Wikipedia:Adminship survey/O

(05/20/08) Admins are currently able to cope with their workloads

Points to think about :

Should there be more admins than we have now?
Do we have enough admins to deal with current backlogs in a timely manner?

Agree

Strongly. The backlogs are by choice, and rarely involve anything pressing. More admins would still help, but we're hardly in a crisis. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
1. Ahem. WP:SSP is down to a 1 month backlog. That's by choice? --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  1. yes, because no admins actually want to wade into that quagmire. Meanwhile there are enough admins to speedy-delete articles within 15 minutes of being tagged by a user. Αργυριου (talk) 23:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, but we can never have enough help. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe they can, and think the influx of admins needs to be met with a removal of admin powers from those not using them enough. This is not a job, but its not something you do once every 3 months when you pop on. The influx of admins should only be taken if they are willing to work in areas that need help. We do not need more admins doing X, if X already has 3 more admins then it needs. How can you have a high workload when you control your own workload? --Nuclear~~Zer0~~ 17:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, though some admin tasks are rather more unpopular with admins than others; there's an imbalance in the work needed and the help available. Αργυριου (talk) 23:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like it to me. I've never seen an admin group cry for help because they can't close AfDs fast enough. This question is more case sensitive. Some admins I know have a tonne of work & manage to do it beautifully, while others struggle with everything. Depends per person, but overall, I see no danger to admins... Spawn Man 02:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree

Too much repitive work. CSD, most of *FD, could be better done via distributed user processes and bots. See User:Hipocrite/Distributed Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
More active admins would be good. Large backlogs encourage corner cutting, leading to sloppiness and errors. Example error: deleting a vandalized page instead of reverting. Sloppiness wastes more time in later explaining the correctness of an action than it saves in doing it quickly the first time. On 24 January 2007, for 5% of articles deleted, I couldn't tell why from the deletion log (see User:GRBerry/Deletion Log Stats#Reasons). Similarly, we seem to get about a deletion review a day for correct AFD closes with insufficient explanations. GRBerry 16:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We are volunteers, not workers. We each operate under an obligation determined by our personal levels of passion for the project. Shortages of admins create extra stress for the volunteers who are here, and it can lead to burnout. There is no cost to having a greater quantity of admins because they are not salary positions. Opposition to new admins on this basis shows a lack of empathy. Opposition should be based on individual merit, not a 'mood' about the entire admin community itself. This is akin to deciding not to accept a woman or man into a volunteer position at a charity because there are "too many" of that sex in position already, without regard to their qualifications. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
CSDs should be handled by bot, most XFD could be handled by bot with administrative oversight (i.e. making the decision, telling the bot what to do, and the bot handles the close while the admin moves to his next XFD), many Prods could be handled by bot (if no edits have occurred since the prod was added, and it's been the required number of days, it's a clear case where deletion can be done), etc. If the community would let this happen, I think it'd lessen a lot of the backlogs. Ral315 (talk) 18:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, and there are two solutions: promote more admins, as Chairboy says, and improve the processes by which backlogs are handled as Ral315 says. Chick Bowen 18:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Substantial backlogs are a problem in themselves, but also encourage people to work too quickly and unthoughtfully in order to clear them out. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No. It is not lack admins so much as lack of efficieny and priorities. Adminship just isn't oganized to train and divert admins the things they are most needed to do.--BirgitteSB 21:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
We need as many active admins as we can get. Yuser31415 22:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Dragon's Flight's tracker begs to illustrate the backlogs. {Slash -|-Talk} 23:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ral315 is right...more things should be automated. However, we need to look carefully at that...we don't want a bot auto-deleting anything that gets tagged for speedy immediately, as we could see major abuse of it. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Per Ral315 - but we will need to be careful not to over-automate it. Daniel.Bryant 04:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Per Ral315 again. Continual backlogs encourage sloppiness and result in overflow of one process into an unrelated area (AN/I, individual talk pages, etc.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Opabinia regalis (talk • contribs)
Yes, the backlog is by choice. If we forced all our admins to work on backlogs for 50% of their Wikitime, rather than choosing what they wish to do, then we might well not have any. But the fact is, we can't force people do do things they don't want to, so we have backlogs that we will not get rid of without many more admins. While we manage the speedy deletion backlog at times, who knows how many improper deletions have been made in an effort to quickly muck out the category? I suspect it's at least 100 times more than the number we get at DRV. New people who get their articles deleted will rarely challenge the decision; I'm sure that most do not even know how, and it's not exactly easy to find out. -Amarkov moo! 19:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Having had a 3rr report sat unwatched for over ~~a day~~ two days, a request for semi-protection sat for over 12 hours, and a watchlist full of vandalism to be reverted, I have to agree that backlogs are not being dealt with. Catchpole 12:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is a voluntary project and until there is more incentive to get down to the backlogs nobody wants to look at they will remain. I think the current number of admins could handle it if they were paid to edit WP (I'm not suggesting it) but if they want to block users and AIV is empty, it doesn't mean they suddenly switch wanting to clear the speedy categories. When given a choice, anyone would do what they wanted to and seeing as there's no obligation, backlogs are inevitable. More admins would mean more people (perhaps the same percentage but a higher number) would see the backlog and tackle it rather than just skip over it. James086 ^Talk 09:13, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No need to not have more admins. Similar to the bureaucrat situation. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Per Ral315 and well, even though I so often vote against RfAs, we need more admins. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:38, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Tony Sidaway 01:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC) I'm concerned that good potential administrators are deterred by fear that their requests may degenerate into unseemly brawls--as so many of them do.[reply]
Repetitive work is way too high for the number of admins we have now. I would support more admins and also admin bots to help out. —METS501 (talk) 07:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This answer was pretty obvious. We need more admins who are willing to pitch in. Anyone who says otherwise must be oblivious. The fact that some things are backlogged all the time (CSD, images) isn't a good thing! Just because it's become normal doesn't make it ok that it's always backlogged. -Royalguard11(Talk·Review Me!) 21:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Other

We can cope with the current backlog. However, as we don't have enough people actively working on cleaning them, a lot of the work is done after only a superficial examination of the merits of a deletion (especially in image deletions). If we could halve the workload on the average admin, there would be more time to actually explain to newbies why their images aren't okay or why their articles were deleted. Right now, the backlogs encourage (at least me) to rather do a mediocre job on 10 articles than do an excellent job on 2. Kusma (討論) 15:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't the slightest idea - are then any stats about? --Mcginnly | Natter 16:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some backlogs are coped with fine, others (like CAT:PER, WP:CFD and CAT:CSD) are routinely backlogged. I agree with Kusma; it would be better if administrators had more time to clean out backlogs to improve the accuracy of their judgment, which reducing the workload would help with. --ais523 17:46, 16 February 2007 (U T C)
I wouldn't mind more admins if something held them accountable, more hands make the load lighter. However, we need to make sure those hands won't start punching us rather than holding up that load before figuring out whether the load is too heavy. Just H 20:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I was just about to observe that it would not be too much work if more admins participated. (And one way to do this would be to strongly encourage admins who wee not, to either resume, or relinquish the job if they were holding onto it for prestige). But I'm not clear what Just H means by new admins being likely to punch the current ones. I do not get the feeling from the discussion on this that there is radical dissatisfaction with the way the current admins work--the general trend of the discussion seems to be a desire to improve the process not revolutionize it, and to find a way to possibly remove some few, but not the whole body of them. DGG 22:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need just more admins. We need more admins that are interested in doing the tasks that are severely backlogged. Just promoting more people at RfA is unlikely to address the backlog issue since the areas with backlogs are not the areas we're likely to see the marginal RfA nominee's tackling. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:41, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We are on the edge now, it seems to me. And unless we change the wiki-culture to promote more (or more active in backlogged areas) admins we will soon have a serious and growing problem. Eluchil404 05:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I find myself nodding my head at Kusma (#1) once again, after I was going to enter my opinion in a different section. Although, in my experience, I do a good job when a good job needs to be done, regardless of the size of the backlog. Grand master ka 09:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]