User:Ctjf83/Admin Coaching/Archive

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Okay, here goes. I'm finally delivering on my promise to make you an admin coaching page. Mr.Z-man 00:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Some more abstract questions 2 Review 3 Lesson 1 - Page protection 3.1 Full protection 3.2 Semi-protection 3.3 Move protection 3.4 Cascading protection 3.5 Coaching (protection)

[edit] Introduction

I think I'll begin with a few basic questions about adminship and Wikipedia and yourself.

1. Why do you want to be an admin?

I want to be an admin because i think i can bring more to wiki then what i do now, by being able to do stuff that i can't do now, such as page deletions, blocking vandals.

2. What is your impression of what [the majority of] admins do?

i think the admins are here to "keep order" they are here often to settle disputes, or to block vandals so they don't ruin the hard work of others. they are also here to uphold policies and most importantly to help any user with a question or a problem

3. How familiar are you with Wikipedia?

I'm pretty familiar with most of the general stuff on wiki. I'm always up for reading more to better understand the policies...esp. if someone has a question for me

[edit] Some more abstract questions

4. What do you think is Wikipedia's most important policy? Least important?

most important is the vandalism policy, with out it wiki would be a disastrous mess of vandals destroying everything. i think the least important policy is the image policy. i feel there could be a lot more and better pictures if anyone could put (almost) any picture on there related to an article. don't get me wrong, copyright laws are good, but i dont think there needs to be a free picture of famous people as long as the source is credited.

5. Besides "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" (or some variation on that), how would you summarize Wikipedia?

an encyclopedia that is constantly updated, even up to the minute of current events. with over 2 million articles in english alone, that most encyclopedia's wouldn't have..such as Simpsons episodes or stuff about the Kennedy expressway in chicago.

6. What is your opinion on WP:IAR? Are there any rules that should never be ignored?

i think it is to general of a term. of course no one should ever ignore the policy on vandalism or the 3RR policy, as ignoring those would only cause chaos and wouldn't help anything at wiki

7. Rate in order from most to least important: 'Encyclopedia', 'anyone can edit', 'free content'.

free content, encyclopedia, anyone can edit

8. What do you think are the biggest problems facing Wikipedia?

vandalism for sure. all vandals do is ruin the hard work of other wiki contributors and feed false information to the readers, if that is the type of vandalism they are doing

[edit] Review

Okay, I will analyze your answers similar to what would be expected on RFA. You might want to review current and closed RFA discussions to get an idea of what the process is like. Mr.Z-man 04:52, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

1. This is a decent answer, but note that many admin related tasks don't require you to be an admin. You can still revert, warn, and report vandals; tag pages for speedy deletion, participate in AFDs, etc without being an admin. Note that we have no shortage of admins to block vandals - most are blocked within minutes of being reported.
2. This is a good answer. Note that most policies don't need an admin to uphold them.
3. Admins should generally have a knowledge of policy before becoming an admin. You don't need to memorize the Manual of Style, but you should be quite familiar with the Five pillars and most of these, especially ones related to behavior, content, deletion, and policy enforcement.
4. This kind of an answer would probably hurt you on RFA. Core policies such as WP:V and WP:NPOV are critical for making an encyclopedia. Also, image policies are important, some other projects don't allow fair use at all to remain as free as possible. Serious violations of images and other copyright polices could get Wikipedia in legal trouble. They might seem somewhat oppressive now, but that is only due to lax enforcement in the past.
5. This answer is great. A good interpretation of WP:NOT#PAPER
6. WP:IAR is a fairly important rule and it is fairly important to know when to use it.
7. Also a good answer (there is really no wrong answer to this)
8. This answer would probably be seen on RFA as a lack of experience in admin related areas, other than WP:AIV. Other policy related things that you should consider are WP:CIVIL (incivility), WP:NPOV (POV-pushing), and WP:EW (edit warring)

[edit] Lesson 1 - Page protection

Okay, I am going to start the actual "coaching" parts of admin coaching with what I have found is generally the least controversial admin task (and also the least used) - page protection.

• You should read WP:PROT if you are not already familiar with it, but I will give a quick summary below:

[edit] Full protection

• Full protection of a page is mainly used to stop an edit war between registered users.
• It can also be used in the case of heavy sleeper sock puppet vandalism.
• Its also used for things that should not be changed without discussion - the main page, official disclaimers, highly used templates and images.
• If a blocked editor is disrupting their talk page, it may be protected.
• The entire MediaWiki namespace is protected by default by the software.

[edit] Semi-protection

• Semi-protection is used almost exclusively to prevent vandalism and POV pushing by anonymous users and SPAs.
• Because of the desire to have an encyclopedia that everyone can edit, it is used very sparingly. See also WP:MPFAP
• It can also be used to stop an edit war between only anonymous users, but this is rare.
• If a blocked anonymous user is disrupting their talk page, it may be semi-protected.

[edit] Move protection

• Move protection is by default assigned to the same level as editing protection. If a page is semi-protected, move protection will not change, as anons and new users cannot move pages anyway, if a page is full-protected it will be full move-protected as well.
• Move protection can also be applied separately from edit protection and is used to stop a move war or page move vandalism.
• It can also be used on pages in the Wikipedia namespace that need to be edited but have no reason to be moved.

[edit] Cascading protection

• Cascading protection is the least used form of protection.
• It protects the page it is used on and any page transcluded on it or image in it. It only works with full protection.
• It is used on the main page and for preventing page creation (salting)

[edit] Coaching (protection)

Most page protection is a result of a report to WP:RFPP or if someone reports an edit war to WP:ANI. However, admins don't have to wait for someone to ask. If they see an edit war, they can protect the page. You should review the above, and I will soon post some scenarios below for you to test yourself. Mr.Z-man 19:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've presented some scenarios below, typical of RFPP reports with a quick summary of what the edit history looks like. Under each one, put what you would do to the article (semi, full, move protect, other or nothing) and a short reasoning. You can use the {{RFPP}} template if you like. Assume in each situation that you have no background knowledge of the subject or any disputes and that there are no other policy violations not mentioned (WP:BLP, WP:SOCK, etc.)

1. A user requests semi-protection due to disruption by an anonymous user, the page history shows the anon adding a sentence saying its important and the user who made the request removing it as vandalism.

none - one edit by an anon doesn't warrant protection

Y

2. A user wants their user talk page semi-protected. There have been 3 anon vandalism edits to it in the past 3 days.

semi-pro for a day or 2 - that isn't really a lot of vandalism, and it is spread out over 3 days.

N 3 vandalism edits over 3 days isn't enough to warrant protection of any page

3. A user requests semi-protection of an article due to vandalism. The article is the today's featured article currently on the main page. There have been at least 14 instances of vandalism in the past 9 hours.

semi-pro for 24 hours, until the page is not Today's FA

N Per WP:MPFAP, the TFA is rarely protected.

4. A user requests semi-protection about a major sports event happening next week. There is no recent vandalism in the history.

none - shouldn't be used "As a preemptive measure against vandalism before any vandalism has occurred."

Y

5. A user requests full protection of 6 articles due to edit warring. 2 users have been reverting each other on all 6 articles for the past week.

full - to enforce a cool down

Y A block of the users would also work

6. You see a slow edit war on an article you edit regularly. The dispute does not involve you, but you are one of the article's main editors.

not sure what is meant by slow, but if it is an edit war with each over 3, semi or full depending on if they are anon or regs...protection would have nothing to do if i edit the page all the time or never

Y As long as you are not involved in any way you can protect it

7. Different types of pages require different levels of vandalism before they should be semi-protected. Rank the following in order of least to most vandalism before protection should be applied: Policy, templates, userpages, articles, public forums (WP:VP, WP:AN, etc.)

policy, temp, user, articles, forum

Y

Not bad, the main idea of the protection policy is "everyone can edit" which is why protection is used so sparingly. There are other factors to take into consideration when choosing to protect or not: whether there are BLP issues, how high-visibility the article is, ratio of vandalism/reverts to good edits, time it takes for vandalism to get reverted, history of edit warring, etc. The protection policy leaves the most room for admin discretion but protection is also one of the least used admin tools, compared to deletion and blocking. Mr.Z-man 04:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)