G'day Matt,
On 8/14/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We do. People keep trying to neutralise it but the comunity is a pain to go against.
Exactly - while a group of 50 admins could get away with quite a lot in terms of rewriting policy, say, it would be hard to impose it on the community, woudln't it?
Not necessarily. If you aim right, you can get the community to screw *itself*. We already see it on a smaller (and less severe, since there are very few admins involved[0]) scale when it comes to things like:
* Speedy deletion (it's vanity! You must speedy it!) * Image copyright (if you tag it as "fair use" it can't be deleted!) * Edit warring (Ha ha, you reverted four times but I can stop at three and you'll be blocked!)
Let's say we have four users: A, B, C, and D. User A makes some stupid shit up[1]. User B hears him, and adopts it, thinking it's policy. User C does something different, and is attacked by User B for contravening policy. User D, an admin, then comes along and does the Right Thing, according to policy, common sense, God, and apple pie, and gets abused by B and C. This can happen over a stretch of a year or so, in which time B and C have had time to spread the Bad Word to E, F, G, and H. We're at the stage, now, where B can run for adminship --- *on his policy knowledge* --- and pass!
Witness, for example, the "Administrator Discretion Zone". I've seen two admins recently (within a month or two) close an AfD along the lines of "the tally is only 60%, so that falls under my discretion, and I vote delete". This is wrong for more reasons than I could count (if I was of a mind to count, and when it comes to AfD I don't do *any* counting), but I've got a smart-arsed chap on DRV who thinks he's a policy wonk telling me that referring to the ADZ is perfectly justified and I'm an ignoramus for claiming otherwise. Now, I've been very busy in the last few weeks and my egg-sucking abilities may not be up to their usual standards, but I submit that the mere fact that someone can honestly believe this crap *and* be one hell of a smug bastard in the meantime shows that people can spread misinformation about policy quite easily just be getting the wrong idea in their heads and having other editors copy them.
Now, imagine what fifty people with admin status and powers could do if they really wanted to fuck things up. They wouldn't need to head out there and re-write policy by fiat or anything like that. They'd just need to convince enough of us that 2 + 2 = 5, and we'd fuck *ourselves* up. Hint: CVU are a powerful tool for anyone attempting this[2].
[0] Someone who spreads misinformation about the blocking policy is not as big a problem as someone who spreads misinformation about the blocking policy *and* uses their blocking powers to back that up.
[1] Bad faith isn't necessarily the cause of our problems. Chinese Whispers is far more common; however, that requires more than four users :-)
[2] Kids! Don't try this at home!