[WikiEN-l] Things about admins

[Fastfission]

On 7/14/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> 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?

Now now, this is a simple data-collection fallacy. Admins don't
complain to the mailing list when they are annoyed with users, so that
can't possibly be used as an indication of whether or not users or
admins are more often annoyed. And it is also the case that you can
have fewer admins annoyed by greater numbers of users -- why, I can be
annoyed by five users at the same time, all of whom think that I have
somehow devoted my time to suppressing their particular version of the
truth!

FF