User blog:JoshuaJSlone/Hello! Project Wiki Admin Audition - 2014 August

Hi guys, welcome to the first planned regular admin audition! I'll explain some of the whats and whys of this process, then leave things open for questions or comments. Why now? First, neither WonderBuono! or myself are planning on quitting anytime soon. There's never any telling when admins will become unavailable for personal, technical, interest, or any other reason, though; and waiting to be shorthanded before looking for new ones is asking for trouble. It was before my time here, but there have been times with no active admins. There's also the fact that just because we're not hurting for help isn't a good reason to hold back people who could be good admins. Being an admin here has been a good thing for me; I'm sure it can be for others, too. More specifically for why now--well, it was pretty arbitrarily decided that planning on three auditions a year would give people a frequent enough and known time to apply, and August was a close enough time to start. Does this mean new admins every four months? Not necessarily. Like a Morning Musume audition, it's possible there could be one, four, or none. Maybe there's not a very qualified applicant. Maybe we've already got six active admins so the need for more is extremely low. Maybe with this process repeating every four months, there won't even be any non-admins interested each time. Why "audition"? When I became admin it was part of an admin election. But we're not a very large community and just as in reality not everyone eligible to vote chooses to do so or has a strong opinion, so actual voting was pretty minimal. It was decided to try removing the vote count as a factor. In the election it was optional to include reasoning for your vote--this much is still encouraged, to help make it a community choice.

So how does this process work? The plan is to keep things simple and hopefully not too fast or slow. First week of the month, people can decide to participate simply by replying and saying so here. Second week is the time for discussions about or questions to applicants. Third week, current admins should decide who if anyone should join them at this time. What does an admin do, anyway? Here's a page I wrote about that. Are there any necessary qualifications? Nothing set in stone. For obvious reasons, though, people with less wiki experience and with less time in the community will be harder sells.