[WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

[slimvirgin at gmail.com]

On 1/3/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, some of these admins *don't* know better.  Recently I've seen
> people become admins with thousands of edits, but under a hundred Talk: page
> comments, and others who became admins with as few as 16 people voting for
> them.  People who have had so little interaction with other Wikipedians, or
> who are so unknown that there aren't even 20 Wikipedians willing to vouch
> for them, are simply not members of the Wikipedia community in any
> meaningful way.  It is not surprising, then, when they act in ways which
> display an ignorance of, or go against Wikipedia norms (e.g. unblocking
> blocked users without even first discussing the block with the blocking
> admin).  The purpose of Wikipedia is not to create a website where people
> can set up really cool user pages, or engage in wheel wars.

Exactly right. Almost every block is at serious risk now of being
reversed by an admin who's never read the blocking policy, has had
very little interaction with the community, and who got elected with
under 20 votes, but decides he quite liked something the blocked user
once posted, and so therefore he has to unblock, leading to wheel
wars, endless explanations of the most obvious things on WP:AN/I, and
a consequent unwillingness on the part of other admins to block
troublemakers until they become serious problems (and even then it can
be difficult: see the Marsden situation). Unfortunately, part of this
problem is fueled by the philosophy that adminship is "no big deal,"
which if Jimbo reads this thread, I ask that he consider commenting on
somewhere, because I've lost count of the number of support votes I've
seen quoting it, leading to yet another unknown and possibly clueless
admin being promoted. Combine poor admins with hundreds of users who
are turning Wikipedia into a social club, and you have a giant mess.

Sarah