Bobak the throwback

[Kraken]

It never ceases to amaze me, what's lurking in the pile marked Administrators who your never even heard of.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... User:Bobak

If you ever need a lawyer, hire this guy.

[ericbarbour]

Ha ha. Another "trusted member of the glorious community" goes into the weeds, and the instant response of the other twits is "BLOCK-BLOCK-BLOCK" followed by whining to Arbcom. Because no one can be bothered to TALK to the guy, or try to reason with him.

How many times have I seen this shit happen? Too many to keep track of. Hundreds of times.

Bobak has been pissing around on WP since 2005. Did lots of content work from 2006 to 2013, dropped off to near inactivity in 2014.

Must have gone to USC (whatta surprise). Big damn fan of Mark Sanchez. Go Trojans blah blah blah.

Someone must have gotten his "attention" because they unblocked him several hours later. But this is an admin in danger of being desysopped for "inactivity", so this is all stupid and pointless. And how many experts on USC football does Wikipedia really need anyway? They already have too many lawyers farting around.

Maybe they should read that Minnesota Daily article so they know who he really is.

From his 2007 RFA. "Well educated and mature". Ha. Assholes, running a petty shithole, badly.

Bobak (talk · contribs) - Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Bobak. Bobak has loads of experience in articlespace - see the list of the articles he created here. He has had a lot of community interaction, evidenced by a large number of edits to the various talk namespaces. Finally, he has a couple of hundred edits to the projectspace. Based on an examination of his edits, I am satisfied that Bobak is sufficiently knowledgeable in policy and will exercise discretion when using the administrator tools. Finally, Bobak is well educated and mature, and will make a splendid addition to our sysop corps. Thank you. -- Y not? 01:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

[Kraken]

But this is an admin in danger of being desysopped for "inactivity",

But that's the hilarious thing, the guy isn't even close to the inactivity threshold. You have to be almost dead for that to kick in. He even shows up in the "Active Administrators" list (the flaw of which is that it only measures edits, not Admin actions). But with a handful of admin actions a year, you clear the bar easily.

If anyone wants this guy desysopped because he's a throwback, they have no choice but to drag him to ArbCom.

But he's unlikely to get on anyone's radar precisely because of his very low activity. He was noticed and dragged to AN/I only because he randomly insulted an editor from a later generation, GreenC, who joined in 2009. Hence why Bobak, who joined in 2005, thinks it's OK to call people lazy and GreenC doesn't.

A straight up Wikipedia intergenerational culture clash.

[ericbarbour]

But that's the hilarious thing, the guy isn't even close to the inactivity threshold. You have to be almost dead for that to kick in. He even shows up in the "Active Administrators" list (the flaw of which is that it only measures edits, not Admin actions). But with a handful of admin actions a year, you clear the bar easily.

I wouldn't say that--he's skating the edge of the ice, like many others. After the 2022 change, about 150 admins were tossed, because they also skated the edge. Last time that many got tossed at once was in 2011-2012.

Following a community discussion in June 2011, administrator accounts that have neither edits nor log actions for at least one year are subject to procedural removal of administrator permissions for inactivity, and following a 2022 community discussion, starting from 1 January 2023, administrator accounts that have made fewer than 100 edits in the last 5 years are also subject to this policy.

Dan "Deskana" Garry, one of WP's longest-term and most powerful insiders, has received multiple warnings this year.

Scroll down here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... nistrators

For the past several years it averaged 3-4 per month. Last year was a major uptick. Before 2011 this would have been unthinkable--people were only desysopped by their own request or due to an Arbcom case. Even major PITA power mongers like Raul654, Mbisanz, Prodego, KillerChihuahua, The Wordsmith, Tim Vickers and Steve Smith got the boot in 2023. Ten years ago those people would have fought like rabid weasels to keep their powers--and would have succeeded. Now their "careers" are ending with a miserable quiet whimper.

Scroll down to January. I count 105 desysops just in that one month. Many of those are very early admins who were appointed by Jimboob The Glorious himself, prior to 2004. Some served on Arbcom long ago. Only word I can think of: a PURGE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... nuary_2023

THAT is the "reward" for 20-plus years of doing the dirty work of Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation. You get stuck on an obscure list and your name is checked off. The word for that is SUCKERS.

[Kraken]

I've almost become an expert in this area recently. In another place.

He's well above the bar. Over a 100 edits this year already. Five logged Admin actions in 2023. Both are five times the requirement. They are insanely generous.

What you call the "purge" is a literal clearing of the dead wood. People doing nothing as an Admin, or who are long gone. People who fail to meet this exceedingly generous standard are so blatantly unfit to serve on a project which has become this complex and where Admin roles and responsibilities are changing quite rapidly, that over half are actually voluntarily resigning. Doing the right thing before the bot gets them. Happy to admit they are yesterday's men. Dinosaurs. Liabilities.

The bot also seems to have debunked one myth. It is showing that once an Admin hits this level of detachment, they rarely re-animate. Their fire has gone. Their race run. Their fuel spent. They disengaged for a reason usually related to the role, not external factors. It's almost comical, the few who even try, sputtering, then collapsing. So yes, purge is more than apt. Or cull.

The major issue is that still leaves literally hundreds who do next to nothing (like Bobak), or who are using the tools solely for their own convenience. They are not only not registering as inactive, they are reported as active. One of 400 odd.

This purge is also masking the real story. Once you factor out the voluntary and automatic removals for inactivity from the stats, Wikipedia is in real terms suffering year on year losses of ~15 active Administrators a year. Burnout, sudden retirement, removal for cause and even the ultimate inactivity, dying in post.

People don't fight for it now. Because it's a shit job with shit pay. And there are plenty of bad apples left on the tree, getting found out, getting investigated and convicted.

They have indeed wised up. The Admins actually doing stuff, really are the suckers of Wikipedia.

Hence no applications for two months.

They may not have the time they think they have.