From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Delaney
As for the "decisions" thing, I assume they are talking about decisions re: admin actions, like blocking and page protection. Personally, I'm not as interested in opinions from non-admins about administrative actions. There are two reasons for this: First off, people who are not admins don't have the kind of experience with these problems -- from the perspective of someone trying to solve it -- to be able to talk about it with some kind of awareness. Second, I assume (perhaps naively) that if someone were able to understand admin-related situations, think them through, and come to a decision, they would be admins themselves already.
I don't think anyone is disputing the desirability of having an admin discussion list where non-admins can't post. Non-admins shouldn't be able to participate in such a list, and the reasons given above go a long way towards justifying this.
The question is more about how open the archives of such a list should be, and there are two main arguments for this. The first is tramsparency of process, and the second is that with 800 participants the thing will leak anyway.
Peter (Skyring)