Cabal nature of long-term editors and admins

Cabal nature of long-term editors and admins

As someone who came into the project about 18 months ago and was extremely enthusiastic to start, fell into being morally crushed by highly-experienced users, had come back and again soundly mentally defeated, I feel there is a gigantic problem with exclusivity (or "cabal-like behavior") by longer-term users, and among administrators in particular.

Much of the time, anyone trying to get past anything but the most basic levels of editing will quickly be pushed back as they peek deeper into the project. Many editors get into content disputes for reasons that are never particularly mentioned to them in regards to policy and guidelines (and are either just reverted or scolded on user talk pages), and more experienced users know of the variety of outlets they can take to "resolve" the issue via repression/suppression. Merely using a term like "diff" to most editors can result in extreme confusion as they could well have no knowledge how to research edits in their own defense or demonstrate examples, making them entirely helpless to express themselves. Educating oneself on project lingo and edit styles is hard in and of itself with no central source on how to really prep an editor for most situations.


My best evidence of this would be the RfA process, since it often includes even the most knowledgeable "newer" editors. Whereas many admins entered the system while it was far more casual and granting adminship was a more casual "why not?" if good faith had been shown by a candidate, today the question is more "why?" and applicants have had progressively lower success rates, and there have been progressively fewer applicants. Standards are extreme, and "typical successful candidate requirements" listed are asinine after seeing what is typically expected. User evaluation is often so strict that persons will express negative opinion of a candidate based on a single 'questionable edits' or judgment call of the past.

If even the most tolerant and understanding of newer breeds of editors are held down from asserting themselves more in the community, the odds are even lower for most others.

The longer that the exclusive nature of larger community and policy discussion stays within this same relatively small group (a few thousand very active editors, or less), the lower user retention will become, and thus exacerbate the problem further. If one were to put this into political terms, it's a generation gap of editors, and it stretches farther every day. I apologize for the lengthy post, but even this is an extremely shallow version of how I view the issue.

Datheisen19:40, 12 March 2011

This is exactly what quickly repels new editors which are interested in the natural sciences or math' areas: there are too many established (if that's the right term) but unfortunately half-educated editors who feel that editing their pet-articles is like stepping on their turf. The graph of the turn-away numbers shows that the ratio of the number of editors who seem themselves as guardians over the number of editors who joined with a good-will is increasing. In the good old days, all that territory was not yet claimed.132.229.222.14

132.229.222.1422:44, 12 March 2011
 
Edited by another user.
Last edit: 03:31, 13 March 2011

(To all: This comment is not meant to be a venting session about my personal experiences on WP. As such please do not infer any kind of "tone of voice". I am simply passing along anecdotal information.)

I could not agree more with this topic and observation. The fact that there are so many Deletionists on WP appalls me. When I started out editing, I read through several help articles such as Newbies before attempting any edits. Then I finally ventured out only to encounter a kind of article territorialism. I now make it a point to stick to subjects or areas that I am fairly knowledgeable and informed. In some of these subjects, I am regarded as being knowledgeable and well informed within those communities related to the articles.

Recently I had an article nominated for speedy deletion with an amazingly strong emphasis on "speedy". After researching other similar articles (about websites) I proceeded to write mine. Within an hour, a more experienced editor nominated it for speedy deletion and tagged it. When I signed back on several hours later, I saw the tag and read that I could request a "stay of execution", but when I went to the article it had already been deleted by a different and apparently even more experienced editor. And the method used for deletion requires a editor with certain privileges to retrieve it, otherwise its actually gone from WP. I have to locate a senior enough editor and then convince them to retrieve my article. Rather than point out the perceived problems with my, the choice was to erase it. It was demoralizing to say the least. - Scalhotrod 03:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

The editor that originally nominated it for speedy deletion was someone who I had previous communication. I'm guessing, but it seems I was on his radar and as such my articles and edits were getting extra scrutiny. This was not the first instance that an editor who is territorial about their articles had seemingly pursued me.

The first time that an editor chose to watch me in particular resulted in the reversal of edits made across of variety of articles. The only apparent connection that my pursuing editor had to these articles was that I contributed.

In each occurrence when I was challenged on edits, I made the effort to be gracious and thank everyone that commented on talk pages for their input. I didn't care if they were being vindictive or not towards me, I still gained useful information about editing articles and operating within the WP community.

All this said, I would speculate that I am not alone in these kinds of circumstances. As someone who appreciates the core values of WP, I chose to stick it out. It's great to see that this topic is being addressed.

98.248.208.14203:28, 13 March 2011
 

The problem with en.wp admins is simple: would you elect you president/MP/mayor for life? Treating adminship like academic tenure is patently absurd given the MMORPG way in which it is granted initially.

85.204.164.2612:21, 16 March 2011

Uh, Admins are not the equivalent of president/MP/mayors. Not even the equivalent of cops. We're just average users with a few more privileges.

I honestly wish there was another way to acknowledge editors who are accepted as "established" or "trustworthy" than making them an Admin. But there isn't, & a lot of people who basically are trusted not to abuse these few privileges are expected to be cops -- only they have no training or even the expectation to be cops. So most Admins don't bother to do any Admin work -- even administrative trivia or protecting pages from obvious vandalism.

Llywrch20:20, 16 March 2011

The Swedish language Wikipedia appoints administrators for one year at a time. It works great and everybody is happy.

LA220:32, 16 March 2011

Good for them. That might also make people more willing to serve - although overall, I wish we had far fewer admins on en.wikipedia. The vast majority are behaving like prefects, not janitors.

Yngvadottir20:33, 18 March 2011
 
 

The ability to block indefinitely anyone who disagrees on Gdansk/Danzig, images of Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullāh or bombing civilians makes people with admin accounts rather different from cops. Cops can arrest innocent people, and the occasional death can be overlooked, but the survivors will be tried. Admins are like "coalition forces" who may murder civilians and disarmed POVs in Fallujah without any judge looking into their actions. --Erik Warmelink 20:16, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Cabal nature of long-term editors and admins20:16, 21 March 2011