On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
geni wrote:
2009/2/12 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Indeed. As I suggested, a small amount of enforcement of good behaviour amongst the admins by the ArbCom will go a long way to getting all admins to behave in a more fitting manner. As Lar pointed out, the admin bit is so much of "no big deal" that people will do anything not to lose it.
No. Arbcom needs one of a pretty narrow set of Casus bellis to even act. There are quite a selection of problematical actions an admin can carry out that arbcom will never be a realistic threat against. In theory this kind of thing should be prevented by other admins but that isn't always too effective.
People have thought that in the past - that the ArbCom won't act against admins doing certain things - and they have been wrong. Your theory is more like wishful thinking from the admin side: there is a tariff, there are procedural things that are constants. In other words the old business of a system that can be gamed in some ways, because it is too rigid. David is essentially correct, and it is faitly obvious that sanctions have a deterrent effect on most people (though not all).
Most importantly - even if it was true in the past, there's a problem, and it can be not true in the future.
I don't think admins are the bulk of the civility / abuse problem but I think that they're the right place to start for a number of reasons. More seasoned users "set the tone" to a large degree. Admins are supposed to be trusted on top of being more seasoned, so them setting a bad example is even worse. Etc etc.
For what it's worth on the wider question - I've been jumping on civility problems that surface on ANI for the last few days - they're all responding to calm down warnings (and one block), and I haven't gotten any nasty pushback or anything. Every little bit helps.