User talk:Monsieur Crow/What Makes An Admin

Some things

This is mostly good, but some things I want to touch on.

One very important thing not touched on is the difficulty of removing adminship from someone, and that adminship here is indefinitely a "for life" thing (while it's not intended to be, there are no adminship "terms" and we have no rules in place to demod someone after a certain period of inactivity). There is no written procedure for it, and no real precedent. The only time people lost adminship was after the move from Wikia where adminship wasn't carried over and it wasn't given back unless the inactive admins requested it, which none of them did but Pikamander2. The one exception additionally involves him, as after he got back, he disappeared for over two years doing absolutely nothing but asking for his adminship back and posting in a browser poll, so I asked Toomai to demote him. This exception though still ties into the inactive admins losing it from the wiki move and Pikamander was agreeable to it, making the demodding amicable and without any controversy. A real demodding attempt though would be far rougher and full of controversy, unless the admin did some extreme abuses of power or got convicted of some heinous real life crime. The wiki would not be prepared to handle it and it would be extremely difficult for a demodding attempt to actually succeed, while virtually impossible for it to happen without causing significant disruption and a longterm negative feeling among a noninsignificant portion of the userbase (as it's extremely unlikely there would near-unanimous opposition to the admin). It's one of two reasons I never actually went through with a demodding attempt of Miles despite how vocal I was against him (the other being the lack of admins at the time, which I'll get to later).

As such, every RfA is treated as a permanent thing with such high standards, and is why promoting someone on a "why not?", "wait and see if they'll be good", or "they'll be a good janitor" basis is a terrible idea, as it'll put the wiki in a terrible "damned if we do damned if we don't" situation, where we're stuck with the bad admin until they leave to their own accord (as is the case with several of the admins from the pre-2010 era who would have no chance in hell of getting a RfA passed post that era), or we go through with the aforementioned complete lack of precedent and inevitably divisive demodding process. So it's better for the wiki to have very high standards for who they give adminship to and try to minimize the possibility of that situation ever happening.

For another thing I want to address, the "Not enough admins/Too many admins" points are too black and white. Yeah both reasonings on their own are bad and no RFA should be passed or failed based on them, but there is grey in the matter that can influence how our standards are affected. Having too few active admins around is certainly a problem for the wiki, it was experienced firsthand during all those years where only me, Toomai and Miles were the active admins, and then it got worse when my activity slipped. Things that require admin attention takes all that much longer to get it, with vandals/spammer being able to run amok for hours on end, and it only serves to stress the few remaining admins farther as their workload increases. It additionally amplify conflicts between existing admins when there's so few of them; would my and Miles' conflicts be such a huge deal if there were 7 other active admins around instead of just Toomai? I doubt it would be. The main reason I've became inactive here was burnout, and a big part of that was carrying such a big workload for so long, for something that would never pay me nor otherwise reimburse in any way.

So for both the functioning of the wiki and the wellbeing of the existing admins, it is certainly acceptable to relax admin standards a bit during periods of few active admins. Now this doesn't mean we drop our standards to where we would promote someone because of "why not?", and we have to be especially careful to not drop our standards so much because of the prior point about how difficult it would be to demod an incapable admin later on. However, what it does mean is that I would be more willing to support an 8/10 or even a 7/10 candidate under such conditions, when otherwise I would be lukewarm at best about promoting them. Mega for example is a candidate I wouldn't really push to get promoted if he became reactive and made an RfA today, as he certainly had some conflict handling issues, but I would strongly push for during that period a few years ago as the wiki really needed more admins around that were at least competent.

As for the counterpoint, "Too many admins" is a piss poor opposition reason by itself, but there is validity to the concern and why one may want to increase their standards during a period of many admins being around. Something that stuck with me about this that Emmett once said here; "Yes, there is such a thing as too many admins. If you have too many, it begins to look like an elitist cabal, with all the popular, contributing users as admins, and it creates an inferiority complex for the normal users." Also with too many admins around, it can add unneeded bureaucracy that slows down administrative processes , and increase the propensity of admin conflict happening (yeah there's the prior point I made on how few admins amplifies admin conflicts, but the alternative of an admin conflict happening often when an admin flexes their power on any remotely controversial issue and another admin disagrees isn't ideal either).

There's no defined limit on what constitutes "too many" and we're far from reaching the point of bureaucracy that Wikipedia has, but in a period with many active admins, where we usually have multiple admins online at once, it's certainly valid to not readily support the aforementioned 8/10 and 7/10 candidates. Trying to avoid having too many admins around is also another major reason we should have such high standards to who we promote, as the difficulty of demodding them means they'll keep their powers and it will only make it more difficult for better candidates to get promoted later on. Plus this lends validity to the "X would be better" point; while you shouldn't be opposing just because one or two other users are potentially better candidates, there is certainly validity to withholding support on the basis of there being several better candidates, so their later possible RfAs aren't impeded by this less capable admin being in the ranks already. Also how good a candidate someone is for adminship has a large relative factor to it, based on how capable you are for the job relative to other active users. If that's the case though where there are several better candidates available, the guy running is likely a 7/10 or 8/10 candidate anyway who wouldn't succeed outside of an admin drought, but comparing them to existing possible candidates is still a valid measure of how fit they'll be for the job and can make their deficiencies more clear to criticize. Omega Tyrant 21:40, 14 October 2017 (EDT)

Ha ha ha, what a story, OT! I certainly knew that if you ever read this stupid essay, you'd definitely have quite a bit to say.

I agree with a majority of what you've written, particularly in light of demoting an admin is, for the lack of a better word, impossible. It's definitely something I should address in a later update, since I don't think we'll ever have a true demotion process in place (I know there's been at least one proposal for such a system, but it didn't pass).

As for your criticisms surrounding the too many admins vs. not enough admins, I will admit that I wrote these in regard to "extreme" cases i.e. the candidate is frankly flawed or is perfectly capable, hence why they may feel a bit black-and-white. I'll likely fix this later to be a bit less "simplistic", though I still think it's worth mentioning on the page, since, as you said, it's a pretty bad reason by itself to support/oppose.

With that out of the way, some of my thoughts on some of your thoughts, and why I wrote this essay in its current "way":

I'd argue that Emmett's quote about admins had different context when he first posted it compared to today. It's been a long while, so my memory could be fuzzy, but I seem to remember the "divide" between admins and regular users being far greater in the Wikia days than in the current days, especially since earlier admins, like Semi, CHawk, Randall00, and Smoreking were much more involved with the greater Smash community than most of the regular userbase at the time. Didn't help that most of the admins were rather serious about editing, while some community members (Cafinator, Cheezperson, and BNK come to mind) were more about shitposting, in-jokes, and such; as such, while a large number of admins could feel threatening on Wikia, I feel it's a bit less so today, since there seems to be greater transparency between the admins and regular users, and we have members on both side that are involved in the greater Smash scene. Barring extreme circumstances, I think the SmashWiki of today can't really suffer from "too many admins" that easily, especially compared to SmashWikia. That said, there's no telling if this balance will change in the coming years, so it's something I'll try to address in a future revision.

For your argument that a larger number of admins may decrease the number of potential conflicts, I'm not entirely sure if I can agree with this. I'd say that one reason your dispute with Miles didn't completely spiral out of control (that is, ending with one or both of your demotions) was because it was mostly restricted to the two of you. I think the fallout could've been much worse if we had, say, seven admins, including you two. There's no telling if the others would end up siding with you or Miles, as well as how they would respond to other admins that try to sit out of the dispute (which is something I would probably do); in particular, I feel a dispute among admins can be far more disruptive than a dispute between regular users, since it could undermine the authority admins have when they can't even seem to police each other. Mega and I, for instance, generally get along quite well (we've been communicating near-daily on Steam for probably four years now), but we never really saw eye-to-eye on Wiki disputes (I generally thought the Miles dispute was pretty overblown while he almost completely agreed with you; I think we disagreed on whether a certain user (PSIWolf? Drakon? Don't remember...) should've been banned on SWIRC; when I did this as a stupid joke a few years ago, he actually thought I had gone too far; etc...), so I'm not sure what would've happened to the adminbase were larger and if both of us were admins at that time (since I know both Mega and I were pretty high on your "admin wishlist"). I mostly remember your dispute with Miles overlapping with the Brian Fiasco, aka a time where the userbase was extremely fractured, so I might be acting a bit melodramatic here, but hey, my two cents. A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.

Ultimately, I don't think any one of us can ever agree what the "sweetspot" for the number of admins should be, and I don't think we ever will, since the dynamics of SmashWiki could change at the drop of a hat. Yeah, we appear to be pretty well-off right now with four active admins, but that's more probably because it's been three years since Smash 4's release, so I don't think adding a few more would strictly hurt SmashWiki before the obligatory Smash 5 hits the scene. All I can do with this essay is address the hypotheticals, which is what this page is intended to cover. Perhaps I can address this in a later revision, but I'm not sure how to do so (yet).

Finally, I dislike playing the comparison game. I feel that a candidate should be judged purely on their own merits, not in comparison to Mr. Ideal; while an RfA is comparable to a job interview, the lack of "competition" makes judgement a bit different. Even if your hypothetical situation came about where there was a candidate with seven better potential candidates, there's still the question of how much better these candidates would be; if there were a significant difference, yeah, they probably shouldn't be admin, but why would they be considered as a candidate in the first place, then? Furthermore, if the divide between the top of those seven candidates and the bottom weren't that large, it shouldn't make much of a difference, imo, over who does an RfA first.

As an aside, on the topic of demotion, what are your thoughts on allowing for users to "write in" candidates for an RfA? I seem to remember PoD and a few other users (Toast?) supporting the idea way back in 2011, though I myself was never really on-board with it. Just curious about your thoughts, the last time I heard head-wind of this would've been in, well, 2011 or so.

That's all. Thanks for reading my stupid essay and my stupid response, and I hope you enjoyed most of it.

--- Monsieur Crow, Author Extraordinaire, 21:56, 15 October 2017 (EDT)

Maybe also mention that "I won't abuse it" is not a substantial thing to put on your RfA? Serpent King 21:58, 15 October 2017 (EDT)

"we've had precisely zero users end up losing rollback privileges, implying that more or less everyone who has gained rollback can be trusted with it"

This is actually not true: Drilly lost his rollbacker privileges after being suspected of earning them illegitimately. Dunno if that counts for anything, as it is Drilly, but I figured that I could point it out here regardless. - EndGenuity (talk) 16:43, April 10, 2019 (EDT)

Wow, I didn't think people would actually be reading and linking to this page literal years after I became inactive. I must say, I'm feeling both impressed and humbled. Thanks to anyone who's read it.

Serp: I actually drafted a similar point ("I can be trusted as admin"), but it ended up reading more like a rehash / hodge-podge of two or three other sections (especially "Showing, not telling", "Why not?", and "I've been around for a while"). Stupidly forgot to save the draft, but I might try something similar in the far future if I can find a way to make it seem less redundant.

EndGenuity: Surprised to see you here, and still active, to boot! Anyways, duly noted, I've edited the page to reflect that. I kinda wish I could've watched the Drilly Saga in real-time, it sounds like a bizarrely surreal portion of SmashWiki history.

Also, I'm surprised to see that we not only have a full-on Requests for Demotion policy, but we even demoted an admin! A small part of me wishes I could've seen that in real-time as well, but then again, I think I'd have 108 consecutive aneurysms if I ever had to experience wikidrama again.

--- Monsieur Crow, Author Extraordinaire, 02:41, April 12, 2021 (EDT)

Ayo, you actually responded! :D Yeah I still check in whenever I get the chance; I've even spent every now and then working on an essay/ramble that may or may not have been inspired by this one, but lord knows if I'll ever have the gall to post it. :p - EndGenuity (talk) 19:39, April 24, 2021 (EDT)