Forum:Long-term reforms of adminship?

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Context:

• Last summer, following a long vote, 8 new admins were appointed. For a while after the site benefited from the boost it received, but some argue that it still came to a halt, due to an overwhelming number of users now taking administrative decisions and/or a perhaps too high ratio of active admins per active users.
• Since then nobody has been appointed for adminship, with the exception of The Woodburninator, who after nomming himself and receiving the rights repeatedly claimed it was just a joke, and myself (following another self-nom), although I only served for two days.
  • Sorry to butt in, but for full transparency on my administration: Yes I had admin rights, and as it stands, I currently don't have admin rights since they were taken away... By me.... making my repeated claims of the joke aspect of my nom seem somewhat truthful. There is still studies being done by scientists and lawyers to decide if I was, in fact, making jokes and having funsies. Now, back to your regularly scheduled program... The Woodburninator Minimal Effort ™ 00:59, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Current situation and problems:

• I agree that a too large number of users recently elected as admins can be disruptive for the site. Every admin necessarily has his own view of how things should be done. Despite there almost always being a community vote to put in place reforms and decisions, being an admin is still about, voluntarily or not, changing the site's direction (even if this change may consist solely in more maintenance work being done).
• However, I also think that opping new people is a great way to revive and galvanize the site, even if a short-term one. To deal with the short-term aspect, I personally find it a good idea fo have a regular process of electing new admins, considering a reasonable amount of people are opped each time and the interval between each two series of votes for sysops is sufficient to prevent admins from "stepping on each other's toes" (using Zombiebaron's words.
• Even though opping 8 people at once might have been an error, it shouldn't prevent us from adopting another form of regulated community vote, because no matter how many people are opped, there still seems to be appear when the level of activity on the site decreases to approximately the same level it was before the vfs.

I think so far all ideas expressed are the ones generally agreed upon, but please correct me, if I'm wrong. What we don't (yet) agree upon is what exactly is the "reasonable" number of admins, how long should fhe "interval" be and, in general, I feel like the points raised should be generalized and implemented into a regular running process. To clarify this and perhaps to agree on (a) new reform/s is precisely the goal of this forum. To make the discussion clearer, I advise you contribute to the general discussion just below, propose new ideas with new forum headers and discuss the ones I propose in the corresponding sections. Anton (talk) 23:13, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

When do we need administrators?

Right now

Votes

Score: 1

1.  For. If we were to adopt a new(er) approach to choosing admins, the best time to try it out would be right now, IMO. A year has passed since the last VFS forum and apart from bumps here and there, I think the activity on the site is clearly similar to what it was before we choose new sysops in 2014. Below are two examples that justify this need (once again, in my opinion).

• There were several instances in July when there was no featured article on the main page. The main page was either empty or had Mr Wilde's picture as a placeholder. However, an alternative to this, which we agreed upon and even put in place, was the refeature queue, which unfortunately isn't running anymore. Leverage who is currently doing all the featuring clearly stated that "one more decent pair of hands [to help with VFH] would be more than welcome" and I haven't yet found anyone who volunteered to restart the refeature queue.
• A good sign of whether we need new admins or not, is when a change agreed on by the community isn't being implemented. If the example above isn't sufficient, here's another one. Back in 2014, once again, we seemed to have mostly agreed that most of the bans of IP addresses should be removed, especially if the IPs were banned prior to 2013. As far as I know, there hasn't been any major improvement on this and it's clear such a major project requires many pairs of hands to be executed. Anton (talk) 23:13, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

  If there is work to be done maybe we should be trying to get our current admins to do it before looking for new admins. You mention days in July with no feature. How many times during those days were admins hailed on IRC and asked to feature something? If Leverage wants some help he needs to communicate that effectively to other admins. I'm generally around and willing to do stuff and it's pretty easy to get ahold of me. -- The Zombiebaron 23:30, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

  I did try to ask admins about the refeature queue on IRC but received no response. I can't answer about the features, though, because I wasn't on IRC the days this happened. What I can say, however, is that the problem wasn't that Leverage was unwilling to ask for help on IRC, but rather that (1) he didn't have time to do anything about it himself (and probably noticed it a posteriori) or notify someone and (2) nobody else was willing to do that. I agree that in a lot of cases problems can be solved by notifying admins via IRC, but in my opinion when the community needs to ask admins to perform maintenance tasks on a regular basis (which seems to be what's happening right now), it is a good sign a part of that community should be given the rights to do it itself, to be more efficient. Anton (talk) 23:41, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

  I can feature an article in minutes and I would do it every single day except that Leverage does it and he does it better than I do. I'm fairly certain that's the way most other admins think about featuring articles, and featuring articles is just one example. I wouldn't want to muscle in and fill the feature queue so that when Leverage shows up he can't do that thing he likes doing. In terms of other things that need doing I feel like most of our admins don't know what they are and if they were presented with the work they would be more than happy to do it. -- The Zombiebaron 00:01, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

My tuppence worth:

• I don't "like" featuring articles, but I do it because I like doing it better than seeing a banner that says "today's featured article" with nothing underneath it. Not a great welcome page.
• I welcomed Anton's adminship because he was looking to take up Xam's idea to have something else in there, namely a revolving set of previously featured things.
• ZB, you say you would feature an article every day, but the issue is there usually isn't one with enough votes.
• Consequently, one features sits there for days on end. If I haven't been on for a week, the blank space turns up. That is the level of attentiveness we are dealing with here, and to say "Oh I don't do it cos he likes to do it" strikes me as disingenuous.
• The shop is down. Did anyone else notice?
• How many have you times have any of your cleared the caches lately? That makes the pages unusable for new users.
• How many of the other admins who were (seemingly) jokily voted in a year ago have 100 edits to their name which are not fucking around in forums and on userpages? We don't need more admins, we just need people who actually do stuff, notice when things go wrong, try to improve things, etc.

Leverage (talk) 09:54, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

• Hey Leverage! Sorry if I came across as disingenuous, I legit thought you enjoyed featuring articles, and I do believe you do the best job of it. I agree with you that we need our current admins to actually do stuff, but I think many of the admins we ushered in last year were never told what to do or how to do things (I tried to get some of them to feature an article and had to explain how to do it). Perhaps it would be a good idea for the admins to collaborate and make a page listing all the maintenance to be done with a brief explanation of how to do it. -- The Zombiebaron 14:22, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Making votes for sysops a regular process, implying the "do we need new admins?" question shouldn't be asked every time

Score: 1

1.  Conditional for This seems to be the most appropriate idea, if the number of new admins per vote was restricted and the interval at which the votes should be held specified. Of course, there could be emergencies, when the site would suddenly need a hundred new admins at once, for example, but those can be dealt with through specific forums. Anton (talk) 23:32, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Two new administrators every three months

Idea summary: While opping every active user at once will imply a significanf short-term activity increase, but might result in a "halt" afterwards, opping one person a year might not have any significant effect at all. Electing two new admins every season seems to be the middle ground. If veteran admins agree to leave some space to the newly-chosen candidates for the duration of this period, then they will have enough time and opportunity to exercise their creativity and quickly get into the administrator's duty. Three months also indicate a time period by the end of which the activity of the new sysops is likely to decrease (especially if they aren't particularly interested or motivated to administer the website) and new candidates will be needed. Two seems a sufficient but an unintrusive number of admins. Also note that if this guideline is followed, this will amount to 8 new admins every year. Anton (talk) 00:30, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Score: 0

1.  For. Seems a reasonable idea to me. If you feel like the number of admins elected every time should be greater/smaller or that the interval should be longer/shorter, you're welcome to make a new section heading summarizing your proposal. Anton (talk) 00:30, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
2.  Against. "Because ???" is a silly reason to op people. - Not particularly sincere, Sir ColinAYBCUNVFHWhoringMore Whoring at 01:27, Monday 10 August 2015 -

Deop every administrator who hasn't been active for a year or more?

Score: 1

1.  For. Assuring that the number of admins doesn't increase indefinitely, this might also urge the deopped users to come back to get the rights back. If they have indeed left the site with no plan to ever return, the deopping will be of no harm to anyone. Anton (talk) 00:35, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

• This is actually something that we do yearly around Christmas time and doesn't require a vote. -- The Zombiebaron 01:14, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

*sigh*

Fuck, I just can't... The Woodburninator Minimal Effort ™ 01:32, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Radical Reform

The focus of Uncyclopedia has shifted from new article creation. This really cannot be argued. I didn't do the research to have hard data, but scroll through VFH, new article special pages, and the pages of abandoned writing honors and you'll see for yourself. The only consistent source of new content comes from community-organized writing contests.

The focus of Uncyclopedia's continued survival is not attracting new users. Scrolling through new user special pages will tell you enough, or taking a gander at the active user list, or that INS forum.

Uncyclopedia, long in the throes of depth, has entered into a period of seemingly indefinite stagnation. The purpose of the wiki has naturally redefined itself. We are no longer a steady source of new content, but an archive undergoing constant revision and intermittent updates (aforementioned writing contests).

Naturally, the responsibility of an admin adapts to the changing purpose of the site. The admin is now less of a community manager, as the influx of new users has slowed to a trickle. As the incoming creation is dominated by spam, with inconsistent new articles, the admin's focus becomes cleanup. Its primary role would be that of a janitor and archivist. The role of community management, should pass to the bureaucrats.

Loathe as I am to say it, but MrN's prophecy has come true. It would be best for the uncyclopedia to op all active editors and promote community figureheads to bureaucrat. Following that, lock the creation of new articles in the mainspace, and reserve the right for opped users. New users, when they do join the site, can create in the userspace and become approved by current admins/active editors. This will put a hard stop to spammers, eliminate 90% of rote cleanup, shift the focus of adminship back to writing and editing, empower active editors, and reinforce the small group of remaining community members.

We would have to rewrite literature for new users, but no one reads those, and the rewrite would actually be a great simplification of what already exists. --Argylesocks (talk) 01:33, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Throw in a bonfire month and I'm totally on board. ShabiDOO 01:45, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Create a forum, have a vote

Uncyclopedia doesn't need a set in stone process. Adminship should be fast and efficient and nothing is more so than simply creating a forum and having a vote. We do recognize the good works of other users and to simply create a dump forum saying "hey this user is cool and have done this, this and this for Uncyclopedia and therefore should be opped/bureatcrated, so lets vote" is a goood process. I did this for Bizzeebeever after the fork and that process was really smooth. It was not overly political and it did not take long. VFS is just a big fat circle jerk for users that want OPs but haven't done the work yet (I say that as the most blatantly obvious example of this). If people that want OPs want to self nominate in this way, go for it but they will be every bit as expected to give the community a rundown as to why it is a good idea to OP them. Uncyclopedia has shrunk far too much to warrant an official process and frankly every attempt at an official process has ended in ragequit after ragequit. ~Sir Frosty (Talk to me!) 05:43, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Frankly I find this the best solution, but it seems to be a rather prevalent opinion that we don't need new admins and there seems to be an unspoken rule against self-noms. I started this forum to officially eliminate the necessity to ask the "do we need new admins?" question every time we want to op someone. Anton (talk) 08:06, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

VFS never had self-nomination. The intent was to find a balance between others recognising those who were contributing to the community whilst protecting the voting process from abuse from sockpuppets/cliques/etc. Its about finding a balance between having too much formal structure and having to put up with requests for sysop from everyone overinflated ego who has been on the site for 10 minutes and thinks they "deserve" it more than everyone else on an almost daily basis. Its about a balance between keeping people engaged and interested in contributing and collaborating and maintaining a sense of community. The VFS system circa 2010 was pretty much designed to cover as many bases as possible, whilst recognising that NO system is perfect and some bitches are gonna cry. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

Mhaille, I think no matter whether a user nominates himself or someone else nominates him and the user in question then votes for himself, it ultimately doesn't matter much, as everything is decided by a final vote, in which all community participates. Users willing to become admins will still find ways round the no self-noms rule, by pushing others to nominate them and getting votes off-site (on IRC, for example), which I'd be personally hate doing. That's why I preferred to honestly nom myself and wait for the voting results. Add to this that nobody nominates yourself for anything anymore. All of our awards are dead (I've recently restarted UN:WOTM, which has only received two votes), and nobody has nominated another admin for ages (and I can't see why this would change). So I personally think legitimately nominating yourself (instead of waiting for a hypothetical nomination by someone who'll recognize your efforts) might as well be the most time-efficient strategy right now. Anton (talk) 11:07, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I'd disagree with the first part of that. From my experience anyone who actively nominates themselves AND votes for themselves AND is actively desperate to become an admin at all cost is usually the last sort of person who should even get admin rights. ;) -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I never vote for myself on any occasion, actually (apart from VFH, but that's different). What I meant is that right now, considering nobody noms anyone anymore, I see only two options. Either you ask someone to nominate you off-site and then ask people for votes (which, I am fairly convinced, is what happened in the last VFS forum, at least to some extent) and which I'd personally never do, or you honestly self-nominate yourself, without voting or campaigning to gain votes and then wait for people to either up- or downvote you. Out of the two options, I personally chose the latter. I might be exaggerating some things, but I think this is the general picture. Anton (talk) 11:32, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

It seems to me that we're still a fair way away from a Seldon Crisis on the site, having witnessed quite a few. There is a lot of work that people could do without the need of adminhood but for whatever reason they're not doing them. This isn't a criticism, its obvious from the edit logs that some people ARE contributing and putting work into the site wherever they are able, and many people ARE helping to build community spirit and foster collaboration and new work. Again, this isn't a criticism, but this discussion doesn't seem to have that much support. Not looking to make this into a dramafest, like we've not had enough of those in the past, but the danger is that people might start to view this as an obsession, as this discussion is expanding now across a couple of forums and talk pages. I'm sure that isn't the case... :)

In order to move this forwards and avoid weeks of endless debate I'd like to formally suggest we open up VFS to firstly see if there is a community need for more admins or not. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

So the answer is clear. Get our dozen admins off their buts and make them update the bloody feature queue or take their admin privileges away. If not one is up to doing that...then get a new admin. Problems with the feature cue have been chronic for years (despite the large effort Leverage has put into it...who cannot do it 365). Ensure that the admins deserve to maintain their privileges or find new ones. ShabiDOO 13:01, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I tried to update it once and fucked it up and was advised to never bother trying again. - B@NZai k!tten (Meow?)B 13:05, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

We have too many admins

The old saying is 'Too many cooks spoil the broth'. If we have too many admins it will lead to chaos among the community. MUN MyOwnBadSelf, The BFDI Fan (talk - stalk - block) 08:24, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

What exactly is too many? Five? Ten? Fifty? Is it too many admins, if at least half of all admins don't do anything? What chaos can "too many admins" lead to? Too much maintenance work being done or something? Anton (talk) 10:55, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Well then nobody will be able to get maintenance work done. MUN MyOwnBadSelf, The BFDI Fan (talk - stalk - block) 23:38, 10 August 2015 (UTC)