[WikiEN-l] Re: #wikipedia-en-admins

[Phil Boswell]

"Tim Starling" 
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote in 
message news:dr1el4$pda$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> The IRC channel #wikipedia-en-admins has now been created, with mode +is, 
> i.e. secret and
> invite-only. It currently has an access list of 64 people. I am opposed to 
> its existence. To call a
> forum which admits 800 people "almost public" is bizarre. You admit 800 
> but you exclude thousands of
> active contributors. Wikipedia has always attempted to encourage newcomers 
> and to assume good faith,
> but it's a clear violation of that principle to assume that the rest of 
> the world, those 6 billion
> non-administrators, have nothing useful to contribute to the discussions 
> we wish to undertake.
>
> Imagine if you joined Wikipedia today. How would you feel about the 
> formidable barriers against your
> potential contribution to Wikipedia's decision-making process? How would 
> you feel about having tens
> of admins declaring new policy, stating their rationale but refusing to 
> enter into discussion with
> you on equal terms, on the basis that it had already been decided in 
> private?

I'm not happy for one basic reason: I can't get to IRC from behind this 
firewall. So I have no way, even though I am an admin, of joining in with 
this discussion. So if I were to do something which might be regarded as 
controversial (unlikely but bear with me) I might find my activities 
discussed and condemned in a forum to which I have no access.

Quite apart from that, I suspect that most of the conversation carries on in 
a quite different time-zone, so I likely wouldn't actually be awake even I 
had access.

There's no way of guaranteeing that logs of any pertinent conversations 
would ever be made available to anyone, never mind the affected parties.

This channel might be useful in the event of a massive vandalism attack, for 
coordinating efforts to repel boarders when the regular Wikipedia-based 
channels of communication are clogged up, but for the normal course of 
events, discussions should take place on Wikipedia where the appropriate 
people can watch and take part.

HTH HAND
-- 
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]