Graham87 on being the first-ever administrator recall subject: Explanations for what led to it and what it was like to undergo it.
I have been a Wikipedia editor since February 2005 and was an admin on this site from August 2007 until November 2024. I lost my admin status after failing a re-request for adminship (RRFA) following the first ever admin recall, largely due to my aggressive blocking and heavy-handed treatment of new users. The RRFA is the subject of this article, in which I offer explanations for what led to it and what it was like to undergo it. This is not a general overview of everything I've done on Wikipedia; for that, see my 2017 Signpost interview and my personal Wikipedia timeline.
I became a Wikipedia administrator in August 2007 following a unanimous request for adminship discussion. I have had four main preoccupations on Wikipedia: wikiarchaeology (investigating the old history of the site), mostly history merges and imports (the latter being the reason I obtained the importer user right in 2013), my daily skim-reading of selected Wikipedia noticeboards (such as the technical village pump, the main admins' noticeboards, and later the bureaucrats' noticeboard), Wikipedia's accessibility for blind screen reader users like myself, and, most importantly for the purposes of this article because it's where I found many of the users I'd blocked, my (until recently ever-expanding) watchlist. It contained not only articles that I'd worked on, but also many articles subject to vandalism/deleterious editing that had not been undone for more than a couple of days.
When I became an admin, I tried my hand at dealing with regular backlogs (like speedy/proposed deletion, which I found unfulfilling), and I did not regularly check pages where users requested protection, asked for vandalism blocks, or reported bad usernames because I prefer to be self-directed, so my watchlist became my Wikipedia fortress, so to speak.
I would often check all the recent edits (or those that were the top edit) of any new user/IP to appear there. As I encountered more contributors making various types of problematic edits over the years, I became more paranoid about new users and their possible motives, leading me to become more and more aggressive about blocking. I became especially afraid of new users who I thought were gaming auto/extended confirmed permissions by making small edits (such as overlinking and often unsuccessful attempts to copyedit articles) to increase their edit count and school IPs (as many articles were on my watchlist due to vandalism from schools). I fairly frequently blocked users/IP's who I thought were problematic with little or no warning because I felt that allowing them to continue editing would waste the community's time and I valued the integrity of the encyclopedia above just about everything else.
My friends, especially the occasional Wikipedian Codeofdusk, half-seriously called me a "Wikipedia meanie" for my approach to dealing with new users. Most articles on my watchlist were there because no other active users were watching them, so most of the time I obtained relatively little feedback about my admin actions except from the new users themselves (which I generally discounted) and the occasional admin/established user who either praised me for doing a good job or let me know that I was getting out of line with community expectations; in the latter case, I'd try to heed their advice.
That all changed with two admins' incidents noticeboard discussions started in September 2024: "Overzealous blocking by Graham87", about one of my blocks, and "Inappropriate blocks and WP:BITE by Graham87", about my general approach to blocking and new users; I took on board the advice in both of those threads. There are more details on my personal Wikipedia timeline subpage about how I lost my adminship, which details several sliding doors moments in which if I'd made better decisions, I could've kept my adminship; the subpage also includes a link to a relevant thread on Wikipediocracy.
Meanwhile, the foundations were being laid for the admin recall process, in which 25 users had to sign a petition to force someone to undergo an RRFA within 30 days, and I happened to be the first person to be subjected to it. It was going about as well as a first try at a completely unfamiliar process can go on Wikipedia (i.e. not particularly well), but in the first nine days it had only received 12 out of the needed 25 signatures ... until 5 November when this edit adding a good-faith, but irrelevant reference to the Sleepover article appeared on my watchlist. I checked the other edits by the user who made it, was so incensed by the quantity and nature of their edits (as they pressed so many of my buttons at once) that I was hyperfocused on them and didn't even think about the recall petition, and eventually gave them a remarkably poorly executed and communicated indefinite block ... which meant that all hell broke loose.
My petition reached 27 signatures in over half a day, and I needed to face a new request for adminship if I had any chance of keeping my admin status.
After the above-mentioned block and its fallout, I had a huge amount of soul-searching to do. I wanted to keep my adminship largely for wiki-archaeological work, which sometimes requires it. I realised that to have even a sliver of a chance of keeping it, I should rid my watchlist of articles I wasn't interested in that were potential newbie magnets, and pledge to avoid blocking. I originally saw my watchlist purge as a dereliction of duty (though the idea had been at the back of my mind for many years beforehand), but I later saw it as liberation. I spent seven hours sorting through my watchlist, removing 1,173 pages, which calmed it down considerably. As many voters in my RRFA did, I knew that my no-blocking pledge was technically unenforceable, and that my attempt to hide the block links in my common.css was akin to putting an alcoholic's drink of choice in a slightly more difficult-to-reach part of the fridge. But without the political will to separate the block button from the admin tools, that's all I could do.
I also had to find potential nominators, by asking people I'd worked with in the past to endorse me for adminship. It took some time, but finally, my re-RFA was ready, and I was relatively optimistic. What happened next is best summed up at the timeline of how I lost my adminship, the relevant parts of which I have copied here:
In short, by blocking users to avoid wasting the community's time, I ended up creating a colossal time sink discussing my adminship status; I'm very sorry about that.
The last few months have certainly been a wild ride but the support of my friends and family along with music have helped immensely. The fact that I spent my first two-and-a-half years as a Wikipedian without admin tools (which was a long time by the standards of 2007, the year I gained adminship) makes it a bit easier to adjust; I've just revived my old habit of adding speedy deletion tags like {{db-G6}} for uncontroversial maintenance (like pages left-over from history merges) rather than deleting the pages myself.
I've been missing the tools in the strangest ways. For instance, when I notice an unfamiliar user, I've often been in the habit of comparing their account-creation date to the date of their first edit and checking their deleted edits if the two don't match; I can't do that now. I also didn't realise until I lost the rollback tool that I sometimes used it for orientation; my screen reader puts links like the rollback link on their own line and that was helpful when navigating lists of edits — and a line like "rollback: 3 edits" let me know that there were three edits by a particular user to navigate past before I find other edits to potentially check. That's a bizarre way to use rollback and I doubt I'd use it much for its intended purpose these days after the watchlist purge. If someone wants to grant me the rollback right, I'd be OK with that, but I also don't want it to cause any controversy. I've missed the tools in more tangential ways too, like having to ask for a page undeletion to facilitate a history merge. As for blocks, as of the publication date of this Signpost piece, three out of the four blocks I've requested since losing adminship have been carried out.
I can't lay all the blame on this, but I sometimes wonder if the newcomer homepage has a hand in some of the edits I've noticed in recent years. One thing it encourages people to do is copyedit, which is a great first editing task for a competent native speaker of English, but not a good one for people whose English is more shaky than they realise (compare the Dunning–Kruger effect).
The situation I was in reminds me a little of the 2005 Stevertigo arbitration case, one of the Committee's first desysopping cases, that I've never forgotten because of the debacle of the reconfirmation RFA the committee forced him to undergo; they've never done that sort of thing since. I do hope a re-RFA is always an option for admins with certified recall petitions though; I've implied this elsewhere.
Despite the setback of losing my adminship, I hope to continue editing Wikipedia for many years to come. I'm ranked #5 among human editors on the list of Wikipedians by longest consecutive daily editing streaks, and I intend to keep that up.
Discuss this story
Very thoughtful, thank you! Valereee (talk) 00:16, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I missed your re-admin vote, which I would have surely voted for, not that it would have made a difference. --rogerd (talk) 01:19, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I admire the author's thoughtful perspective on their experience. Not many people would admit to their own faults. Brave also to link to the Wikipediocracy forum topic, which gets sort of rough as it progresses.→StaniStani 10:55, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with above this was very thoughtful, and agree with Graham that copyediting should come right out of the Newcomer tasks given the issues it raises and how poorly targeted it is. CMD (talk) 11:06, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Graham has set out the reasons he came to be de-sysopped. Like Graham, I'm local to Western Australia and have met with him many times in person and I have always been impressed with his contributions. The admin recall process is a no win situation as its always easy to find 25 people who are upset enough with an admins decision put their name to the recall process. On en.Wikpedia pile-on signitures are equally easy to gather its normal for disgruntled contributors to come out of the woodwork whenever an Admin is being scrutinised regardless of their interaction with that Admin. In a project where getting 1000 people to respond is common, where RFA's regularly had 500 support votes over the years, just 25 appears to be way too disproportionate perhaps it needs to be similar in number to the support recieved in their original RFA. This process ran while there was testing of a new Admin Elections attracting many more people wanting to be seen on the right side rather than sticking up for each other. I honestly dont think the way this developed was anything but a Kangaroo court I glad I resigned my admin bit a few years ago when my editting whaned and I couldnt be bothered with the continual private emails asking me to: do something about user:foo. Where ever people think the Admin process should go, please remember that revenge isnt the way, neither is ancharcy, being kind, and recognising that no admin hasnt upset someone.
I remember back when Wikipedia didnt have 1000 rules or policies where editors were encourage to defend each other not pile on. Its also the time when RFA was not a 1000 question maze but rather where as long as person was sound they got approved. Perhaps we have over regulated, and put so many hurdles in place that we have forgotten that we here to write an encyclopaedia not to create cage fights. Gnangarra 13:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is interesting to read this from Graham's point of view. I was the editor who disagreed with Graham's 25 August block of Hocikre. Before I took it to Administration Action Review I, very tentatively, pushed back on Hocikre's Talk Page. It felt terribly stressful to me because I did not yet know anything about Graham, the admin that backed up his decision to indefinitely block Hocikre, the review process, or very much on the admin side of Wikipedia other than what I see at RfAs. I was afraid that I was about to get myself involved in internal politics when what I really wanted to be doing was looking at books and rewriting stubs. I felt good after the review, I thought, "Well, that was not so bad. A bad decision and then a correction. The system works." And I was wrong.
I did not know about the recall petition until it had already gotten twenty-five signatures and gone to an attempt to retain through RfA. And my thought on seeing his user name was, "Oh shit, this again. He didn't change." Even then I was thinking, "Well maybe, he did promise to step back from blocking." And decided to come back later after more thought. Meanwhile it was pointed out in the opposes that he'd done the same kind of block while the recall petition was running. And that made me feel really foolish. I'd been ready to give yet another chance even though I had seen the same thing happening over and over. Graham was being given all the chances to change that he didn't give to other editors. The system did work in this case, but it is as Graham has pointed out himself a case of someone being hoist with his own petard. Though also because he was being enabled by another Admin who did him no favors by backing him up. I'm not sure what system might work better and be less stressful for the people involved.
I'm still partly sympathetic. I also watch a lot of quiet pages and get annoyed with editors who've not read the Manual of Style doing lots of little edits, but because I don't have the "phenomenal cosmic powers" of an Admin there is a limit on what I can do. I've always got to follow the process of Warn1, Warn2, etc. It slows things down, but that is a good thing. There has been many a time that just one warning, one more or less friendly comment, corrects a new editor and they stop the bad thing and never come back or change their behavior and keep going. I hope I am not being foolish, but I'd be willing to support Graham as an Admin if he got back into correcting the newbies and other characters for two years or so. But I would want to see actual evidence of change rather than just a promise to do better. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 20:13, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Although I signed the petition for the recall and pushed you to withdraw the RRFA, and stand behind those positions, I have also been impressed with your calm demeanor and your eventual honest and forthright evaluation of your own errors. You seem to be more able than most not to take things too personally. El Beeblerino if you're not into the whole brevity thing 23:03, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The negative mindset towards new users is what surprised me, because it was Graham87 who welcomed me to Wikipedia all these years ago, and helped me out greatly as a new user (well, one who had done a bit of editing for a few years, but never got a welcome or an introduction, so still largely unfamiliar with Wikipedia's processes). His constructive and helpful advice was what helped get me up to speed with recent changes patrolling, and then ultimately to where I'm at now. It really shows that treatment of newcomers can often make-or-break their entire wiki editing career... I don't think I would still be here if my first impression of Wikipedia, after trying to contribute positively, was an immediate block. I'm still surprised this came from the person that welcomed me. What can I say... I'm sad—and disappointed—that it came to this. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 15:07, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Graham87: I'm quite late, but I just read the part about how used rollback. Would User:Nardog/Consecudiff suit your needs? Aaron Liu (talk) 12:40, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Graham87: A word of concern and I am going to point it out in WP:Recall annd RfA: You should not close the vote. This is a case of the judge making the decision of himself, no matter the result, even it is a Snowball fail. SYSS Mouse (talk) 23:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]