Friday 23 May 2008

Commons is not mellow

Some people say they love Commons. I have slowly started to hate it. I have found the community to be unfriendly and hostile. Most of my activity there recently is voting on RfAs, where the ridiculous strictness from enwiki has been gradually seeping through. There was a recent poll where the community were essentially planning to ban any new editor from voting on RfAs because they didn't have the necessary edit count. How friendly and welcoming from this supposedly "mellow" community. As well as this, some were trying to prevent people running because they didn't have 500 edits - editcountitis, editcountitis, editcountitis. There's so much more to experience than edits. Not according to Herbythyme, whose joke of an RfB is passing as a popularity contest. Those supporting cannot have looked at the way he hypocritically opposes people who had more experience than he did, people who have more experience than some of his candidates, and of course his friends. It's just really unfair. Frequent opposes on RfA for such poor reasoning makes me ill frankly. It is people like Herbythyme and Marcus Cyron (another frequent opposer, whose opposes are normally in all caps and with several exclamation marks) who put me off editing Commons more, and probably put off good potential admins with their "must... oppose... not got x edits..." attitude. They seriously need to chill out a bit on these requests, lighten up a little and remember it's just a website. And it is not a big deal, especially if the editor is an admin on another project. You can go and promote the "mellow" essay all you like - Commons' most regular editors are the least mellow people I've ever encountered.

3 comments:

llywrch said...

I wonder if some of this "seeping through" is due to the fact many Admins on commons are also Admins on EN-Wikipedia?

As for the number of edits vs. being an Admin on another project, I have to disagree with you: to be an Admin on any given project, that person needs to be familiar with the culture/community of that project. Which is why, although I am an Admin on EN-Wikipedia, I would never request Admin rights on commons or meta. I have accounts on both that I try to use, but nowhere near enough to feel comfortable wielding a mop.

Geoff

Unknown said...

It's not just trust. Edit counts are one way to show activity and commitment to the project. Something admins should have. I can trust someone based on their actions on a different wiki, but should they be given the tools just because of that? If that was the case, why not just give global admin rights to every admin? They can be trusted, right? No, being part of the community is important.

-Brad (Rocket000)

Majorly said...

They oppose admins who have over 250 edits as "not enough experience". Surely if you even have a ridiculously high edit count expectancy, you would reduce it for people trusted on other projects. I mean I'd never support someone on the sole basis that they were an admin elsewhere - that would be silly. But it's certainly an important factor.