Jesse W wrote:
On Jul 17, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Timwi wrote:
Yes, I do not deny that. Now -- if a user finds an admin to have done something wrong, does that make it likely that the admin has done something wrong?
Certainly it does. If no-one has objected to an action, it's more likely that action is correct than if anyone has. There - the rest of your argument has just foundered on the rock of people not behaving as you predicted. Sorry.
Obviously you'll say 'no' because there's only one user complaining, and everyone else sides with the admin. But read on...
As I said - sorry - you guessed wrong.
I'll be frank: you appear a little conceited here. If you agree with the original statement, you are only confirming my theory even more, but you are blindly assuming that contradicting me makes you "win" and so you say "sorry, you lost, nee-ner".
But we have already established on this mailing list that admins *do* conspire, albeit on a very subtle and subconscious level, without knowing it. Someone (not me!) gave this analogy with noblemen in the Middle Ages, who rarely if ever accused each other of a crime even if they knew about such a crime.
Mailing list archive citation? Or at least a name, or a subject line? Otherwise I'll have to consider that it *was* "you" you gave this analogy, with all the lack of support that entails.
If it had been me, I would obviously be more likely to know precisely what I typed, especially the subject line. This way, however, all I remember is the gist of the thought, not the subject line and not the author's name. Also, Google's coverage of the mailing list archive appears to be notoriously incomplete (searching for a randomly-chosen subject line from last month gives no results), so it is no surprise that I cannot find it. It is unfair of you to allege that this means it doesn't exist.
Wait, wait - now you are jumping to claim that admins agree with each other to prevent people from getting through RfA? Evidence? Argument? Something other than "proof by assertion"? Please?
What do you expect? A link to an RfA in which someone says, "Oppose -- If I gave support for this one, I'd be less popular in the admin community so I better side with everyone"???
Rather, look at the kinds of arguments that are brought forward to justify the rejection of candidates who have never done anything wrong. These arguments go something like, "We don't need that many admins", "We already have enough admins", "There is no point in making him admin if he's not going to be active", etc. Everyone copies these arguments from everyone else, and nobody actually thinks about them to realise that these arguments are stupid and make no sense.
Anyway. I do not follow RfA. The only RfA I have followed closely is the only one I have ever nominated myself. That RfA (Spottedowl, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Spottedowl) is a prime example of adminship refused solely on the basis of edit count (which I'm sure you'll agree is not an indication of any wrong-doing and therefore not a valid criterion for opposition). By extension, it's an example where admins collectively act contrary to the spirit of policies ("adminship is not supposed to be a big deal") and all of them get away with it because only one person complains about it (me) and everyone else defends each other.
A-ha! Doesn't this explain the above effect then? If a majority of admins agree with a decision, then the decision is less likely to be questioned (and, consequently, the complaining user is taken less seriously). Therefore, admins will agree with each other in order to reduce the likelihood of being questioned. This is the "benefit of agreeing with each other" that you were looking for. :)
Why is this a benefit? As far as I can see, a lack of questioning is a detriment to proper functioning, and the benefit of Wikipedia.
It is a benefit to _them_ (their social standing in the community), not to Wikipedia. If you assert that people subconsciously act solely and only for the benefit of Wikipedia, you are quite naïve.
Now, does "the way things are done on Wikipedia" refer to the spirit of the policies, or the behaviour of admins in practice? We all know that there are significant differences between those two.
Sigh. Not this again. "the way things are done on Wikipedia" means the practices which typically occur on the website with the DNS address of http://en.wikipedia.org. Drop the dead horse, please.
I'm surprised at this reaction... and slightly offended, because I have never argued this way before, and don't consider it a particularly often-cited argument. Either way, your reaction indicates that you understand "the way things are done" to mean "the way people actually behave in practice", irrespective of what policy dictates people should behave like. Therefore my argument, which you conveniently removed, applies:
If you mean "the way admins behave in practice", then you have confirmed my theory. Several admins come to the same conclusion, /therefore/ you do the same (and presumably accept and defend their arguments but not the complaining user's).
.
Of course it is easy for you to claim that someone has "absolutely no regard for policy XYZ", but surely most of the time it is more likely a misunderstanding of the spirit of the policy (by either side!), or just complete ignorance of a less obvious policy.
Well, ignorance doesn't fly after the policy has been pointed out
With something like 3RR, you are right. The rule is dead clear and spot-on. However, with something like "notability" or "verifiability" or even "no personal attacks", this is a bit unfair. There is no clear logical definition for those rules, therefore it is obvious that a large number of people will come up with a large variety of interpretations. The variation in interpretations is much smaller in admins because they are selected to be the type of people that is prepared to learn from the "more experienced ones", and so they homogenise their "experience" with each other.
It is, for example, not intuitive that we should have a policy on "notability" or "verifiability", so why should anyone look that up?
Maybe because someone else has said - "I noticed you made an edit that didn't agree with our policy on [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] - please read that page and follow it in any future edits you make. Thanks for volunteering your time working on Wikipedia!" (paraphrase of one of our standard notes to new users).
I have never seen a message of this kind. The kinds of messages I see on User talk pages, especially those for IPs, sound more like "You have repeatedly violated the [[WP:XYZ]] rule. Further violations will be sanctioned with a block. You have been warned."
Timwi