G'day Steve,
> SlimVirgin wrote:
> > ...we're a top--ten website with no idea how many admins we have.
> > We know how many accounts, but not how many people, and we don't
> > know whether they include banned users.
>
> I'm not an admin so I hope I'm not sounding glib or naive about
> it, but: I'm at peace with this dilemma. It's true we can't
> know, it's true that's a concern, but it's not one we can afford
> to worry about unduly, because there's nothing we can possibly do
> about it and still remain as open as we have to be. As long as
> it's significantly easier to deadmin someone who's clearly "gone
> rogue" than it is for them to construct the facade that allows
> them to become an admin in the first place, I think the situation
> is tenable.
I hadn't actually considered the scenario that SV puts in her post,
but it strikes me that there are more ways for a Trojan admin to
cause damage than simply going rogue and deleting the main page.
I'd also have to agree with her that, what with the CVU admin
phenomenon, it is trivial for a bad user to rack up a lot of edits and
bung his hand in, "Yep, I'll have me some extra buttons, please."
He doesn't even have to be a *competent* cleaner-up of vandalism;
reverting good edits by anons, leaving inappropriate warnings, and
tagging good articles for speedy deletion all show up as Good Work
in a "vandal-fighter"'s log. So, not only is it easy for an unworthy
person to get adminship by doing semi-automated tasks that look
and feel (but aren't) like hard work, his actions don't even have to
be of net benefit to the project for people to support him.
A Trojan admin will have all of the disadvantages that made him a
banned user in the first place: he'll be quarrelsome, rude, clueless,
arrogant, and insensitive. It's not hard to see how a rogue admin
who doesn't "go rogue" but simply hangs around like that last
inaccessible little bit of peanut butter in the jar, driving away
newbies and befouling the morale of the community, spreading
cluelessness about him like the Johnny Appleseed of the
Broken Telephone Effect, could cause a great deal of damage to
the project ... and we wouldn't even know. Going out with a
magnesium flare, chanting "I am rogue, I am rogue" brings a lot
of attention to one's self; just being a moron is unlikely to raise
nearly so much fuss.
The Trojan admin doesn't have to be a sleeper agent with Big Plans
to cause trouble. He just has to be what he is: a really, *really* bad
admin. So, I agree with SV that this could be a big problem. On the
other hand, it's no worse a problem than what we see today with
ordinary, non-Trojan, really, really bad admins.
So, I sort of agree with you, too.
Cheers,
--
[[User:MarkGallagher]]