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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>While we're nominating people for sysop-hood I'd
like to nominate Anthere, from what I've seen she has been an excellent
contributor. In light of the below I'm not sure if she'd accept but I think it
would be polite to ask.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Andrew (Ams80)</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=anthere6@yahoo.com href="mailto:anthere6@yahoo.com">Anthere</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=wikien-l@wikipedia.org
href="mailto:wikien-l@wikipedia.org">wikien-l@wikipedia.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, May 13, 2003 11:22
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [WikiEN-l] 172's sysop
request and some random thoughts</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR><B><I>Daniel Mayer <<A
href="mailto:maveric149@yahoo.com">maveric149@yahoo.com</A>></I></B> wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">
<P>Note to Abe Sokolov (aka 172)<BR><BR>And I also found it odd that you
<BR>wanted to be an Admin so badly even though, in my experience, you
haven't <BR>done much Wikipedia Weeding or had a desire to edit protected
pages. <BR></P>
<P>------------------</P><FONT size=2>
<P>It is interesting (hum...who said what about that expression ?) you give
(among other arguments of course :-)) as a poor justification for asking to
be a sysop the fact 172 did not commonly ask to edit protected pages. I
think it is a bad argument for not granting sysophood. Reading your
comment, I reflected I long gave up the idea of having any impacts on the
content of protected pages. I just avoir looking at them (I never look at
the main page now), I consider I have no real right to edit them for each
time the process required is to beg and convince someone to do it for me.
Which I consider bad for a wiki.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>Curious, but I miss Ed here.</P>
<P>Some time ago, he led a nice description of the different levels held by
users in wikipedia.</P>
<P>I think these descriptions are changing or will change soon.</P>
<P>Imho, before, a sysop was a super user. Ie, someone who had super powers.
The "normal" state (the regular user) being enough to work without much
trouble, to give his opinion, and to generally participate in the decision
making process. Usually super powers are restricted to a small class of
people.</P>
<P>Now, I think that if most people are upgraded to the sysop status, the
regular (standard) status will becomes the sysop status.</P>
<P>Ultimately, the only ones left in the simple user status will be a couple
of weird people, questionables editors (per sysops estimate), newbies,
trolls and vandals. Which probably means there will be more "bad" or "said
bad" edits by simple users. Further instoring in every one mind that simple
users have a low-trust status.</P>
<P>On one hand, it is quite good there are more sysops, for it could mean
more balance ("could").</P>
<P>On the other hand, the simple user really get a lower-status, and I fear
it will very soon have a very strong smell of "not to be trusted" by
default.</P>
<P>I think a simple user will little by little see his own abilities to
participate in the decision process shrink (potential e.g. very annoying
users pages and talk pages being protected).</P>
<P>But right, some could argue that someone willing to participate in the
decision process could ask to be a sysop.<BR><BR>Going back to what is
basically the role of an simple user : editing then...</P>
<P>I also think the editing moves of a simple user are also slowly being
restricted and misconsidered, because of a growing bureaucracy on the
english wiki.</P>
<P>"Trust me", french people are very accutely aware of bureaucracy when it
begins to plague a process :-))))</P>
<P>More often than not, when I have a problem on the english wikipedia,
either I just drop it by anticipated tiredness, or I feel like entering a
french social security administration building (incidently, my whole country
is on strike today on retirement issues...well, except me of course :-))</P>
<P>For so many barely interesting issues, a simple user needs to find the
proper page, read all the rules and guidelines beforehand (not knowing the
rules is an offense), check if the page is protected (if so, head for
someone to unprotect it, justify your request for unprotection), head for
the talk page, check if the talk page is not too long (if so, head for
someone to clean it), add your request, wait, justify, wait, justify, wait,
justify, wait...head for the pump (ask someone to clean it before), try to
raise someone interest to make the sysop act for you, wait, justify again,
head for the mailing list..., maybe propose a wikismile for the action (what
! bribing !)</P>
<P>At this point, either you are labelled "heavy" or you drop the topic.</P>
<P>And each time I am heading for one of these processes, when I see a sysop
just do it in a couple of seconds without having to justify anything to
anyone, I am accutely aware a simple user is a lower-user, with less editing
rights than others and with less trust, even if it just relies on a little
flag somewhere. And I wonder over little flag importance over just common
sense.</P>
<P></FONT><BR> </P></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<P>
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