Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
... As I said above, I think the policy leaves room for a group of sysops to act temporarily, before the AC does.
Without comment on this particular block, I completely agree with your above general statement. I would in fact like to deputize admins so that they have more authority to do this sort of thing but would have to implement such blocks in triads (three admins would be needed to issue a block; the ability for single admins to block obvious vandals would not be changed).
Is it good ? *yes, because AC is acting slowly. Participants are getting upset to see reincarnations waiting for 2 months before "judgment" by the AC. It is no good that participants become angry.
I agree - The AC is a panel of judges who have the authority to issue long term bans. This is a large responsibility and contrary to what many might think, it is not fun at all. Thus cases move slowly. We are not, nor have ever been a police force and therefore cannot protect people from the actions of others. Our job is to judge those people and issue remedies which we hope will be fair to the accused and to the community. Admins are the ones who implement those rulings.
In real life, there is similar provision.... when someone is said to have done something deeply wrong and is considered a potential threat to the society, he may be put in jail before the judgment is made. He should be put in jail only if there is enough evidence naturally. But this prevents damage to the society, while giving time to judge fairly.
This concept in the U.S. at least is called 'probable cause'. It allows policemen to detain suspects before trial and allows individual judges to extend that through trial based on incomplete evidence. The goal is to balance the rights of the accused with the right of the public to not be harmed by somebody who the police or the arraignment judge reasonably thinks may do harm if released. A full trial will determine guilt.
In fact I want the AC to change its arbitration policy a bit to allow for probable cause blocks of users during a trial based on a simple quorum (4 votes in favor). Such a user would only be able to edit his/her user and user talk page, and the AC pages concerning him/her. But that only takes care of the trial part. IMO, admins also need the ability to do this during day to day operations (the pre-trial part). Either way we need to greatly increase the size of the AC so that it can deal with the workload.
If there is a mistake, we should deeply apology to the wrongly-blocked person, and re-consider how we are looking for evidence for next cases.
Not necessarily - if probable cause was in fact valid to begin with then the user was not wrongly blocked. But just as there is a possibility for police abuse, there is also the possibility of admin abuse. If that is the case, then the admin may be in a trial of his/her own. However, we should assume good faith of admins as much as possible - otherwise everybody will be too afraid of using their sysop power to do what needs to be done for the good of the community.
*yes, it is also good because power should be in the hand of people first. Those doing the daily work. This is the wiki way.
I agree. The current set-up is rather top heavy with the AC having most of the authority and most of the admins feeling as if their hands are tied. I would like to spread some of the AC's authority around but would like to proceed with caution.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
I support all these suggestions. You are right that AC is judge, not force police. So, activities should be separated. And empowering teams of sysops (with a good balance of pro and con-banning for example) to act in good faith while you are working through the case seems a good idea.