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michaelturley@myway.com wrote: <snip>
Part of the more general problem I see here that causes this is that granting administratorship at Wikipedia is meant to be "no big deal", yet anything that even hints at removing such, even for an hour or two, is the seen as end of the world as we know it. If granting administrator status truly is "no big deal", it shouldn't be that much less common to remove it, if only temporarily. Instead, we have more and more policies and procedures that excuse and insulate administrators from the "no big deal" portion and say "forgive the administrator for being mean because you really were a jerk" or "don't worry about the administrator driving off new users because he's so good at catching vandals."
This is why I look forward to graduated user rights levels. The abilities to block, delete, protect, and revert should all be assigned individually, not as a lump sum just for "doing a few hours RC patrol, having a bajillion edits and working on a featured article". Sure, those things make a person a good Wikipedian, but does that justify adminship? We seem to have a lot of hot-headed admins about (not just the rouge ones) - and when an admin decides to throw a hissy fit, block, revert and delete pages, and announce that they are fed up with the whole thing, it only serves to re-inforce some people's beliefs that people should be stripped of their admin priveleges.
If we truly want to live up to the perception and ideal that adminship is "no big deal", it should be a matter of routine to revoke admin priviledges for a few hours for something as little as a single foul mouthed comment, even if provoked and egged on by peers. If this is done, perhaps we will see less admins defending their actions at any cost, and more "shrugging it off" and proceeding with business.
Indeed; at present, it takes the intervention of a steward (which I've always thought of as being comparable to a Herculean effort) for someone to have admin priveleges removed; even so, it must be at the request of said admin, or the result of an RfAr, or something equally vile. For example, there are several Wikipedians on en who are listed as "missing", and yet still have their mystical powers. Who knows what would happen if they ever returned. I agree that admins should be elected, and elected by the community; but reading the votes at RfA gives me the feeling that members of the Cabal are elected by the Cabal, for the Cabal, and Cabal memebership is some kind of certificate you hang on your wall, much like a diploma. Yes, you can lose it, but it requires breaking, entering, pillaging, and arson.
For an example of an insulating policy, what's the point of getting another user to certify an RfC if it's only meant to be a request for <i>comments</i>? To paraphrase a comment I posted earlier on WP, it's as if people think of it as two people ganging up on a third to administer a lashing. It probably comes from being the first "formal" step of dispute resolution, but we should try to de-escalate the seriousness of RfC so we have a more basic forum for public commentary.
Also, how come only users get subpages at RfC, and not articles/policies/whatever? And why is an RfC only ever a /bad/ thing? Why is there never a /positive/ RfC? As in "I think this is really great, what do you think?"
I didn't mean for this to be a rant, but I hope this is an appropriate place for such comments. I also hope that anyone not interested will sell me an indulgence for the price of fifteen good edits as penance.
The mailing list is the home of all good rants not unleashed at RfAr, IRC or WP:VP :)
Michael Turley User:Unfocused
- -- Alphax OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis