steven l. rubenstein (rubenste@ohiou.edu) [050531 09:28]:
This isn't about the fact that I think SlimVirgin is a dedicated editor who has added much to Wikipedia. We can discuss questions of improper action, or possible reasons for it, here or more appropriately at the Admin bulletin board, incident report page, whatever. But it doesn't matter who you are talking about. This phrase "rogue admin" is inflammatory, unnecessarily insulting, and has no place at Wikipedia. If we as a community or some body representing the community decides that a sysop should be de-sysopped, okay, we de-sysop the person. But until that happens, they are an administrator. Period. If you don't like what that administrator has done, fine, but focus on the action. And certainly don't go around calling someone a rogue administrator -- this insults the whole community because the person using this phrase is abrogating the authority to decide who is or is not a legitimate administrator. You may not like what they did, you may not like them personally, but as long as they are administrators, call them that, or don't call them anything at all.
More seriously, I will point out that when we *have* had an administrator apparently go batshit, they get desysopped on an emergency basis in pretty short order - someone typically goes to the dev IRC channel and lets them know, someone with the relevant power takes a look, and if they look at the edits and blanch the sysop bit is switched off until we know WTF is going on. So actual "rogue admins" are dealt with on a sharp and effective basis.
- d.