At 12:56 AM 6/1/2010, Durova wrote:
Let's not mince words: Wikipedia administratorship can be a serious liability. The 'reward' for volunteering for this educational nonprofit can include getting one's real name Googlebombed, getting late night phone calls to one's home, and worse. The Wikimedia Foundation has never sent a cease and desist demand to the people who have made a years-long hobby of driving its administrators away.
Durova's history is a classic example. She was hounded by a screaming mob when she made a mistake, even though she recognized the error and undid it within an hour. She might have been desysopped had she not resigned, but that would have been a miscarriage of wikijustice. She should have been defended, but was not. And why? I've never really studied that.
While I've studied and have dealt with administrative abuse, the people who are most abused by the Wikipedia system are administrators, and that is probably a major source of abusive adminship.
I've argued for clear and strong rules for admin recusal, but what's often been missed is that this *protects* administrators from becoming over-involved in the mudslinging contests.
I've been a meeting chair, and a good chair rigorously stays away from involvement. So the chair is obligated to rule on matters of procedure, and perhaps a member stands up and starts shouting about how stupid a ruling was and how the chair is biased. What does the chair do? Argue?
No, the chair puts the ruling to a vote, immediately (that's the substance, there are details I won't go into). The chair is not actually in charge, the membership is, at all times. The chair is just a servant. A chair who doesn't understand that and who becomes attached to control can make quite a mess, and the belief of some that Robert's Rules of Order is some kind of oppressive document have probably experienced a chair like that. But even a few members in an organization who understand the rules and know how to use them to guarantee that decisions are adequately deliberated and that democratic decision-making is maintained efficiently can handle even a poor chair.
But there is no power that can avail against a stupid and active majority, and when that happens, it's time to consider leaving.