-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com [mailto:wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com] Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2007 11:25 AM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Hypothetical question about how certain admin behavior would be handled on Wikipedia
An... interesting... situation has arisen on another Wiki. (Yesyesyes some of you can guess but never mind). Mind you, it _is not Wikipedia_ and it is young, small, and its policies far from codified. It involves a sysop (they call them sysops there) who was given sysop privileges for the purposes of editing a protected page. (I told you, it's not Wikipedia!).
The sysop is arguably aligned with the Wiki's official point of view (yes, it has one).
The sysop is an active editor of a different page, one that is not protected.
The page also has an active non-sysop editor who is arguably not as well aligned, perhaps detectably opposed, to the site's official point of view. But I don't think he is perceived as a problem editor by most users there. He is civil, his changes are well supported by sources, he adds a lot of uncontroversial content, etc. There was a lot of back-and-forth editing, but neither of them would have even been close to being violation of Wikipedia's 3RR. (This site doesn't have any such rule).
In order to prevail in the dispute, the sysop blocked the non-sysop.
For three months.
(No, the non-sysop in question is _not_ me).
What I want here is: which of our policies here would such an admin be violating, and what is people's best and most realistic judgement of what, in practice, would be the likely course of events if a Wikipedia admin did that. (I'm thinking: an RFC, an overwhelming yelling-at by other admins, and perhaps a warning. I'm thinking that a _pattern_ of such behavior really could get someone de-adminned eventually... but how many actual incidents do you think it would take for that to happen?)
One, but as you say, its not Wikipedia.
Fred
This is what SHOULD happen if the situation arose on En-WP:
(1) The non-sysop would post an "unblock" template or on the unblock list, and would get unblocked, either immediately or after some discussion on ANI. (2) The sysop would be asked the reasons for the block. If the reasons were plausible, even if incorrect, the sysop would probably get scolded and told by his or her peers on ANI never to do anything like this again. If there were no plausible justification, or it happened more than once, the situation would be a candidate for RfC and if that didn't resolve it RfAr based on violation of the blocking policy. (3) Desysopping would not generally occur for a first offense of anything, absent extreme circumstances. However, you indicate that on this other wiki, sysop privileges were conferred temporarily to allow editing of this one protected page. Presumably such temporary or ad hoc privileges could be withdrawn as readily as they were conferred. (4) There would be a discussion about whether the page in question could be unprotected.
And now you've got me curious what other Wiki we are talking about. I have minimal experience anywhere outside En-WP.
Newyorkbrad
On 3/1/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com [mailto:wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com] Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2007 11:25 AM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Hypothetical question about how certain admin
behavior would be handled on Wikipedia
An... interesting... situation has arisen on another Wiki. (Yesyesyes
some of you can guess but never mind). Mind you, it _is not Wikipedia_ and it is young, small, and its policies far from codified. It involves a sysop (they call them sysops there) who was given sysop privileges for the purposes of editing a protected page. (I told you, it's not Wikipedia!).
The sysop is arguably aligned with the Wiki's official point of view
(yes, it has one).
The sysop is an active editor of a different page, one that is not
protected.
The page also has an active non-sysop editor who is arguably not as well
aligned, perhaps detectably opposed, to the site's official point of view. But I don't think he is perceived as a problem editor by most users there. He is civil, his changes are well supported by sources, he adds a lot of uncontroversial content, etc. There was a lot of back-and-forth editing, but neither of them would have even been close to being violation of Wikipedia's 3RR. (This site doesn't have any such rule).
In order to prevail in the dispute, the sysop blocked the non-sysop.
For three months.
(No, the non-sysop in question is _not_ me).
What I want here is: which of our policies here would such an admin be
violating, and what is people's best and most realistic judgement of what, in practice, would be the likely course of events if a Wikipedia admin did that. (I'm thinking: an RFC, an overwhelming yelling-at by other admins, and perhaps a warning. I'm thinking that a _pattern_ of such behavior really could get someone de-adminned eventually... but how many actual incidents do you think it would take for that to happen?)
One, but as you say, its not Wikipedia.
Fred
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