Andre Engels schreef:
2007/2/19, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
The notion of the sysops having too much power, is always seen from the outside. From the inside you will notice that the more power you seem to have the more careful you have to be when you wield it.
I've been on the inside, and I indeed found I had to be very careful. Very careful to not do something to upset other sysops, that is. If I had not interfered with the actions of other sysops, I would not have been in problems.
Interfering with other sysops did not get you in problems to the extend that you had to give up being a sysop. It was your choice to give up your sysopship. Were you to stand again for sysop, chances are that you would be voted in again. I would vote in favour. Being careful not to upset other people IS the name of the game.
One great strategy
with people who complain is to make them part of the "establishment", this allows them to do "better". This is when the people still on the outside start to say that "power corrupts ...". The Dutch Wikipedia has on occasion added large groups of people to the rank of admin to prove that there is no such thing as a cabal. With hind sight is it obvious that this does not work.
By adding more people to sysophood, the only effect is that you draw more and more of the fighting behind the closed doors of sysophood, which actually makes it easier, not more difficult, to ignore the voices of non-sysops on the matter. Also, you increase the likelihood of having rogue admins, and lessen the chances of them losing their sysophood.
Rogue admins can be de-sysoped. They can even be banned. This is what happened to Waerth.
With the removal of the possibility of the use of proxies, it becomes more
difficult to do nefarious deeds like sock puppetry. This is in and of itself a good thing. It will hopefully calm down our community.
Unlikely if one of the things that the community is getting wild about is the blind blocking of proxies. "Just let me do what I want, and everything will be fine" is not the way to alleviate the worries of people who think you have too much power.
How come that you assume that proxies are blocked blindly; have you spoken about this with Ronald ? Read what he wrote on the mailing list, it is reasoned and it sounds that he is willing to arguments to refine his ways. He presented on this subject on multiple occasions, last Saturday in Nijmegen at the "Moderator workshop". He is approachable.
Where you say assume good faith, you definitely will find in the Dutch
community that people assume that with no indications to the contrary the other party means well. There are however people who in word and deed demonstrate that there are indications that they do not mean well. When abuse has to be accepted because someone is "angry" and when this right of being angry is reserved to them then this is to much to ask from me and from many others.
Apparently using an anonymous proxy is demonstrating that there are indications that you do not mean well? We're not just talking about assuming good faith in Waerth here. We're talking about the good faith we assume of the random new user coming to Wikipedia. Apparently when that user comes through an anonymous proxy all good faith we might have, has already been lost.
Using proxies is certainly a red flag raised. It does however not automatically mean that bad faith is certain. It is however reasonable depending on the type of proxy to have a different strategy to deal with this. It is a right to edit anonymously however this right is not absolute.
Where Andre says that his opinion is irrelevant because he is no sysop, I do
disagree strongly. I know that many people will, and do listen when he makes his point. I know that I do.. then again I am no nl.wikipedia sysop either. I do know that I have my contacts in the Dutch community and I may make a point and this occasionally does have its consequences.
How? RonaldB does his blocks, and even if I do convince people, he'll just go on with the support of that part of the population I did not convince. It's either convincing him, or having no effect at all.
Like me, you do convince people. However, like me you do not convince people all the time. When a particular policy that you do not like is supported by a substantial group of the community, you really have to convince and you may fail at that. That is how the cookie crumbles.
In the past Waerth has threatened to do things that were incompatible with
the role that he played in the WMF. As a consequence he is no longer a steward nor is he a sysop. This time he explicitly informed us that all his edits are copyright violations in the assumption that we will believe him and delete all he has ever done. This deletion of his work is something he informed the Dutch community that he wanted before. So yes, the relations are very much disturbed. Waerth made his bed, he can lie in it. It is his choice to be abusive. It is his choice to move away from the Dutch wiki community.
There's more people involved here than just Waerth. He's just one of a series of people who feel wronged. Just look at the arbitration committee that is now being formed. There are people who are voting against all sysops in that election, because otherwise there would be too much concentration of power. If they did not think that being a sysop would entail having power, they would not vote so. I personally do agree with them that sysops are having quite a bit of power, though they should not have, although I don't agree that it should have any bearings on their capacity to serve in the committee. So I guess it's my choice to move away from the Dutch community too?
When Waerth feels wronged, when anyone feels wronged, it does not mean that he/she has a right to become obnoxious, abusive. It does not give him/her a right to threaten people or threaten the system. When there are people who vote against sysops on principle, they may but they are in my opinion stupid. People have a right to be stupid, they have a right to be wrong. They should not be surprised when they are then ignored because this behaviour is explicit "assume bad faith".
Yes, it is your choice to do whatever. I value you as a person, I hope you will do the right thing. That is why I take ample time to reply.
Thanks, GerardM