[WikiEN-l] IAR

[stevertigo]

Ian Woollard wrote:
> To be perfectly honest, I think the potential problems of 'wishes of
> admin' are worse than any problems of wikilawyering.
> I've never been ganged up on by a bunch of policies, but I've
> certainly been ganged up on by a bunch of admins.

Well yeah. And the fact is that we do need to sort out what adminship
means again. That meaning has fallen a bit into dissonance, by my
reckoning. The fact that there is a page for admins stating that they
are "willing to make tough blocks" comes out of several basic
misconceptions - that 1) that decisions about who and when to block
are optional and admin discretion 3) that blocks can be "tough" is
entirely ambiguous -- either it mean that they are blocking someone
they probably shouldn't, or they are just too scared to block someone
they should. Either way, its a pansycrat notion to declare oneself
"tough," which, come to think of it, is probably the actual purpose of
that page.

Ian Woollard wrote:
> Indeed, it was the policies that stopped them. And that's what
> concerns me about the attacks on wikilawyering. Rules are intended to
> *avoid* problems.

The caution to 'treat rules with care and discretion' is a valid one,
and maybe that's what IAR means, and is usually interpreted that way.
I would prefer we rename IAR to something like UGJ ("use good
judgment") and state upfront that 'this "policy" was formerly called
"ignore all rules -- one our very first "policies" that helped define
Wikipedia."

-Stevertigo
TRWBL