User blog:Random-storykeeper/Revising RFAs

My days of editing on Nitrome Wiki are almost up. Over the course of this week, I will spend time redoing my profile, deleting numerous subpages and basically, just packing up to stop editing.

Only September 03 2013 08:30:00 until uni starts...

There may be need for a new admin. I'm still trying to decide if this is so, as well as whether I should remove my admin rights from Nitrome Wiki or not. Alongside Ayernam's RFA, there is another nomination I wish to make to a user whom I believe would benefit from admin tools. Before I do so, however, I would like to revise the Requests for adminship page, particularly the preloads that come up when loading the page and the requirements a user has to meet in order to become an admin.

When I first helped set up the RFAs, I had a set idea in mind as to what the "ideal" admin would appear on the wiki and tried to model various requirements so that every user who requested admin rights or nominated another user had to meet those prerequisites in order to be granted adminship. I tried to follow Wikipedia's style of RFAs, with a section for "Support", "Oppose", "Neutral", "Questions", etc. What I didn't realize was that separating each of these viewpoints (and questions) into sections created a MAJOR (sorry for caps) misconception for this wiki as to how RFAs work.

Here's what bothers me most about past RFAs:

The user with the most edits/knows how to wiki code is automatically "adminship" worthy, according to community vote.
Don't get me wrong; having a knowledge of wiki code and editing a lot on a wiki is a great thing, but just because a user can generate a thousand edits per day should not mean that they deserve adminship. Remember, adminship is not a big deal. It should not be treated as a reward for knowing how to make wiki tables, or writing thousands of wiki articles under your username. Having users nominated for adminship on the basis that they are fluent in wiki coding, can write walkthroughs or whatever is truly misleading to other users who come to this wiki and believe they have to meet these requirements and that in order to be recognized, they need to become an admin.

I won't say that there is one specific set of assets that make a user "admin worthy", but more on that below.

Reducing requirements
What also happened during our previous RFAs was that having too many requirements forces the community into thinking admins have to be "one way", and therefore, no discussion was required for many requests. It became more of a process of voting to see which user to collect the most votes, and ultimately become an admin.

Adminship requests should really be about involving the community more than having a set of requirements to do it for you. What do you think makes a user "admin worthy"? These are things you need to discuss and bring up with the rest of the community. The nominated user needs to be chosen, ultimately by what the community thinks.

Reducing the amount of prerequisites a user needs to fulfil before submitting an RFA will encourage users to participate in discussion more. There is no "one way" that a user has to be. I am willing to argue that a user doesn't necessarily need to be fluent in wiki code in order to become an admin.

What qualities should an admin possess? That depends. When I assess RFAs, I look at the user's involvement with the wiki. Not how much they are involved, necessarily, but where they are involved and if they are consistently involved with it. Is the user helping out the wiki in ways which the wiki needs an admin right now? Is there an area of the wiki that is important but is mostly underlooked by the rest of the community? These may be different for you, or for Nitrome Wiki in the future.

Please, actively participate in RFAs.

Offended
I can't help but feel deeply offended that some users think that some admins should be demoted because they don't have time to edit, so that they can "award" or should I say, "make room" for other users who can beat admins on the leaderboard.

I'm sorry I haven't been a very active admin lately. I want to assist the wiki in areas where users here otherwise neglect, and currently, this is with Nitrome Pixel Love Wiki. This is why I haven't edited much here. Editing on an emptier wiki also allows for the opportunity to experiment with new ideas that may help Nitrome Wiki in the future. Remember the new infobox design I talked about several blog posts ago? This is an idea I'm considering applying to Nitrome Pixel Love Wiki first to see how things turn out.

If I am to return to editing on Nitrome Wiki, it will mostly be Nitrome Pixel Love Wiki, unless a large number of active users happen to migrate over there and not Nitrome Wiki. In the past, I adopted a number of wikis that were mostly abandoned. I thought I would have lots of time to edit on several wikis at once, but I turned my focus to Nitrome Wiki at the time I adopted these ones and one of them has become subject to mass amounts of vandalism that have slipped under my nose. (Fortunately, there are a small handful of other users who were able to handle most of the vandalism where I couldn't.)

What you may also want to discuss is whether admin rights should be removed from users who "suddenly" become inactive. If a user suddenly goes AWOL for five months, will they no longer require adminship tools?