User:Pigman/New Admin Notes

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NOTE: This was obviously turning into a kind of blog which is really inappropriate for WP. I'm keeping what I've written but intend to reshape it into something closer to notes and points for new admins to be aware of. It's unclear to me whether this will be of value but it depends on how general and universally applicable I can make the result.

[edit] A New Beginning

9 November 2007: This may turn out to be a bad idea but I thought it might be helpful to others if I documented some of my discoveries, slips, problems and pratfalls in my new Wikipedia role of admin. Less than 36 hours an admin and I'm already trying to leave a written legacy; how egotistical is that? Of course, I may just write this journal/diary off and delete the page but we'll see. I've done my share of blogging in the past so this probably won't be a complete shambles.

Don't expect to see revealed the secrets of the Cabal(s) or deep dark mysteries of adminship. One, no one has told me any juicy secrets yet, and two, I'm supposed to fall on my sword if I say anything about the Cabal... uh, the Cabal I know nothing about. No thanks! That would hurt a lot.

I'm thinking of arranging this like a diary, chronologically rather than trying to organize the info into some cohesive article or essay suitable for more public consumption. Not yet at least, but I might see if something useful like that might be extracted from the entries in the future. This means I'll be signing the entries to give a date/time stamp for the entries.

Undoubtedly, someone will find this (there's a link on my userpage after all) and say something like "Look, here he admits he's not familiar with copyright policies on Wikipedia! How can Wikipedia allow such an ignorant person to be an admin? This is an outrage! Why, he's a threat and danger to the whole project! He might delete the main page!" One problem with disclosure of the learning and discovery process when one is in a relative position of power (three buttons to rule them all!) compared to non-admins is you become a target. For example, by referring to being an admin as a "position of power," am I revealing a betrayal of the egalitarian mythos of WP which says admins are the same as all other editors except they have three more buttons? Perhaps, but the reality of being an admin mostly seems to be grunt work and spending more time doing the day-to-day housekeeping required to keep a project like Wikipedia functioning on a relatively even keel.

The only page I've deleted so far was one of my own user pages, an easy and non-controversial deletion. I've done test blocks of specially set up test accounts at Wikipedia:New admin school. The New Admin School is an excellent idea and I'm really happy to be able to use it to perform real but test exercises with my new buttons.

Learning Policy

I thought I was relatively familiar with WP's main policies and guidelines. But there's nothing like needing to be sure I'm making the right decisions based on policy to make me want to thoroughly read and digest all of them. I don't want to be bitten by ignorance.

When I was tagging articles for speedy deletion before I was an admin, I was paying attention to the speedy criteria but I also knew the admin performing the actual deletion was a check on any mistakes I might make. Now that I'm the one making that decision, I don't want to make a stupid call. Yes, it's not the end of Wikipedia if I make a bad judgment but I dislike making obviously stupid mistakes. So I find myself reading the following:

You may be saying "But Pigman, blocking policy is much more important to know than page deletion policy. Deleting wrong pages is nothing compared to blocking someone unfairly or for too long." I agree. But strangely, policy on blocking editors is more straightforward in my opinion. Most of it is in one place: WP:BLOCK. If I have questions about the appropriateness of my decisions, I can post it at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents (AN/I) or Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard as a check and to get feedback. For blocked users, I also think the process of appealing their block is relatively easy.

One last thing: I suspect I will have to grow a thicker skin because there will undoubtedly be editors who will get pissed at my decisions. The real question is how to do so without losing compassion or empathy for other editors on Wikipedia, without falling into the arrogance of authority, without becoming ethically numb from repetative actions. That may be the hardest lesson. Pigmanwhat?/trail 00:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A working admin

And now the actual work begins. A day after my first entry, what's changed? I've closed some AfDs and carried out a number of speedy deletes. Actual editing? Not so much. The housekeeping tasks I'm learning to do are not glamorous or exercises in dominance and power. I knew this before I became an admin but it bears repeating: The janitorial/mop-n-bucket metaphors are also remarkably apt and descriptive of the tasks involved in the admin position.

There's always more stuff to do, from closing xfDs to vandalfighting to clearing the backlog of speedy deletes. Admins have responsibilities that come along with with the post, obligations to fulfill. Sure, I could just follow my previous patterns of editing and not use any of the new buttons. However, that's not why one gets the mop and bucket. Editors support someone's bid for adminship because the person says they are willing to do some of these housekeeping chores. To not do some of them is a breach of faith with those expressions of support from the RfA.

There's a current in me (and I've heard it expressed elsewhere) that you do what you have to to gain adminship, then you can coast and/or use your new powers however you see fit. There's no oath you take, no very specific job description or obligations mandated to fulfill. The closest thing is your archived RfA, which often contain promises to do certain things once adminship is granted. I notice I have a desire to put links to my RfA on my user pages. Because there's a sense that I want to people to be able to check on what I said I would do. It's a way of keeping me honest, particularly in these early days when I'm still developing a routine of tasks and places to check for problems. Of course, in a couple of months, this will undoubtedly seem overly precious and rather too loud a declaration of purpose. I'll be jaded and more like "yeah, whatever" when it comes to my list of tasks.

Clearly, an important task for me to work out is how to balance my duties as admin with my desires to use my editing skills on articles. If admin duties take up a majority of my time and energy on Wikipedia, I will undoubtedly burn out rather quickly. This has always been the trick with volunteer work. Why do I work on Wikipedia? Because it's satisfying to be a part of improving such a monumental reference. I like editing and I like shaping articles. I like the collaboration process, the give and take of improving articles with other people. There's always dicks but I find it remarkable there aren't more.

I'm thinking of starting an essay on the sort of unspoken tenets of the Wikipedian culture, calling it something like "The first rule of Wikipedia is you don't talk about Wikipedia," a nod to "Fight Club". The reference is to the tendency to discourage bringing in outside people to bolster arguments and flood an area of WP with their opinions. Wikipedia is a kind of insular culture in many ways, and it shows in the kinds of rules, guidelines and policies the community follows. That's enough for now.

BTW, in an odd reversal, I'm posting these on the talk page because it's easier to do new posts that way. If you come across this and have comments, leave them on the user page connected to this talk page. Pigmanwhat?/trail 00:06, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Earning my keep

Perhaps that's the wrong phrase since I'm not actually paid for being admin. While going through some speedy candidates, I found one that was mistakenly marked (G11). OMG, an actual decision that involved a clear judgment contrary to the CSD nominator! I don't know if the article Everette Harp will actually survive since it has other problems but it didn't seem to meet any SD criteria. I saved an article! Well, for the moment. Nothing is permanent on Wikipedia and I have no attachment to Mr. Harp's WP future. And of course there was the obligatory note on the nominator's talk page explaining my rationale for declining the speedy deletion.

Now this may not seem too exciting to you but it's an interesting milestone for me. It's a case where my judgment directly affected the keeping of an article. Going through WP:CSDs is boring. Usually the articles nominated easily and obviously fit within one of the SD criteria. I might as well be a monkey hitting a bar to get food rewards for all the choice I have about deleting the candidates I've seen so far. This is grunt work mostly, stuff that has to happen but only an admin can do it. I think lots of experienced editors could do this particular work without a problem. Pigmanwhat?/trail 02:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

After all the above, here is where I fell down on this one. The content of Everette Harp was a copyvio from another website. I should have known from the length of the article and the writing style that it wasn't just some fan. So it's been deleted on those grounds and I'm hanging my head for not checking that possibility. This is the kind of mistake I'll probably make more than once during this period of learning the ropes. However, an interesting lesson is that another admin caught it and corrected my oversight. A collective endeavour like WP seems to have a certain amount of redundancy built in. I guess that's a kind of "fault tolerance" of the system. Pigmanwhat?/trail 02:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)