[WikiEN-l] sysop nominations

[The Cunctator]

On Thu, 2003-05-08 at 16:41, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> And a technical means to "auto-sysop" would be a bad
> idea; like you said Lir would have been made a sysop,
> so would Clutch and maybe even TMC (depending on the
> criteria). These users would have been even more
> troublesome as Admins and created an even greater
> amount of damage (blocking IPs willy-nilly, deleting
> pages that should not have been deleted etc). 

Actually, it would have made the case for banning them much stronger
more quickly.

Instead of seeing possible auto-sysopping of troublesome members as a
Bad Idea, it's more constructive to think about the principle of No
Permanent Damage. That is, what constraints/mechanisms would be
necessary for a few bad apples to be unable to make the Good Idea--of
allowing useful contributors (that is, most people) to automatically
gain more capabilities--a problem?

> Some people think that society would be better if
> every teenager were given a gun on their 18th birthday
> regardless of their mental state or firearms training.
> I'm definitely not in that camp of thought.  

Nor am I. But conflating sysop powers on Wikipedia with gun usage is
silly and wrong. Your principled stand against disseminating instruments
of death has little relevance in a discussion about Wikipedia editing.