinion of an article in the DYK queue, that might get them to interact more in WP space.

Otherwise the prospecting bot that I suggested might work to get some of these candidates identified to be spotted by potential nominators, but I think we also need a "wp:random jury bot" to alert potential participants about discussions that could do with neutral input from experienced editors. It would be a bit of a brute force way of doing things, but if you got a bot asking you to opine on an AFD or RFA then you would feel entitled to do so. ϢereSpielChequers 23:42, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

WSC, you propose some terrific ideas and make some very valid points. Generally what I look for in a candidate for sysop is a penchant for avoiding drama when possible but dealing with it appropriately and effectively when it does arise (which oftentimes becomes unavoidable when one becomes an administrator). The only caveat with this criterion is that, I think, most of the editors I speak of that avoid the dramaboards and the like are the editors (as you say) that have limited interaction with the community. This, then, becomes a question of candidate recruitment rather than process reformation. Your idea to bring these productive, introverted types into the more gnomish or content-oriented aspects of the Wikipedia space, like DYK, is a solid one. I would further suggest that many of these editors have heard the negative things about getting involved in the WP space but none of the positive. In this regard, getting content experts into areas like DYK, AFD, and the like is a suggestion most certainly worth considering.

If I understand your Random jury bot proposal correctly, it'd be like the RFC Feedback request service for AFD's and RFA's and other areas in the WP space? If that's the case, I like the idea. Getting some of our more reserved editors who generally stick with content work (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course) to engage in the WP space would have a twofold effect, I think. The first and most obvious would be things generally running smoother in the WP space. The second, and what seems to be the object, is a potential for an increase of candidates at RFA who have a lot to contribute in the role but hadn't previously considering running. I see also that you've created a page for the Random jury bot proposal; I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. Tyrol5 [Talk] 20:56, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but Feedback request service is opt in, useful, uncontentious, but not very effective at engaging those who don't know what they can opt in to. Perhaps we need more of an editor milestone type of welcome, the birthday committee could have been that, but some people will be here for years before they've done a hundred edits and others might do a couple of thousand in three months. I hate using raw edit count as a metric for most things, but if someone has made it to a thousand edits and not really interacted with the community then it is time someone said "Hi, as an experienced editor would you mind giving an outside opinion on x" ϢereSpielChequers 07:50, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense; thanks for clarifying. I like the idea of engaging editors who have otherwise not interacted with the community. It's an intriguing solution and could potentially be presented to the community in the near future. I look forward to seeing how this develops. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:20, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: Another priority that we should have as a community, so it seems to me, is Administrator retention. I've lost count how many administrators who have, over the years, become burned-out with sysop work and left the project after all but ceasing to create content after passing RFA (oftentimes because they're just too busy to do so). Perhaps we ought to be actively encouraging administrators to remain active in the article space, using their "editor hat," as it were, since much of the discontent with this project seems to be the result of drama in the WP space (but, upon returning to article work, we realize WP's not such a bad place). I've made a conscious effort to remain active in article work after my RFA almost two years ago and it has worked wonders on the level of enjoyment I have in participating here. Alternating between sysop work and content creation is an effective means of preventing burnout and could go a long way towards retaining active administrators, I think. Tyrol5 [Talk] 21:37, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

We have lots of problems, but I'm not sure that admin burnout is particularly one of them. Though we probably do suffer burnout amongst our most active admins. But amongst admins in general our retention rate is far higher than the 18 month wiki career that sometimes gets quoted. We have nearly 700 "active" admins, and more than 700 other admins who have edited recently enough not to be desysopped. That's roughly two thirds of all the admins we've ever had and more than have passed RFA in the last six years. Now it may well be that once someone has reached a certain point in this project they rarely leave and for all I know the turnover amongst significant contributors who choose not to become admins could be even lower (according to WP:EDITS 174 of our 200 editors with the highest edit count are still active), but on the other hand I can think of several former admins who are still active editors, and a few admins who have passed RFA more than once. So the real attrition rate amongst admins is probably not as bad even as when I calculated it in mid 2011. Our failure to create new admins makes our admin retention rate a potential problem, but I'm not convinced there is huge scope for keeping a larger proportion of what is already a very motivated and committed volunteer group.

Whether admins continue to create content is a very different issue. Yes there is the temptation to use those new tools and spend more of or all of your time in admin work, much of which has little to do with content, and the fewer admins we have to share the admin workload the more we will need admins to act as admins and forsake their content contributions. But on EN wiki we haven't yet got to the point where admins are under any great pressure to do specifically admin stuff. Yes occasionally people contact me to do admin things, but at present that takes far less than an hour per month, so my belief is that admins are currently free to choose where they edit, and in some cases make very little use of the tools. ϢereSpielChequers 07:50, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Granted, it's not so much of an issue now, perhaps we ought to be thinking about preemptive solutions since one of the major aspects of recent discussion has been the decline in the amount of active administrators (although the number has not yet dipped to a dangerously low level). I'm tempted to pull myself away from content work and check the venues I normally work at (WP:UAA, WP:CHU, WP:AIV, WT:RFA, and the list goes on), but find it beneficial to occasionally take a Saturday or Sunday—or both—and delve into some research material and write an article or two rather than keeping up with goings-on in the WP space. But that's just me. Most of the sysop stuff I do is repetitive gnoming and, thus, can get to be a bit tiring w/out a break. I've found that getting back to the article space for a little while when I'm in the mood and have some free time is very beneficial in this regard and serves as a reminder of why I joined in the first place. This could go a long way towards preventing burnout when we do have to worry about a shortage in active administrators. So, I suppose it's not as much a set-in-stone suggestion as it is an observation from my time here. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:20, 20 March 2013 (UTC)