First, Ryulong failed to follow policy. He did not
assume good faith, nor
did he follow WP:SOCK. He arbitrarily made up his mind that these socks were
the same person, and they were trolling (neither of which was the case and
should have been evident). On top of this, he blocked the socks with
autoblock enabled, effectively giving the editors an ultimatum: Out
themselves or quit the discussion.
Ryulong then left, leaving his actions in place and having other admins
clean up the mess. This wasn't just a simple mistake as everyone would like
to believe. This was a serious issue. Too often on Wikipedia admins feel
they can make such mistakes and everything will be OK when they appologize.
The action should never have taken place, and the editors and admins
involved made that quite evident.
No, I wouldn't call for someone from being banned from editing for breaking
a pages formatting, but then again, this is a poor comparison. Breaking a
pages formatting has no chance of hurting another iditor, Ryulong's did have
that chance (depending on who you ask, the risk would be less or greater).
Admins need to take responsibility for their actions and realize that their
adminship is not an ammunity, and "I'm sorry" is not a fix all, and should
never be treated as such by anyone.
-Cascadia
"Todd Allen" <toddmallen(a)gmail.com> wrote in
message news:2a34d5a90704221744u43596fafk742a81f259206d3a@mail.gmail.com...
On 4/22/07, David Gerard
<dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 22/04/07, Cascadia
<cascadia(a)privatenoc.com>
wrote:
"David Gerard"
<dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote
in
message
news:fbad4e140704220818n7330f43cya6890397a0d06f22@mail.gmail.com...
> On 22/04/07, Cascadia
> <cascadia(a)privatenoc.com>
> wrote:
>> - Be too nice to the newbie, shoot the
veteran: I know Todd said
>> this,
>> but
>> it happens too much- We're so afraid of biting people that we'll
>> throw
>> the
>> book at a seasoned editor.
> e.g. when you demanded Ryulong resign from
adminship for blocking
> your
> sockpuppet.
If an admin is going to hold the position, they
need to be on top of
things
much better. Personally, if I was an admin, after such a total screw
up, I
would have resigned and reapplied in a few months. Why? Because it
would be
admiting I had completely screwed up, and that I was willing to own up
to
the mistake and take full responsibility for my actions.
Except for the detail that it wasn't anything like a "total screw up."
Second accounts are barely tolerated at best, not a "right."
- d.
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Hey, here's part of something we need to realize, in that positive
culture you're envisioning:
EVERYONE SCREWS UP.
That's just a fact of life. Even highly-trained professionals make the
occasional error. We should certainly expect that from a crew of,
well, effectively amateurs.
If someone messed up an edit and broke a page's formatting, you
wouldn't call for them to be banned from editing. (I sure hope!) You'd
bring it to their attention or fix it. By the same token,
administrators will make the occasional mistake too. That doesn't mean
they're terrible people, or even careless. It means they're human.
Now, that being said, there's a difference between an error and
genuine abuse. Ryulong's actions didn't rise to the level of abuse by
any stretch of the imagination. (I'm not sure I'd even necessarily
call them an error.) In that case, there was some tension (and still
is) between an allowed use of sockpuppets (to maintain privacy), and a
prohibited one (to avoid community scrutiny). For all we knew, it
could easily have been the same person who made -all- those accounts.
There's no way to have the first clue if what any of them said are
true. That's why "anonymous" socks are frowned upon.
That being said, given the sensitivity of the situation, I wish
Ryulong would have discussed a bit before issuing the blocks. But
that's a -minor- error if it is one at all. And part of building a
good community is to accept that others -will- have a different
viewpoint than you, and unless someone is being egregiously abusive,
destructive, or totally refusing to explain themselves at all-learn to
accept a good rationale even when you don't totally agree with it. The
other guy thinks he's just as right as you think you are.
Seraphimblade
--
Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.
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