"Leif Knutsen" wrote

I suspect that people are far more suspicious than is warranted by what actually goes on, but I think we can agree that suspicion is distracting and damaging.

I trust that people are more trusting than one might suspect from some of the more inflammatory analyses that are put about. I agree that suspicion is damaging. One of the reasons that we have 'assume good faith' is to prevent people, where possible, from reading far too much into things, as in 'cock-up rather than conspiracy'. And to prevent, where possible, the kind of partisan talk prevails outside WP being imported here, as in 'leave it at the door'.

Those who find it hard to do those things - assume good faith, and see WP not as a partisan but as a participant - may indeed have problems. But their suspicion is really not so much a distraction, as a systematic missing of the point about Wikipedian culture. And they damage themselves, above all.

And for those who really can't get it, I wonder what changes of current practice would actually suffice. The Main Page right now says en-WP has 997,857 articles. That is a massively decentralised system, based on mutual trust, in action. Almost all those pages are open to editing.

Is it really surprising that with fewer than one admin to every 1000 articles there are some needs to make patrolling the site effective and practical?

Charles

From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Leif Knutsen

...

That kind of corrosive supiciousness is the problem. For

the most part

...

our administrators, those who are involved in backchannel

operations,

...

are the best and the most trustworthy we have.

I suspect that people are far more suspicious than is warranted by what actually goes on, but I think we can agree that suspicion is distracting and damaging. If admins made it an explicit practice that they would communicate privately only about certain, clearly defined issues; it might reduce some fo the mystery (though I'm sure some suspicion and paranoia would always persist).

There's the old Chinese proverb about how the wise man does not stoop to tie his shoelaces in his neighbour's vegetable garden.

I am curious, however, what is the measure of the "best and the most trustworthy" admins. My observation is that being elected to an admin role depends on not having too many detractors; and being deadmined is a result of truly egregious offenses. The corollary to that is that an editor who wants to be an admin must avoid contention in order to be elected; but can let loose once he/she is in. I'm not saying that it's common, but it bothers me to see how a lot of well-meaning editors can't bombarded when they ask to become admins by people they've had content disputes with; and then see that established admins more or less abandon the caution that got them their role to begin with.

Spot on. Most admins get their heads down, work hard, and do the right thing, but a few, well it just sickens me to see the diference between their humble notices of acceptance and the arrogance that appears a few months later.

Peter (Skyring)