Call for new admins?

[Peter]

In my opinion, we can't keep up with the current rate of submissions. The verification process, one of the best site improvements in the latest months, is demanding for more admins. I sometimes see whole batches of files being tagged as checked or worse, as verified without a real verification.
To maintain quality to the same rate as quantity, we need new admins.

What do the other admins think?

Maybe we should make some criteria for new admins concerning copyright, deletion and user communication policy. Why not make a test to make it somewhat funny (e.g. is this submission public domain? or estimate the publication date of this file...). Or the candidates could just prove it with some past edits that show their insight...

[imslp]

That's one thing that has been on my mind for eons. I've got a few people I'm looking at as potential admin candidates (i.e. those people who continue contributing to the wiki)

Knowledge of public domain-ness is very important of course, but also is the willingness to actually spend the time on the wiki to check the scores, as well as a personality willing to accept mistakes (and yes there will be! Everyone makes dozens of them, with me leading the pack ) and learn more about the copyright laws. This is why I have not yet set a test course for admins, because while knowledge is testable, the other facets that make a good admin is not, unfortunately.

That said, I do have one person that I've wanted to ask for a while: Mcroskell. He has submitted tons of scores, so I'm sure his knowledge of the copyright laws is quite good, and he does have the dedication. Of course there are also several others I'm looking at, and may ask in the future

I'm thinking that in the end we may have something similar to what Wikipedia has (community voting). The problem is that I'm not sure there are enough contributors on IMSLP for a mass vote to be feasible... which is why I have so far only hand picked admins. I also would like to avoid the bad air that goes around during elections, though I guess that is inevitable if IMSLP grows to a certain point and voting becomes the only choice.

In any case, Mcroskell, when you see this thread, please reply whether you would like to be an admin For everyone else, feel free to say whatever you have on mind, or bash me for not appointing more admins

[Carolus]

I see Peter's point here. I often come to review and verify items at the end of a work day and it can take a quite a while to churn through all the new uploads. I think Mcroskell would be a good choice to join the admin ranks. He's very conscientous about putting in the publisher info (where it's available), which makes life much easier. He's also careful about observing the copyright guidelines.

This is all part of growing pains, I suppose. There will be a point at which the new submissions will slow down considerably because of the sheer breadth of what is already here. The hard work in the future will be correctly identifying the thousands of items which are files siimilar to those churned out by CDSM and Everynote: No attriution for the publisher, plate number, etc. Some composers are easy in this regard - like Puccini or Debussy, whose works have appeared only in their original editions or in reprints thereof. for the most part. Composers like Chopin, of whom there are at least 150 different pre-1950 editions, present a considerably more daunting challenge to the researcher.

[Leonard Vertighel]

I'm not sure if a community election would be a good choice for IMSLP. Apart from the existing problems in Wikipedia, the situation on IMSLP is somewhat different, since admins here need to have specific knowledge of copyright issues. I suppose that the existing admins (excluding myself, since I'm only acting as some sort of janitor/technician and sporadically a web designer ) could judge the aptness of potential candidates much better than the community as a whole. Maybe for now the new admins could be hand picked by the existing ones, much like Feldmahler has done up to now single-handedly. If necessary, the process can later be formalized, but I'd avoid that as long as possible, since all formalism is also a burden and bears the potential for abuse.

[mcroskell]

I've replied on my talk page, but I thought I'd go ahead and post it here as well that I'd be happy to help out on the site as an Admin. I do think I have a pretty good grasp of copyright law although there are still the occasional copyright issues that I have to defer to Carolus's expertise. Hopefully I can help decrease the verification workload for fellow admins.

[imslp]

And now you're officially an admin