But that is an exceptional case, when Jimbo hands out a decree from the top against community consensus, and it doesn't happen very often. It can't be taken as the general situation. In general, what is good for the Wikipedia is determined by the community and not some omnipotent being with an absolute and unquestionable benchmark of appropriateness. We ARE here to build an encyclopedia, but since it is WIKIpedia and not Nupedia, there can be no encyclopedia without the community. The community builds the encyclopedia. Except for certain special authorities like Jimbo, it is the community that must decide whether an admin's actions are in the best interests of the encyclopedia, we shouldn't take the admin's words for it.
Look at it this way, we rely upon the community to decide who will work best for the encyclopedia in the first place. What miracle suddenly happens after the RfA concludes that the very admins who were chosen by the community get the power to disregard the community? It's like "Now you know you made a mistake and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. I AM THE TYRANT MUHUHAHAHA!!!"
And for the trolls complaining about corrupt ArbCom, ofcourse they whine about it because the ArbCom tends to rule against trolls. But if we have an avenue of removing those invalid criticisms without any negative effects, and have as an additional benefit the direct accountability of the admins to the community without going through the indirect and unnecessarily resource consuming process of ArbCom or even worse, Jimbo himself.
Molu
On Tue, 30 May 2006 11:04:00 +0100 Nick Boalch wrote:
This is simply not the case. If an admin is acting in the interests of the encyclopaedia then he is doing the right thing, regardless of what the majority of the community thinks.
We're here to build an encyclopaedia, not a community. Usually the interests of the encyclopaedia and those of the community go hand in hand. Where they don't, the encyclopaedia comes first. Always and without exception.
[[:m:Instruction creep]]. Such a mechanism would be totally unnecessary.
Trolls complain about ArbCom being 'corrupt' because, rightly if they're trolls, they don't get the results they want from it.
Cheers,
N.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com