On 10/8/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 8 Oct 2006 11:56:03 -0700, "Matt Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote: I'm not very good at defusing tense situations either. But I tend not to try. Tony is, on the other hand, possessed of pretty good instincts in respect of content and has a long history of spotting and correcting obvious errors in the deletion process.
I think I saw Tony comment that only a few things he'd done for many months had both truly required the admin bit and not been controversial, and that he thought he could still do nearly as much good, with much less controversy, without it. I am hopeful that he follows through and does stay actively involved.
I think we're clearly seeing a bunch of smoke settling from pushback on "problem admins" getting very serious.
The results are a mixed bag - I would not have suggested Tony give up his admin bit, I would not have recommended Kelly Martin leave, especially given that she wasn't the source of the problem she got caught up in. I am quite glad that Fred came up with "No action taken for excessive zeal" for the Arb case Mongo was caught in, and that everyone including him accepted that after a bit more heat.
I certainly don't like some of the trolls taking this as some sort of victory. But complaints have been building for some time.
Ultimately, "customer service" skills are probably becoming increasingly important for WP admins. Part of that will be an increasing need to step back from an incident and have someone else handle it more often, rather than stay involved when it may be increasing tension rather than reducing it.