[WikiEN-l] Policy is done by administrators without consultation!

[Luna]

On 5/31/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Wow, being an admin is even more of a big deal than I thought.  For some
> lame reason I though ordinary peons, er editors, had some say in
> policy.  I
> stand corrected.  (Not really, I didn't think editors had any say in
> policy
> unless and until they became admins, but it's nice to have it so obviously
> pointed out now and then when anyone who says that being an admin is a big
> deal just gets slammed.)
>
> KP


I can think of a lot of useful practices and policies that started in just
this fashion. Take the creation and quick spread of templates like
{{anonblock}} and {{schoolblock}}, or the general extension of blocks on
persistent problem schools, to save our counter-vandalism resources. Take
the trouble of sorting out which cases should be handled by the admin
noticeboards, and which by Arbcom. Take the practice of courtesy blanking
pages to avoid nasty phone calls from laywers representing clients offended
at what we said at some AfD page. Take the handling of hundreds of
particularly complicated OTRS tickets by dedicated volunteers. Take the
gradual switch over to more standardized user warning templates.

Many things we now consider common, both in general practice and in policy,
originated with one person making what seemed to be a common sense call.
Often enough, this person is an admin, but that need not be the case --
there are many issues which can be resolved without the use of admin
priviledges, and for those that do need an admin to carry out the final
action (protection, blocking, deletion), unreasonable responses can and
should be discussed by the community. When we find a situation where people
can't agree, we should strive for compromise while working towards the best
encyclopedia we can.

As a project, we're told to *be bold* as we work. It's true that a good
number of issues need discussion, sometimes an awful lot of it. But we
should never mistake that for the belief that *all* actions require prior
discussion. That philosophy doesn't scale well, on a site with thousands of
active users, all actively working, collaborating, and making decisions.
Rather than paralyzing ourselves with excessive bureaucracy, it seems better
to direct those efforts to the areas where the payoff is best -- where we
have or expect disagreements of substance which can reasonably be resolved
or addressed.

General practice can shift, over time, based on hundreds or thousands of
actions by our thousands of users. "General practice," of course, would seem
to refer to the most common response to a given situation. If policy doesn't
describe the general practice, what *does* it describe?

Not picking out anybody in particular, much less trying to put words in
anyone's mouth, here. I'm not even especially involved in this particular
discussion. But this came to mind, and seemed worth saying, so there you
are.

Thanks for reading,
-Luna