Countering active admin flight

Countering active admin flight

Active administrators are plummeting as reader and editor growth continues. Active admin flight has serious consequences severely impacting quality.

The number of active administrators per editor has been very sharply declining, and I can see no more serious threat to Wikipedia content quality. The problem of administrators spread too thin is reflected in poorer quality administrator decision making, longer administrator task queues, less reliance on deescalation and more reliance on clumsy vindictive measures.

I've recommended incentives,[1] but haven't heard any opinions either way from other people on that subject, which is surprising and disappointing.

What is the best way to counter active admin flight?

99.34.79.15112:44, 31 December 2009
Edited by author.
Last edit: 13:00, 1 January 2010

I'm not sure what this shows, or its significance. Admin decline is also noted elsewhere (RFA I think).

Would not object to a review of RFA's from (say) Feb + October for the years 2009, 2007, 2005 (6 months total) to see what's going on - attendance, responses, and evidence if the issue is higher standards, more demanding requirements (perhaps unreasonable at times), conflicting demands meaning people get "hit" by one view or the other enough to falter, cliques, or whatever.

If the ratio is seen as a problem, does this mean we need to encourage more people to take up adminship, encourage more people to take up the kinds of jobs admins do (which they often don't need to be an admin for), or use the interface to guide people so they don't as often do the kinds of things admins patrol for (eg poor articles).

Worth a look. But a minor recommendation/observation.

FT2 (Talk | email)14:09, 31 December 2009

What do you mean by "significance"? You have used that term on multiple occasions, and I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing.

99.34.79.15114:31, 31 December 2009
 

Variously, what it really means, what it says, what it's showing... and also in some contexts, its salience, "what matters and why it matters", and so on.

In this case I'm not sure what it really shows. The raw data's superficially obvious but what would this information really mean if examined carefully, and how "key" a fact is it?

That sort of thing.

FT2 (Talk | email)15:16, 31 December 2009

It shows a very sharp, consistent, and accelerating decline in the number of active administrators which began two years ago; that much is obvious. By any statistical measure of significance, it is troubling.

I do not believe that all admins will be gone in five years, but unless I see some sign that anyone is willing to take this problem seriously, I will not have any reason to doubt what I have experienced first-hand will continue: that administative stress, decision making, queue length, aggression, and talent will all become substantially worse; even in the near term, because of the second derivative of the statistic.

Is there any support for taking closer and more careful measurements of this phenomenon?

76.254.65.11023:14, 31 December 2009

We have the same problem on my home project: the number of administrators is roughly stable (about 70) for more than 2 years. Frankly speaking, I do not think we can suggest anything there: the communities will resist any changes until they are ripe for these changes to happen. And when they are right they will design smth themselves, not just accept what we suggest.

Yaroslav Blanter13:52, 1 January 2010

Do you think that means we should refrain from making any suggestions on the topic? Will the communities know about the problem before it is too late? It may be useful to 'prime the pump' by trying to think of some solutions for what appear to be very serious problems.

I would say the same thing about "Article Wizard" interfaces: Easier said than done. If such an idea is to be taken seriously by implementers, we need to know exactly what kind of "Wizards" are being proposed, and we need to measure whether they will help or hinder before they are deployed on a wide-spread basis.

76.254.65.11001:10, 2 January 2010

But what can we recommend? Electing more admins? This only worls if there are more reasonable candidates. Easing the requirements for an admin? I am all for discussing and recommending smth, I just honestly do not see what we can do.

Yaroslav Blanter01:31, 2 January 2010

We can look and see what other large volunteer organizations do to attract and retain the best and brightest as their top line volunteers.

Cash, gifts, real-life community recognition (if they want it, and anonymity if they do not!) are some possibilities. Which of those possibilities do you think has the greatest chance to make the most positive difference?

What are the upsides and downsides to each?

99.22.94.15000:45, 3 January 2010

Obviously real-life community recognition.

Cash and gifts in my opinion are more likely to attract people who want cash and not creating encyclopedic content/

Yaroslav Blanter11:52, 3 January 2010

Do you suppose we have any admins who would be embarrassed if their employer discovered their hobby? More importantly, how many admins want to remain anonymous because they were involved in a content dispute in which they were threatened? I suspect, given the extent to which both occur in practice, that real-life community recognition would not make as much positive difference as anonymous gifts or payments.

76.254.68.10017:44, 4 January 2010
 
 
 
 

(Regarding Wizards and the like, a range of concrete ideas have been proposed and gained significant support early on. It's mainly (but not all) in Archive #1.)

FT2 (Talk | email)04:08, 2 January 2010

This?

I would recommend tangible incentives for top-line volunteers at least at the level the Red Cross provides before I would agree to asking people who want to create an article to fill out a form. We tried complicated forms for copyright concerns on Commons, but a lot of people just click around them and choose the license from the big pull-down menu (HTML form INPUT TYPE=SELECT) instead of going through the forms.

I'm not opposed to them, I'm just saying there are a lot more tangible things that need to be done immediately to, for example, reduce the number of contested prods which come back to undeletion requests. Treating admins like respectable volunteer organizations treat their top volunteers is one of those things.

99.22.94.15000:42, 3 January 2010
 

There's a whole thread (several actually by now) on wizards and interfaces, and ways we can use both. You're missing the point on all of these, best look up those threads (on this wiki) and see what we have been thinking as an overall approach. What you're thinking is crude and indeed gets in the way as much as it helps.

FT2 (Talk | email)02:37, 3 January 2010

In what way do you find those thoughts crude? What are they getting in the way of?

If there are more developed examples of "Wizard" interfaces, please cite them.

99.27.134.12806:25, 3 January 2010
 

"Crude" relates to your point:

"We tried complicated forms for copyright concerns on Commons, but a lot of people just click around them and choose the license from the big pull-down menu (HTML form INPUT TYPE=SELECT) instead of going through the forms."

I would say that's very crude (ie, agreeing with you), and that kind of approach would not be too productive.

The broad concept that task force members have in mind is very different. I'll look up the cites in a bit (sorry for the delay, not much time free the last day or so), but you can find them on this taskforce's threads and archived discussions. That said, it's a bit of a tangent here.

FT2 (Talk | email)12:19, 3 January 2010
 
 
 
 

As above (14:09) for my thoughts.

FT2 (Talk | email)13:00, 1 January 2010
 
 

This graph is a waste of time for our task force. It shows the number of admins is declining. It's unclear what this has to do with quality. Instead, a graph showing the number of admin actions vs. the amount of needed admin actions would show us something. Sadly, we haven't got such a graph.

This is why I treated users, edits and edit rates separately in my essay. Using the wrong thing to show something is an unwanted form of data manipulation.

Woodwalker18:56, 9 January 2010

The number of admins is declining while the number of editors continues to climb. Is there any reason that doesn't have negative implications for the amount of admin actions versus the amount needed?

99.38.149.21300:53, 12 January 2010
 

There is no reason to assume it does. You are comparing apples with pears.

Woodwalker18:00, 12 January 2010

It seems to me you are claiming that the number of necessary admin actions does not vary in proportion to the number of editors. There is a strong argument from induction that it does. Do you have any evidence that the correlation is zero or negative?

99.38.148.25500:50, 16 January 2010
 

Why should I spend time proving a negative? Come up with data about admin actions, and we have something to talk about - well, even then the need for such actions may have decreased too.

Woodwalker21:55, 20 January 2010
 
 

well i dont know if im supposed to post here or not. A link appeared at the top of a wiki page inviting comments on the task forces recommendations. After an hour or so I still dont understand how it is organised, how the non-normal indenting system works, where i should post or what exactly I am being invited to comment on. I find the whole thing confusing, which can't be good if you are trying to get people involved. So anyone reading please regard this as a general observation of confusion as to how I am being invited to contribute and maybe place this general observation somewhere else where it properly belongs.

As to what I am trying to respond to, why there is a decline in the numbers of administrators, duh, are you serious? Im not an admin but I am the sort of person who might have made a good one. But every year the appeal of being one becomes less and less. Instead of a job where you get to be helpfull and maybe use the added perks to do the odd admin tidy up where you come across a problem, it becomes more a policemans job all the time. The original definition was a janitor who tidies up. Now many admins I come across see it as their job to tell people off for their temerity in trying to edit an article. There are enough rules on wikipedia now to keep lawyers in business for years and they just keep growing. You can spend your whole life trying to keep up with those rules. I have seen comments by quality assessors, dedicated ones, moaning that they no sooner assessed an article than the standards have changed and they have to do it all over again. Do I want a job which involves spending most of my time checking how the rules have changed since last week and then quoting rules I didnt write and dont agree with at people who were just trying to contribute? This place was supposed to work by consensus, not rules imposed from the top.

There seems to be a great emphasis on admins doing administration. Maybe that is what you mean by 'active admins'? If the deal is signing up to spend all my time processing articles to delete, or some other list, then obviously Im not iterested. Some people may like that kind of thing full time. I might do it sometimes but being here is for fun not community service. The image of an admin comes across as someone obsessed with admin, not writing articles. This perception of what an admin does is growing as the beaurocracy here grows.

I sometimes come across someone who has been an editor for only 3 months and is madly clocking up edits on some admin task, and I just think, ah fast track to admin, someone wants the position. I wonder what they will do with it when they get it? Do I want someone like that bossing others about here? no. Do I want to spend my time arguing with them? no. Do i think all the admins already in existence are on a power trip? yes. Do I think they would blackball me as a rebel if I so much as expressed interest in the position? yes. Sandpiper 00:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Sandpiper00:55, 20 January 2010

Well, I do not like it either, but this is how our real life is organized. I have no idea about the details of the laws, and I would need a layer to go to the court for smth, but I know how to behave in all situations to make sure I do not break the laws.

Yaroslav Blanter10:58, 22 January 2010