Flame Viper wrote:
I recently was engaged in an encounter with a
particularly troublesome admin. He blocked me and when I attempted to contact him through
e-mail, he made ad hominem personal attacks and generally condescended to me. Now I can
assure you this is the only time an admin has ever personally attacked me, but I have
repeatedly encountered the seemingly glaring obviousness that is admin elitism.
Wikipedia editors, or regular users, usually create and edit articles, sometimes
reverting vandalism or dealing with formal Wikipedia business. And once an editor has
performed a large enough amount of good deeds, they can be nominated for administrator. An
RfA is a harsh process which yields few admins, and this would seem to make them an
exclusive group (which they are indeed). Many people (or at least me) seem to regard
adminship as a sort of trophy rather than advanced tools. And it would be intuitive to
think that. On almost all websites, being made a moderator (or other "elevated user
right status") is a gesture of great respect, trust, and exclusivity. This is because
moderators are the "high lords" of the website, much like mayors or
representatives.
So why shouldn't adminship be a trophy?
Forgive me if I've misread this, but you seem to be simultaneously
complaining about admin elitism and saying there's nothing wrong with it.
Adminship is a set of advanced tools. Some people use it like a trophy.
There isn't an awful lot that can be done about that. And if it really
results from "good deeds" then some people have a very odd definition of
"good deeds".
Don't read too much into the "standards" applied at RfA. All sorts of
arbitrary metrics and irrelevant judgements are made there. More
worryingly, the "standards" are being raised progressively higher, to
the point that nobody who would make a good administrator can be one.
I took a glance at the RfA page today to see what was what. It seems
that two popular reasons to oppose at the moment are "doesn't need the
tools" and "doesn't do enough work on articles".
Just wait... before long people will start applying BOTH those criteria
simultaneously. Then *nobody* will pass.
-Gurch