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What's up (and down) with administrators, articles and languages

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By Bri
English Wikipedia's active administrators could fit in Lincoln Hall (balcony not shown) with a few seats left over.

A sad milestone for English Wikipedia

For deeper background, see "Administrator cadre continues to contract" from the July issue, or other items in the Reforming RfA series.

This December, for the first time since the list was established in its current form in 2014, the tally of active administrators has been under 500 for the entire month.[1] It does not appear likely to rise above 500 again, unless there is a major change in trend.

WereSpielChequers sent us this commentary on the request for adminship process:

Turkish Wikipedia block lifted

Censored no more

Just before we went to press, the Constitutional Court of Turkey ruled the block of Wikipedia in Turkey invalid. We will have to cover the full implications of this in more detail in a future issue. Suffice to say that we (Wikipedians) think that it is important for people to be able to access our content, and the fact that a national court agreed is significant. To our knowledge, this is the first time any court has found there exists a constitutional right to read Wikipedia specifically.

Brief notes

Indigenous groups in Taiwan include the Sakizaya people who now have their own Wikipedia.
  • New language: Sakizaya Wikipedia (szy.wiki.x.io) launched in November.[2] The Sakizaya people are one of sixteen Taiwanese tribes recognized by the Council of Indigenous Peoples. One of the prerequisites for the new wiki was the January registration of an ISO 639-3 language code for Sakizaya by SIL International.
  • Administrators:
    The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators, Dreamy Jazz (December 2); and Rosguill and Newslinger (December 23). All had approvals above 90%. Adminship was procedurally restored to Spartaz, Deor, and Xeno (a bureaucrat). This year saw a total of 22 new sysops by RfA compared to only 10 in 2018. 22 new sysops in one year is below replacement levels, but the highest annual total since 2014.
    Angusmclellan passed away in November. He is missed.
    Edgar181 was desysoped by Committee motion. clpo13 and Athaenara both requested the voluntary removal of their admin rights while NCurse and Matthewedwards were dysysopped under inactivity rules in December.
  • Article milestone: The English Wikipedia will reach six million articles by January 15, according to our estimate. Previous milestones were noted in last month's news and notes.
  • Wikispecies milestone: In early December, Wikispecies exceeded 700,000 articles. Good work: its editors created the last 100,000 pages during about 13.5 months.

References

  1. ^ Probably for the first time since 2005, see User:Widefox/editors
  2. ^ meta:Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Sakizaya
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No trend AFAICS. Just a sudden bunch of RfA on which the usual trolls were either not able to cause a stampede of pile-on oppose votes, or simply got bored and stayed away. Undeniably however, most potential candidates won't run nowadays unless they have a very, very strong reason to assume they'll pass. Of course, we nominators don't get it right all the time, but nobody is perfect. This year has seen a few more new admins than what has become 'normal', but on average I don't see it as bucking any trends. Perhaps remind The Signpost readers of the RfA trilogy I wrote last year. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:13, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you proceed with the belief that almost all candidates are worthy, then it's no wonder would-be kingmakers like you bristle at any dissent from the working classes. RFA stopped being meaningful once bureaucrats decided that the numbers don't matter, so anyone that participates now does so in an empty manner. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:02, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Chris troutman please do me a favour and do some fact checking before you launch into personal attacks. I am one of the rarest nominators, and I only bristle at the trolls. I would never say a word against a genuine, non vengeful, or well researched oppose vote. It might not sway my position if I'm upstairs in my House of Lords, but I would respect it. Times have changed since the days when my early votes on an RfA would have an influence; nowadays I generally vote late, and the outcome by then is pretty much already secure (one way or the other.) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:28, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, I disagree. From my vantage point, RfA has become far less of a gauntlet than it was a few years ago. Most solid candidates pass easily. The problem lies in identifying these candidates and persuading them to run. It probably doesn't help matters that some editors are still repeating the doom-and-gloom mantra. Lepricavark (talk) 23:48, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's not quite accurate, Lepricavark. RfA is still the snake pit it's been for well over a decade. You only need to take a look. The only reason candidates pass with flying colours (or most of them anyway nowadays) is because the only ones who are prepared to come forward nowadays are the ones who are are almost certain to pass and are brave enough to shake the evil behaviour off like water from a ducks back. There is no 'doom', aspiring candidates only need to look at a few RfA and they can draw their own conclusions. Any 'gloom' is what we get from from the users themselves when we try to talk them into running. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've followed recent RfAs fairly closely and I can't say that I agree with your conclusions. 'Evil behaviour' is definitely a stretch. Lepricavark (talk) 04:20, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously Lepricavark, you won't agree if all you have only examined the most recent RfAs. Solid knowledge comes from solid - and long - empirical experience. Admittedly I've only been following RfA matters for 10 years and only voted on 400 or so, but I believe it's enough for me to have been able to notice any trends and changes. Oh, and I have been through the process myself. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:20, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Fine. I'll rephrase. I've been following RfA for years (which includes the recent one, as I'm sure you would agree) and I base my comments on the observations I have made while following RfA for years. Oh, and I have also been through the process myself. Twice, in fact. Lepricavark (talk) 18:24, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There were 500 admins classified as active just yesterday, as well as for the full first week of this month, FWIW. Usually the number of active admins rises significantly enough in December, January, and February that we would also expect a moving average to increase. Dekimasuよ! 03:43, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to become an admin after reading this. Apart from thatI also nominated the Turkish court overruling Erdogan's decision on banning Wikipedia in ITN section. Hope this Signpost would encourage to post it in ITN. Abishe (talk) 04:14, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • For a discussion on this held in November, see RfA - Rising Success Rate. That discussion moved on to consider how many applications we'd need. In total numbers, we'd need loads, but to match the declining rate of active admins (rate as of that point), we'd need 31/year or 2.55/month. While a new strategy might be best, that number probably is acheivable. Perhaps combined with some efforts of actually trying to re-engage admins, especially those still active on the site in any fashion. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:24, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very interesting article. I have a sense (or maybe just hope), that the body of admins is kind of stabilizing from a "bubble" in the early days? Wikipedia should have some clear graphs on the front page showing the trend in articles, which I think keeps rising – E.g. we should keep re-selling ourselves to ex-admins that the project, staffing issues aside, continues to be in high demand by its readers. I know people in Microsoft who tell me that they gave up years ago trying to "compete" with Wikipedia (e.g. proprietary and/or other platforms), and that Google is of the same view.
My biggest concern is for the smaller group of 30-50 admins who do 90% of the admin work, and who dominate individual AIV, RPP, UAA, XfD, ANI, CCI, CSD, SPI, etc. boards. The loss of any of these admins who be serious, and given the inevitable "burn-out" of many admins, is almost a certainty. Part of the issue is that we need more technology (e.g. more Cluebots in different areas), however, there are many areas that need "human" judgment. I am not sure how this is going to work out? Britishfinance (talk) 11:44, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a huge concern, and it's not limited to admin backlogs either. We're currently experiencing an unprecedented crisis at WP:AFC, which has the unfortunate intersection of being a boring task that requires a good amount of expertise to handle (at least, I think that's what the problem is). As I write this there are 3,763 unreviewed submissions, including over 1,000 of which are at least two months old, so I dread to think of what would happen if some of our most diligent and hard-working editors who do an incredible job at AFC were not able to continue. — Bilorv (talk) 01:35, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Bilorv, AfC has problems, but not the ones you mention here. There is no urgency at AfC - have you seen the stats of accepted vs declined/rejected?. What the community should be focusing on right now is the huge backlog at NPP, our only firewall against inappropriate new articles, and subjected to a harsh deadline. It's an uphill battle, and it's losing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:40, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • It doesn't matter whether the backlog is at AfC, NPP or elsewhere. A problem I found is that some editors really don't like unknown admins showing up the area that they frequented (possibly because they don't know if the admin is an inclusionist or deletionist). For example, I closed an XfD 9 months ago (which I usually don't do, but have done in the past) and was promptly called out by a now-banned editor for "You are an Admin? Never seen you at MfD or take any other Admin action ever." With that kind of attitude and treatment, why would admins feel like they should continue doing admin work while being attacked? This isn't going to be fixed even with RfA reforms or more admins. OhanaUnitedTalk page 03:59, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Kudpung: there's urgency for two reasons that I see. The first is that editor retention will improve if an editor sees their draft accepted or rejected, rather than sitting stale for as long as it takes for them to forget that they submitted it. Of course this only applies to some types of people who submit AFCs (e.g. not paid editors) but it's still a huge base. The reason you might have overlooked this factor is that currently almost no AFC submitters (other than paid ones) stick around, and the explanation for that is that our reviews are taking months. The second reason I have is that we do have a deadline: drafts are deleted after six months, information can become stale over time and the queue is getting longer, which means that if the trend were to continue indefinitely then there would be many drafts that would never be reviewed. This forecast isn't actually that unlikely, as Wikipedia continues to scare off and burn out its long-term editors, whilst paid editing and POV editing is on the increase.
    @OhanaUnited: I think this experience points to a really hostile culture we have all over Wikipedia when it comes to ownership and a perceived need for control. Admins often receive the worst of this but in general I think it's a huge editor retention problem, which in the end is a big contributing factor to every backlog we have. — Bilorv (talk) 13:26, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Bilorv, there's a lot of truth in what you are saying but unlkike NPP with its much tighter deadline, AfC is not the gatekeeper of Wikipedia - it's a concession we make to IPs and those who can't wait until their accounts are autoconfirmed. Now, autoconfirmed is an extremely low threshold, so anyone who really wants to see their article published can surely register an account or make those 10 edits in 4 days and if they don't know how to do it, there is a plethora of help pages and venues. Perhaps that's one of the problems: there's so much help and a forest of links to it and confusing policies and guidelines they can't see the wood for the trees. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:33, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that NPP also has a big backlog which causes a lot of trouble. A pet peeve of mine, however, is your position that anyone who's truly interested can easily get autoconfirmed. I think you're really underestimating how easy it is to find places to edit when you've never edited before. You might think, "I watched this movie the other day, maybe I could look at that" and read through it thoroughly, eventually work out a small improvement you can make, and then find for some reason it won't let you edit it (semi-protection)! Most of our guidelines for newbies really do have the wood-for-the-trees issue. And of course there are brilliant tools like TWA or that Special page recommended to newbies which leads them to a random page in a few cleanup categories (e.g. needs copyediting) that even I can't find anymore. But these tools are only obvious to a newbie if they're the first thing they accidentally stumble across.
The other thing is that I feel "if they're really interested..." is exactly backwards of what we want. We want to be persuading people that they do want to edit, not making themselves prove that they do. I wasn't that interested in editing 6 years ago, but I had a decent initial experience and here I still am, and hopefully I've been a good asset to the site in that time.
Another thing is that I'd rather see autoconfirmed people still using AFC rather than creating articles directly—I think it's a lot better to have a draft rejected or a helpful comment left rather than the scary "WE'RE GOING TO DELETE YOUR PAGE" tags. What has been happening a lot more recently is NPP patrollers moving things to draftspace, the editors submitting them to AFC and then... nothing... for months and months... and then a rejection, and the editor is long gone. So in a way, NPP won't work unless AFC works as well. — Bilorv (talk) 16:17, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Bilorv, again, I can't disagree with you. I and one or two others have been working hard these past 12 months or so to dispel the traditional rivalry between NPP and AfC. Their approach to new pages is fundamentally different but the mechanics of the processes are as dissimilar as they are alike - but we do now have them cohabiting on the same feed interface sharing all the filters and ORES. But NPP is basically a binary triage (a concept that people with with front line army experience or MCI aid workers will understand) while AfC is more of a field hospital. It would naturally be ideal if all new pages were to be put through AfC, but that would require thousands of reviewers rather than just 200 or so (of whom like at NPP only a fraction are truly active). Nobody really likes doing either task once they have been at it long enough to be fed up with the arrogance and insults from people who believe 'anyone can edit' gives them a constitutional right to claim a slot in mainspace for just whatever purpose they like. I have no qualms telling such people to bugger off, but I'll bend over backwards to offer some genuine help to those who deserve it.. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:11, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • based on what I read on these pages, I'd huve to give up full-time work and spend a couple of years editing to again feel ready to stand. By the time I retire, that bar will likely be much higher. I'm never going to write a feature article, and no one needs to do that to serve as a good administrator. That's clear in part because it's a process that isn't particularly dependent upon administrator authority at any point. I've always found that to be a curious test.~TPW 13:57, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you haven’t written a featured article you are very unlikely to get 100% support. But you could get well over 95% and the passmark is much lower. I am not convinced that the de facto criteria are actually rising, with the possible exception of tenure where several editors seem to vote against anyone with less that 15 months tenure. It is still possible to become an admin with a level of activity that fits in with also having a full time job. ϢereSpielChequers 20:36, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've always felt that number of active administrators isn't the only way we should judge the health of the site as a whole. There can be many strong contributors who will not run to be an administrator, because they either fear the process or simply have no interest in it, or feel unqualified. Eddie891 Talk Work 15:46, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hi Eddie, yes there other metrics, such as how much editing activity and how the editing community as a whole is growing or declining. When the editing community as a whole appeared to be dwindling there was a lot of fuss about that, even though much of the apparent decline from 2007 to 2014 was because of the increased use of edit filters and the move of links between different language versions of Wikipedia to Wikidata as well as the difficulty of editing Wikipedia on a smartphone. The 2015 rally seems to have ended with Wikipedia editing levels stable at a significantly higher level than in 2014. But the decline in active admin numbers has continued. However I take your point that lots of Wikipedians simply don’t want to be admins, and I’m OK with that. My fear is that there are qualified candidates out there who would easily pass RFA but have been deterred by myths that have arisen re the process. WereSpielChequers 08:51, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whilst a small number of admins actively seek out potential candidates and encourage them to put themselves forward, we could probably do more to actively mentor them, as I think once used to happen, or even to train any new or existing admin in complex areas that they might become interested in. Of course, we do have WP:ORFA, and a number of guidance pages for potential admin candidates who think they might be ready to take on the role. But we have nothing whatsoever that allows editors to self-test their knowledge and understanding of our many policies and procedures, or to help them gauge for themselves how ready they might be to become an administrator. This could be something as simple as a 25-50 question multiple choice page, giving a helpful indication and scoring, but without any of the public exposure, criticism or even embarrassment that an ORFA can bring. I firmly believe we should turn our attention to creating this sort of resource, or maybe finding a way for other (extended-confirmed?) users to flag up or praise other editors who they think show  good admin-like abilities. (On a different note, Bri please not a small typo in the Turkish article: Suffice to say that we (Wikipedians) think that it [is] important for people to....) Nick Moyes (talk) 22:55, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just joined AFC. It's super easy with the helper gadget - don't forget to sign up first - I got to help some articles along that probably deserved to exist, and there's always a backlog! If you've been around long enough to have a good nose for what would live or die at AFD, then you're qualified - David Gerard (talk) 22:14, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I can't remember if I ever ran. I've written FAs, GAs, and whatnot. I think I did run and I got a bunch of "doesn't need the tools". It's hard to hear someone's vocal inflection in text, but I swear it was "fuck you!" Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:14, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you did run; t'was back in 2007. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Peregrine Fisher. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:31, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri: Wikipedia is still blocked in Turkey. You might want to correct the article. Kaldari (talk) 20:49, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Unblocked yesterday, according to The New York Times ☆ Bri (talk) 17:52, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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