On 6/18/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/18/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/18/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
As I see it, what we need to start doing as a minimum, is stop promoting people who've spent a few months hitting revert every few seconds. That kind of profile tells us nothing about the person, and it's too easy to build up several accounts that way. And we need to ditch the "it's no big deal" thing. It's not for us to decide that it's "no big deal" when hurtful material deleted from Wikipedia ends up on Wikitruth, just because the material's not about us. The existence of Wikitruth is a direct consequence of the "it's no big deal" mentality.
I think it's far too late for that, and that the only solution is to embrace the "it's no big deal" mentality. Any information which is a [[clear and present danger]] should be oversighted and taken away from the view of even the admins.
Then you have to trust the oversighters.
Sure, but you don't need as many oversighters as you do admins. The vast majority of deletions and undeletions aren't of materials that pose a clear and present danger. Plus deletion isn't the only task which requires adminship to perform.
Look, Wikitruth was able to evolve because we regarded adminship as "no big deal" while giving admins access to deleted material. That meant we regarded undeleting deleted material as "no big deal." When it started happening, we realized that in fact it was biggish, and we developed oversight, which is restricted to fewer people than adminship.
But the people with oversight are selected by the community (most of whom are unknown) from the set of current admins (most of whom are unknown). So in fact, nothing has changed.
All that has to happen now is for Wikitruth (or anyone else interested in causing trouble) to get someone on the ArbCom so they have access to oversight. It's only a matter of time before it happens.
This is the rule of evolution. Niches will be filled. The only way to thwart it is to anticipate and fill the niches ahead of time. We seem to be very bad at doing that.
What I am arguing here and elsewhere is that one of the very obvious niches is that people can get to be admins by hitting revert for a few months. I think we need to put a stop to that.
I think if you do put a stop to that, Wikipedia won't have enough admins to handle the tasks at hand.