[WikiEN-l] Your comments on wikien-l regarding adminship

[Timwi]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 
> Basically, you are suggest removing the concept of administrators
> entirely, giving everyone access to all the tools, and then
> introducing a new kind of block that take some tools away from users
> that do something wrong.

Essentially yes, except that I'm not entirely opposed to the idea that 
the admin tools would not be available immediately (just like the 
"autoconfirmed" state is not granted immediately). My only gripe is that 
the process is not automatic, i.e. adminship is decided by people, and 
as a result people are able to (and do) put ridiculous criteria in 
place, thereby actively stopping most people from ever getting a chance 
to play with the tools.

> The system we use for editing pages (the one you think should be
> extended to admin powers) results in an enormous amount of vandalism,
> which takes a lot of effort to clean up.

I don't deny that some changes to the software would be nice that would 
make reverting a user's actions easier. Until we have those, I would 
agree that admin vandalism is difficult to clean up, but it's not an 
insurmountable problem. Remember we used to have huge problems with 
page-move vandalism because it was difficult to revert? So now we have 
new features to revert it more easily. The same will happen to reverting 
admin actions or mass actions if we need it badly enough.

> Using the same system with admin powers would result in an equal
> amount of admin vandalism, which takes more effort to clean up, does
> more damage, and is not at all worth it.

You have not provided any evidence for that.

> Also, if adminship is opened up that much, we would have to introduce
> a new level of admin anyway to handle blocks (which would actually be
> desysopings, as everyone would be able to unblock themselves),

There are two flaws in your logic. First, if your adminship bit is 
removed, how do you "unblock" yourself? So no, you don't need an extra 
"super-admin" level to do de-sysoppings, you can just allow admins to do 
it. Second, your argument would equally apply to page deletion (you can 
publish any crap because if anyone deletes it you can just undelete 
it!), and yet admins can all delete *and* undelete and it still works 
(because they largely follow a certain policy).

Timwi