[WikiEN-l] So, has the need for consensus in wikipedia been eliminated?

[Peter Ansell]

On 10/01/2008, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> To outline my strong objections to this in one place:
>
> In itself:
> Negatively: no big deal:
> Vandals vandalise a little faster? but soon blocked anyway.
> Edit warriors can go faster? but warriors will war regardless.
>
> Positively: maybe, at best, a little help
> Lots of people want it to be faster on the draw. However, since in most
> cases of spotted vandalism six people fight to roll it back, the benefit
> to the project is negligible. There is no backlog of reverted, yet
> identified, vandalism. The only conceivable benefit is that it keeps the
> plebs happy by equalising their 'success' rate in the revert race with
> admins - I suppose that's not a bad thing, but little to be excited by.
>
> in term of process - admins granting it
> Negatively:
> *Increased instruction creed and policy pages
> *Time spend handling requests
> *New process - we already have a 'requests' page
> *Process for removing it will be required
> *Process for handling appeals against admin decisions will be required
> *Disgruntled users who are refused it
> *Disgruntled users who object to x being granted it
> *Conflicts between admins - wheel wars - ANI reports and arbitrations

If a user abuses the privilege remove it or block them under the
current process. It is easy to get because it is also easy to remove.
Having a huge removal and appeals process just for this is completely
unnecessary due to its trivial nature. Wikipedia can be completely
transparent and still not have an excessively large appeals tribunal
for every decision. Having admins insist on spending large amounts of
time interacting with those people who will inevitably continuously
complain about small matters such as this may be a bigger issue.

If a wheel war happens then deal with it the same way all other wheel
wars are dealt with. The worst in this case would be a grant or not
grant, how is that harming anything?

It is a very small amount of time handling requests when you think
about it. If you don't want to be involved in this then that is your
choice though.

> People say, "how is this difference from block/unblock"? It isn't. But
> block/unblock disputes are already incredibly disruptive and clog up ANI
> and arbcom - and we agree blocking is useful.

Some people think vandalism bots combined with generally available
rollback procedures can make most blocking redundant...

All of your claims however could be put against any process on wikipedia.

> Positively: can't think of any
>
>
> Conclusion
> Very minor positives, huge negatives. Combine that with the dreadful
> disruptive and manipulative way this was rammed through and this is a
> considerable detriment to the project.

How is it practically a detriment to the project? If a group of admins
object to others having partial powers which only they had in the past
then they are entitled to put up a fuss but that doesn't mean the
change was responsible. The admins putting up the fuss have to be in
part responsible for their actions.

> And I have ignored the argument that scripts make it redundant anyway
> for those who really want it.

Server loads decrease with the inbuilt php method as opposed to the
javascript multi-GET/POST method. That definitely isn't to the
detriment of the project if there are a non-trivial number of
non-admins helping with vandalism related issues. Given the take up so
far I suspect there are quite a few non-admins who don't want to
bother dealing with block/unblock/delete/undelete issues but do want
to be able to practically help out on articles more efficiently. You
can't easily ignore its popularity so far in non-bureaucratic circles.
The masses can only speak with their feet in a heirarchical society.
If they can get it anyway why not at least reduce the server load for
the large number who will have used the old slow resource hungry
method anyway? Combined with people who will now spend less time
patrolling their watchlists and more time making edits to articles I
definitely see it as a good thing.

Peter