[WikiEN-l] De-sysoppings in the year of 2007

[Charlotte Webb]

On 1/21/08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> I tried to file a 3RR report, and I hadn't yet figured out the proper way
> to do diffs. So I posted Contribs for the IP, which essentially pointed
> to the  edits *more* efficiently than diffs. The admin who looked at it
> rejected the complaint because I hadn't followed proper process.

While I do agree that it is a travesty to reject a straightforward
complaint on such dubious grounds, and that it would (as far as I'm
concerned) reflect poorly on the competence of the admin in question,
and while poorly judged admin actions can eventually result in loss of
privileges, I am unaware of any case where an admin has been
desysopped (or otherwise sanctioned) for refusing to act. This is
probably a good thing, if you consider all possible scenarios, most of
which are less clear-cut.

> I asked how to do it. I wasn't told. I was basically told, "Assume good
> faith." Good advice, inappropriate for the situation. There was
> enough information in my complaint that any admin paying attention
> would realize that some action was needed.

Obviously we need more admins paying attention in that venue, if for
no other reason than to keep the current ones sane.

> Many users would simply have gone away. I didn't. I had come to
> understand that any user has the same rights as any administrator,
> but without the buttons. So I did, effectively, what an administrator
> would have done, only less efficiently. I reverted sock edits --
> unless they were useful -- and I didn't consider myself limited by
> 3RR, since blocking is *effectively* more than 3RR, even more
> damaging potentially.

You probably would have done better to drop an informal note on a
random admin's talk page.

> A chair will often rephrase an improper motion from a member to make
> it proper. An abusive chair will say, "You are out of order," and if the
> member protests, will order the member removed from the meeting.

Robert's Rules of Order thankfully do not apply on Wikipedia.

> A little while later, an experienced user, who had originally written
> on my Talk page to warn me about what he thought was contentious
> editing, actually read my response and turned around: he started an
> RfA for me, and asked me to accept. I did not want to be an
> administrator, but I accepted, simply wanting to acknowledge his
> kindness and consideration. It was, of course, snowed out, but what
> was interesting to me was how parochial the process was. The
> administrator who had been so unhelpful in 3RR was a prominent
> objector, "he didn't even know how to present a diff."

Yes, you'll learn most people are assholes.

> Wikipedia is going to need many more administrators as the scale
> increases. It is also going to need additional structure to make
> administrative support more efficient, while preserving the open
> community process that makes Wikipedia so special.

Actually, it's the vast range of articles, and the freely re-usable
nature of (most of) their content which makes Wikipedia so special.
The nitty-gritty specifics of how things actually get done behind the
scenes have been arbitrarily chosen over time and are, in the big
picture, fairly trivial.

My advice to you is not to let the internal parlor games (or anything
else) prevent you from enjoying the project as a whole.

—C.W.