Ray Saintonge wrote:
John Lee wrote:
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.
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.
24 hours is enough to cover off any possible urgency to an admin's unilateral action. It gives others time to review the block, and extend it if that's appropriate, perhaps based on a recommendation by that admin. Admins should know the rules better than a newbie, so why shouldn't those rules be applied equally? I don't see where lying enters into the picture at all.
So, if someone finds an open proxy/Willy on Wheels/communism vandal, they're only allowed to block for 24 hours? At which point /another/ admin must waste precious time re-doing the first action? That's about as silly as making admins tag speedies instead of just shooting them on sight.
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.
The mischief that such a rule would address is admins who are being dicks by imposing excessive blocks before another admin even has a chance to look at the problem being addressed.
So, you'd rather punish 500+ good admins for the sake of a few bad ones?
I should also remind you that blocks are not meant to be punitive.
Absolutely, and that's exactly the problem that is being addressed.
I'm not sure I follow you.
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.
Common sense tells me that this would get the message across to rogue admins much more quickly than a lot of wangling at arbcom.
And then pretty soon admins will be afraid to use the admin tools at all, for fear of being dragged off to Arbcom.