Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Whoa there. Wikipedia is reputation based. We have editors who have a firm place in whatever elite one might infer we have, by dint of their contributions, but who are not and never will be admins. And that's before we get to Giano...
Ba-dum-ching!
No, it's not hard to sanction an admin. All they have to do is something stupid. The big problem is that there is a reluctance to bring those sanctions before the community. We seem to have nothing between "ZOMG! He deleted my article on my band I just formed last week! Rouge admin abuse!" and total meltdown.
That's fair. But...
The main problem, I think, is that there is no calm atmosphere for discussing the performance of admins (and that brings us back to the thread earlier about admin meltdown). I seriously do believe there should be a place for admins to discuss their actions and quietly admonish each other for being bloody silly *without* making it a three-ring circus. And yes, that goes against the Wiki ethos, but the problem with openness is that there are a lot of POV-pushers out there just looking for chinks in the armour. I'd hope the need for privacy would be temporary, but I perceive it as being there. I also believe that trusted non-admins should be allowed to take part. Just not any-old-editor coming to take the next pot-shot at whatever admin stepped in to stop their particular content dispute.
This *could* act as a solution, but not as a great one. I mean, right now, as it stands, if an administrator (to use my pet peeve) is consistently abusing the speedy deletion policy, I have one choice to have anything substantive done about it - ArbCom. Of course, no one really wants to do that, and it doesn't always result in a prompt resolution - one open-and-shut case I presented last summer still took weeks, which is fine, but isn't always helpful. Etc etc.
Your clearinghouse idea has significant merit, though.
- More importantly, adminship is viewed as a reward rather than a
responsibility, thus creating a protector group of admins. There's one recently-promoted admin in particular who embodies this concept, but there are many like him.
You might want to run that past a few admins and see how loudly they laugh. Seriously, anyone who wants to be an admin should try it for a couple of weeks and see how they like it.
I should be clearer. The reward part of it comes from the editor class, not the administrator class - I'm sure admins knee deep in the muck don't see it as a reward. However, the result of users nominating users as a reward and then becoming a protector type still stands - I see it too much not to be concerned by it. It's not a god complex as much as something else I can't find the words for.
-Jeff