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

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> A lot of it is poker. Folks without a decent hand, raising and
> bluffing. I suggest courteous calling: asking for sources,
> negotiating, patience, using the dispute resolution process effectively.
>
> Fred
>
I suggest that, even if one is willing to go through all the trouble
of learning and following the dispute resolution process, 9 times out
of 10 nothing will happen anyway, because the arbitration committee is
grossly ineffective at handling any but the most obvious of disputes.

There are many RFCs started against admins who have clearly exceeded
the bounds of their authority, and that ultimately amount to nothing. 
Quite often the reasoning behind this is that the ultimate result
justifies the means.  Less often but still sometimes the excuse is
more along the lines that the admin *thought* the ultimate result
would justify the means.  It's really not such a bad argument, but it
makes any argument that admins don't have any authority pretty
obviously false.

Some clear examples which illustrate my point would be wrt speedy
deletion.  Excuses for admins exceeding their authority under the
speedy deletion policy (which in itself was created in some ways under
threats of page protection and banning) include that the content would
have been deleted anyway and even that the admin was "being bold" and
doing something which she thought was right.

It seems absolutely clear to me that admins, collectively at least,
have a significant amount of de-facto authority in Wikipedia.  They
have powers, and there are essentially no hard rules over how they are
permitted to use it (let alone *enforced* rules).

Anthony