On 1/18/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
It's all about building trust. If a sysop has built a reputation for fairness he can "get away" with a lot more. The community knows that his edits do not deviate radically from accepted norms. He will also show himself willing to discuss issues when his decisions are questioned, and will be quick to admit when he is wrong. If he wants to take a stand he will choose his issues carefully without feeling compelled to maintain an argument about everything.
That just seems like elementary ability to get along with people.
Ec
I think you are mostly right, but with an important tweak. It really doesn't matter what the "community" thinks about the admin, so long as the community of admins (and in most cases, the arbitration committee) is willing to work with her.
Individual admins do not have very much authority, but as a group the admins have a great deal of authority. The role of admins in Wikipedia has become rather political, and the proportion of admins to all contributors is small. Thus adminship has become a big deal.
I suppose the fact that admins themselves tend to rule under a form of rough consensus mitigates the authority of any single admin even more. There seems to be a limit on the number of people, even people who are highly skilled at getting along with each other, that can reach a rough consensus on issues, and this particular group of admins seem to be around that threshold. Thus the introduction of "wheel warring". So far the arbitration committee seems unwilling to tackle that one, and in this case with good reason as it's going to be a difficult problem to resolve. Reducing the number of admins (and thus making them even less representative of the whole community) or modifying the power structure of Wikipedia in some way are probably the only solutions, and the arbitration committee doesn't really have the authority to do either. It'll probably take a while, but the problem of wheel warring might very well be one of the next major crises to hit.