I don't think there is any real danger of getting into a mess if you simply make it a practice to never reverse the action of another administrator. We have not made this a hard fast rule, but It completely avoids wheel-warring, an evil which transcends most instances of harm which are done by ill-considered actions of administrators.
Fred
On Apr 19, 2006, at 4:44 PM, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
geni wrote:
On 4/19/06, Elisabeth Bauer elian@djini.de wrote:
This was not a misunderstanding, this was lack of good faith. Erik should have trusted danny that he has good reasons for an action which might not be selfexplaining. If he wanted to know more, he could have asked. And an admin who acts before he understands the situation can - as this incident has shown - potentially endanger the foundation.
Admins almost never work with complete information.
Indeed, Brad himself wrote just that in his response:
"Not everything that involves Wikipedia is public, nor should it be. The typical user or admin doesn't have all the pieces of the puzzle."
Note that, while this is abviously true, it doesn't mean I necessarily like it much. I don't know WTF is going on at the office -- my first thought was that Danny must be really close to burning out from stress to react so out of proportion -- but events like this are making Wikipedia feel like a minefield, an oppressive place where one must watch one's every word and never take a step before checking twice that no-one's toes are in the way. If I'm to work effectively as an admin, I _need_ all the pieces of the puzzle, or at least I need to know where the missing pieces are. We are not mushrooms, to be kept in the dark and fed manure.
I strongly supported Kelly Martin's earlier 0RR proposal, since it was sensible and clear: don't redo what you did earlier without discussion. But if the new policy is to be that an admin may not do anything that might step on someone else's toes, I'm not sure I dare to continue being an admin.
-- Ilmari Karonen _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l