[WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

[Oskar Sigvardsson]

On 3/6/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> In the computer world,  "System Administrators" and "System Operators"
> (sysops) are those with special privileges on a multi user system.
> They can do things that ordinary users can't do. Read/delete any file,
> restrict user accounts. On some Unix type systems, they are members of
> the "wheel" group thus the term "wheel war". Wikipedia is a multi user
> system and Admins/sysops on Wikipedia have some of these same powers.
> They can delete any article, restrict any user. They need these powers
> and they are a necessary evil.
>
> If a user tries to edit a page and can't because he is blocked,
> whether he deserved it or not it's an insult to his intelligence to
> tell him it was "cleanup" by a "janitor". I came to this list a few
> years ago because I was blocked for a month, my whole ISP was because
> of one vandal with an army of sock puppets and a slew of throwaway ISP
> accounts. You are not going to get me to believe that drastic action
> was done by the guy who mops the server room floor.
>
> I say continue to call them what they are, "Administrators".

This is exactly right, they are administrators in all of the classical
computer science senses of the word. But I would also argue that they
are in a way "part of the administration", since they are trusted with
making some tough administrative decisions, such as AfDs. I don't
think that the word "administrator" implies any sort of extra
editorial power though. since they only administer (wow, I've bent
that word backwards and forwards for this post, huh) the site. Plus,
"janitors" would sound really stupid, especially in newspaper
articles.

--Oskar