All these staff members are super capable. All of them have good judgement and are good at policy. All of them are qualified for adminship.
We've been considering this list for well over a year, so there's been a lot of time to consider. I also approve of promoting everyone here at the same time — they'll be able to rely on each other as a group, and balance each other effectively. We're sorry this waited for so long — long enough that a few choice came and went from the list (though I think they'll be considered again in the future, whether near or far)! Yet, still, this is the most admins we've ever promoted at once since the beginning of the site.
Here we go:
anqxyr has been one of the best and most reliable team captains we've ever had. His judgment is stellar on the subjects he chooses to give input on, which is why as an admin I've pretty much universally deferred to what he thought was best on a topic he spoke on. He's extremely low-drama and great to work with.
I do not know anqxyr enough to lay out relevant areas for concern; ordinarily, not knowing someone's flaws means I am very unlikely to vote for them (because inevitably, a serious flaw always does arise), but anqxyr is so capable that I'm happy to take the risk.
Decibelles has an invaluable perspective. She's good at seeing crucial concerns with specific issues and speaks up for areas of community concern in general. She cares a lot, at a fundamental level, about how the community overall is working. She is unusually friendly and kind, severely undervalued traits in people with authority. Whenever she's been in a significant position as staff or dealing with an issue, she's been one of the most valuable people involved. Yet she doesn't seek personal power; she's reluctant to take it when offered. She takes responsibility very seriously, and works very hard, which is excellent for an admin.
If there's a concern for Decibelle, it's that she has struggled with burnout from taking so much input, which is especially dangerous given how many community members have tended to single her out in abusive ways. But over the last year she's spent quite a lot of time working on ameliorating burnout, and done a good job at stepping back when necessary, whether for offsite or onsite reasons. This is a valuable skill for an admin to have; if more of us had it, maybe we'd have more admins.
Dexanote is also unusually friendly and kind. He always tries hard to see all sides of an issue. He's a very cooperation-minded person, and we value that highly for adminship. He's reliable — of all the people here, I believe he's been staff longest, and his experience and understanding of the long-term arc of the site are valuable. Dexanote cares a lot about everyone having a good time, which is important since we're a site where we want everyone to be having a good time (and yet struggle with most of the fandom being alienated by an inner core of staff & vets who don't care for them). Dex is especially willing to be available to perform necessary constant technical site functions, like bans and apps (when applicable). We can't promote admins based on being willing to do this, ever… but it's also extra-valuable.
Dexanote does sometimes misunderstand situations (whether policy or a topic he knows less about), especially when he wants to make someone happy and fix a situation too quickly. I would have said the same thing a year ago when we first considered his promotion in-depth — and in that light, this is good timing, because Dex has been actively working on this issue for the past year and a half, and very much in the past few months in particular. This is a common theme with people on this list, which is good, because that's the best kind of admin preparation there is.
Roget is the person most recently up for serious consideration for administrator. (The others here have been on the short list for a year or more; Roget's been on it for around the last six months.) I'm gonna get extra-specific for him. Roget has a long history of running effective site teams (notably International Outreach, Images projects, and others), even during periods of lower activity… but also a history of having some troubles with responsibility. His creation of the Wikiwalk Team, and his effective handling of the problems that arose with it, demonstrated to us his readiness to be admin. That project directly addresses a huge long-term issue, and took a lot of initiative and grasp of policy to kick off. More than that, though — Roget went about the project impressively, taking a huge amount of community and staff input, modifying the proposal based on concerns, and keeping the community mostly in the loop. And when fuck-ups happened, because fuck-ups always happen, he took responsibility and took steps to directly fix the issues.
Roget does still need to watch out for acting too quickly, and (much more rarely these days) acting unilaterally without consultation with others. Before the Wikiwalk Team, Roget had a pattern of making great projects and great teams, then acting as final authority and doing something wrong, necessitating admins to come in and clean things up. We're making him and administrator himself now… he really will be the final authority, now. It's vital to make sure other admins (and staff overall) are on board with the current agenda he's following, and that he's on board with their agenda too. Though I'm asking him to pay attention to this, I know he gets this now. That's why he's ready.
Silberescher is one of the best people we've had for years at helping both sides of a situation understand each other. He is one of the most unlikely staff members to stick like glue to groupthink. He's stood out multiple times for siding against staff members who he likes in an argument, and making a good and sincere argument on their behalf, rather than siding by default with staff members until proven otherwise (which most of us do, and that's understandable) or siding by default against them regardless of the merits (which we get a lot of, too). And Silber's able to handle long, wrenching discussions (and bad situations) while contributing usefully.
Silber does have a tendency to just not think his input is useful. We respectfully disagree. As an admin, he will need to make sure he operates as if his input is useful, because his input is very much why he's becoming an admin.
SoullessSingularity is very insightful and sees things others don't see, and suggests things others don't think of. He brings a completely unique and very useful perspective to almost any situation. He cares a lot about fully understanding situations, and is an extremely thorough thinker. He's always open to changing and re-assessing a situation, and listens to feedback from literally anyone. He also always, always tries very hard to fix any errors he's made, which is a big deal for an admin. We'd rather have someone who cares about fixing errors, than someone who rarely makes errors but is incapable of fixing them (or, worse, seeing that they're errors).
Soulless does have trouble with just going along with a course of action he's been told to take, or agreeing with any random user's assessment of his behavior and offering to change it for them. This is a detrimental habit, carried too far; but Soulless can and should (and, I believe, will) rely on the other admins here to center himself in situations like this. He also will always have communication troubles, and many newer (and some older) members will misunderstand him. Yet, Soulless has worked for years at getting better and better and making things clear, and continues to do so. This is another reason why we're confident in Soulless's major capability as an admin.
Zyn is already the most powerful moderator on the site, by a long shot. A 'mini-admin', if you will, considered by many to be an admin in all but name. She's also been on the admin short list for the longest of any of these names (several years, in fact). She's worked harder for longer than any other staff member on the site, for years. In terms of day-to-day public-facing staff duties, she's been a core staff member for longer than anyone. No one else really comes close. Even outside public-facing duties, only people like Troy are in her category. She has a very thorough grasp on how the site works, and has done an immeasurable amount of work to make it function, particularly to make sure everyone gets some kind of feedback — a core function of a writing website.
We have two concerns, which we think she's done work to address and is ready to handle going forward. First, while she has a great head for policy, she sometimes goes into autopilot and misunderstandings happen. She needs to prioritize the needs of newbies highly, and be very concerned about punishing them too much, while still remembering to enforce rules if someone is causing active harm to other users (not just writing a bad article or double-posting). Conversely, she needs to be much more concerned about not letting people off (who she likes and/or respects and/or looks up to) for long-term negative behavior. Second — burnout. We wanted to promote Zyn to admin years ago, but were afraid of seeing her real life suffer for her job here. But she's now learned pretty thoroughly to delegate vital tasks, (even if they will be fucked up in the short term) and prioritize her offline life first. Like everyone on this list, I fully believe she'll be a superb admin.
This is a huge change in site leadership. Five admins total are voting on promoting seven new admins. And almost everyone here has been staff for seemingly endless amounts of time. This has been many years coming. You'll do great. Congrats <3
