On 7/7/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
It may be noted for the record that I don't fear
retribution from any
admins, ok? And I watch this constant ongoing trollfest and I tire of
it. You show me good evidence of an administrator abusing their admin
powers, and the ArbCom not acting on it, and I'll do something. This is
my promise to the community, my final role here, to prevent
authoritarian cliques from controlling the process.
But, I see essentially no evidence of this, and a whole ton of whining.
One thing that is absolutely 100% notably absent from these complaints
is links to diffs and actual examples of admin abuse.
With all due respect, Jimbo, may I suggest that you are looking at
this from exactly the wrong point of view.
Grab yourself a sockpuppet account, dive into an edit war, start
correcting stuff and see what happens when other ditors don't know who
you are.
Then try to forget that you are well-regarded and experienced here and
you have a great deal of power. Put yourself in the shoes of a new
editor doing what they see as the right thing and encountering
statements like this one: "I will revert you twice a day, for the rest
of history if needs be. Plus I have more allies than you, so your
attempts to restalinise this article must fail."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AKhmer_Rouge&diff=14835…
This is from an editor, one heavily supported by admins and ArbCom
members, who manages to get away with the most shocking abuse, often
involving sexual connotations.
Comments form an Arbcom member about protecting this editor, despite
his long history of abuse may be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbit…
No-one is disputing that this editor is not a good editor. But when it
is made clear at the highest levels that there are different standards
for different editors - and I quote the same ArbCom member referring
to the same editor in a private email six months ago: "By the way,
xxxx is like that with everyone. It's his schtick. I think I've seen
him be polite towards someone about once. ;)" - I think that one is
entitled to come to a certain conclusion.
I'm not trying to refight old battles here, merely pointing out that
in my experience, thuggery, threats and hypocrisy are what a new
editor may expect if he gets on the wrong side of "the old soldiers"
here.
--
Peter in Canberra