Wikipedia talk:Reviving the active admin corps

Just some initial thoughts.

1)Decide on whether we're presenting Coaching as the sole solution, or will suggest a package of reforms (the others likely to be much more minor).

The coaching idea alone might come across as a one sided solution in that might appeal only to younger editors who are relatively unseasoned. As we have a strong case for reform to arrest the decline, we can possibly also suggest something that will help the more experienced become admins. There's been talk that editors who have been here more than a year tend to be discriminated against, as if they try to see that policies are adhered to they inevitably grow a list of enemies. We could possibly suggest that Crats have a greater discretion window for passing these candidates. Full weight would still be given to evidence showing consistent or outstandingly problematic behaviour, but otherwise established editors could be allowed maybe a discretionary 2% per year of editing, maxing out at 6%. So for example for an editor with 2 years service the soft promotion limit can be 66% rather than 70%? This way there's something for everyone.

I also like Lara's suggestion that we have fixed minimuns for edit count and time served, and then encourage voters not to oppose based on lack of experience. Its all very well having undefined minimums to leave the door open for ultra exceptional candidates, but realistically there seems a vanishingly small chance anyones going to pass at less than 3 months / 1000 edits , so we'd be exchanging a castle in the sky for a possibly significant reduction in oppose reasoning not based on assessment of quality.

4) Prepare a quality consensus building presentation.

It should include some of the reasoning expressed at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Active_admins along with the graphs and charts from Mat and Cool. If someone is able to find stats for the extent of the easily definable admin work queues that would be great. I wouldn't personally include the admin actions chart. The relationship of that chart to the problem is contingent on a host of other factors that would be challenging to concisely define. Focussing on the declining active admin corps, the plummeting number of promotions, and the persistence of lengthy work queues is probably our best bet.

My opinion

I added my two cents over at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Coaching with Tools. I can support some form of coaching and some form of accelerated access to tools, but not the current proposal. - Dank (push to talk) 02:03, 16 September 2009 (UTC)