On 06/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that one day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the next day being able to do all these amazing things. Imagine if you one day woke up with x-ray vision: your first thought would probably be to use it on your hot next-door neighbor, wouldn't it?
It been traditional for Wikipedia to have as many admins as possible without laxing our barriers to adminship too much. I think this is from the open source "many eyes catch all the bugs" school of thinking. The reason we are able to do this is because, as someone has already mentioned, all admin actions are recorded and reversible.
I also do not think that making it harder to become an admin would make some admins more civil. Many of the most curt admins (perhaps read "uncivil") have been with us for a long time. Clearly, their curtness has nothing to do with your X-ray effect and is more related to a jaded outlook.