How many admins does WP need to "function"?

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Bbb23sucks
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How many admins does WP need to "function"?

Post by Bbb23sucks » Sat Jan 28, 2023 10:38 pm

Of course we all know that Wikipedia doesn’t function, but what I mean is the bare minimum to have the appearance of functioning (i.e. not taken over by vandals, spammers, attempted revolutionaries, etc.)

So with the exponentially accelerating drop in admins, how close are they to approaching the limit?

And what is the minimum to begin with? 250? 100? 50? 20?
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Re: How many admins does WP need to "function"?

Post by wexter » Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:44 pm

A list of all users who are currently administrators (sometimes referred to as "sysops") in the English Wikipedia can be found here. There are 911 (as of now) administrator accounts (active and otherwise), 497 of them active (as of 2023-01-28). Activity is defined as 30 or more edits during the last two months. Administrators who have been completely inactive for over a year or having fewer than 100 edits in the last 5 years are routinely de-sysopped, though they can reactivate their status through a simple request within two years of being de-sysopped. The number of active admins, and the date for it, in this paragraph are updated automatically on a daily basis by Rick Bot.
Automated tools (some transparent and some not) and coordination on Discord help manage the platform

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... o%20months.

With a smaller list of active admins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ors/Active

Even something like "recent edits" spur non-administrators to swarm into action

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:R ... lversion=2

or

Utilities: RC patrol – New pages – IPs' contribs – Mobile contribs – Cleanup – Vandalism – Deletion – RfC – Backlogs
My favorite was Twinkle where I can be a despot and dictator.

or

Imagine if Wikipedia Sucks made the creation of posts and content difficult for participants and the deletion of posts easy!

Imagine if Wikipedia sucks allowed non-administrators to revise content out from other people and delete content randomly on whim.

As EB mentioned - a good organization might hire someone with a mental handicap or illness here or there; but they would not empower them to run the company.

(A post of mine once got scrambled and there was concern here that it might be construed as censorship, with an unnecessary apology - also every one here is direct with an occasional smattering of crankiness - and there is a huge amount of tolerance = there is lots of integrity here! ) and on Wikipedia the crazy increases as the number of active administrators decline or decide to cross dress. So good point and observation.

"Bad ideas work until they don't; and there is not a single bad idea that Silicon Valley does not like to try out in scale" Wexter
Wikipedia - "Barely competent and paranoid. There’s a hell of a combination."

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