[WikiEN-l] The Counter Vandalism Unit? Whaa?

[Jay Converse]

On 2/4/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/3/06, Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > More (and automatic) admins, I say.
> >
> > This is the easiest, fastest, most efficient, least work-intensive
> method...
> >
> > of dismantling Wikipedia from the inside out.
> >
> > I'd say a good portion of our vandals are kids who have nothing better
> to
> > do.  This is the same kind of kid who, from experience with forums, and
> > various other free forms of online entertainment, will perform the bare
> > minimum of actual work necessary to get whatever power, MP3, level they
> > want.
> >
> > If you tell people they need to browse 6 months and get 1000 edits and
> they
> > will be automatically admin'd, you will see people adding content to
> > articles one word at a time, making meaningless edits to pages over and
> over
> > again, and doing that until they hit 1001, then sit around until 6
> months
> > have passed up.  Then they'll go nuts using their admin powers in
> incredibly
> > new and damaging ways.
>
> Wow, you have not only a minimum faith in the good nature of your
> fellow man, a lot of faith in their lack of anything better to do.
>
> > Automatic adminship is NOT the way to go.  Absolutely not.  To be
> honest, I
> > don't think we need to be admitting admins at the rate that we
> are.  Hell,
> > RfA pretty much is an automatic approval process at this point anyway,
> and
> > I've seen infrequent complaints that some admins getting through aren't
> > quite stable.  Just imagine what would happen if we put adminship in the
> > hands of, essentially, everyone.
>
> Oh, lordy! The unwashed masses! Quick, defend the citadel. Being an
> admin really ain't that amazing.
>
>
Except for the simple fact that they can delete images, which cannot be
restored.  All it takes is one bad apple to completely destroy Wikipedia's
images, unless they're stopped in time.

And we all know how hard it is to remove an admin once he's there.

--
Jay Converse
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.