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  • 21 Aug, 2019

  • By, Wikipedia

Wikipedia Talk:Requests For Adminship

Temperature check: Applying for the Researcher right

The Researcher access right allows users to view deleted content, but not to actually delete (or block, or protect pages, or do anything else admin-y that isn't viewing deleted content).

I am one of the more active admins on Commons (and just picked back up admin on Wikidata to better deal with cross-project spam), and it would be useful for me to be able to see user's deleted English Wikipedia contributions in order to better assess whether images nominated for deletion on Commons as spam are, in fact, spam.

However, there really isn't a precedent for applying for this right, as far as I'm aware, so before I went down the path of actually trying, I wanted to do a temperature check to see if such a thing was something this community would even approve of.

Cheers, The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 01:36, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@The Squirrel Conspiracy: It looks like we have 3 editors with this permission [1]. My gut instinct is to tell you that getting approved for this would be difficult. I wonder what people who are sysops on both projects think of these sorts of situations? There might be viable alternatives. Courtesy ping to Red-tailed hawk who happens to be the only person that I know to be an enwiki and commons sysop (at least off the top of my head). Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:19, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know of any local process to grant it. My understanding is that the WMF holds that viewing deleted data is something that requires vetting (and requires some RFA-like process or elections for a local wiki to give out a role with that right), so we can't quite give it out ad-hoc.
That being said, I believe that it is theoretically possible to create a local process to grant the right. We just don't have one on EnWiki, and the process would probably need some WMF eyes to actually get approval.
Pinging @Vermont and RAdimer-WMF: Can you confirm my understanding on this is correct? — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 02:38, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Red-tailed hawk, thanks for the ping. I've brought this up internally and will get back to you when I can :) RAdimer-WMF (talk) 02:55, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Red-tailed hawk: Any ideas on possible alternatives if this perm doesn't get granted for whatever reason? I'm not sure how common the above scenario described for the use case is. If it's a small scale issue, collaboration with individual enwiki admins might make it unnessecary. It likely wouldn't be all that different from the admins who provide copies of deleted articles to users with reasonable requests. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:44, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Clovermoss: Individual requests might be overkill. When an image on Commons gets tagged for deletion on Commons as spam and is in use in the draft space, I can check out the article and gain a lot of valuable content with just a quick glance - is this an SEO optimizer, someone writing an autobiography, a fan of the subject, etcetera. Being able to see deleted articles would extend this ability to gain said insight into situations where instead of a live draft space article, it's a deleted main space article. Most of the time, the file is going to get deleted as spam, but every once in a while, I catch that it's a fan or other genuinely good-meaning contributor that just doesn't know how to write in an encyclopedia style, and then I convert the speedy tag into a standard-length deletion discussion or outright save the image. That being said, the ratio of non-spam to spam among files tagged for speedy deletion as spam is pretty low, and the volume of such files is decently high, so I'd be doing, say, a lot of pinging admins on Discord to save very few files. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 06:06, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a lot less friction if one does not have to involve someone else. We needn't use time from two persons to achieve one task when time from one would do quite well. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 05:53, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
First, I'm not sure who exactly can assign the researcher right, but I can tell you English Wikipedia admins can't. It looks like it may be a WMF-only thing. Secondly, maybe a friendly neighborhood WMF person (or bureaucrat, if they're capable) can remove researcher from the three people that currently have it? It doesn't seem like it was ever meant to be a permanent right. Finally, TSC, if you have any interest in being an en.wiki admin, I'd welcome an RfA. In addition to the cross-wiki spam you mention, you'd be an asset at WP:ERRORS. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:53, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This log does give the impression that these permissions were meant to be a temporary thing [2]. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:59, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Only Stewards (and I guess sysadmins and WMF trust and safety but they probably won't get involved here) have the technical ability to assign the right. That fact doesn't really matter much here as I'm sure if whatever the community decides is the process for this is followed sufficiently one of them will be happy to oblige. * Pppery * it has begun... 04:20, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This situation also reminded me of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/lustiger seth. It's rare, but there's definitely precedent for us to RFA someone who's already trusted elsewhere and use adminship in highly technical situations. Not sure how much this applies here though. Soni (talk) 06:08, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All three +researcher were performed by the WMF, and the first team at least were intended to be temporary, but never removed. MarcGarver (talk) 10:59, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, based on the page at Meta, created by the WMF team, EpochFail and Jtmorgan can have the rights removed without further discussion as they were clearly only granted until 1 September 2011. MarcGarver (talk) 11:10, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I tried to do so and am somehow unable. Filed phab:T368577. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:33, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As an update to anyone not following phab/meta, all three users had their researcher rights removed. So it's currently an empty user-right. Soni (talk) 23:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Short answer: You'd apply via WMF. This community didn't ask for this permission to be built here, it was forced by the site owners, who control it. — xaosflux 12:20, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the correct way to do this would be to gain consensus that these set of rights can be unbundled, create a new userright with permissions analogous to the current researcher userright and then have it be assigned by bcrats or admins based on a community procedure/vote, all of which are a lot of work for the specific situation you are describing. Regarding the researcher right, I'm pretty sure that (AFAIK) it is only given to peeps who are working on a research project that requires access to deleted edits (say something like Empowering newbies: Investigating Harassment and Safety in Wikipedia), and I would assume that it would have to be assigned after WMF review.Sohom (talk) 14:23, 23 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think there's community consensus to grant this perm to additional folks. It sounds like the 3 folks that were granted this 9+ years ago were granted it by WMF staff accounts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:58, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Exactly right - unfortunately we were a lot less organised that long ago, so there were no logs maintained for the issuance of these rights. I think it's totally fine to remove them, once it's possible to do so. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Squirrel Conspiracy: to get specific answers to questions about deleted content, you can ask at WP:REFUND you could get an opinion, a snippet of content, perhaps a restore as a draft, or an email with the content. So for occasional investigations, this would be far easier than creating a new user group and the procedures to cope with it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:58, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    or a RfA. 😁 – robertsky (talk) 11:04, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Soni, I think Lustiger seth's RFA is the best equivalent to this. That passed at 77%, but it was in 2008. IMHO, a "view deleted edits only" RFA should pass for the same reason LS's did, but I have no idea what would happen today; community opinion is (for me) harder to predict these days. If you started an RFA with the attitude "if this fails, it will be because of people's opinion on how RFA should work, not their opinion of me specifically, and I will not let it hurt me", I think you might have a decent shot. Especially since I don't think there are currently other workable options. --Floquenbeam (talk) 12:21, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WMF reply about userrights

Hey howdy, I was invited to comment by Legal via RAdimer-WMF since it's generally T&S who give out rights to staff. Looks like, as people have noted, this one was provided a long long time ago, before we maintained internal logs and before we had a robust requesting system. (The long-story-short is that we only provide rights to staff when necessary for job actions and only with approvals from their managers and/or our T&S Global Head.) Generally you all can do as you want with the Researcher right, but historical precedent would suggest splitting up the admin tools like this on a larger scale would likely require consensus. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JSutherland (WMF): you all can do as you want: Are you ... sure? I was under the impression that WMF-legal required that anyone wanting deletedtext rights had to go through an "RFA or an RFA-like process". Has this changed? If a wiki holds an RFC tomorrow, and the outcome is "admins can unilaterally hand out researcher rights to anyone who asks nicely" WMF-legal would not object? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:33, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah, my bad, that's still technically the stance since I don't think it was ever re-evaluated (meta:Limits to configuration changes, Wikipedia:Viewing deleted content). Both of those stances are at this point thirteen years old in fairness, but yeah, you're right in that they're still current. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 21:40, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@JSutherland (WMF) Could WMF/WMF-Legal clarify if those stances have changed in the last 13 years? Or the more general "What rights can be unbundled from admin without requiring an RFA-like process"?
This question has come up in RFA adjacent discussion for a few years with the WMF's final say being a deciding factor in "We cannot do this". Knowing which are currently considered un-bundleable will help enWiki evauate if any of them will be better off as separated. Soni (talk) 22:52, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding this request. I'm generally not in favor of unbundling (and I don't think the community is either), but it would at least be good to know if the options have changed. The Wordsmith 23:00, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WMF appears to have actually gotten more lax in the viewdeleted requirements as the years go on, as the most recent stance appears to be that CU/OS can even be handed out without adminship or a community election process, so long as ArbCom allows community feedback. See here. I would be interested to see if the community would be in favor of unbundling these types of rights, though I think the chances probably sit somewhere just above "dead in the water" and below "it's possible?" in regards to actually getting an RFC. EggRoll97 07:41, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fwiw, a bunch of projects have non-admin CheckUsers, and the method of appointment is constrained to elections or ArbCom appointments. Personally, I strongly recommend against projects appointing non-admin CUs; it makes it a lot harder to make blocks based on nonpublic information when the people who have to make those blocks (non-CU admins) can't have that information. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 17:58, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
meta:Limits to configuration changes should be updated to meet current standards wrt handing out CU/OS. And personally, I agree. But I also would like clarity on what specifically can/cannot be unbundled (even if it's arbcom instead of elections). It'll let the community decide if anything else is better off as "Arbcom appoints" or even "Crat/admin appointed", even if I cannot currently think of any, offhand.
(I have emailed this question to ca@wikimedia.org per Joe's suggestion) Soni (talk) 18:14, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems up-to-date to me: stewards handle the technical granting and removal of CU/OS pursuant to the global CU and OS policies. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 18:20, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah I was missing that distinction, thank you. Is there a general "Arbcom can request stewards to assign these rights" list somewhere? Or is it just a special exception for CU/OS. Soni (talk) 18:34, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All grants for CU/OS are handled on Steward requests/Permissions. When ArbCom seeks to appoint a new CU or OS, they leave a request on Meta and a steward will verify and action it. If a project without an ArbCom elects a new CU or OS, they'll leave a request at the same place with a link to the discussion, and we'll verify it was done in line with policy. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 20:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this question would need to be emailed to the team for discussion internally (and to track it for metrics etc) - ca@wikimedia.org Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We were contacted about this through email - thanks! Here's what we replied:

I spoke with the Legal team yesterday about this. They did mention that a complete answer to this would require a fair bit of research which they don't have the bandwidth for at the moment.

I think the general consensus is that the issue is trust. An RfA process with community votes implicitly proves that the user has this trust from the community. While the risk of deleted content containing extremely private information is low, it is not zero, and as such we'd not be comfortable allowing users access to this without first proving they have the trust of the community.

There could be other methods to "prove" this trust that serve the same purpose, but previous suggestions haven't been sufficient; a while back there was a proposal to give prospective admins a limited tool set but since these users were basically just picked by admins the trust element wasn't as strong.

Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Following reply

So, we've now received the reply above from the WMF. If the researcher right was dealt with in a similar fashion to adminship, going through WP:RFA, but presumably having a new section for "Requests for researcher" or similar, this would more than likely meet the requirements. The more important question, though, is whether there is actually any support for making this a thing. Presumably there's a lot of other questions to be asked regarding implementation as well, especially "what kind of use case would be acceptable for this?", though I can think of at least a few use cases. EggRoll97 06:18, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a lot of interest in creating a researcher permission on enwiki. We seem to have done fine without it for the last 20+ years. Especially if that process would be more like RFA than WP:PERM. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:54, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that there doesn't seem to be much appetite for actually using it right now, at least on enwiki. I could see it being useful on Commons and a few others for enwiki admins/CU to be able to see deleted contributions for SPI cases, but that would be a question for the other wikis. Right now, this seems like a good thing to keep in our back pockets if a use case ever arises but I don't think it needs to go further now. The Wordsmith 17:38, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As the original proposer, I'm no longer interested in pursuing this. Even if it's half the mess that RFA is, it's just not worth it for me at this time. While it would be a useful tool in cross-wiki spam and abuse-fighting, it's by no means a necessary tool. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 02:46, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We're getting kinda low

I'm not trying to be an alarmist and am aware that some have been raising concerns for years, but FWIW as of this comment we are down to 428 active admins on the English Wikipedia. There is going to reach a point in the not-too-distant future where the attrition is going to start impacting the project. I'm already noting occasional backlogs in areas where such used to be pretty rare. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where are you noticing the backlogs? I've found myself mostly doing the same few admin tasks. I'm open to trying new things if there's specific areas that desperately need admins (except for AE, not interested in getting myself into that). Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 01:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
RFPP and surprisingly, I've seen a few backlogs at AIV, though usually late at night. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:36, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you be more specific than late at night? I'm EST but I keep weird hours sometimes as a former night shift worker. I could try to take a look at RfPP and ANV more often. So far I've mostly processed csds, blocked a few obvious vandals/spammers, and assigned a handful of userrights. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 01:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also EST. I suspect a very large block of admins will be in the western hemisphere for the understandable reason that this is where much of the English speaking world lives. I don't think things have reached a point where it's gotten urgent. But when I passed my RfA (class of '16) we had around 600 active admins (close to twice as many occasionally active). The attrition rate was pretty steep in the immediately preceding years and has slowed since. However, it has not stopped. I figure we have seen a roughly 20% decline in active admins. Because of the automatic desysopping of inactive admins the raw numbers can look worse. Anyways, just some food for thought. We all do what we can. -Ad Orientem (talk) 02:19, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be quite frank I've been trying to give NPP more of a helping hand when I'm in the mood to do maintenance related tasks because that backlog is just absolutely insane. At least things aren't that level of backlogged on the admin side. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:31, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of course the trend is downward on a larger scale, but I don't think we are at any sort of breaking point. We were at 434 in September 2021 and at 434 a few days ago. Most admin work is done by a much smaller number of admins regardless of how many are actually active, so losing those sorts of admins causes more issues. As Clovermoss indicates, looking at actual backlogs is probably more productive than looking at numbers of admins, and trying to distribute efforts in a more efficient way would be helpful. Are you finding that people are ignoring backlogs even when attention is called to them at places like WP:AN and WP:RFCL? Dekimasuよ! 02:36, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For reference: in the last two months, 418 non-bot accounts have taken at least 1 logged admin action, 229 non-bot accounts have taken at least 10 admin actions, 109 non-bot accounts have taken at least 100 admin actions, 40 non-bot accounts have taken at least 500 admin actions, 16 non-bot accounts have taken at least 1000 admin actions, and 5 non-bot accounts have taken at least 2500 admin actions. Of 119,659 human logged admin actions, 101,491 (84.8%) were performed by 50 editors. More than half were done by 5 people. Dekimasuよ! 04:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More than half were done by 5 people. Are you deriving from this, or you are doing a rolling 60 days? Nonetheless, these are done mostly in areas where deletion is required, i.e. AfD, CSD, RfD, or expiring drafts at AfC, and most of the time, these areas are well tended to. That being said, if there is backlog there or one of these 5 admins are getting burned out, we should step up. – robertsky (talk) 07:14, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I used that tool's output for the period starting June 27. Certainly there is lots of administrative work that doesn't show up clearly in these logs (RfC closes, AfD keeps, declining unblocks, page moves, etc.), and some of this overlaps with "admin" work that is being handled by non-admins. Dekimasuよ! 07:22, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think those totals are skewed. Take out Explicit and Liz's 50k deletions (and DQbot's 6k revdels) and the rest of the curve looks more distributed. That 50k must be batch processing of some kind. Levivich (talk) 07:31, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The bots were already removed from the numbers above. Dekimasuよ! 08:04, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you remove Explicit and Liz (who are not bots?), then it doesn't appear accurate that >50% of logged actions were done by 5 people, at least not according to the admin stats link provided above, unless I'm missing something. Levivich (talk) 13:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Explicit does a lot of batch deletions of images and Liz closes a lot of AfDs. Both are areas that lend themselves to large numbers of admin actions in a short period of time because most of the decision making has already been done (which is not to disparage the valuable work these admins do in any way), whereas evaluating a messy noticeboard thread, for example, might take an hour or more and produce only a single admin action or none at all. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:50, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of closing discussions, if someone wanted to consider doing something like that, what would your advice be? I've never closed a discussion and I'd honestly want to participate in more of them before I close them. But I am willing to branch out into more niche admin areas if I wasn't worried about barging in and messing things up. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:52, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Clovermoss as with anything, start small and build up. :) You just need to read the discussion, if it's messy or controversial it's worth writing a summary of the arguments and their applicability to policies, and then record what the consensus is (assuming there is one) and implement it if appropriate. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Clovermoss, you might try checking out discussions that have already been closed. Don't look at the result at first. Read over all the discussion and decide on what you think the outcome should be, then check see if you are more-or-less in tune with the actual closing decision. Joyous! Noise! 18:14, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You can visit a board like WP:CR and look for easy ones to close. Sometimes there's a clear consensus or near-unanimous consensus and it just needs a non-involved stamp of approval. My best tip for closing is pretend you're writing a Wikipedia article and using the discussion as your source. Summarize, don't supervote. Also when you're new at closing, if someone objects on your talk page, self-revert and let someone else close it, until you're confident you know the culture of closing in that corner of Wikipedia. Each area of Wikipedia has its own culture of closing, so be sensitive to calibrating yourself to this. For example, at AFD you're supposed to upweigh GNG/SNG based arguments and downweigh the rest, at RFD you're sometimes expected to WP:BARTENDER instead of no consensus, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:26, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Liz closes a lot of AFDs but she didn't close 19,414 AFDs in the past two months; those are obviously batch deletions as well, probably CSDs.
Last 2 mos admin stats shows 120k total actions. The top 5 #'s are 28k, 19k, 6k, 3.5k, 3.5k. Those top two (Explicit and Liz) are outliers that skew the overall totals. They're performing automated actions using non-bot accounts -- nothing wrong with that, except when we're looking to analyze non-automated actions, we need to remove those two from consideration along with the bots.
Taking the top 2 (and bots) out of consideration leaves 72,757 logged admin actions in the last two months performed by 416 different admins. Of those 72,757 logged admin actions, 55,244 (75%) were performed by 50 admins (12%). Pareto principle's 80/20 applies here: 83 admins (20%) performed 64,134 admin actions (88%). But the top 5 (excluding Explicit and Liz) preformed 17,544 actions, or about 24% of all actions--not half.
The distribution of logged admin actions shows the pareto principle at work but nothing more unusual than that. In other words, our logged admin action work load is distributed the same as any other work load among any other group of people in the world. We're normal in our distribution of work load. Levivich (talk) 14:26, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not necessarily disputing your point, but one AfD could result in multiple deletions if there are talk pages and redirects; possibly not 20k though. And all those admin actions, although semi-automated, would still need to be done if Liz and Explicit weren't doing them—a human would still have to review that each file didn't have a suitable copyright status or that each AfD had a consensus for deletion. The automation aids in implementing the decision, but it still needs to be made by a human. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I worry I sound like a broken record at this point, but admin actions are not a good measure of admin effort. I appreciate the work that the admins active in deletion do, but it may take me an hour to research a single AE report which probably will not involve a logged action, in which time I could rack up 100 actions elsewhere. The measure of whether we need more admins is in the backlogs, and in whether those whose activity is keeping the backlogs low are feeling burned out. The backlogs at COIN, SPI, and CCI are enormous; at DYK and AE they are usually under control, but just barely, and burnout is an issue; at AIV, ANEW, and RFPP, they are under control but even occasional backlogs can mean very annoying rapid disruption. CAT:RFU is always backlogged, and would be in truly dreadful shape if not for one or two admins. Arguably AfD is the only venue not persistently backlogged, and if Liz is closing 80% of discussions, that has a risky bus factor too. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:52, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, I think the bus factor assessment at AfD is a bit misleading--I think there's a fair amount of admins that check the AfD backlog, myself included, only to find that Liz has already taken care of everything; if Liz took a step back we'd be filling in without missing a beat. I'd be more concerned about the backlogs for more obscure processes. signed, Rosguill 16:58, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto ANI. An admin can spend hours and hours over multiple days working there, sometimes resulting in zero logged actions. Valereee (talk) 17:22, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And in a lot of shit thrown on the admin. Ymblanter (talk) 05:40, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We do have the WP:admin elections coming up, which means we may be able to get some competent people running who would find a regular WP:RfA too big a hurdle. So let's do a push together contacting potential future admins :). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was just thinking the same thing! I've got whole rolls somewhere of people I need to encourage/vet to run, and admin elections is the perfect opportunity. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:40, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit worried that admin elections is going to be less toxic but harder to pass. For example in arbcom elections (WP:ACE), the best candidates typically get around 80%. Contrast this to RFA where the best candidates get 95-100%. Yet in both processes, the pass threshold is 70%. This -20% supports is not yet compensated for in admin elections. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:50, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
yeah, i had a significantly lower threshold when I was drafting out a proposal for this – hopefully it works out okay, or we can always try and get it amended. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 10:52, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we do get lower percentages, there isn't going to be any way to know whether it's because people are opposing who wouldn't have opposed in an open RFA, or because the people who were willing to run in the election but not open RFAs were worse candidates. —Cryptic 11:01, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
unless someone who's already run in a public RfA serves as a kind of control... theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 11:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd expect that to skew the election numbers toward the RFA result. The electorate will already know what the "correct" choice is. (Plus, they'll have the benefit of full scrutiny, instead of the abbreviated three days - divided among who knows how many candidates we're going to have to simultaneously evaluate - that the elections allow.) —Cryptic 11:11, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think ArbCom's pass rate might not necessarily reflect what would happen in an admin election situation. For one thing, Arbcom is arbcom. For another, there are limited seats and therefore people might oppose candidates they'd otherwise support because they prefer someone in particular gets that seat. We don't have a cap on how many of these candidates are allowed to pass. I do think it's possible support percentages may be different based on how people might find it easier to oppose if they don't have to do so in public but I think it's difficult to speculate on how much this might matter without trying this out. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my case I will probably !vote (well, in this case, basically just vote) more often. When I see an RfA I can get an idea of the necessity of my participation based on the overall community response. With a secret ballot I won't have any way of knowing whether I can rely on the preexisting input of the community. I'm guessing that will result in stricter outcomes overall. Dekimasuよ! 13:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The minimum amount of support required to pass the arbitration committee elections is 60% to be seated for two years, or 50% to be seated for one year. isaacl (talk) 16:22, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We have at least two data points where public elections went private and support percentages dropped dramatically - ArbCom and Checkuser/Oversight. Now it's been a long time since either of those so it's possible this would no longer be true but the reasons why it dropped (and which have been mentioned by others above) would still hold true in this circumstance. Personally I'm more interested in how some of the other RFA reforms do to see whether or not this is a serious conduct issue the community is able to handle. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm wondering if we might want to consider some kind of recruiting drive. Maybe post some kind of poster/meme image at the top of everybody's watchlist page for a week. Perhaps a wiki-version of the famous recruiting poster from WWII. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:26, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's a great idea. We would likely get some very new editors participating in the admin elections in response, but the current system of a few people encouraging others to run is also quite sensitive to the bus factor. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:32, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At this point, any watch list notice might help by even slightly influencing some experienced editors who are already on the edge. It might not cause any significant effect, but it's worth a quick try potentially. The Night Watch (talk) 17:55, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could we make a subpage that I could then un-watchlist? Like Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Boring "Not enough admins" discussions. The project is no more complicated than it was 10 years ago, but I know several editors who would likely have passed in 2014, but who would definitely get "not enough edits, come back in a year" opposes now. If I were in charge, I'd hand out adminship like candy, and just politely remove it the first time it was misused. Ugh. See, now I've made myself part of the problem. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    hahahahaha Valereee (talk) 18:11, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That is the extremely obvious and easy solution to reducing backlogs that most people don't even want to consider. In the meantime, we try a zillion complicated solutions (RFA2024) while ignoring the easy and obvious one. Levivich (talk) 18:31, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I mean, I've considered it. See the whole editcountitis section I wrote in my RfA essay. Depending on your editing style, it may be take an active editor 16 years to meet "minimum" requirements. I can't change the entire culture of RfA by myself, though. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:46, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    One person saying 20k is a minimum does not make it true. I think 10k is a more likely consensus minimum. If we set the bar at 10k/1yr to be an admin, then the ~500 editors who make 1k/mo edits will reach that bar in 1 year. 500 admins is plenty. It's true, the ~5,000 who make 100 edits/mo will take over 8 years to get to 10k edits. That's OK, we don't need 5,000 admins. And anyway, we'd almost all agree that an editor who has been here a year and made 1,200 edits does not have enough experience yet to be an admin. Even if we did set the bar higher, at like 20k/2yrs, then the ~500 editors who make 1k/mo would get there in 2 years, still workable.
    And just to clarify, I'm not talking about RFA standards, and I don't think Floq is either (though I don't want to speak for him). I'm talking about automatically giving every active editor in good standing the admin bit when they hit 1 year / 10k edits, and then take it away from those who abuse it. Auto-admin is the solution few people want to consider, even though it's the easy and obvious solution to "not enough admins." Levivich (talk) 19:10, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I realize that one person saying it does not make it true but I have seen standards edge higher over time. The comment came from a long-established editor I respected so it felt like a good premise for taking that to its logical conclusion. 8 years/10,000 edits is still a long time and plenty of people see that as a bare minimum where they want to see specific things as well.
    Maybe we don't need 5,000 admins but if we truly do want more admins we need to consider out-of-the-box ideas like that and this would be closer to the "like candy" idea that Floq proposed. I'm not saying to be reckless, obviously, just not to evaluate people solely on numbers. An extra 500 people doing admin tasks every so often would presumably lead to less admin burnout. My point is that our admin numbers already include almost everyone making 1000+ edits a month and we should be more open to considering active editors spending just as much time on the site but with a different editing style. Does that make sense? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 19:26, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure I think "out of the box" ideas would really help at this stage. Making creative ideas is nice but, I've always felt that the processes of promoting admins is bit conservative I guess? It took a really long time to actually get admin elections through the system, so I'm not sure giving time to considering more outlandish concepts will have any meaningful effect. There will probably always be people in opposition to new ideas. RFA2024 had some neat and interesting proposals, but remember only a fraction of them passed right? Forgive me if I'm a little rusty, I've not been keeping up as much with projectspace as I would wish. The Night Watch (talk) 20:31, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well I'm not really proposing anything radically different to the process itself. I'm just asking people to reconsider if editors with lower edit counts are viable candidates because sometimes it's hard to understand people who have different experiences than our own. I'm not suggesting the perennially failed proposal of "automatic admins" or anything like that. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:49, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    our admin numbers already include almost everyone making 1000+ edits a month Really? I would guess that most admins made <1k edits/mo, and most editors making >1k edits/mo are not admins. There must be stats somewhere for this? Levivich (talk) 20:50, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well the site I linked only gives a count without telling you who is in the category (obviously we'll have some people in that category without adminship and some with lower counts in it). But the number matches up oddly well with Wikipedia:Active admins (427). I'm making an assumption that there's a lot of overlap there given high RFA standards. It's possible I'm wrong. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:54, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Hey man im josh: I know you've done some interesting quarry stuff with admins in the past. Is there any way to use it to see if my hunch that there's a lot of overlap between the active admins and the 1,000+ edits/month cohort has any basis in reality? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:09, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Hey @Clovermoss. I do a lot of quarry stuff, but it's all forked from other people's queries or slight modifications that's I'm comfortable making. I am definitely not the best person to ask if you're looking for a custom query of any kind since I typically rely on the kindness of others for those. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:48, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Hey man im josh: Any idea who I should ask? I suppose I could try doing this manually but that seems like a lot of work that could be better spent elsewhere if this is something that can actually be automated. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:56, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I know AntiComposite has been super helpful, as have Sohom Datta, MPGuy2824, Novem Lingue, and im sure a few others I'd feel ashamed of leaving out. Cryptic has also chimed in a few times on wiki after I've shared some queries here and offered helpful tweaks or fixes, or an explanation as to why the query was flawed. Perhaps ask at the request a query page (cannot recall the link) or the general tech discussion channel on the Discord server? Hey man im josh (talk) 22:01, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The request a query page is at WP:request a query. —Cryptic 22:24, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I've requested one there. I'll get back to everyone here if someone deigns to make my day and we learn anything useful. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 22:55, 26 August 2024 (UTC) [reply]
    While admins are a diverse group, there are some things that all admins have in common. Namely: (1) they all wanted to be admins, (2) they were all willing to run RFA, and (3) they all passed RFA.
    The community has spent a lot of time looking at that third factor, trying to make RFA easier to pass, so that people who meet criteria #1 and #2 could more easily hit #3. But even if all unsuccessful RFAs were successful, it wouldn't really make a dent in admin backlogs.
    The community has also spent a lot of time looking at the second factor, trying to make RFA more attractive, so that people who meet criteria #1 will be more likely to meet criteria #2. We don't know how many people who meet the first criteria do not meet the second; how many people want to be an admin but are put off by RFA. Except pretty much all anecdotal evidence reported by the folks who ask folks if they want to run says that the number is somewhere between "most" and "almost all." We more or less know that RFA is a bottleneck that is preventing a number of people who want to be admins from becoming admins.
    If it were up to me, we'd completely eliminate #2. I'd make almost everyone who wanted to be an admin, an admin (subject to some minimum objective criteria of experience and good standing), and then take it away from those who abuse it, as Floq suggests. The reason is that I don't think that removing #2 will make a significant dent in admin backlogs. How many people are there who would do the work, and are qualified, but don't want to run an RFA? 100? Do we think there are 400 out there right now? Because even if we doubled the number of admins and cut all backlogs in half, some of the backlogs would still be not great. To really make a dent in backlogs, we'd need to like triple the amount of active admins. And in order to do that, you need to make more people interested in doing the admin work (or find a way to stop having to do the work that no one wants to volunteer to do).
    Many are opposed to the idea of auto-adminship because they think it'll be widely abused. I don't, because the rest of Wikipedia works. Most everyone can edit most anything, and while we have vandalism and hoaxes and such, it's manageable, and has been for decades. It turns out that letting anyone edit doesn't prevent productive building of an encyclopedia; rather, it spurs it. I find no reason to believe it would work differently with block, protect, delete, etc. Sure, under any auto-admin scheme, at first we'd have a rash of tool abuse and desysopings, and even on an ongoing basis, we'd have more abuse and desysopings than we do now, they'd become a regular thing, much like blocking vandals is a daily routine. But I believe, just as with regular editing, the productive use of the tools will far outweigh the abusive use of the tools. We'd be able to handle it.
    And that's without considering various ways to "throttle" auto-adminship; e.g. you can auto-give p-blocking, but not allow full blocks until a certain proficiency or level of experience is demonstrated (e.g., at something like PERM, or heck even something like RFA or elections). You could do the same with protection levels, template editor. There are a number of different ways to unbundle-and-auto-give-some-tools. Levivich (talk) 01:39, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I started a thread ... eight years ago ... titled "Planning for a post-admin era". Eight years later, our situation is worse than it was then, and continues to decline. No one's really come up with any way to fix it, and I think nobody will. This is part of the organizational life cycle. It's a very slow process, but Wikipedia is dying. You can't really stop it, and the Foundation sure as hell isn't doing much of anything to lessen the impact. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What would you expect the foundation to do to make an impact? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:24, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Show some organizational leadership. This isn't rocket science. Thousands of organizations have faced exactly this curve before. Some have done so well, and turned them into mature, long living companies. Others through their efforts have managed to tank the companies and send them into bankruptcy. So far, the Foundation's plan has been to ...do nothing. --Hammersoft (talk) 00:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly would you expect "showing leadership" to look like in this context? If the foundation started assigning sysop rights to people, I have a feeling a lot of people would be incredibly outraged. They're willing to talk to people from the community about things sometimes and that's a bit more than nothing. But I'm not sure what more they could really do beyond that. Do you have any specific ideas? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 01:26, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My general thoughts are that specific solutions to specific problems isn't going to fix the sinking ship. We need more broad leadership, strategy, sense of direction. There isn't any, and the staff at the Foundation know it. There was a somewhat recent survey of employees there and the results showed an extremely high level of distrust of senior management. --Hammersoft (talk) 02:28, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, so you're thinking more broadly. If you do find that survey, I'd be interested to read it. I've met numerous foundation employees that have not confided such things in me but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't feel that way. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:34, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes the movement has leadership and direction problems. But I'm not seeing their effect at the level of blocking vandals or deleting spam and copyvio. Framgate is a while ago, and apart from that scandalous mistake by the WMF, I suspect over 99% of admin actions are uncontentious. More broadly, we should expect the organisation to be going through various growing pains "organizational life cycle" as you put it. What doesn't make sense to me about the RFA crisis is that editing levels remain high or at least above the late 2014 nadir, and only about a third less than the 2007 peak. Whilst new admins are down 98% on the 2007 peak. More to the point, if our problems were those of a maturing community, you would expect that almost everyone was now an admin and we were most worried about getting new blood into the community. Instead we have this odd situation where we have plenty of people who are qualified to run at RFA but who aren't willing to go there. Its almost like the greying of the pedia has meant we now have lots of retired and semiretired editors most of whom are unwilling to go through a public "right of passage" ceremony that was so attractive to the teenage vandalfighters of 2003-2008. As someone who was OK running twice at RFA as a middle aged candidate, maybe I'm one of the exceptions to the rule. But I have heard that the few teenagers we still get don't baulk at running for RFA. ϢereSpielChequers 11:18, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It has been my experience that it is easier to persuade younger candidates to run. There's some guesswork involved with that assessment of course. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:06, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's because us older people need to get the lawn mowed, and if we wanted to risk spending a week having people point out our flaws we'd visit our inlaws. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:19, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm 21 and it took a lot of people trying to convince me before I ran in December. I plan to be around for the long-term, though. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:22, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, it won't. Sorry to be pessimistic, but this sort of thread has happened many times before. There's been no appreciable increase in the number of admins, though occasionally the cat has bounced. This is all just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. --Hammersoft (talk) 00:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a bit harsh, Hammersoft. I know a handful of current admins who spend time recruiting adminship candidates because at some point a conversation like this one brough the need home. I wouldn't have spent a substantial portion of my Wikipedia time vetting candidates if I hadn't seen some of the stats WereSpielChequers put together 6-7 years ago. I've had a hand in 10 successful nominations. I'm a far cry from fixing the problem; but without the efforts of such recruiters - and I'm not the most prolific - we'd be in considerably worse shape. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:45, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes we would be. I don't mean to take away anything from the people who are trying to avert crisis. The reality though is that we'd need probably 20x the effort to really avoid what's coming. And let's be clear; it is coming. It's already happening at Commons. The backlogs there are measured in months. That's why I say the Foundation doesn't care. It's already happened there and the Foundation won't do anything about it. --Hammersoft (talk) 02:28, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Enwiki and many wikis have made it clear to the WMF that they do not like WMF involvement in their internal processes. Framgate comes to mind. I think expecting WMF to fix enwiki's RFA issues may be ignoring that enwiki would probably not want nor let WMF fix it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:42, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not expecting the WMF to step into RfA and try to fix it. I think that would be an unreasonable request, and one the community would fight to the death. Doing so would be expecting senior management at a major car company to come to the engineer's workshop and tell them how to design a starter for the next model car. The problem is much bigger than RfA. The problem is organizational life cycle. RfA is but a minor symptom. Without strong leadership to focus on a long term strategy, the project is aimlessly wandering. Such ambiguity results in all sorts of symptoms which we are currently seeing play out on Commons. Framgate was a symptom as well. For proof of this, I invite you to review the (two weeks now out of date, at least) website of the Wikimedia Foundation. Take a few minutes and see if you can find their organizational strategy. Go ahead. Try. Maybe you can find it. I can't. It should be front and center, much like the bridge of a ship. If there is a strategy, it's buried somewhere down in the bilge of the ship. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:57, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
meta:Movement Strategy/Recommendations is probably it. Although I admit that as an insider I knew where to look. It might be a bit harder to find for someone just google searching or poking around https://wikimediafoundation.org. It seems like WMF had some process to create these 10 strategy points back in 2017, and now tries to design their annual plan around it and have their product managers pick things to work on that align with it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Putting it crudely, I would think that the Foundation has other concerns than enwiki with respect to local governance. The strategies that the Foundation is focused on are more for knowledge equity. When comes to the knowledge of governance of wikis, they would be more inclined to transfer the knowledge of administrating enwiki or other bigger or established wikis to the other smaller/newer wikis, rather than developing (or interfering as some might put it. Can't blame them for that.) the established ones. – robertsky (talk) 00:08, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So it turns out that Levivich was right that there are more non-admins in the 1000+ edits/month category than admins. 56/471 are admins. I still think looking to the pool of 4,776 editors that make more than 100 edits a month to be a more viable option to improving # of active admins, even if there's not as much overlap as I thought there was. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There were 907 non-admin, non-bot accounts that would have matched the criteria I used for that query. I don't know precisely where your 471 figure is coming from, though it's likely it's looking at an average over a couple months. —Cryptic 23:24, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Check the link. There's 471 people who make more than 1,000 edits a month. I've been looking at it every month for a bit more than a year now and it usually hovers between 450-550 people. It's a fairly consistent statistic. Same goes for the people making 100 edits a month. They're usually more in the 4600-5800 range iirc. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:27, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I misspoke. I knew where you were getting it; I don't know where wikiscan is. (My other suspicion besides averaging over a longer period is that it's omitting some automated edits. No human's really making 510k edits per month; that's more than one every 5 seconds, every minute of every hour of every day.) —Cryptic 23:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well you might find this interesting. That's the all-time stats and you can specify whether you want to see bots or not. Then there's this page for edits made by people in the last 24 hours.Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:37, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, no user's making 510k edits per month even with automation, and that should've tipped me off; my counts were borked. 438 non-admin/bot users. The error wouldn't have affected the admin count. —Cryptic 23:44, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Break up the tools make junior administrators..... Giving them minor tools...... maintenance type tools.Moxy🍁 23:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you mean like permissions? What else do you suggest separating from admin? Donald Albury 00:29, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Correct..... first one that comes to mind is revision-deletion of copyrighted material from public view. Moxy🍁 01:33, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    From a skill perspective that's a good unbundle, but the WMF is unwilling to let people have the right to see deleted revisions without an RFA-like process. The roadblock is higher than en.wiki (see conversations re: researcher rights in the history of this page). Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:47, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    One downside to unbundling is that we seem to get fewer candidates at subsequent RFAs and they are judged to a higher standard. This was most dramatic in 2008 after the unbundling of rollback. So I would be cautious about a future unbundling unless it had a significant impact on the admin workload. The obvious one for that in my view is "block newbie" - you'd call it something else to try and get it past the WMF. But the vast majority of blocks for individual IPs and new accounts are for spam or vandalism. An indef block of a blatant vandal is almost always uncontentious and routine, a civility, edit warring or "running bots on a personal account" block of a regular is often a dramafest. So a block/unblock button that didn't work on extended confirmed accounts would likely be a successful unbundling that gave us an alternative to admins for many of the most urgent admin actions. But the WMF will veto it as long as they continue in their misconception that our main problem is that we bite the newbies. ϢereSpielChequers 10:29, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It is indeed a major problem that we bite the newbies, but I am not sure blocks are an important part of that problem. Reverts and warnings without outsider readable explanation and a kafkaesque seeming process to get a draft approved would rate higher on my list of WP:BITE issues than who ends up blocked. To return to the original point: I am very wary of unbundling. Sure, it is easy to become a rollbacker or template editor than it ever was to become an admin, but the step up from rollbacker or template editor to admin seems bigger than the step it was before unbundling. (Insert warning about anecdotal evidence by old timers here). —Kusma (talk) 13:10, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure creating a tier system for who you can block is the best idea. We're all supposed to be subject to the same standards. I've only blocked an extended confirmed editor once but it was warranted. The other aspect to this is that if someone makes a bad block of a long term editor, that's more visible and people are likely to review their blocks as a whole. It might take a bit longer to notice that if someone is just blocking a bunch of newbies. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:46, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Might as well just link WP:UNBUNDLE (which is listed at WP:PERENNIAL also) here. The gist, of course, being that the community has been opposed perennially to any proposals for the separation of block, protect and delete; and that seems set to not be changing anytime soon. Not that I see unbundling any of the three fixing the most problematic backlogs, like CCI. And re WSC: WP:RESPONDER-RFC, somewhat similar to a "block newbie" perm, has long fallen by the wayside, but may be of interest if anyone wants to revive it. Though Proposal 10 at the RfA review, based on similar grounds, was rejected by a wide margin... so yeah. JavaHurricane 16:33, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    FTR, ruwiki has done this kind of unbundling recently by using an adminbot (and the first few people were assigned this right by the bot owner). 1234qwer1234qwer4 01:59, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the current set of advanced permissions that an editor can apply and demonstrate that they are competent in performing various administrative tasks is sufficient. I would say I am a product of that, having accumulated many of the user rights before applying for RfA. – robertsky (talk) 00:00, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Me too, but the unbundled permissions are still insufficient for the admin work I would like to be able to do - page protection, requested moves and Did You Know queues. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:31, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You have Wikipedia:Page mover—isn't that sufficient for most requested moves? Dekimasuよ! 05:14, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Admin-protected pages related to DYK area I suppose. That's not covered under the page mover right. – robertsky (talk) 05:15, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Have you considered another RfA? It has been 5 years since your previous one? Maybe the community's impression has changed since then... – robertsky (talk) 05:17, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just to give an idea of what not having enough administrators will look like: At Commons, there are currently more than 2800 overdue deletion requests. Almost three thousand. Let that sink in. Commons is effectively a failed project at this point. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:38, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to Commons, exactly? Do they just not have enough admins? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:48, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. So far this year, they've had three successful RfAs. The last one was six months ago. Over the prior five years, they've averaged just shy of eight new administrators per year. We've averaged 14.4. Their 8 per year has not been enough to keep up. It's highly unlikely our 14 is enough to keep up. From 2018 to 2022, we had a net loss of 46 admins per year (WP:DBM). The loss curve will go asymptotic, so it's not linear. But, if it were linear, we'd have zero admins 10 years from now. 10 years isn't that long of a time. That's less than half of the current age of the project. So, imagine having (essentially) no administrators 10 years from now. That's basically how much time this project has left. I'm not being melodramatic. This is reality. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:01, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are their standards really high at RfA or do they not have many active editors? I've participated at Commons a bit but definitely more casually than anything I've done here. I haven't really done much outside of uploading files. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 15:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They have a 75% support rate for passing RfA, so higher than here. I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but I am quite certain their active editors to active administrators ratio is far higher than it is here. I think part of the issue (not a fault; just a difference) is that many editors there are like you (and me; I do the same); we upload files from time to time. There's no buy in with editors there, less a sense of community. There's quite a bit of (non-article editing) work that goes on here on en.wiki that isn't done by administrators. Commons, not so much. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:40, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Certain tasks take longer on Commons for example, renaming an article because of the impact it might have on Wikipedia projects. It’s effectively English only with its convoluted category despite being a multi-lingual project. Ton of technical debt and half-assed tooling. Uploading albums to Flickr and mass-importing to Commons is far easier than uploading to commons. But this is also because English Wikipedia editors advocate mostly for their interests instead of broader Wikipedia infrastructure. Commons culture certainly has its own issues as well. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 16:56, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I wanted to get more involved at Commons, what would I even do? It sounds like they need more people who care and I wouldn't mind pitching in a little bit if I knew what I could do to help. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:01, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Participate at their village pumps (there are quite a few) and see what is happening there. I would say a few months would be a reasonable time to get in, one day is not enough. Ymblanter (talk) 06:44, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that they have a higher bar than enwiki. A lot of file deletions there are related to copyright status of where the file was created. Invariably I have seen editors there testing the potential admin about this at rfa there. You will end up having to know some legal concepts surrounding that. – robertsky (talk) 23:54, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No way. Speaking as a Commons admin (who unfortunately barely has any time to dedicate to cleaning any backlogs there, however) and having skimmed a few RfAs on enwiki in the past, I can say that the amount of scrutiny users are subjected to on there is almost negligible compared to the English Wikipedia – and I did fail my first RfA on Commons! That combined with the fact that you don't actually need to contribute any of your own content to Commons to be qualified makes the bar a lot lower IMO (though this might just be a personal perception since my work on here has never really been related to content creation either). 1234qwer1234qwer4 02:06, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I must have looked at the RfAs there at the wrong times then. 😂 – robertsky (talk) 05:03, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think having overdue deletion requests is an active problem. The Russian Wikipedia has over 9000 (literally) 10000 articles currently nominated at AfD. IMO it's a lot better to have deletion requested for things worthy of deletion rather than to keep the trash lying around for ages. It would probably be a very conservative estimate to say that the number of files on Commons that meet deletion criteria there (and are not nominated for deletion, though that hardly makes any difference) is a high five-figure number. 1234qwer1234qwer4 02:12, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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