On 5/29/06 9:55 AM, "Conrad Dunkerson"
<conrad.dunkerson(a)worldnet.att.net>
wrote:
To put it another way... if something would have been
so disruptive as to
prevent a person from ever being appointed an admin in the first place why
is it suddenly ok AFTER they become an admin?
One does not have to be "disruptive" to be prevented from becoming an admin.
All it takes is to make any decision on-wiki which in any way creates
controversy, and it then becomes ridiculously easy to votestack the RFA with
opposition.
Admins are routinely called upon to make precisely the sort of controversial
decisions on-wiki that will inevitably leave someone pissed off. Deletion
and verifiable/reliable sourcing questions quite often result in the people
making the choices being called censors, Nazis and all sorts of vulgar
names.
Admins are appointed by the community... and when the
police lose the
support of the people they are policing they generally get replaced... or
the neighborhood goes to hell.
Ah, no. One cannot fire a police officer merely because he "loses the
support of the people," whatever that means. One must go before a review
board, such as a Police Commission, and demonstrate that the officer has
committed wrongful acts - abuse of power, misuse of force, etc. Similarly,
we have a procedure to allow review of administrative decisions through the
Arbitration Committee. Several admins have lost their sysop bit due to
ArbCom actions, so this is not some sort of paper tiger but a real check on
administrative abuses.
I agree that admins cannot and should not be seen as untouchable and perhaps
we need to make clearer to people who feel wronged that they do have
recourse to appeal. At the same time, to expect the people that we call upon
to make controversial and contentious decisions about the encyclopedia to be
somehow subject to the arbitrary whim of the "support of the people" at any
time is the height of insanity.
-Travis Mason-Bushman