If you are unpopular, then you are doing something wrong. Blocking vandals pisses them off, but earns the support of real Wikipedians. As you raise the userbox issue, if an admin is doing something that the majority of the community does not support then he's doing the wrong thing. If his actions are controversial within only a small part of the community but actually is in accordance with policy, then other wikipedians will come in to support and drown the trolls.
There should be a mechanism to impeach admins without going through ArbCom. Apart from increasing accountability, the next time trolls complain about admin abuse and corrupt ArbCom we can just point to the mechanism and say what are you waiting for? If there is some support in this list I may go ahead and start a proposal. What do you think?
Molu
On Mon, 29 May 2006 22:11:32 +0100 (BST) Nick Boalch wrote:
<snip>
I do. One can do things without being unpleasant that nevertheless make you unpopular. Look at the administrators who have been vilified for attempting in all good faith to deal with the userbox problem.
Cheers,
N
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Molu wrote:
As you raise the userbox issue, if an admin is doing something that the majority of the community does not support then he's doing the wrong thing.
This is simply not the case. If an admin is acting in the interests of the encyclopaedia then he is doing the right thing, regardless of what the majority of the community thinks.
We're here to build an encyclopaedia, not a community. Usually the interests of the encyclopaedia and those of the community go hand in hand. Where they don't, the encyclopaedia comes first. Always and without exception.
There should be a mechanism to impeach admins without going through ArbCom. Apart from increasing accountability, the next time trolls complain about admin abuse and corrupt ArbCom we can just point to the mechanism and say what are you waiting for? If there is some support in this list I may go ahead and start a proposal. What do you think?
[[:m:Instruction creep]]. Such a mechanism would be totally unnecessary.
Trolls complain about ArbCom being 'corrupt' because, rightly if they're trolls, they don't get the results they want from it.
Cheers,
N.
* Nick Boalch wrote:
This is simply not the case. If an admin is acting in the interests of the encyclopaedia then he is doing the right thing, regardless of what the majority of the community thinks.
Good to know.
The other day a fellow named Linuxbeak acted in the interests of the encyclopedia (as he saw it). Some people disagreed, but clearly he was "doing the right thing" because HE thought so. No need for that silly 'consensus' stuff. :]
"Conrad Dunkerson" wrote
- Nick Boalch wrote:
This is simply not the case. If an admin is acting in the interests of the encyclopaedia then he is doing the right thing, regardless of what the majority of the community thinks.
Good to know.
The other day a fellow named Linuxbeak acted in the interests of the encyclopedia (as he saw it). Some people disagreed, but clearly he was "doing the right thing" because HE thought so. No need for that silly 'consensus' stuff. :]
If admin A is actually acting in WP's interests, then of course that is fine. If A is not, but is acting under some delusion, then that is not fine at all.
The key point here is not whether there is some sort of backing for the option taken, but whether the action is clear-sighted or otherwise. I don't see that the logic has to be smudged here. Admins are given discretion. If they foul it up, they are poor admins and eventually they should have their mop retired.
Charles
Everyone who sprung into action and DID SOMETHING when Linuxbeak did what he did, aggravated the situation. He may have acted in error or unwisely, but the solution is to discuss the situation.
Fred
On May 30, 2006, at 3:11 PM, Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
- Nick Boalch wrote:
This is simply not the case. If an admin is acting in the interests of the encyclopaedia then he is doing the right thing, regardless of what the majority of the community thinks.
Good to know.
The other day a fellow named Linuxbeak acted in the interests of the encyclopedia (as he saw it). Some people disagreed, but clearly he was "doing the right thing" because HE thought so. No need for that silly 'consensus' stuff. :] _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
It will be a lot easier for a community to build an encyclopedia.
Fred
On May 30, 2006, at 4:04 AM, Nick Boalch wrote:
We're here to build an encyclopaedia, not a community. Usually the interests of the encyclopaedia and those of the community go hand in hand. Where they don't, the encyclopaedia comes first. Always and without exception.
On Tue, May 30, 2006 at 04:56:46PM -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
It will be a lot easier for a community to build an encyclopedia.
Hmm. It seems that "community" has a lot of costly overhead that gets in the way of getting things done. Two of those sources of overhead feed off of one another:
* People who want to be in charge, just for the sake of being in charge; and
* People who want to attack the people in charge, just for the sake of attacking the people in charge.
Many people seem to think that Wikipedia has only _one_ of these two types. For instance, people who complain about "rogue admins" are complaining about the appearance of the first type; people who complain about "trolls" are complaining about the second. The fact is that we have _both_ problems: people who want to *be* Authority for no good reason, and people who want to *smash* Authority for no good reason.
The worse problem is that these two feed on each other.
* As pain-causing authority actions increase, more people become disgruntled and think it would be a more satisfying use of their time to be trolls and vandals, or to stalk people and post their home addresses on Wikipedia Review.
* As pain-causing anti-authority actions increase, more people become Concerned Citizens and think it would be a more satisfying use of their time to create more rules and more procedures, to lock the whole project down tighter and tighter, to drag everyone in front of a tribunal to have their sins beaten out of them.
People can easily become convinced that the purpose of their being here is to Fight Crime, or to Fight The Man, rather than to contribute.
It's like Gang Violence and Police Brutality ... or domestic terrorism and domestic fascism. The worse the "Bad Guys" get, the worse the "Good Guys" can become, in order to be Tough On Badness. And the worse the "Good Guys" get, the more defensible the "Bad Guy" position looks to the disaffected and the pissed-off.
I'm not saying that the Bad Guys are good -- they aren't. They're bad. Vandalism, trolling, stalking, and disruption _suck_.
But the Good Guys can _also_ become bad, in their attempt to eliminate Badness. Instruction creep, paranoia, admin touchiness, newbie-biting, itchy trigger fingers on the "block" button, and the escalation of content disputes into allegations of wrongdoing, _also_ suck.
It is possible to make people's lives miserable, and to drive them off the project, with trolling. It is also possible to make people's lives miserable, and to drive them off the project, with newbie-biting and heavy-handed administration.
Fred Bauder wrote:
We're here to build an encyclopaedia, not a community. Usually the interests of the encyclopaedia and those of the community go hand in hand. Where they don't, the encyclopaedia comes first. Always and without exception.
It will be a lot easier for a community to build an encyclopedia.
It will. You'll note I don't say 'there should be no community'. I say that where the interests of the community conflict with those of the encyclopaedia, the encyclopaedia comes first. This should be self-evident and non-controversial.
Cheers,
N.
Trolls complain about ArbCom being 'corrupt' because, rightly if they're trolls, they don't get the results they want from it.
That strikes me as a dangerous line of thought -- "Trolls, by definition, are always wrong. And the people who disagree with us must be trolls, because trolls are who we're fighting. Therefore anyone who disagrees with us is wrong." I'm not saying you've taken it to that extreme; more, I'm objecting to widening use of words like "troll" (and "meatpuppet") -- they make it too easy to class all opposing arguments as nonsense and all opposing people as not worth the time of day.
Ben Yates wrote:
Trolls complain about ArbCom being 'corrupt' because, rightly if they're trolls, they don't get the results they want from it.
That strikes me as a dangerous line of thought -- "Trolls, by definition, are always wrong. And the people who disagree with us must be trolls, because trolls are who we're fighting. Therefore anyone who disagrees with us is wrong." I'm not saying you've taken it to that extreme; more, I'm objecting to widening use of words like "troll" (and "meatpuppet") -- they make it too easy to class all opposing arguments as nonsense and all opposing people as not worth the time of day.
Well said.
Ben Yates wrote:
Trolls complain about ArbCom being 'corrupt' because, rightly if they're trolls, they don't get the results they want from it.
That strikes me as a dangerous line of thought -- "Trolls, by definition, are always wrong. And the people who disagree with us must be trolls, because trolls are who we're fighting. Therefore anyone who disagrees with us is wrong."
Well, that certainly isn't what I meant. What I mean is this: if you troll Wikipedia and then take a case to ArbCom, or get taken there, things are unlikely to work out in your favour. Hence you go off to Wikipedia Review and complain about the ArbCom being corrupt.
However, where you extend this to mean 'the people who disagree with us are always trolls' I don't know, because I never said or even implied that.
I'm not saying you've taken it to that extreme
Good, because my comments aren't anywhere near it.
Cheers,
N.
I think you will make a lot of trouble and accomplish nothing.
Fred
On May 30, 2006, at 1:39 AM, Molu wrote:
If you are unpopular, then you are doing something wrong. Blocking vandals pisses them off, but earns the support of real Wikipedians. As you raise the userbox issue, if an admin is doing something that the majority of the community does not support then he's doing the wrong thing. If his actions are controversial within only a small part of the community but actually is in accordance with policy, then other wikipedians will come in to support and drown the trolls.
There should be a mechanism to impeach admins without going through ArbCom. Apart from increasing accountability, the next time trolls complain about admin abuse and corrupt ArbCom we can just point to the mechanism and say what are you waiting for? If there is some support in this list I may go ahead and start a proposal. What do you think?
Molu
On Mon, 29 May 2006 22:11:32 +0100 (BST) Nick Boalch wrote:<snip>
I do. One can do things without being unpleasant that nevertheless make you unpopular. Look at the administrators who have been vilified for attempting in all good faith to deal with the userbox problem.
Cheers,
N
Ring'em or ping'em. Make PC-to-phone calls as low as 1¢/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l