On De, however, I perceive a much more homogenous
distribution of
opinions among the sysops. Since it was a sysop who made the edit, and
since sysops are trusted users, the edit was probably trustworthy. Since
there are often no other sysops disputing/opposing the edit, it doesn't
matter that the edit was of a much greater significance/magnitude than
some edits that spark violent edit wars. This (among many many other
things) encourages existing sysops to make sure the community of sysops
remains broadly like-minded, and this in turn encourages the view that
dissenting non-sysop editors are just vandals, and encourages the sysops
to keep the page protected. Hence, as Erik said, "sysops become far more
relevant in the power structure" and "instead of being janitors, they
become editors".
Timwi
The same can be said of Polish Wikipedia, although here we do not
protect as many pages as at de:.
--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org