On 1/18/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)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.