Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I got my admin buttons.
The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be quickly desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it). Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly, inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights? Sounds fishy to me.
Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole. It's more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
That said, even vandalism _is_ a concern, if an unlikely one. Besides the obvious opportunities, like replacing MediaWiki messages with genitalia, a malicious admin could really have a field day with the ability to edit the sitewide javascript files. Unfortunately that does make adminship a big deal in some ways.
(Ideas on how to sneak in some malicious javascript without getting immediately noticed snipped per [[WP:BEANS]].)