I trust admins. I trust them to almost always mean well, and to generally do well. I also know them to be human. I do not trust all eds. to either mean well or be competent, or be unbiased. I certainly don;t rust them to have the time. I ask for two or three articles a week to be undeleted for a bit so I can look at them. One-third of the admins ignore it, one-third say it isn't necessary and to trust them; one-third do it the way they should. So few are willing to do it that there is a separate very short list of the dozen or fewer admins who are prepared to say they will.
The consequences of a type I error, of accepting a borderline article when it should be rejected,is not very great.A very large number slip through anyway, to join the million or so already there. Many get picked up later. The consequences of a type II error, of rejecting a good article, is usually a lost article, and generally a lost editor.
This doesn't bother the experienced. They know how to defend a questioned article, They know not to be hurt by idiots. They forget the most people do not.. It isn't really a question of being an admin or not, as much as being experienced. ,
A wiki by nature is intended for an average user, and should not require this sort of espertise. -- David G.
On 4/13/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Maury Markowitz wrote:
Despite the objections raised from time to time about this, I fail to see the issue. I think it boils down to the generic mistrust of all administrators that certain people who are not administrators seem to harbour.
I've been a contributer to the wiki for five years and an admin for three or four. I object to this sort of behavor, and it has nothing to do with "generic mistrust of all administrators".
It has everything to do with generic mistrust of administrators because it is what creates it. These people who go ahead and delete things following no counsel but there own, and without any effort to correct the situation produce an atmosphere where no-one feels certain what an admin will delete next. If we were confident that they were restraining themselves to deleting pure vandalism nobody would become concerned. Instead their laziness and impatience to have a high quota of deleted garbage prevents them from doing minimal searches or trying to start a dialogue with the contributor woh was likely acting in good faith. I can't stress enough that it's likely the leading cause of generic mistrust of administrators.
Ok, here's my suggestions:
In cases where tagging may result in an article, or significant portions of it, being removed for reasons other than vandalism or similar, the tagger must:
- place a note on the editor's talk page saying the article has been tagged
- place a note (NOT templated) on the article talk page explaining what the
problem is. "failed notability" is not good enough
Any tags placed that fail to meet these can be summarily deleted. If they are not removed, at the admin's leisure, they are _not_actionable_ until someone DOES meet these criterion or does remove them. Additionally, incorrect tags, prods on NPOV or notability for instance, should be summarily removed. These would fix the vast majority of cases I come across.
That sounds good, though it is probably less important when only significant portions of an article are deleted. At least then the deleted material is easily available through the article's history.
These lazy admins should be treated in the same way they treat contributors. Persistent refusal to treat users with respect should be grounds to initiate a request to de-admin.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l