[Wikipedia-l] "adminship is no big deal"

[Fred Bauder]

You mischaracterize an ambiguous situation as being totally corrupt.

Fred

On Jan 18, 2006, at 9:10 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>> Yes, it is somewhat outdated, but it remains true in a sense;
>> administrators are on the same level as everyone else as far as
>> content is concerned, pointing out that you are an administrator will
>> not get you far in a content dispute, and carried far enough, will
>> get you desysopped.  There are occasional lapses and a few folks  
>> sneak
>> around a bit, but those who think being an administrator gives them
>> authority over the most important thing in Wikipedia, content, are
>> mistaken.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>
> I'm amazed sometimes at how often blatently untrue statements like
> this get made.
>
> Admins decide which content gets deleted and which content gets
> undeleted.  They decide when pages are protected and when they are
> unprotected.  While those pages are protected they decide what those
> pages are going to say.  They decide when to block someone for
> violating the three revert rule and when not to block someone for
> violating it.
>
> On very rare occassion an admin does something so ridiculously
> outrageous and out of touch with the POV of the arbitration committee
> that they get reprimanded for it, but there are numerous occassions
> where they influence content and nothing happens at all.
>
> It's very hard to separate power from authority, and in a flat (as
> opposed to hierarchical) system, it's probably impossible.
>
> Anthony
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