I disagree with this assessment entirely. I highly doubt the community would support secret decision making. A consensus would be immensely hard to reach simply because you and 15 people go "Well we discussed this and we have our reasons". I highly doubt the community would stand for that at all.
I see the channel as a way to quickly get help for administrative duties that non-admins can't provide help on. As a relatively new admin, I run into new problems that I can't figure out myself on a semi-frequent basis. It'd be nice to have the availability of a dedicated admin group to respond in a much more immediate way than talk pages. I personally happen to prefer IRC correspondence to talk page correspondence for quick issues.
The one thing that'd immediately turn me off of the idea of this channel is if it becomes clear that the person in charge of the inviting won't invite you simply for being an admin. There's a difference between a chat room and a clique room.
On 1/22/06, Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
The IRC channel #wikipedia-en-admins has now been created, with mode +is, i.e. secret and invite-only. It currently has an access list of 64 people. I am opposed to its existence. To call a forum which admits 800 people "almost public" is bizarre. You admit 800 but you exclude thousands of active contributors. Wikipedia has always attempted to encourage newcomers and to assume good faith, but it's a clear violation of that principle to assume that the rest of the world, those 6 billion non-administrators, have nothing useful to contribute to the discussions we wish to undertake.
Imagine if you joined Wikipedia today. How would you feel about the formidable barriers against your potential contribution to Wikipedia's decision-making process? How would you feel about having tens of admins declaring new policy, stating their rationale but refusing to enter into discussion with you on equal terms, on the basis that it had already been decided in private?
-- Tim Starling
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-- I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.