[WikiEN-l] Admins and elitism

[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:24:10 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>You're not wrong, and I'm of the opinion that we are in a situation where
>we have an elite class already.  The problem is twofold:

Whoa there.  Wikipedia is reputation based.  We have editors who have
a firm place in whatever elite one might infer we have, by dint of
their contributions, but who are not and never will be admins.  And
that's before we get to Giano... 

>1) Adminship *is* a big deal, whether we want it to be or not.  We trust
>them to do too much, expect a lot of them, and it's very difficult to
>remove or sanction an administrator who acts inappropriately.

Ah, but...

No, it's not a big deal.  The RFA queue always includes a steady
stream of people who get through on the nod.  Perversely, the longer
you've been around, and the higher your profile, the harder this gets.
The threshold (leaving aside the perennial demands for shrubberies) is
making a decent number of edits without making waves.  Mind you, I
would not be sysopped if I went for RFA now, but maybe it's *good*
that these days we don't want bad-tempered argumentative opinionated
old farts to be admins.

No, it's not hard to sanction an admin.  All they have to do is
something stupid.  The big problem is that there is a reluctance to
bring those sanctions before the community.  We seem to have nothing
between "ZOMG! He deleted my article on my band I just formed last
week!  Rouge admin abuse!" and total meltdown.  The main problem, I
think, is that there is no calm atmosphere for discussing the
performance of admins (and that brings us back to the thread earlier
about admin meltdown).  I seriously do believe there should be a place
for admins to discuss their actions and quietly admonish each other
for being bloody silly *without* making it a three-ring circus.  And
yes, that goes against the Wiki ethos, but the problem with openness
is that there are a lot of POV-pushers out there just looking for
chinks in the armour.  I'd hope the need for privacy would be
temporary, but I perceive it as being there.  I also believe that
trusted non-admins should be allowed to take part.  Just not
any-old-editor coming to take the next pot-shot at whatever admin
stepped in to stop their particular content dispute. 

Then again, in other ways, it is a big deal - but only when you don't
get it or when it's taken away.  Funny business.  We've lost a  number
of decent people because they found being voted down at RFA too
bruising.  So being promoted sysop is the only thing that makes the
process of an RFA bearable.

>2) More importantly, adminship is viewed as a reward rather than a
>responsibility, thus creating a protector group of admins.  There's one
>recently-promoted admin in particular who embodies this concept, but there
>are many like him.

You might want to run that past a few admins and see how loudly they
laugh.  Seriously, anyone who wants to be an admin should try it for a
couple of weeks and see how they like it.

Some people get the God complex on promotion, but I don't see it
lasting long.  Everyone grows up.

Guy (JzG)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG