Hi AS-Wikipedians,
A few recent incidents have shaken our fledgling community like never before. Most of these involved questions on adminship, and the role admins play in a Wikipedia. Therefore, I take this opportunity to point out a few things.
First, an admin is not an award or a position of power but a position of responsibility. But all it comes down to is this: an admin is a sweeper. Look at the English Wikipedia article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators) and the first graphic. As an admin on Assamese Wikipedia I spend most of my time: making sure the Bengali ro has been replaced by the Assamese one and the pipes are replaced by a dari; checking links to articles marked for deletion (and deleting them); correcting mistakes in protected pages when Wikipedians points them out; listening to irate Wikipedians when things don't get fixed fast enough, etc. One might be forgiven if one thought being an admin was glamorous, but really it is more like a sweeper, a plumber, a firefighter etc rolled into one. Admins are at the community's beck and call to render service. And I must admit there is great pleasure in being able to do this.
Second, we need to move forward on this. The community has to figure out how best to put the rancour behind and get back to blissful Wikipedia-ing (admins have the power to verbalise nouns in emails---with the permission of the community). We should discuss among ourselves what the powers of an admin should be by setting down a set of policies and procedures. We should also work towards implementing the necessary templates and categories to facilitate these. The place to do this is this:
https://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%... https://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%...)
While formulating policies we should follow the English Wikipedia examples as much as possible. We should strive for consensus rather than votes which are devisive. Please go through the section on expectations of adminship ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators#Expectations_of_admins...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators) which governs the behaviour of admins both within Wikipedia as well as outside. Please read the section on how to engage an admin and how to resolve conflicts. It is better to resolve conflicts quickly than to avoid them and letting them fester.
What has happened is painful, yes. But I suspect they are nothing but growing pains. We have done great stuff in recent months, and we should continue doing it.