Ray Saintonge wrote:
Admins must be held to a higher standard of behaviour than a simple user. For example, if a policy allows any admin to block a user for a maximum of 24 hours, there isabsolutely no excuse for blocks that exceed that length of time. Perhaps that admin himself should be blocked for the amount of the excess time. I would not go so far as to support having ALL admin actions immedialtely revertible, but the ones that aren't should be clearly defined. Where an admin has removed a clearly libellous statement from an article the discussion should happen first.
Ec
Eek, sorry for the half-baked reply earlier. Stupid computers...
Anyway, I think those ideas are terrible. Process is important, but it should not be fetishised. Blocking people for being pricks is one thing, but lying about it and using the excuse of "blocking for imposing a block exceeding 24 hours" is stupid and crazy. Has everyone gone mad over the [[literal rule]] lately? Whatever happened to the [[mischief rule]]? Our policies exist only because there tends to be a 1:1 correlation between the targets of their remedies and people being dicks. Now people seem to think this correlation can hold, even if we start developing policies with loopholes begging for trolls to demand someone be sanctioned for "violating policy". In the end, process exists as a guide to ferreting out the dicks in the community. It is not meant to be used to find people you can label dicks and then sanction for doing something else entirely.
I should also remind you that blocks are not meant to be punitive. I find the idea of punishing an admin for a mistake by blocking utterly ludicrous. Either the admin made a mistake, is compulsively a mistake-maker/dick acting in good faith (not going to name names...), or is just a plain dick acting in bad faith. The latter should be dealt with by the arbcom or common sense; the two former categories *may* be dealt with in a similar manner, but not always.
John