[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] One week later and I am still blocked, nobody is doing a fucking thing

[Andre Engels]

2007/2/19, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:

> The notion of the sysops having too much power, is always seen from the
> outside. From the inside you will notice that the more power you seem to
> have the more careful you have to be when you wield it.


I've been on the inside, and I indeed found I had to be very careful. Very
careful to not do something to upset other sysops, that is. If I had not
interfered with the actions of other sysops, I would not have been in
problems.

One great strategy
> with people who complain is to make them part of the "establishment", this
> allows them to do "better". This is when the people still on the outside
> start to say that "power corrupts ...". The Dutch Wikipedia has on
> occasion
> added large groups of people to the rank of admin to prove that there is
> no
> such thing as a cabal. With hind sight is it obvious that this does not
> work.


By adding more people to sysophood, the only effect is that you draw more
and more of the fighting behind the closed doors of sysophood, which
actually makes it easier, not more difficult, to ignore the voices of
non-sysops on the matter. Also, you increase the likelihood of having rogue
admins, and lessen the chances of them losing their sysophood.

With the removal of the possibility of the use of proxies, it becomes more
> difficult to do nefarious deeds like sock puppetry. This is in and of
> itself
> a good thing. It will hopefully calm down our community.


Unlikely if one of the things that the community is getting wild about is
the blind blocking of proxies. "Just let me do what I want, and everything
will be fine" is not the way to alleviate the worries of people who think
you have too much power.

Where you say assume good faith, you definitely will find in the Dutch
> community that people assume that with no indications to the contrary the
> other party means well. There are however people who in word and deed
> demonstrate that there are indications that they do not mean well. When
> abuse has to be accepted because someone is "angry" and when this right of
> being angry is reserved to them then this is to much to ask from me and
> from
> many others.


Apparently using an anonymous proxy is demonstrating that there are
indications that you do not mean well? We're not just talking about assuming
good faith in Waerth here. We're talking about the good faith we assume of
the random new user coming to Wikipedia. Apparently when that user comes
through an anonymous proxy all good faith we might have, has already been
lost.

Where Andre says that his opinion is irrelevant because he is no sysop, I do
> disagree strongly. I know that many people will, and do listen when he
> makes
> his point. I know that I do.. then again I am no nl.wikipedia sysop
> either.
> I do know that I have my contacts in the Dutch community and I may make a
> point and this occasionally does have its consequences.


How? RonaldB does his blocks, and even if I do convince people, he'll just
go on with the support of that part of the population I did not convince.
It's either convincing him, or having no effect at all.


In the past Waerth has threatened to do things that were incompatible with
> the role that he played in the WMF. As a consequence he is no longer a
> steward nor is he a sysop. This time he explicitly informed us that all
> his
> edits are copyright violations in the assumption that we will believe him
> and delete all he has ever done. This deletion of his work is something he
> informed the Dutch community that he wanted before. So yes, the relations
> are very much disturbed. Waerth made his bed, he can lie in it. It is his
> choice to be abusive. It is his choice to move away from the Dutch wiki
> community.


There's more people involved here than just Waerth. He's just one of a
series of people who feel wronged. Just look at the arbitration committee
that is now being formed. There are people who are voting against all sysops
in that election, because otherwise there would be too much concentration of
power. If they did not think that being a sysop would entail having power,
they would not vote so. I personally do agree with them that sysops are
having quite a bit of power, though they should not have, although I don't
agree that it should have any bearings on their capacity to serve in the
committee. So I guess it's my choice to move away from the Dutch community
too?


-- 
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels