Gwern would be good and I’m happy to volunteer. I am an admin on most MediaWikis I hang out on. (I’m one of the few who is an admin both on Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia …)
Really, I suggest the basic admin powers—delete things, block spammers—should be granted to almost anyone who actually edits at all and is one of the community. There’s almost nothing an admin on a MediaWiki site can do that is irreversible. I wouldn’t autogrant them, but they should be widely spread, and the norm should be regarded as “grant” rather than “not grant”. In my experience, spreading the powers far and wide saves a lot of social fuss.
(On RW, anyone who edits for more than a few days and isn’t a gibbering nutter or obnoxious jerk gets swooped upon and cursed with a +10 mop. The ’crats all but stalk n00bs waiting for their moment. So far there have been no disasters. Remember the Secret of Wikipedia: most people are pretty OK if you set the environment up right.)
It looks like the current LW wiki admins were created when the wiki was started and the list has never been updated. We may need more ‘crats too … I nominate Vladimir Nesov. And Ciphergoth. (Who appears to have previously been one.) Anyone who’s been around since it started and still edits is a good prospect for ’crat.
It looks like the current LW wiki admins were created when the wiki was started and the list has never been updated. We may need more ’crats too … I nominate Vladimir Nesov. And Ciphergoth. (Who appears to have previously been one.) …
I cleaned the list up a week or so ago. I meant no offense to ciphergoth by removing him (I couldn’t remember official permission to grant that power so removed it).
Wmoore and I have Bureaucrat power without authority, so there is effectively only one Bureaucrat (with six arms).
I am in discussion with Eliezer regarding this thread.
No offence taken :-) I’m happy to be an admin or bureaucrat if people like. I agree with David that we should err on the side of handing out adminships quite freely.
Am getting pissed off with not having the “skipcapcha” privilege—I’d still love to be an admin if there’s a way to move that forward. And I still think we should hand out adminships like candy to anyone we think is a good sort, it doesn’t give you the power to do lasting harm.
The main role for a bureaucrat is social: deciding who gets to be an admin (after whatever process, if any).
In the model I propose, where basically everyone becomes an admin unless there’s good reason not to, a bureaucrat’s job would be to judge that and swoop on people and bless/curse them with the mop. So admin freely, ’crat a little less freely.
(On RW, almost everyone is an admin, but admins have somewhat less powers than on WP, e.g. RW admins can’t edit the interface, only ’crats can do that. I would suggest only doing such things on LW if and as needed—KEEP THINGS AS WIDE OPEN AS POSSIBLE TO MAKE A WIKI WORK.)
People worry about admin status lots and lots on Wikipedia. This is because humans obsess about social status, not because it does any good toward writing an encyclopedia—it’s an anti-pattern and really shouldn’t be imitated.
I don’t think not enough people being admins was ever an actual problem that prevented people from doing useful stuff on LW wiki. There’s just too little interest. If giving admin status can incite interest, that’s good, but I’m skeptical.
I don’t think not enough people being admins was ever an actual problem that prevented people from doing useful stuff on LW wiki.
To keep things clear, I (as opposed to David_Gerard perhaps) never meant to suggest that adding some admins & vandalfighting capability would make the wiki take off. (I’m not too clear on what the wiki’s function is, in general.)
I just wanted the admin bit so I could deal with the vandalism that routinely passed through my RSS feed—I’m willing to contribute to that extent but not much more.
My main reason for the suggestion is not a positive effect in wiki writing, but to avoid a negative effect from social reasons: it avoids the failure mode on Wikipedia, where adminship is such a HUGE DEAL that they’re actually having trouble finding people who want to subject themselves to the trial by ordeal required. Making adminship easy also increases personal social buy-in, and particularly if they’re familiar with how awful the process is on Wikipedia.
But it doesn’t automatically mean it doesn’t. Note that WP, like LW, is largely populated by huge nerds who like detail and getting things right. I suspect there’s more for LW wiki to learn from WP than most wikis would have to learn from it. I could be wrong, of course., this is personal surmise rather than experience.
Comparison with Wikipedia is difficult, as there is a crucial difference that Wikipedia has a huge number of contributors, as the world’s Schelling point for collecting facts.
Anyone who’s been around since it started and still edits is a good prospect for ’crat.
I don’t precisely know how the privileges are set-up for this wiki but since in the standard set-up the main ability of crats is to make admins and modify rights flags(which aren’t an issue here since we don’t have any specialized flags as far as I can tell) then it might make sense to bundle the rights.
Gwern would be good and I’m happy to volunteer. I am an admin on most MediaWikis I hang out on. (I’m one of the few who is an admin both on Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia …)
Really, I suggest the basic admin powers—delete things, block spammers—should be granted to almost anyone who actually edits at all and is one of the community. There’s almost nothing an admin on a MediaWiki site can do that is irreversible. I wouldn’t autogrant them, but they should be widely spread, and the norm should be regarded as “grant” rather than “not grant”. In my experience, spreading the powers far and wide saves a lot of social fuss.
(On RW, anyone who edits for more than a few days and isn’t a gibbering nutter or obnoxious jerk gets swooped upon and cursed with a +10 mop. The ’crats all but stalk n00bs waiting for their moment. So far there have been no disasters. Remember the Secret of Wikipedia: most people are pretty OK if you set the environment up right.)
It looks like the current LW wiki admins were created when the wiki was started and the list has never been updated. We may need more ‘crats too … I nominate Vladimir Nesov. And Ciphergoth. (Who appears to have previously been one.) Anyone who’s been around since it started and still edits is a good prospect for ’crat.
I cleaned the list up a week or so ago. I meant no offense to ciphergoth by removing him (I couldn’t remember official permission to grant that power so removed it).
Wmoore and I have Bureaucrat power without authority, so there is effectively only one Bureaucrat (with six arms).
I am in discussion with Eliezer regarding this thread.
No offence taken :-) I’m happy to be an admin or bureaucrat if people like. I agree with David that we should err on the side of handing out adminships quite freely.
I know of no reason ciphergoth couldn’t be an admin if he wanted, if anyone cares.
Am getting pissed off with not having the “skipcapcha” privilege—I’d still love to be an admin if there’s a way to move that forward. And I still think we should hand out adminships like candy to anyone we think is a good sort, it doesn’t give you the power to do lasting harm.
The main role for a bureaucrat is social: deciding who gets to be an admin (after whatever process, if any).
In the model I propose, where basically everyone becomes an admin unless there’s good reason not to, a bureaucrat’s job would be to judge that and swoop on people and bless/curse them with the mop. So admin freely, ’crat a little less freely.
(On RW, almost everyone is an admin, but admins have somewhat less powers than on WP, e.g. RW admins can’t edit the interface, only ’crats can do that. I would suggest only doing such things on LW if and as needed—KEEP THINGS AS WIDE OPEN AS POSSIBLE TO MAKE A WIKI WORK.)
People worry about admin status lots and lots on Wikipedia. This is because humans obsess about social status, not because it does any good toward writing an encyclopedia—it’s an anti-pattern and really shouldn’t be imitated.
I don’t think not enough people being admins was ever an actual problem that prevented people from doing useful stuff on LW wiki. There’s just too little interest. If giving admin status can incite interest, that’s good, but I’m skeptical.
To keep things clear, I (as opposed to David_Gerard perhaps) never meant to suggest that adding some admins & vandalfighting capability would make the wiki take off. (I’m not too clear on what the wiki’s function is, in general.)
I just wanted the admin bit so I could deal with the vandalism that routinely passed through my RSS feed—I’m willing to contribute to that extent but not much more.
My main reason for the suggestion is not a positive effect in wiki writing, but to avoid a negative effect from social reasons: it avoids the failure mode on Wikipedia, where adminship is such a HUGE DEAL that they’re actually having trouble finding people who want to subject themselves to the trial by ordeal required. Making adminship easy also increases personal social buy-in, and particularly if they’re familiar with how awful the process is on Wikipedia.
LW wiki is not a healthy wiki, it’s important to keep this in mind when making decisions about it.
It’s not a “huge deal” here, the fact that there is a failure mode somewhere else doesn’t automatically translate here.
But it doesn’t automatically mean it doesn’t. Note that WP, like LW, is largely populated by huge nerds who like detail and getting things right. I suspect there’s more for LW wiki to learn from WP than most wikis would have to learn from it. I could be wrong, of course., this is personal surmise rather than experience.
Comparison with Wikipedia is difficult, as there is a crucial difference that Wikipedia has a huge number of contributors, as the world’s Schelling point for collecting facts.
I don’t precisely know how the privileges are set-up for this wiki but since in the standard set-up the main ability of crats is to make admins and modify rights flags(which aren’t an issue here since we don’t have any specialized flags as far as I can tell) then it might make sense to bundle the rights.
You’re now an Admin.