I haven't read all the appropriate mailing lists but I scanned them to see if this subject was being discussed already. If it is being discussed in a place I couldn't find, I apologize and please let me know.
The "Richard Wagner" article has been repeatedly stagnated by untimely, inappropriate freezing by Ed Poor, who is both one of the authors of the page and one of the participants in the talk page discussion. It is a grave breach of trust for somebody with "sysop" powers to "pull rank" by freezing an article he is editing. Sysop isn't supposed to be a rank, but a measure of trust. Trust which at least I have totally lost in him. This is not the first time he has done this and it is not the first time people have called him on it.
Because of this, I would like to request that Ed Poor's sysop powers be, at the very least, frozen until he can prove that he is capable of not abusing them.
Thank you,
Dan Keshet PS: please cc: me on answers; I am not on any of these lists.
Dan Keshet wrote:
Because of this, I would like to request that Ed Poor's sysop powers be, at the very least, frozen until he can prove that he is capable of not abusing them.
I'm sure Ed will not do this again, and that he just made a mistake. It's not his style.
--Jimbo
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 08:39:19AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Dan Keshet wrote:
Because of this, I would like to request that Ed Poor's sysop powers be, at the very least, frozen until he can prove that he is capable of not abusing them.
I'm sure Ed will not do this again, and that he just made a mistake. It's not his style.
Jimbo, Ed did not make a mistake. The good work Ed did has been seriously misrepresented on this list. I think commendation is in order for the way that he handled the edit wars that have kept erupting over the Wagner page.
Ed has done his best to only freeze the article on a relatively NPOV, non-biased version; neither my desired changes nor the oppositions changes were allowed to partisanly carry the day.
I request Ed Poor's sysop status not be frozen.
Jonathan
No one is freezing anything. Ed's a good guy. He's built up a lot of trust. I don't agree with what he did in this case. It's no big deal.
Ed has done his best to only freeze the article on a relatively NPOV, non-biased version; neither my desired changes nor the oppositions changes were allowed to partisanly carry the day.
Right, but as I was saying the other day, what I'd like to see is all parties to dispute working with good will and compassion to reach mutually agreeable solutions. We don't fight, we work for mutual good. It's not about sparring non-NPOV factions reaching an equilibrium of exhaustion -- it's about people of good will working to avoid factionalism in the first place.
This is not always possible -- some people are just jerks or kooks, and that's that. But reasonable people can work together reasonably.
--Jimbo
Dan,
I just brought the same issue up on wikipedia-l. As I (User:Eloquence) noted on the Talk page to [[Richard Wagner]], I agree that Ed's use of sysop powers in this matter is unacceptable, and I remember a similar incident where Ed was accused of wrongly protecting a page. He seems to be the only sysop who regularly does so.
I still think Ed is, in general, trustworthy. He has, so far, done a good job of clueing in newbies and reverting obvious vandalism. In spite of some of his rather extreme viewpoints, he usually manages to stay on the right side of NPOV. If he can agree to a more narrow definition of sysop responsibilities than the one he currently seems to follow, I have no problem with him holding these privileges.
Regards,
Erik (non-sysop and proud of it ;-)