[WikiEN-l] Reversing admin actions, was: ArbCom Legislation

[Carl Beckhorn]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 11:47:40AM -0400, David Goodman wrote:
> This is a proposal that will encourage administrators to not act
> responsibly, by destroying the principle that an administrative action
> can be overturned by another administrator. 

Independent of BLP issues, that principle has always been a problem. 
Permitting any admin to unilaterally reverse any other admin's action 
harms the collegiality of the admin corps and undermines the individual 
responsibility of administrators.  When it is clear that the original
admin would not agree to having their actions reversed, discussion is in 
order, not unilateral reversal. 

> Any one of the 1100 or so active administrators can delete material, tc. etc. 
> and no one can overturn it without a definite community consensus. any one 
> of the 1100 can be as arbitrary as he pleases, and get away with it unless the 
> community is willing to actually actively oppose him. 

Yes, that's how it should be.  Unless there is agreement that an admin
action is actually wrong, no other admin should reverse it simply because
the other admin individually doesn't like it. This is simply a matter of 
respect for the original acting administrator, that they don't take their 
actions lightly and we don't reverse them lightly.

Adminship is "not a big deal" because any admin action can be undone 
- admins can't permanently change things. We elect administrators for 
their judgment, however, and we need to give them sufficient ability to
exercise that judgment, provided they are willing to explain and discuss
their reasoning to those who disagree. The goal of such discussion is 
to reach compromise on the matter, something that a unilateral reversal 
makes difficult by adding conflict to the situation. 

 - Carl