* Mark Gallagher wrote:
What I meant was, this handwavey "oh, oh, there's a problem, a terrible problem," without giving more details or (seemingly) doing anything to help fix it is Not Good. It's like that old joke --- you can't trust the Church to fight evil, because if the Devil were vanquished and all men led sinless and happy lives, they'd be out of a job. If all admins behaved blamelessly, then some of our critics would be out of a job ...
If all admins behaved blamelessly it'd be a miracle of unprecedented scope. Never going to happen and not remotely my goal. I'm actually against 'punishing' admins who mess up with de-sysoping and the like (in most cases - there are always exceptions). I'd just like us to get to the point where when an admin messes up there are at least as many others willing to say so as there are egging them on.
No-o ... not exactly. I pointed out that, instead of damning all sysops to the end of time on the basis of the behaviour of one admin, you could instead take the matter up with the lady in question, and stand at least a decent change of fixing the problem ...
I don't 'damn all sysops based on the behaviour of one admin'... I 'damn' many of them based on their lack of response to it, or outright support. Admins being uncivil to 'troublemakers' (as in that case) from time to time is human nature... not 'the problem'. Sooner or later even >I< will say something annoying to someone... I know, hard to imagine, but it'll happen. Admins being 'allowed' or even 'encouraged' to be uncivil is another matter entirely. Though I will say that when another admin did so recently a bunch of people stepped up and said 'not cool'... and the admin conceded they might have a point. Was very heartening.
Oh, there was another interaction: when you stated publicly on AN/I that anyone who closed an xfD on some basis other than a strict numerical count must be acting in bad faith.
It took me a while to figure out what you were talking about here. The dread 'pi userbox' issue presumably? I believe such vague references to supposed problems are called 'handwavery without giving details' or something like that. :]
The 'strict numerical count' seems to be something you have projected onto me, as I said nothing of the kind. Indeed, I didn't mention the 'count of votes' at all. My objection there was that an admin should not close deletion debates they were involved in and/or started... and certainly not as 'delete' given an obvious and overwhelming consensus to keep. Strict numbers nothing. When an impartial decision is required an involved/clearly partisan admin is exactly the wrong person to be closing the debate. That the close involved a 'creative' interpretation that 'keep really means delete after copying the content' was just a profound demonstration of WHY admins should never close debates they are partisan in.
The whole thing was just plain silly. It was the value of pi for frick's sake. A number. Inside a rectangle. "Kill it! Outcast unclean!" :]
Lookit, I can accept that you're doing what you think is the Right Thing to improve the behaviour on admins on Wikipedia (I didn't believe that, earlier, hence at least part of my aggression here).
Heh, well that's progress I suppose.
But I think your approach is doomed to fail.
Maybe. Personally, I was predicting that it would all end with a public stoning;
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notice...
You *do* have a point ... sometimes. I think, however, that viewing yourself as one who "challenge[s] the admin community as a whole to confront the perceived double-standards" is what we generally refer to as "looking through rose-coloured glasses".
I've always wanted to get a pair of those. :]