[WikiEN-l] Things about admins

Timwi timwi at gmx.net
Fri Jul 14 17:15:02 UTC 2006


Hi,

There is one thing I don't really quite understand, and I was wondering 
if someone could explain this to me in very simple and easy-to-follow 
terms...

Basically, I seem to be making the following two recurring observations:

(1) Users who are unhappy with some admin action or other post to the
     mailing list - sometimes angrily, sometimes rationally, but always
     making explicit that they are annoyed - complaining about what they
     perceive to be "admin abuse".

(2) Admins sometimes defend their actions by using the argument, "If
     you've managed to piss off several admins, chances are you've done
     something wrong."

Given that this massive influx of annoyed complaints plainly 
demonstrates that users are much more commonly and much more seriously 
the ones that get annoyed, and supposing that the argument #2 is 
applicable, doesn't it follow plainly obviously that the admins are 
doing much more significant wrongs?

The only ways out of this dilemma appear to be either to admit that a 
larger proportion of users are right in their "cabal" accusations than 
is widely assumed, OR... to accept that argument #2 is invalid.

If we accept that argument #2 is invalid, then it must logically follow 
that admins getting annoyed is no indication of user behaviour being 
wrong. If that is so, then what sort of non-wrong behaviour gets them 
pissed off and why?

Timwi




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