From: Molu loom91@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death of Wikipedia

If you are unpopular, then you are doing something wrong.

People who whine on about admins and admin abuse broadly seem to fall into two categories. Either they're people with an agenda (or a model for the 'pedia that the majority don't support) to push or they're admin-wannabies who see the post as some sort of reward and want it for themselves and are frustrated they don't think they'll get it.

Interestingly, people who criticise Jimbo fall into similar categories - either they have an agenda to push or they think they can do a better job of being figurehead and are frustrated they won't get it.

It's interesting to watch these people in action. Again, they split into two categories. They're either the ones demanding someone be de-sysoped for using her/his judgement, or they're quoting (or misquoting) rules back to admins and demanding someone be de-sysoped for not using her/his judgement.

They can be found complaining about articles being deleted and articles not being deleted. About what admins said and what admins didn't say. About admins WP:IARing and admins not WP:IARing. About how admins are inconsistent and how we all act as a hive.

They can be found picking over every letter of an admin's post looking for a tiny violation of a rule and screaming that an admin has dinged them for breaking a rule that suddenly doesn't apply to them.

You can find them, begging your pardon, MSK, screaming about userboxen rights and unilaterally changing the graphic in a userbox because they don't agree it represents certain users, of which they are not one, correctly (cf {{User Socialist}}).

They are likely to be found nominating themselves for admin after 50 edits and being appalled when they are (usually quite nicely) told to come back later and carrying userboxen that say "this user doesn't want to be an admin". They are to be found demanding higher quality admins but voting "oppose" to all candidates regardless and to be ignoring RfA completely and then feeling affronted that they weren't personally consulted before someone was given extra buttons. They are to be found demanding penalties for admins' miniscule transgressing of rules and forgiveness for their (minor, non-, not really, it doesn't count) vandalism and POV pushing. They say a wheel war means a permanent ban for admins, but a revert war between them and others means that admins have abandoned them and they were right anyway.

They are to be found spending all evening watching one admin's edits and crying "stalker" if an admin nominates two articles by the same person for deletion in the same month. They are to be found demanding complete anonymity and trying to tear the shreds of anonymity away from others. They want every admin action to be reviewed but their own actions ignored or buried. They want others to do all the work and want articles reserved for them only to edit.

What amazes me is how these people can represent either or both of these views depending on what they feel will get them an advantage that moment. How they can dismiss Wikipedia as meaningless, then spend hours on a bloody forum devoted to how meaningless Wikipedia is. How they can demand perfection at all times from admins whilst demanding everyone ignore their own failings.

How they are completely unable to get the hint that their complete inability to fit into a community that celebrates diversity and eccentricity is indicative of a problem /they/ have, not a problem that Wikipedia has. How they had the choice of contributing to an open free encyclopedia or a UBB forum for nutjobs with an agenda, and they chose the latter *because they didn't fit in to the open encyclopedia*.

Above all, I remain gobsmacked how these people can fail to get anywhere in a community, fail to make friends, fail to write articles that prosper, fail to be trusted by the community with two extra buttons, fail to make anything of their freely-given time on Wikipedia other than to be banned, bemoaned or generally be wished away by their fellow editors, how they can go through all of this and *still* use sockpuppets to try to contribute, subscribe to the mailing lists, visit IRC and generally hang about like a bad smell rather than doing what rational people would do and find another bloody hobby! One day, Wikipedia may eclipse the internet. Until then, there are some 3 billion other places to waste others' time that they could be checking out.

If nothing else, don't they realise that they're driving admins to cabal, that they're creating more people who agree with the status quo, that they are having *exactly* the opposite affect to the one they seem to want?

And don't get me started on the actions of [[User:WR-Recruiter]] and the like, busy writing to the total mentalists, the tiny unstable minority who detonate when asked their opinion or find themselves disagreed with on an obscure talk page. If they're actively recruiting from that particular gene pool, it's no wonder they attract stalkers, shitbags and specials.

The company you keep often tells more about you than you do yourself, I find.

-> REDVERS

___________________________________________________________ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html