On 6/2/02 11:01 PM, "lcrocker(a)nupedia.com" <lcrocker(a)nupedia.com> wrote:
Like most features of the software, it will be decided
by
programmer fiat unless we get specific direction. I'm
quite happy to remove any mention of user rights from the
user list, I'm happy to call them whatever you like. You
make good arguments, so I'll take those suggestions unless
I hear otherwise.
Lee, please don't make such changes unless you get a consensus. The idea of
hiding or even obscuring information about who is in power is a profoundly
bad one.
One of the reason representative democracies work even at all is because
it's well known who the representatives are. Whenever it's a secret who's in
the government, who's in power, problems are created.
I think it's reasonable that the sysop/developer etc. status is listed on
pages separate from the user (aka editor) list, but that it's utterly
unreasonable for a sysop or developer to get to choose to announce that
status.
Contributors should never have to work to find out who holds the reins of
power.
maveric wrote:
Anybody of good intentions can be a sysop if they want
to be. I don't think
we should label people as having a particular status and thus imply that this
status is anything particularly special.
It is something special. To say otherwise is to be disingenuous.
It might also lead to confusion when there are valid
disagreements about an article between a non-sysop party and a sysop. The
non-sysop would be able to see that a particular person is a sysop and this
knowledge might imply that the sysop is acting in some type of official
capacity -- which they seldom are in these cases.
Rather, sysops are NEVER acting in some type of official capacity. End of
discussion. Only Jimbo can act in an official capacity. Everyone else has
equivalent authority. Or, another way of looking at it, is EVERYONE is
ALWAYS acting in some type of official capacity, from non-sysops to sysops.
We are all equivalently vested.
I suspect the easiest proper long-term solutions to this issue are either
1) Get rid of sysops entirely, and figure out other methods of dealing the
stuff they deal with now, or
2) Do something like the Slashdot moderation pool, where some percentage of
active participants are always active moderators, and each individual
participant only gets to moderate for a few actions over a limited period of
time.
--tc