[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[Parker Peters]

On 2/22/07, James Forrester <jdforrester at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 21/02/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If Adminship were not a big deal, then losing adminship would not be a
> big
> > deal.
>
> Nonsense. It's amazing (and, frankly, mystifying) to me how often this
> awfully poor logical conclusion comes up.
>
> "Being a sysop is not a big thing, anyone can become one" is
> equivalent to saying "If you are judged unable to become a sysop,
> then, wow, you really must be two nuts short of a bolt".
>
> The corollary is that if you do have your sysop bit removed, you are
> now being accused of, indeed, having a shortage of bolt-fasteners.
>
> If we did hold sysops to some impossibly high standard - and, it
> should be pointed out, I personally see nothing wrong, and a great
> deal right, with holding Arbitrators and Stewards to this level, for
> instance - then, yes, being desysoped would not be such a big thing
> because people would fail the test all the time. But we don't, so it
> is, because they don't. See?
>
> [Sorry for being annoyed at yet another faulty repetition of illogic.]


James,

Not the case.

If we held the standard for entry fairly low, we'd have more sysops. Some of
them, just like too many today, would probably get drunk on the power and
start abusing it.

If it were taken away, BUT it hadn't been so hard to achieve in the first
place, it would not be so much of a letdown. It's not an insult to say to
someone, "Sorry, but this was an inappropriate usage; you're being stepped
down. Feel free to reapply later when you feel you've corrected whatever
caused this overstep."

Instead, being de-adminned right now is considered a huge deal. An admin has
to go SO batshit over-insane to get de-sysopped that flagrant abuses,
incivility, deliberate provocation of users, are seen as "alright" because
there is a "shortage", we have "too few" admins, yadda yadda.

I'd much prefer the secondary case, where if an admin didn't make the cut,
it was no big deal, because they could always apply later when they correct
whatever's wrong and we didn't have to worry about needing to give that bit
to someone, or worse keep the admin bit in the hands of someone who doesn't
deserve it, "or things will be left undone."

Right now, with the bar set so high for entry, that's not the case;
returning RFA members have been kept de-sysopped for such "crimes" as doing
something over 6 months previous that another admin with an axe to grind
disagreed with... which is also a problem of the cronyism inherent in the
system.

Parker
-- 
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com