[WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

[Rich Holton]

geni wrote:
> On 2/11/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>> As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that
>> a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a
>> regular editor. Is that right?
>>
> 
> I can think of attack lines that would force a rollback the database
> or weeks of cleanup.
> 
> They do exist.
> 
>> As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those
>> things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you
>> rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like
>> a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the
>> beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.
>>
>> If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with
>> Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the
>> solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to
>> evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being
>> under the benefit of X?
>>
>> William
> 
> You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block
> and can hit every page one wikipedia? Admins are to a large extent our
> solution to problem editing. The same solution won't work for problem
> admins. You are free to suggest ways of dealing with that but remeber
> they need to be >99.98% effective.
> 

If there are things that admins can do NOW that could cause us to have 
to roll-back two weeks, then there is an immediate problem NOW, not 
connected to any change in our selection procedure for admins. No 
selection procedure will be 99.98% effective, and the damage of 
attempting to achieve that is just too great.

Sleepers are certainly possible through the current RfA process. You 
don't think someone determined enough to want to damage Wikipedia in the 
way you're describing couldn't jump through the RfA hoops?

So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how 
to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so 
such damage is impossible?

-Rich