On 01/03/2008, Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com wrote:
On Saturday 01 March 2008 15:27, Thomas Dalton wrote:
The alternative is that admins are mistreated so much that they can't really be bothered any more.
They're not.
Those that do their job well, no one really even "knows" they're admins and it's a non-issue.
Those that get uppity and act like they're masters (rather than what they really are: servants) get treated like crap, sure, but they deserve it. It's not "mistreatment" if it's wholly deserved.
Take a look at WP:AN/I, plenty of admins doing their job well get complained about all the time. You do the slightest thing someone doesn't like, or isn't in exact adherence to policy and cries of "admin abuse" go up far and wide. Compare the number of complaints against admins to the number of desysoppings and you'll see that the vast majority of complaints are against admins just doing their jobs. Quite a lot of admins actions are going to upset someone (the person being blocked, the person that created the article that's being deleted, the person that happened not to have got the last word in the edit war before "the wrong version" was protected, etc., etc.). There are also plenty of times when policy doesn't apply word for word and it's necessary for admins to use their own judgement. Sure, sometimes that judgement is slightly flawed, but most of the time it's the right thing to do and most people agree with it, but it still gets complained about just because it didn't follow the exact letter of the law.