On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
When there is a brawl in a bar, and the police walk in, they do not attempt to figure out who caused it, whose fault it is, who is to blame, etc. They tell everyone to stop. Now. And if *anyone* doesn't stop, they arrest that person (or worse.) How often that person, being dragged off, is screaming, "But he started it!"
But if one person is participating in the brawl because they had to defend themselves and they'd rather it be a brawl than a beating, they could file charges against the other one. The legal system doesn't say "you're equally punished, now go away"; if one person's at fault, and the system works properly, the system will figure that out and later punish only him.
And if someone makes a police report about a burglar, the police don't respond by arresting both them and the burglar.
On 7/23/08, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
And if someone makes a police report about a burglar, the police don't respond by arresting both them and the burglar.
Again, the point here isn't justice, but to figure out how we can best write an encyclopedia.
Let us assume, as you do, that there are clear innocents here. Even still, I think it's entirely plausible that a person could be sufficiently victimized that they're no longer capable of performing the role of admin.
As the number of conflicts a user is involved in increases, it errodes their ability to serve as an uninvolved neutral third party able to resolve inter-user conflict. It's conceivable to me, in the abstract, a user could, through no fault of their own, find themselves in a position where it was probably best they no longer act as an admin.
One way of looking at it would be that, as factions form, it might be hard for a controversial user to reasonably be viewed as "uninvolved" in practically any inter-user. Another argument could be that a user has become a lightning rod for a deeper dispute-- much like the guilt or innocents of OJ Simpson became, in some circles, a focal point for race relations in the US. Or maybe it's as simple as recognizing the status quo isn't working out for the project-- akin to the end of a romantic relationship, recognizing "This just isn't working out... I'm sorry, but, the precise nature of our relationship has to change, but I hope we can still be friends".
(But admittedly, this whole line of thinking is predicated upon the assumption that adminship truly is not a trophy, and that therefore, desysopping is truly not automatically a demerit, a punishment, or a mark of guilt. )
Alec
On Wed, 23 Jul 2008, Alec Conroy wrote:
And if someone makes a police report about a burglar, the police don't respond by arresting both them and the burglar.
Again, the point here isn't justice, but to figure out how we can best write an encyclopedia.
Let us assume, as you do, that there are clear innocents here. Even still, I think it's entirely plausible that a person could be sufficiently victimized that they're no longer capable of performing the role of admin.
As the number of conflicts a user is involved in increases, it errodes their ability to serve as an uninvolved neutral third party able to resolve inter-user conflict.
But the punishment isn't for conflicts, but for *reporting* conflicts.
You might argue that being in more conflicts makes a user less neutral. But it's hard to argue that *reporting* more conflicts makes a user less neutral.
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:26 AM, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/23/08, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
And if someone makes a police report about a burglar, the police don't respond by arresting both them and the burglar.
Again, the point here isn't justice, but to figure out how we can best write an encyclopedia.
Justice is a basic principle which is necessary for successfully engaging in any social activity, including that of collaboratively writing an encyclopedia. If you don't provide admins with justice, how are you going to convince anyone to be an admin?
Let us assume, as you do, that there are clear innocents here. Even still, I think it's entirely plausible that a person could be sufficiently victimized that they're no longer capable of performing the role of admin.
I don't see how a completely innocent person can be victimized to a point which necessitates "invoking technical measures to literally prevent them" from performing admin actions.
You say that "doing nothing DEFINITELY won't help", but doing *nothing* would probably have about the same result as deadminship, wouldn't it?