Let's deputize admins and expand the size of the AC (was: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking without following policy)

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ... 
> As I said above, I think the policy leaves room for a group of sysops to 
> act temporarily, before the AC does.

Without comment on this particular block, I completely agree with your above
general statement. I would in fact like to deputize admins so that they have
more authority to do this sort of thing but would have to implement such blocks
in triads (three admins would be needed to issue a block; the ability for
single admins to block obvious vandals would not be changed). 
 
> Is it good ?
> *yes, because AC is acting slowly. Participants are getting upset to see 
> reincarnations waiting for 2 months before "judgment" by the AC. It is 
> no good that participants become angry. 

I agree - The AC is a panel of judges who have the authority to issue long term
bans. This is a large responsibility and contrary to what many might think, it
is not fun at all. Thus cases move slowly. We are not, nor have ever been a
police force and therefore cannot protect people from the actions of others.
Our job is to judge those people and issue remedies which we hope will be fair
to the accused and to the community. Admins are the ones who  implement those
rulings.  

> In real life, there is similar 
> provision.... when someone is said to have done something deeply wrong 
> and is considered a potential threat to the society, he may be put in 
> jail before the judgment is made. He should be put in jail only if there 
> is enough evidence naturally. But this prevents damage to the society, 
> while giving time to judge fairly.

This concept in the U.S. at least is called 'probable cause'. It allows
policemen to detain suspects before trial and allows individual judges to
extend that through trial based on incomplete evidence. The goal is to balance
the rights of the accused with the right of the public to not be harmed by
somebody who the police or the arraignment judge reasonably thinks may do harm
if released. A full trial will determine guilt. 

In fact I want the AC to change its arbitration policy a bit to allow for
probable cause blocks of users during a trial based on a simple quorum (4 votes
in favor). Such a user would only be able to edit his/her user and user talk
page, and the AC pages concerning him/her. But that only takes care of the
trial part. IMO, admins also need the ability to do this during day to day
operations (the pre-trial part). Either way we need to greatly increase the
size of the AC so that it can deal with the workload. 

> If there is a mistake, we should deeply apology to the wrongly-blocked 
> person, and re-consider how we are looking for evidence for next cases.

Not necessarily - if probable cause was in fact valid to begin with then the
user was not wrongly blocked. But just as there is a possibility for police
abuse, there is also the possibility of admin abuse. If that is the case, then
the admin may be in a trial of his/her own. However, we should assume good
faith of admins as much as possible - otherwise everybody will be too afraid of
using their sysop power to do what needs to be done for the good of the
community. 

> *yes, it is also good because power should be in the hand of people 
> first. Those doing the daily work. This is the wiki way.

I agree. The current set-up is rather top heavy with the AC having most of the
authority and most of the admins feeling as if their hands are tied. I would
like to spread some of the AC's authority around but would like to proceed with
caution. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


	
		
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