On Feb 16, 2007, at 7:48, Timwi wrote:
Hi,
sorry for jumping into this thread without reading the other responses first, but here's mine... :-)
Keitei wrote:
Admins must: be neutral, above all else.
This is already wrong. An admin who does not do any blocking, protecting or deleting, is by definition harmless, but they need not be neutral (in what they secretly believe would deserve deletion or protection). You would be denying adminship to such a person even though it would not cause any harm, therefore you are turning adminship into the "big deal" again that we are trying hard not to make it.
Therefore, admin candidates must: demonstrate they can [...]
This is clearly wrong. What you are saying is that someone who cannot demonstrate that they would be a good admin before they're actually an admin, can't become admin. Catch-22!
You are also reiterating this false belief that someone who does not fit your criteria must not ever be admin even for a minute, i.e. you are acting as if adminship could never be removed again.
So, my corrected version of your assessment would look something like this:
Admins must, *on the whole*, be neutral (in deleting, protecting, blocking)
Therefore, an admin who deletes, protects or blocks something/
someone unfairly, must be de-adminned. Everyone else can, by definition, be admin without causing harm.
I stated that incorrectly then. I meant that admins when acting as admins must be neutral in their approach to admin actions. One can demonstrate this by being neutral when approaching conflicts with others, but other than that, I have no idea how they could demonstrate it. And yes, the best way to know whether someone will be a good admin is to just let them try.
My criteria, as you put it, were just meant as what I think admin candidates ought to show (just, "I can be neutral when asked to be", no shrubberies or herrings), but there are many different ways of determining whether someone will do or be something. I'm asking if maybe our current criteria, varied and sundry though they are, are determining whether they will be good admins, or if they are just arbitrary bars. Could we lower the bar and still allow in good admins while keeping out the bad?
And then the backlogs are better, people leave less, etc etc. Hopefull.