Wow, I think that is the first time I have started a thread on this mailing list that has received so many replies. :)
I posted here in the hope of receiving guidance from the list subscribers about what they consider to be acceptable on this mailing list, so that the WikiEN-l moderators can tailor our moderation to suit the subscribers. For weeks we have been receiving messages like "who let this through to the list" and "why isn't this person banned from the list" in relation to various people, and I was unsure to what extent the 'tolerance' of the subscribers to the mailing list endured.
On 20/02/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
Calling someone "abusive" is still an ad hominem statement. Rather than saying "Admin X is abusive!1!" the person should say "Admin X engaged in behaviour on Y page that seemed abusive to me, here's some diffs..."
Yes, that's what I was getting at. You can raise the issue of questionable behaviour by an administrator without resorting to calling them "abusive". I guess that makes this an issue of civility rather than personal attacks? But this thread, if anything, indicates that calling someone abusive is not considered to be as grave as I had thought. Maybe it's becoming so widely used that people have become desensitised to the accusation. Anyway, at least one other user had their emails rejected because of this, and they readily re-submitted the email modified to remove such accudsatory language, and it was accepted onto the mailing list.
I'm not interested in rejecting any email simply because it accuses an admin of misconduct. If that happened, how would dodgy admins be exposed? But what I am hoping to avoid is WikiEN-l becoming "the new Wikipedia Review", wherein a crowd of overly paranoid banned users sit and go through every single admin action of their most hated administrator (generally the admin who blocked them in the first place). I recognise that it is a balancing act between total censorship and a total free-for-all. I just wanted to know in which direction the balance should tip, according to the wishes and sensitivities of the subscribers to the mailing list.
For the record, and since the mailing list has generally expressed an opposition to the moderation of such messages, I copy below the messages whic I moderated. Please look into the person's complaints.
~Mark Ryan
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Samuel L Bronkowitz" countpointercount@gmail.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:31:12 -0600 Subject: Just the latest Not satisfied with trying to silence those they've banned, the abusive admin crew are now trying to silence Miss Mondegreen for speaking up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ANI#Stop_archiving.21_in_re_RunedChozo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ANI#Proposed_Community_Ban_of__Miss_Mondegre...
"Mackensen" has also been routinely "cleaning" comments regarding his behavior off of the page.
But you don't care about systemic abuse, obviously.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Samuel L Bronkowitz countpointercount@gmail.com Date: Feb 18, 2007 7:39 PM Subject: more abusive administrator behavior To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3APSPMario&diff=1088... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User:PS...
User "Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington" blocked him, removed his unblock request, redirected the page to his talk page, then locked them both.
He claimed "Trolling" for PSPMario legitimately trying to file an unblock request.
How long do you plan to keep up the charade that there's no systemic abuse of administrator powers going on?