On 2/9/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Given that the issue was unimportant one way or the other, I don't see where the massive damage comes from.
Community relations. The anger. The blocks. Take out the admin powers and it would have been just another minor spat. It was the involvement of the admin powers that caused the damage to the community. At lost of the distrust of admins comes from that event.
I work on WP for a hour or so every day, and this is the first I've heard of a "Bobby Boulders". Are you sure it was that big of a deal?
It resulted in the brief deletion of the counter vandalism unit see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Cou...
This whole overdramatization of admin activity is the root cause underlying burnout, I'd say. All admin actions are reversible, so no permanent damage is possible,
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
but POV-pushers and other miscreants have learned that they can get their way by blowing everything way out of proportion, accusing admins of tyranny and cabals and bla bla bla, so that the reasonable people get tired of it all and walk away.
I suspect there are other reasons.
It's kind of a clever way for POV-pushers to get control of WP actually; raise the bar for new admins, drying up the supply, and drive the old ones away with continual harassment.
The role of admins in dealing with POV pushers is little different from the role of non-admins.