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