David Gerard wrote:
On 04/12/2007, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
The private lists are not the problem per se. The problem is that there is behind-the-scenes collusion (in any form), that it is leading to action, that it is leading to hasty or mal-thought-action, and most importantly, that this is being condoned by some part of he community.
I'd call it more "unavoidable" than "condoned" per se. The community still pretty clearly holds the person acting responsible for their actions. If emailing other editors is considered evil, you'll get people appearing to agree without even adding "I discussed this with [actor] and ..."
We could make it more clear to people that administrators acting in the guise of an administrator (as opposed to just doing normal editing that anyone can do) should make extra careful to both not be doing anything improper and also not to appear to be doing so. That Wikipedia could be de-facto co-opted by a cabal of sorts, either internal or external, isn't an entirely unreasonable fear, since that sort of thing has happened to many organizations before (entryism long predates the internet). People are therefore naturally wary of it, so it's worth making some effort to reassure them that nothing of the sort is going on. This doesn't require banning all private communications, but there's some point between discussing things with other admins, and 60 admins coming out of nowhere to act in concert with no public discussion having taken place first, that crosses into "certainly looks like a cabal to me" behavior.
-Mark