On 5/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Well, we may just have to have a secret cabal, and deal with it. Openness is exposing people to too much risk.
It's almost but not quite a truism: being open and transparent is more likely to make people mad at you than being secretive and doing things behind closed doors. That is the reason, not maliciousness, cabals typically form in the real world. I think the level of openness and transparency in Wikipedia (and I would distinguish it from Wikimedia, the organization) is exemplary and should be retained. However, given the ever increasing amount of outside harassment, I think it would be fair to add a note to [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship]] that becoming an admin may expose you to such harassment, regardless of your actions.
There are plenty of people, myself included, who don't mind dealing with that kind of thing. I've been called a "child molester" on WR, am a proud member of the "Hive Mind", have been accused repeatedly in lengthy rants off-Wikimedia of being a "corrupt admin", etc. It goes with the territory. I'm a freelancer without family, so there are very few ways in which a person on the Internet can harm me -- and my feelings don't get hurt if someone whose opinion doesn't matter to me harasses me.
Erik