On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Charles Matthews <
charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
geni wrote:
2009/2/12 David Gerard
<dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:
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.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com