[WikiEN-l] Civility poll results

[George Herbert]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 8:35 AM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/8/12 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>:
>
>> You'd have thought that would be the argument: Wikipedia is a working
>> environment, and those who cause the environment to deteriorate are on a
>> warning. That's where things had got to a couple of years ago, and no
>> progress has been made since then. In fact there are brownie points to
>> be had in some cases by people who completely disregard all of that.
>
>
> Indeed. Enforcement would require the Arbitration Committee to
> actually be interested.

Actually, it requires the arbitration committee to be either
interested and active, or benignly neglecting the topic in the sense
of "won't overly aggressively pursue a case against civility-enforcing
admins if one is brought".

I believe we're functionally in the latter.

I have found that in the case of admins behaving badly, the typical
problem is more the backlash against the admin cabal getting in the
way of focusing on the actual abuse, than admins or arbcom or anyone
else standing in the way of warnings or sanctions against the
initially offending admins.

THAT, now, that's a problem I'd love some ideas and help on.  How does
one deal with the rampaging mob that rises after a (legitimate) admin
abuse incident, without encouraging the "admins banding together to
protect each other" meme and feelings?  Reasoning with them is not
working.  Blocking them seems to be counterproductive to the long term
trust of admins by the community writ large.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com