Grants talk:IdeaLab/Annual training for Administrators, ArbCom, Wikimedia, and Chapter leaders

Comment on an approach to setting up a pilot program

As a pilot program, it doesn't take a huge investment. Start with some training at SF for a pilot group of admins, that enables these admins to get to know their way around the organization as well as the policies. Make sure the group members all understand the existing admin policies. Then put them on admin duties three shifts of eight hours / day, two people per shift-- a primary person and a backup. Six people, maybe eight to ensure full coverage on weekends. This way you know there will always be at least one trained administrator available. (Could also be set up with four shifts per day of six hours). After a few months of working as administrators and sharing experiences, the pilot group gets together, possibly with a person who is a professional specializing in online community development, and writes a training guide for administrators.

Also, have the group look at the question of whether the technical and conduct aspects of the admin role should be divided into two different positions, and if so, what tasks, tools, and permissions are needed.

This isn't all that difficult. However, participants do need to be paid in order to ensure that the project is carried out by qualified individuals who are in a position to make this a full time commitment. --Djembayz (talk) 20:02, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

An inegalitarian, closed-source, potentially biased solution

I find this proposal disturbing because:

• It focuses training onto a few Better-Than-Us people who are supposed to make the important decisions about the Wiki for us. It increases the separation between the admin and the user, and provides them with a proprietary skillset they can invoke as the reason for their supervote in any given situation.

• It centralizes administration to San Francisco and perhaps a few other cities, or those who have easy access to Wikimania, creating a rich countries/rich people bias.

• Though vague, it seems to give ultimate control of what is right, what is originally to be "taught" to the admins, to some external agency which may or may not share the philosophy of most users.

• It abandons the Wiki process (including Wikiversity) of education. How can Wiki-anything be a useful method of instruction if WMF doesn't even use it for its own management training?

Therefore, I suggest instead that Wikipedia attempt to ransack existing sources of management training, whatever that may be, put a good useful course of that data online at Wikiversity, and allow (not require) admin candidates to run through that coursework at Wikiversity and somehow (such as by writing essays on various topics using the principles it promotes) demonstrate their comprehension of it. No money should change hands. Wnt (talk) 00:36, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

• I do like the idea of a refresher course for admins, however I do think that the original proposal idea needs to be greatly tweaked before it is accepted. What I'm concerned about is that people will assume that a bad score on the refresher will translate into the admin losing their powers or that a bad admin would receive a bad score, which likely would not be the case. This is a good idea but I can't help but get the impression that this would be mistaken for the de-sysop process, which is much more elaborate process because people have to hold a discussion and vote on whether or not someone remains an admin. And again, a bad admin would not necessarily fail the course since a lot of the more infamous former admins knew the rules pretty well and also knew how to bend those rules to suit their needs. A bad score could be used in the de-sysop process to help condemn an abusive admin, so it would be beneficial in the whole "give them enough rope" sense but still... I can't help but get a little concerned that a lot of people would just see this as a way to get around the de-sysop process. Tokyogirl79 (talk) 03:42, 9 March 2015 (UTC)