Conrad Dunkerson wrote: I don't think that is a particularly fair test. As is obvious, admins are occasionally called upon to perform actions that upset people -- I don't think admins should shrink from making those hard choices. I can think of several thoroughgoingly solid admins, people who temper a good knowledge of policy with a healthy dose of knowing that what we're here to do is write an encyclopaedia, who I doubt would pass an RfA because they've done things that have made them controversial or unpopular in certain sectors of the community. The community giveth, and the community taketh away -- but it taketh away under the auspices of proper consideration by the arbitration committee, not by having unpopular admins strung up by a baying lynchmob. Cheers, N. -- Nicholas Boalch School of Modern Languages & Cultures Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456 University of Durham Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421 New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/

* Steve Bennett wrote: You know... there is a term for that kind of an organizational structure. One we go to some lengths to deny exists here. Admins are appointed by the community... and when the police lose the support of the people they are policing they generally get replaced... or the neighborhood goes to hell.

* charles matthews wrote: See [[User:Katefan0]] and related.

Conrad Dunkerson wrote: Charles was replying to you saying that the "neighbourhood is going to hell" due to too much power being given over to sysops and not enough to the community at large; I fail to see how highly distasteful (and illegal) off-wiki activity by banned users is of any relevance. Can we not get yet further distracted? Yours, -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james(a)jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester(a)hotmail.com

"Conrad Dunkerson" wrote Well, and I'm suggesting that you are busy dragging red herrings right over this issue. It is pretty much tautologous that criticism of the administration of the English Wikipedia is criticism of the admins, plus Jimbo. I think it is very naive about the Internet and its denizens to assume 'no smoke without fire applies'. Criticism of admins does not imply, necessarily, that there are admins who deserve such criticism. You do concede that some very difficult 'customers' are rightly banned from WP? And that subsequent comment from them may have a malicious component? Charles

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt100.htm I am not sure why these stats are incomplete after January. But they do confirm what many of us felt about what was going on in December and January... from November to December, the number of "very active users" in en went from just over 2000 to just under 3000. That 50% jump included a fair number of people who were new to the process, and coincides with the start of some "old timer" versus "newcomer" cultural fights about things like userboxes. This is why there is a perception that at times there have been conflicts between "admins" and "the community". In the past, there was no question at all that "the community" and "the admins" were just about exactly the same people. --Jimbo

On 6/4/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Funny you should see it as power v. no power. Not being an admin affects your ability to write an encyclopedia in the most of miniscule ways. Just write the encyclopedia. Any "power" that you speak of is ridiculous. All this other crap happening... not writing an encyclopedia. Being an admin shouldn't really matter to people. --LV

"Sometimes"? Excuse me while I have a good laugh. You've been trying to drive people like me, who honestly want wikipedia reformed, onto wikipediareview (so that you can say "oh it's just whining from wikipediareview, we should destroy them") for months now. I'm just going to sit back and eat some popcorn and enjoy watching them make fun of YOU now, Conrad, because that's all they're doing. You've raised valid points just as I did, and they're not taking you seriously, just reiterating the same old Judge Dredd "I AM THE LAW" bullshit. A. Nony Mouse On 5/29/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson(a)worldnet.att.net> wrote:

On May 29, 2006, at 3:11 PM, Conrad Dunkerson wrote: This is only natural... an unsuccessful project does not attracts criticism. It is only because the project is *so* successful that it is unavoidable we will encounter opposition. And what was the basis for the project success so far? Wikipedia content policies, the strength of the community and the application of these polices by the latter. So, on the face of criticism against WP and admins, we ought to continue doing what we have done successfully so far. After all, failure is the discrepancy between the expected and the observed. People may need to adjust their expectations of WP and re- read WP:NOT from time to time. -- Jossi

* Jesse W wrote: Absolutely. It is easier to remain patient when dealing with a handful of 'less than perfect' users than it is when dealing with hundreds... but that's an explanation rather than an excuse. As the job gets more difficult the need to keep a cool head becomes all the more important. Ultimately I think the answer is to maintain standards of civility / no personal attacks / consensus building / et cetera NO MATTER WHAT. Far too many admins sometimes act as if civility only applies to 'good' users or 'users who agree with me'. HOW do we change that? Bring it up when people start disregarding civility (a quick glance at AN/I of late should give you an idea what prompted me to comment NOW) and look for ways to nudge the culture. I really DO think that 'admin re-affirmation' could work in some form (e.g. requires X signatories to open, cannot be called for sooner than Y months after adminship/last re-affirmation, need roughly Z% approval to remain admin, et cetera) and plan to make a self-test of it once I've been an admin long enough to have built up a respectable sized collection of people who hate me. :]

Jimbo wrote: Actually, I agree with both Conrad and Jimbo. I think we're seeing several intersecting trends here. One is that "problem" users seem to be getting more aggressive in asserting their "right" to be, well, complete maniacs. When the community was younger and smaller and more cohesive, the maniacs had much less "wiggle room"; they either changed their ways or left for good. Today, however, many of them display a breathtaking level of arrogance and defiance, and if they're ever subjected to any actual sanction, they immediately appeal it on Jimbo's talk page or this list. And I suspect that the natural frustration on the part of the rest of us, when confronted with this escalating arrogance and defiance, is sometimes to, as Conrad put it, just stomp on somebody. But at the same time, as we become ever larger and more visible, we need to be more and more concerned abut the degree to which appearances matter. Intense, festering hatred can of course be a real problem, too, especially when it fuels real-world personal attacks on our editors. We've got to keep working to find ways to carry out our "judicial" actions politely and diplomatically, even if it means, as the old saying goes, overriding our desperate urge to choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it. Unfortunately, no matter how polite we are about it, it's going to keep getting harder to get rid of the maniacs, now that Wikipedia has gotten Big and Significant. Once upon a time, if you were a maniac who had been raking muck on Wikipedia but got blocked or banned, you probably didn't care so much; there were plenty of other equally interesting sites on the 'net where you could stalk off to torment instead. Today, however, although the "plenty of other interesting sites on the 'net" are all still there, they're no longer as equally interesting; Wikipedia is now much, much more interesting. If you're a POV-pusher with a vengeance, you're not content to just go and push your POV somewhere else; it's vital that you find ways to keep pushing it *on Wikipedia*, since your potential audience is so much bigger. This is a tricky problem, and it's not going to get any easier.

On 5/29/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch(a)durham.ac.uk> wrote: The community has no power to take away, other admins are the only ones who have any power to take away rights, and the threat of being told not to wheel war seems to be stopping admins from making hard decisions about other admins. Peter Ansell

On May 29, 2006, at 5:11 AM, Peter Ansell wrote: Peter, Can you show me *one* example in which you made a complaint against an administrator at WP:ANI and you were not listened, to or the complaint not addressed. Thanks, -- Jossi

On 5/29/06 9:55 AM, "Conrad Dunkerson" <conrad.dunkerson(a)worldnet.att.net> wrote: One does not have to be "disruptive" to be prevented from becoming an admin. All it takes is to make any decision on-wiki which in any way creates controversy, and it then becomes ridiculously easy to votestack the RFA with opposition. Admins are routinely called upon to make precisely the sort of controversial decisions on-wiki that will inevitably leave someone pissed off. Deletion and verifiable/reliable sourcing questions quite often result in the people making the choices being called censors, Nazis and all sorts of vulgar names. Ah, no. One cannot fire a police officer merely because he "loses the support of the people," whatever that means. One must go before a review board, such as a Police Commission, and demonstrate that the officer has committed wrongful acts - abuse of power, misuse of force, etc. Similarly, we have a procedure to allow review of administrative decisions through the Arbitration Committee. Several admins have lost their sysop bit due to ArbCom actions, so this is not some sort of paper tiger but a real check on administrative abuses. I agree that admins cannot and should not be seen as untouchable and perhaps we need to make clearer to people who feel wronged that they do have recourse to appeal. At the same time, to expect the people that we call upon to make controversial and contentious decisions about the encyclopedia to be somehow subject to the arbitrary whim of the "support of the people" at any time is the height of insanity. -Travis Mason-Bushman

On Mon, 29 May 2006, Fred Bauder wrote: [snip] You're right, it would be overly simplistic and inaccurate to characterise administrators as police. However, we do have duties on the Wiki that could be described as 'enforcement' -- copyright violations, speedy deletions, blocking, enaction of ArbCom rulings. All of these duties are things that are quite capable of pissing people off however polite the administrator is. 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. -- Nicholas Boalch School of Modern Languages & Cultures Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456 University of Durham Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421 New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/

On 5/29/06, James D. Forrester <james(a)jdforrester.org> wrote: I doubt I'd survive any sort of reconfirmation vote. Then again, that might work out well in the long run, since I think the owners of Wikipedia would rather that I were an admin..... Kellyt

I would not expect to survive either, but I still think it's a good idea. Actually I think it does not hurt for a new wave of hard asses to take over and let the old tired wore out hard asses regenerate for a while. As Stephen Gaskin once said (with respect to those who hoarded paper during the Caravan) "You are not the only one who knows how to keep toilet paper dry." Fred On May 30, 2006, at 8:13 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:

On 6/4/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: No, it's more along the lines of what would happen if I were to be desysoped by a "community process"... in the long term, it might help to undermine that process and our admin promotion process generally, which I think would be a good thing. I occasionally think about running for bureaucrat, but realize that by doing so I would be implicitly supporting the RfA system, which I have grave objections to and which I think should be reformed or eliminated entirely. Kelly

On 6/9/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com> wrote: If you want to start a formal discussion about it, I'm all ears and mouths. Steve

On 6/9/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Exactly why it needs to be removed now before it becomes completely entrenched. First we started getting people who wanted adminship to have control, and now they have adminship, and are taking control. We should have stopped this a year ago, but we weren't paying attention, and now we have a lot of bad admins to show for it. That was, um, what, seven months ago? My attitudes have changed rather significantly since then, as have those of the project. Kelly

On 6/9/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com> wrote: In the end there is no certian way of telling how people will turn out until they become admins. for the most part RFA works. Admins are not meant to be able to exercise a significant degree of control over the project. That they can is not RFA's fault. Not really. 721 fully active admins. Number of those doing things I regard as negative comes in single figures. Project hasn't changed much in seven months. Deletionist/inclusionist wars have largly ended. Userbox issue has appeared. FRA and FC standards have gone up but real chnage has been pretty minimal certianly compared to say my first 7 months on the project (arbcom just starting up introduction of the template namespace and the lose of msg:) -- geni

On 6/9/06, Jesse W <jessw(a)netwood.net> wrote: Pretty much. The real conflict on wikipedia is between the pro and rather less pro process groups but for the most part that involves less shouting. Instead both sides write highly detailed essays at each other. Deletionist/inclusionist issue is real. Largly due to the problem that prior to wikipedia no one appears to have given much though to what an encyopedia is. but hwta we should include/what we should not include is a serious issue. -- geni

On 6/9/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki(a)gmail.com> wrote: Also, we have large numbers of people extremely willing and ready to write detailed articles on topics of dubious interest. We have articles on every single episode of most major TV shows, and lots of minor ones. You would never see that in any encyclopaedia. Steve

On 6/9/06, Jesse W <jessw(a)netwood.net> wrote: Out of curiosity, why? Obviously storage space becomes a limit at some point, but there seems to be little visible limit to the interest of people in documenting things. What, exactly, does an end-state Wikipedia project look like, to those who would want us to stop adding new articles at some point? How and when would you say "stop"? -- -george william herbert gherbert(a)retro.com / george.herbert(a)gmail.com

There will always be that news story about 28 murders in po-dunk Kansas and that city will suddenly shoot from a stub to a featured article. The creation of human knowledge never ends, and we will never stop gathering it. mboverload On 6/9/06, Jesse W <jessw(a)netwood.net> wrote:

On 6/10/06, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: The basic implicit criteria that most people seem to use are: - to be an article, some relatively notable third party news source (take very broadly) must have found it worth writing a story about - all information in the article must be verifiable Therefore your trip would satisfy the second criteria (the information could be added to the article) but would fail the first, because no one else found your trip notable. Steve

Steve Bennett wrote: That's my beef with a lot of our pop culture articles, TBH. The quotes section should go to Wikiquote. If any quotes (I imagine Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" would be a good example) are notable enough to be in an encyclopaedia, we should have some commentary on them and their impact. Plot summaries aren't that bad - at least they're prose. The worst ones, IMO, are pop culture references sections (last time I checked, [[Alan Turing]] is a good example of this) which don't add anything meaningful to the article and act as a magnet for info that most people won't care about at all (relativists who suggest that this is none of our business ought to note that we're an encyclopaedia - when we collect information, we ought to comment on it), and also trivia sections which serve the same purpose on pop culture articles (look at the article on [[House, M.D.]] before I trimmed the trivia section). John

Steve Bennett wrote: Perhaps the proof lies in the simple fact that others DID imagine doing such things. :-) Pop culture needs to be given credit for being popular. Ec

I would disagree. An incredible amount of money is spent every year trying to figure out what is popular. "Popular culture" encompasses so many things I think it would be hard to say "IT" isn't studied. mboverload On 6/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:

G'day Steve, While still at school, I ran across a /Star Trek: The Next Generation/ encyclopaedia (it was in the school library, believe it or not). It included descriptions of all characters and their history (that is, their real-world history[0] ... how the show's creators went about recruiting actors, how they'd originally envisioned the characters[1], etc. There was also a detailed listing of all TNG episodes, with plot summary, credits, a very short review, interesting technical details, and occasionally a photograph. At the end was a detailed "making of" of /Generations/, since that film had just been released, or was about to be released, at the time of publication. I think this qualifies as a specialist encyclopaedia, and I don't see a problem with Wikipedia including analogous content --- provided we keep in mind that a) it has to be relevant to people who don't already know heaps about TNG, and b) it has to stay neutral and not be packed with fan theories and other such crud. [0] I think a lot of our fiction articles could be dramatically improved by taking a real-world approach: "here is what this fictional entity should look like to people who aren't wrapped up in the fictional universe". Our /Doctor Who/ articles largely get this right; our /Star Wars/ and particularly /Gundam/ articles often don't. As a Trekkie, I haven't bothered looking at our /Star Trek/ collection, for fear it would only depress me. Compare [[Light saber]] with [[Dalek]]. Then choose any Gundam article at random, and marvel at the statistics presented therein, instantly forgetting any criticisms you may have had for [[Light saber]]. [1] There was a lot of emphasis on Captain Picard being French, and why he stayed that way even after Patrick Stewart, the most British British actor the Brits have produced, was cast to play him. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

On 6/11/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote: Science is difficult. There are areas that eirther require a hight level of background knowlage to understand or would have to be several hundread pages long. [[Biaxial nematic]] for example. -- geni

G'day Joe, [aaargh, top-poster! Get 'im!] Americans call a programme's series a "season", and the programme itself a "series". It actually makes sense. Australians tend to use an inconsistent mix of American and British terminology in this regard; personally (and this is one of the few cases you'll hear me say this), I prefer the American version: /Star Trek/ is divided up into series, each of which has many seasons ... And before TNG but after TOS, we had TAS --- /Star Trek: The Animated Adventures/. No, I didn't watch it either. I read some comic books (sorry, sorry: "graphic novels") based on it, though. I wonder if this divide has lead to any confusing articles on Wikipedia? -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

On 6/11/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: Ok, that's interesting, because that's even more "specialised" than I was thinking. I was imagining a "encyclopaedia of US sitcoms" or something. I think your example would struggle to really qualify as an "encyclopaedia" though, as it sounds like it was really written for fans to provide interesting "behind the scenes" info etc. As opposed to being a comprehensive reference for researchers in the field, say. It has to meet WP:V too, though, which I doubt most of our articles about TV episodes do. References are few and far between. By comparison with written literature, say, each episode would seem to me equivalent to a chapter, meaning we shouldn't have articles on every chapter, because there just isn't enough interesting to say. After you've summarised the plot, what can you really say about an episode? Its effect on mainstream popular culture? I doubt it. Its significance outside that TV show? The history of production of the episode? Umm... [[Dalek]] is a shining example to all others of what a fancruft article should be like. It constantly places the Dalek in the real world, talking about how they were produced, what the producers were thinking etc. As opposed to getting caught up in how Dalek 2348 got blown up in episode XIV by Doctor Who's pet monkey. Sounds ok. Steve

On 6/9/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com> wrote: What do you want to use instead? Personally I don't mind RFA that much. Although I do think the editcountis is getting out of hand. When I started looking at it in september I think, the limit most people used was 1000 edits, now I already see oppose votes for less then 3000 edits. If we have bad admins, perhaps it should be made easier to de-admin them. I do agree that this should not be done by the community, since that could turn out to be a lynching. (userbox issue for instance) Perhaps by arbcom? They don't seem to be that busy anyway. :) Garion96

Arie van Buuren wrote: That seems like the reasonable interpretation to me, especially since Jimbo didn't even write that specific text---it's the principle of NPOV that's non-negotiable, not the specific sentences currently on [[WP:NPOV]]. -Mark

"Conrad Dunkerson" wrote That is technically untrue, since every syllable of policy on civility applies to admins; and morally has even greater force. There is not the slightest reason to lapse in _civilty_ while talking and acting tough. In fact it undermines the impression. Any admin who is 'routinely incivil' can expect little support. Charles

I think the sheer volume of unpleasantness admins have to deal with -- vandalism, verbal abuse, etc -- might tend to sour some of them toward interactions in general. I've seen a few admins acting in jarring ways ("better not mess with me -- do you have any idea who I am?", etc.) On 5/29/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia(a)philwelch.net> wrote: -- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com

It is not. A user named Saladin1970 was recently indefinitely banned by administrators because his political views was diametrically opposite to theirs. There was absolutely no reason for that ban, and had Saladin1970's political views been better aligned with theirs, he wouldn't have been blocked at all. Since virtually all his edits were reverted solely because they were made by a blocked user, it should be painstakingly clear that (some) admins apply admin powers in attempts to control article content and that that is negative for Wikipedia. And it won't change, because despite the probably hundreds of policies wikipedian-en has, not a single one of them says that when an admin fucks up that bad, s/he shouldn't be an admin. So while Saladin1970 is stuck with some weird arbitration thing with Fred Bauder, the admins can continue their free roll. Saladin1970 is far from the only case, he just happened to be particularly persistent and polite when complaining in this list. -- mvh Björn

So when jaygy does one alledged incident of sock puppetry used against wikipedia policy result in an indefinate ban?? and when jaygy does citing someones ethnicity on their wikipedia biography result in that person being antisemetic , and henced banned indefinately on wikipedia if i were to trawl through your posts it would not be difficult to see a pattern emerging of extreme POV pushing, reverting posts to ensure your POV held. I think it is quite clear that BJorn has hit on a very sensitive and important point. That certain administrators abuse their position by banning or reverting posts to ensure their POV remains on wiki pages that are close to their life view. And that there is NO wiki policy to protect the neutrality of wiki pages from these abuses, or of the victims of these administration abuses. I give you a simple example of the extreme POV pushing that goes on by certain administrators I attempted to include in the "further reading" section of the zionism page, the 5-10 year academically researched book "zionism the real enemy of the jews" by Alan Hart. Now this was disallowed on the grounds of POV, yet if we look at the list on the zionism further reading section one has to wonder why these aren't POV yet the alan hart book is Sholom Aleichem. Why Do the Jews Need a Land of Their own?, 1898 Paul Charles Merkley. The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891 – 1948 (London: Frank Cass, 1998) A. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel, Wiley, 2003 ISBN 0-471-46502-X. etc. yet of course my attempts to include it whilst it being repeatedly removed by slimvirgin, jaygy and humus sapien, are examples of my 'anti semitism'. If i were you jaygy i would be extremely embarassed by the episode of my ban, and be questioning whether such a clear case of injustice actually helps your goals. _________________________________________________________________ Are you using the latest version of MSN Messenger? Download MSN Messenger 7.5 today! http://join.msn.com/messenger/overview

On 6/4/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: Formal definition of "POV pushing" required. Anyone? Steve

On 6/4/06, James D. Forrester <james(a)jdforrester.org> wrote: Currently there seems to be confusion over the term. Maybe you could just answer these questions instead: * does POV pushing have to be intentional? * does POV pushing have to be in bad faith? * is someone who is genuinely correcting bias in an article "POV pushing"? * is someone who *thinks* they're doing the above (but is actually introducing bias) "POV pushing"? * is systematically adding examples of your own country, culture, religion, language etc to a wide range of articles "POV pushing"? Thanks, Steve

On 6/4/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: So POV pushing is not simply an editing pattern, it is an edit/discussion pattern? Steve

Sustained aggressive tendentious editing. Fred On Jun 4, 2006, at 10:48 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

On 6/4/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: Thank you Fred. If more admins acted like you there would be much less stuff to complain about. Unfortunately, with the current environment and policies like "wheel warring," it doesn't seem easy to always do the right thing. -- mvh Björn

The arbitration committee will be hearing this matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/ Saladin1970_appeal Fred On Jun 4, 2006, at 2:15 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

abu hamza wrote: Being able to laugh at yourself in adversity when all around you are taking themselves seriously is a sign of progress. Ec

On 05/06/06, BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne(a)gmail.com> wrote: Racism is illegal and as well as the editor puts Wikipedia in a bad position. If people can't put bigotry aside and instead try to force articles into their personal view of the world, it's right to ban them. -Selina

G'day geni, That's a bit of a broad assumption. Perhaps what you meant to say was "racism is not illegal in my jurisdiction". There's a world outside America: it's a world I've heard described by Americans as terrifying and dystopian (presumably, these particular Americans were funnier in the head than the average), but it's still there. In some countries, Australia for example, expressing racist sentiments *is* illegal. In others, like Germany, certain forms of racism are firmly stamped on. In any case, the general thrust of Selina's comment was spot-on, so let's try not to jump on her for one clause. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

* Kelly Martin wrote: What was that I was saying about the need for admins to maintain civility even with 'bad' users? Oh well... probably wasn't important anyway, right?

* Mark Gallagher wrote: Heh, 'since my RFA passed'... and well before it. As to 'smug', not my intent, but someone once told me that I 'use sarcasm the way most people use punctuation'. I'm not sure they meant it to be the great compliment that I took it for. Accuse me of arrogance and I'll accuse >you< of perceptiveness. :] You are mistaken. I have dealt with heavy vandalism and bloody disputes and trolls in great degree for many years. Granted, much of that was off Wikipedia or before I became an admin for the stuff ON Wikipedia, but this image you project of me as someone unfamiliar with such conflict and dispute would be shocking to those who know me better. As you noted, I've been dealing more with article issues of late, but that isn't the sum of my background nor my only area of involvement on Wikipedia. Again, you seem to think I DON'T have, "some understanding of the difficulty"... at which point I'd invite you to review my interactions with Pigsonthewing, Karmafist, Selina, Freestylefrappe, et cetera. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I've been kicking around on the 'net for a couple of decades now. It is not >possible< to do that and NOT gain an 'understanding' of the difficulty of keeping your temper in check when dealing with some netizens. I've been stalked around the net, received threats and real life harassment, and have the special 'privilege' of being despised above all others by an infamous 'net kook. Trust me... I 'get' it. We're all human and sometimes people get under our skin. I don't exempt myself from that... if anything I'm 'by nature' of the same sort as the admins I'm objecting to, I've just had alot (really really really ALOT) of practice in phrasing, 'Die you farging bastage!' as, 'I see and appreciate your point, but feel there may be other issues you might wish to consider'. Entirely true. However, I am not (primarily) TRYING to nudge individual admins towards greater civility. It is inevitable that admins will from time to time be uncivil. The greater problem, in my opinion, is that the admin COMMUNITY largely accepts and allows these incidents without comment or repercussion... to the point that they have become somewhat commonplace. I would like to see a collective rather than individual change... and that requires public demonstration of the problem. It simply isn't possible to make a case for a global shift through individual appeals. I believe that a change in the culture and standards of adminship would do more to reduce such incidents than I could possibly accomplish through 'individual counseling'. Not that there is no merit in such... I do that quite a bit also, but I think a different method is needed for this issue.

On 06/06/06, Kelly Martin &lt;kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well said. ;) I replied defending myself from the personal attacks Kelly was making in the above posts in WR (General Discussion) as I'm not allowed to here apparently - Judge for yourself, I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as the nastiness from her towards me in this topic... I'm not sure why it seems acceptable for some people to be above the rules... -- Selina - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mistress_Selina_Kyle?oldid=55639088 / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mistress_Selina_Kyle?oldid=41845454 http://wikipediareview.com/?showuser=1 "I *do* think criticism is good for Wikipedia [...] Good quality criticism is valuable, and Wikipedians should listen to it, and actually make changes based on it. Are there corrupt administrators, then we should get rid of them." --Jimmy Wales ( http://wikipediareview.com/?showtopic=1693 )