2007/2/19, GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels