Wikipedia talk:Administrator review

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[edit] Why this will never fly

An administrator who hasn't pissed off at least 6 Wikipedia editors isn't doing his job, and should have his adminship revoked. Admins should be willing (and are expected by many) to wade into difficult issues, help sort out the POV pushers, vandals, crazies, etc. Someone who avoids controversy is shirking his or her duty. In fact, admins open to recall has it exactly backward. FeloniousMonk 18:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Vandals and crazies typically wouldn't be regarded as "editors in good standing" anyways. But, in general, I doubt it's that common to piss off six people at the same time; or to have pissed off so many people that they would outnumber the good editors who would be grateful for the admin's efforts. Kirill Lokshin 18:37, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

There's no shortage of vandals, crazies, chronic pov pushers and 3RR violators who have over 500 mainspace edits and over one month of tenure, meeting the "good standing" clause of admins open to recall. None whatsoever. And there's provision for them being at the same time that I've seen. As I point out, an administrator who hasn't pissed off at least 6 Wikipedia editors isn't doing his job, and the longer they are at in the more pissed off resentful editors there will be. That means that the most successful by that standard will be certain to be opposed. You don't think that problem editors don't hold grudges? And yes, those who are bitter and revengeful are far more motivated and vocal than those who have enjoyed the rewards of those admins who make the effort. FeloniousMonk 18:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

A variety of technicalities here:

• Strictly speaking, the requirement would be six people endorsing a particular request; unless they monitor the talk page of the admin in question, parties unconnected to the incident are unlikely to drop by.
• There's no prescribed venue for re-confirmation; certain options on the table (referring to ArbCom, for example) would be stacked against the problem editors.
• Perhaps most importantly, there is no enforcement here; an administrator's following through on the re-confirmation is entirely voluntary. Ignoring a request would have no effect except on the general perception of the administrator as an honorable individual; in cases where the complaint was clearly made in bad faith, this should be fairly non-existent. Kirill Lokshin 18:50, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It's far too easy a way for nogoodniks to game the system to discredit admins. Requests for review, both legitimate and bad faith, will have the same effect of tarring an administrator with the brush of doubt, the presumption of innocence something altogether too rare outside of actual courts. And those admins who decline to include themselves as willing to stand for review will be already at a deficit, placing their "honor" in doubt by your reasoning, thereby doing the job of the nogoodniks for them. WP:RFC/ADMIN already serves to address issues of admin accountability, and the flaws in that system are still present in this one. FeloniousMonk 19:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just being dense here, but I really don't see the problem. This review page is only going to have self-nominations—in other words, a review would occur only when the administrator asked for one. The only place where complaints would occur otherwise is on the talk page of an administrator, and I fail to see what difference the existence of a (voluntary!) review process would make if some troll left a message on your talk page demanding that you be desysopped. Kirill Lokshin 19:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

This concept will probably fail because I don't think any of the guys who have a chance to fail would go for a review or recall. I am reasonably familiar with most of the admins who are 'open to recall' and none of them are likely to get a bad review. And I can think of a dozen or two admins who will fail a new RfA and I don't ever expect to find their names listed there. Tintin (talk) 14:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

We're talking about the voluntary admin review here, not Admin recall. FM's points about recall have been addressed at Category_talk:Administrators_open_to_recall in the past, I think. It may make sense to raise them again there, perhaps, though. To be clear, my volunteering to be a reviewee is not because 6 editors I respect have asked me to due to having issues, it's to get feedback on how I've done stuff so far, and therefore be a better admin. ++Lar: t/c 16:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

A major trouble that I see with the current editor review is that the requests are usually very vague. The requestors just say 'review me', provide an article or two, and leave it there. It is often too difficult to get much idea about the quality of his work by sampling a few edits out of a few thousand.

It would help if the guys who want to be reviewed here are very specific about what actions they want reviewed. Tintin (talk) 05:30, 19 July 2006 (UTC)