Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-08-14/Opinion

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I liked reading your debrief @HouseBlaster. It was thorough, organized, and insightful, and I really liked the last section for your thoughts on reform. The Night Watch (talk) 02:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

While I agree that admins should not be discussion users only, my leanings are usually the other way. Adminship is stressful enough that I have never seen an admin's content creation not take a massive nosedive. If a user is deeply invested and very productive of content, I'd rather they remain a normal user and productive than an admin that is very liable to burnout eventually and leave wikipedia entirely. Circéus (talk) 16:18, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Where did this idea come from, anyway, that content creation is a useful qualifying metric for adminship? If your janitorial staff needs a supervisor, and you want to promote from within, you don't just pick whoever has the cleanest bathrooms and say, "OK, you're in charge now". Yes, it's a fairly obvious advantage if the person managing the janitorial staff has ever cleaned a bathroom, because you want someone who understands the job and can relate. But it's less clear there's any benefit to them having cleaned a lot of bathrooms. Not only does that additional experience not really bring anything extra to their new role, but as you say, you're depriving the rest of the company of a lot of sparkling toilets. FeRDNYC (talk) 08:02, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@FeRDNYC: see the Peter principle. Sdkb ^talk 16:33, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

@HouseBlaster: One of my pet peeves is people (right?) using the <s> element when they mean the <del> element. Congrats on becoming our latest administrator! Aaron Liu (talk) 03:12, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I always thought it was the other way around, Aaron Liu. Learn something new every day :) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 04:00, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

One couuuuuld make an argument that <del>...</del> is invalid to use in hand-edited text (and should be relegated to use in formatting the automated display of content diffs or change tracking), because if you're wrapping <del>...</del> around some text, clearly it hasn't been deleted — it's still right there! Actually deleting text would involve, you know... deleting it.

(I'm not saying that I'm making that argument. I'm a WikiGnome, not a WikiPedantSupremeWithCheese.) FeRDNYC (talk) 18:31, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I've had enough of you and your cheese now. Please go away.

Anyway, <s> would be even more inaccurate as it's to represent things that are no longer relevant or no longer accurate. I do wonder whether MDN is accurate that neither are read-aloud by most screenreaders, which sounds profoundly stupid. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:36, 29 August 2024 (UTC)