On 10/12/2007, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> And we are unfortunate in another respect: due to
a misunderstanding of
> what has happened here, we may see a decline in admins having private
> conversations with friends to "sanity check" things, and we may see a
> decline in thoughtfully coordinated on-wiki actions. And that's a shame.
However, the issue arises in cases where
public discussion isn't an option at all for whatever reason, so the
actual options are "discuss in private" and "don't discuss at all and
act unilaterally". Given those options, private discussions are
obviously a good thing.
If the person acts unilaterally they know that that it is their
reputation on the line and theirs alone. In addition there is no real
way they can mentally partition themselves from their actions. We know
that people are prepared to go further when they think there is some
kind of authority that will support them. There is a risk that people
people will view the group as such an authority. through in the
problem of such groups tending to be selectable and things are only
going to get worse.
If you are going to consult privately it is probably best done with a
group you have little control over the membership of (say select 10
admins at random from the admin list).
--
geni