[WikiEN-l] A BADSITES RfA piling-on

[Gallagher Mark George]

G'day Gabe,

> On 5/30/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Not at all. My point in all this is the one I've made elsewhere in
> > this thread, or maybe there are two threads going about this, namely
> > that I feel uneasy about seeing people promoted who've racked up 
> high> edit counts by using automated or semi-automated scripts, 
> but who have
> > very little article-talk interaction.
> 
> But you do not use the admin tools to interact in article-talk. They
> *are* used for vandalism-fighting and protection. ~~~~

The most important job for an admin is to interact with people on
talk pages.  Rightly or wrongly, admins are perceived to have
 special status on Wikipedia, and their words and actions will often
have more impact on editors than the words and actions of an
ordinary editor might.

Admins[0] can mediate a dispute and prevent the need for blocks
or protections.  They can convince users to stop vandalising or
spamming and become good contributors.  They can calm users
who have been improperly accused of vandalism or spamming.
They can explain our policies and encourage users to become
Clueful.

They can also drive users away from the project.  They can
convince a tester that Wikipedia is not really a very nice place,
and cause him to become a vandal.  They can offend a good
faith user by calling him a "spammer".  They can spread
misinformation about our policies and encourage users to
become Clueless.

Sooner or later, an administrator will interact with other users
on their talkpages.  We need to know: is this bloke an
insensitive jerk?  We do not know this if all that user has done
is revert vandals, post to AIV, and use those silly {{testN}}
templates.

And that's before you even look at the concern SlimVirgin raised.
I had not considered it, but it is true: if we don't know what the
"voice" of an admin candidate "sounds" like, it's much easier for
a Trojan admin to slip through unrecognised.


[0] Any user, most of the time, but admins are more likely to be
     successful, because people pay more attention to us.

-- 
[[User:MarkGallagher]]