On 7/3/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
No. Doing the proposed would make adminship less of a big deal, becuause it would cause adminship to eventually include all trustworthy users.
Adminship stopped being about being a well behaved editor and not abusing the tools long ago...
Obviously there was no consensus that these editors were trustworthy; someone is not "trustworthy" simply because you believe them to be so. And consensus is still an important part of the Wikipedia process.
Consensus is a fantastic method for governance when the decision is something with directly effects everyone... it is perhaps the only method for governance where it is possible to act without ethical compromises.
However consensus only achieves that level of fairness when inaction is less harmful than action.
In the case of those adminships, there was no consensus to admin but there was also no consensus to fail to admin. Because adminship is no big deal, and because the natural state of a longtime and trustworthy user should be as an admin, it would be reasonable to argue that the correct result of a no consensus adminship should be adminning.
The adminships I cited were not just random failures: In each of the cited the reasons given by the oppose were cited by a fair number of the supporters as not reasons to oppose. In each of the cases the support community contained a group of wikipedians at least as well respected and as experienced as users in the opposed camp.
By failing to act on these adminships we have done a great disservice to the Wikipedia community. Short of actually being adminned, these users will have no way of proving themselves. (that much is clear, at least one of them had a failed prior adminship due to real issues and put in an additional year of hard work before someone renominated).
The complex popularity game that it takes to become an admin turns adminship into something it should not be, a big deal... and it is our duty to tack action to fix that.