[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[Rob]

On 2/21/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ideally? I'd like for administrators not to do the things that cause
> problems. But that's not likely.

Ideally, you would stop viewing every administrative action as
resulting from a malicious abuse of power.  But that's not likely.

> If Adminship were not a big deal, then losing adminship would not be a big
> deal. However, the bar for losing adminship is nearly impossibly high.
> If Adminship were not a big deal, the ever-growing requirements for it would
> not be ever-growing. But they are.

I agree that we should probably treat adminship as a more of a big
deal.  But I don't worry about "abusive" admins, not to protect my own
"power" ("you'll have to pry my mop from my cold dead fingers!") but
because we already have ArbCom to deal with the worst offenders.
Given that I don't see nearly every admin as malicious and abusive, I
think that this is a sufficent remedy. No malicious admin can prevent
an abused user from bringing a matter before them.

> here is the biggest problem with wikipedia today. Administrators are free to
> do whatever they want

This is, of course, news to me.  Had I been aware of this, I would
have blocked the other users I've been in conflicts with instead of
dealing with tedious ArbCom proceedings.

> (A) "Scarlet Letter" abuse. Users clearing/archiving warnings that they've
> already seen, or clearing off bad-faith tagging such as "suspected
> sockpuppet" tags or "warning" templates placed by abusive users trying to
> harass another user (usually claiming that a difference of opinion on a
> content matter is "vandalism), are routinely targeted by administrators. The
> goal of both abusive users and administrators is to rile the editor up. This
> is deliberate provocation, completely incivil, and all too common - yet it
> is regularly given a free pass by the administrator community.

If I put a warning tag on a user talk page, it's because that user has
done something meriting a warning, not to "rile the editor up".  They
should not be removed because they serve as a notice to other
administrators that this user has a history of negative behavior.

Tags placed in bad faith can be dealt with like any other abuse.

> Administrators need to understand: BLOCKING SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET THEM
> MAD. It is an action that is agressive and adversarial. No matter what the
> temperament of the user, they will feel angry over this. They are likely to
> leave a message that lashes out in anger at whoever did it, PARTICULARLY if
> it is not justified within the rules or they already feel picked-upon by the
> admin or his/her cronies.

The fact that a block gets someone MAD does not justify further abuse,
and the talk page should not be used to give a troll a soapbox to
attack people.