[WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.

[David Boothroyd]

Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> writes:
>charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>  >> Why doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect
>>>  contributors?  Why isn't that a high priority?
>>
>>  Why don't we get the cases brought that mean we could do that? We
>>  have a clear policy on civility. Some people do reckon that long
>>  service gives them some rights in how they talk to others. They are
>>  certainly wrong about that, and should note well that ArbCom doesn't
>>  have binding precedents, and may well up the tariff of punishment for
>>  shooting off your mouth. As far as I can see, this causes a large
>>  outcry when it is proposed, but it may well happen.
>
>I back Charles 100% on this.
>
>I am on the ArbCom mailing list, and take an active part in it.  I can
>assure everyone that the ArbCom takes a very dim view of admins behaving
>badly.  The thing is, unless cases are brought, then the ArbCom doesn't
>see it.

The problem is that leads to fairly arbitrary decisions, of which I
was a victim in the summer. In February, blocked wrongly for a
non-existent 3RR, at 1 AM in the middle of an edit that had taken
an hour, I self unblocked. I was a very naughty boy and I was
punished by being blocked again, but everyone seemed to think that
was closed.

Then, months later a completely unrelated issue in which I was
tangentially involved goes to ArbCom and results in this issue being
dragged up again. Now probably it would not have led to my desysopping
had I not regarded the article ban as unacceptable (and successfully
campaigned against it but that's another story), but it does raise
two issues:

1) If admin status is no big deal, is removing it no big deal either?
Arbcom is becoming more willing to remove admin status, of which I
generally approve (despite possibly being a victim of it).

2) If ArbCom is the only body that can remove admin status, excluding
self-administered recalls, then how does it cope with low-level but
persistent admin misbehaviour? ArbCom is much better at dealing with
egregious single incidents.

-- 
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)