I don't agree at all with your ideas of hiding some information from users... one of our great strengths is transparency and openness. We've tried really hard -- and with some success -- to avoid cliquishness in terms of sysops, banning, policy discussions, etc.
One of the things that keeps the "in crowd" honest is a commitment to transparency and personal accountability. Moves away from that may help sysops avoid being yelled at by trolls, but it also risks bad behavior on *our* part.
--Jimbo
I agree with all this.
There is one area though where transparency of information is not offered to regular users, it is in the deleted pages. Once a page is deleted, no one except sysops can look at it. I think it right only sysops can delete and undeleted pages. But I think it wrong regular users can not from time to time check whether pages were not unproperly deleted (not along community defined rules).
That is a feedback control not offered in Wikipedia. I think providing a feedback tool would help strengthening the trust regular users have in sysops. And be a real commitment to transparency and accountability.
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