[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[Parker Peters]

On 2/22/07, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>

I don't view "every" administrative action as resulting from a malicious
abuse of power, Rob, and I'll thank you to take that little flame back right
now and actually read my statements. Particularly the previous email I just
sent.

> 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.


Lol. An abusive administrator only has to indefinitely block a user, lock
their talkpage, and then start "reverting sockpuppets" and they'll be
defended to the hilt by the other abusive administrators. And any case
brought before Arbcom will either be laughed out for "not following process"
or otherwise they'll find a technicality by which to let the abusive admin
get away with it.

> 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.
>

If they're mad, they're mad. PEOPLE VENT WHEN THEY ARE MAD.

If you can't understand this, you've got serious socioaffective issues to
get through, and those alone probably should disqualify you from adminship.

Is a talk page "giving a troll a soapbox"? It's not part of the article
space, and the only people likely to go there are admins reviewing the
block, or people responding to something they said elsewhere.

Instead of instantly extending the block and being vindictive, an admin who
sees something like that ought to post a message understanding that they are
angry, but INVITING THEM TO TAKE IT BACK THEMSELVES.

You know, give someone a chance to calm down and then take back something
said in the heat of anger.

Instead, the admins on wikipedia see it as a chance to kick someone with
steel-toed boots while they're lying on the sidewalk bleeding, and get some
vicious thrill out of doing so, because then they can put another notch on
their blocked-users cane.

I see this garbage written all the time about how "admins have a tough job"
and have to be "cut some slack", have to be "given some time to respond",
yadda yadda yadda. Well, regular users deserve the same consideration,
deserve the time to take back something they said when angry, deserve to be
treated respectfully by the administrators. And that just doesn't happen on
Wikipedia. Admins are free to get as mad as they want, but if someone an
admin's mistreating doesn't instantly calm down and start kissing ass, the
whole admin community decides it's free playtime to engage in a collective
beating.

Parker


-- 
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com