[Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2011/3/3 Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>:
> Amir writes:
>> Now i, in general, think that these permissions should be given
>> liberally to as many reasonable Wikimedians as possible.
> <snip>
>> In fact it's quite likely that communities will want to give as little
>> permissions as possible to users.
>
> Can you explain the apparent paradox above?

It's not a paradox: I think that they should be given liberally, but
many community members may think otherwise. It's not very logical, but
in all languages that i can read there are many discussions about it,
full of confusions and suspicions. I believe that the name
"administrator" is one of the main reasons for this and that's why i
suggest retiring it completely.

The name "administrator" gives the impression of some mythical
"balance of power", although administrators don't actually
administrate - they (un)delete, (un)block and (un)protect, in addition
to editing articles and participating in discussions just like
everybody else. The name "sysop" (system operator), used occasionally
in English, and more frequently in some other languages (e.g. Hebrew),
sounds less like a managerial role, but it's technical and cryptic and
requires explanation.

Giving user groups exact and real names will likely change the
attitude of many users who see these user groups as "the powers that
be" and think that they're impenetrable.