On 7/7/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
It may be noted for the record that I don't fear retribution from any admins, ok? And I watch this constant ongoing trollfest and I tire of it. You show me good evidence of an administrator abusing their admin powers, and the ArbCom not acting on it, and I'll do something. This is my promise to the community, my final role here, to prevent authoritarian cliques from controlling the process.
But, I see essentially no evidence of this, and a whole ton of whining.
One thing that is absolutely 100% notably absent from these complaints is links to diffs and actual examples of admin abuse.
With all due respect, Jimbo, may I suggest that you are looking at this from exactly the wrong point of view.
Grab yourself a sockpuppet account, dive into an edit war, start correcting stuff and see what happens when other ditors don't know who you are.
Then try to forget that you are well-regarded and experienced here and you have a great deal of power. Put yourself in the shoes of a new editor doing what they see as the right thing and encountering statements like this one: "I will revert you twice a day, for the rest of history if needs be. Plus I have more allies than you, so your attempts to restalinise this article must fail." http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AKhmer_Rouge&diff=148359...
This is from an editor, one heavily supported by admins and ArbCom members, who manages to get away with the most shocking abuse, often involving sexual connotations.
Comments form an Arbcom member about protecting this editor, despite his long history of abuse may be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitr...
No-one is disputing that this editor is not a good editor. But when it is made clear at the highest levels that there are different standards for different editors - and I quote the same ArbCom member referring to the same editor in a private email six months ago: "By the way, xxxx is like that with everyone. It's his schtick. I think I've seen him be polite towards someone about once. ;)" - I think that one is entitled to come to a certain conclusion.
I'm not trying to refight old battles here, merely pointing out that in my experience, thuggery, threats and hypocrisy are what a new editor may expect if he gets on the wrong side of "the old soldiers" here.