[WikiEN-l] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting

[Emily Monroe]

> People who are causing a problem but have "aware friends" - people  
> who know them and know AN and ANI and policy ok - rarely get driven  
> off. Their friends post an ANI thread if they're blocked  
> excessively, or go to the admin and advocate moderation, or go to  
> another administrator and advocate moderation, etc.

I think that would happen to me if there was any attempt at all to  
drive me off. More than likely, since I talk about my disabilities on  
my user page, there would be an alert on the talkpage of WikiProject  
Accessibility at some point if it gets bad enough, and therefore the  
people who want me to get driven off would probably get a bigger  
subset of users who want THEM to get driven off instead.

> I almost wish we had an admin action review board, whose job it was  
> to say just quickly look at some fraction (10%?  1%?) of all admin  
> actions and see if they're documented, justified, reasonable etc and  
> give the admins feedback, request more writeup, ask for  
> reconsideration etc.

Good idea. Maybe 10% for the first three months this is tried out, and  
then after that, 10% for the first three months of adminship and 1%  
for every other admin? Maybe there should be a special "recent  
changes" page for administrative actions?

Emily
On Sep 18, 2009, at 5:20 PM, George Herbert wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Emily Monroe <bluecaliocean at me.com>  
> wrote:
>>> Firstly, that powers to ban indefinitely have been devolved (sort
>>> of) from ArbCom to the admins as a group (the qualification being
>>> that ArbCom cannot ban anyone indefinitely).
>> First off, thanks for the history lesson. No, I'm not being  
>> sarcastic,
>> really, thanks.
>>
>>> In short, the checks and balances can fail where people are
>>> unscrupulous and/or are too vested in getting rid of a particular
>>> editor who is not a classic vandal but something else.
>> Good point. This actually interferes with accessibility to people who
>> are disabled (usually cognitively or emotional disabled) or from
>> different, perhaps non-English cultures. Both of these can interfere
>> with competence required to edit Wikipedia, and also with being
>> accepted in Wikipedia.
>
> To add to this -
>
> People who are causing a problem but have "aware friends" - people who
> know them and know AN and ANI and policy ok - rarely get driven off.
> Their friends post an ANI thread if they're blocked excessively, or go
> to the admin and advocate moderation, or go to another administrator
> and advocate moderation, etc.
>
> Once one becomes known to someone in that set of people, actually
> "driving someone away from Wikipedia" becomes exponentially more
> difficult, if anyone supports the problem case at all.
>
> What we are missing is that the vast majority of cases of someone
> getting run off aren't visible to anyone who's active or experienced
> enough.  Nobody is generally following non-admins around looking for
> them being self-appointed gatekeepers who are behaving abusively, and
> there's little QA / review for admin actions practically except where
> the "aware friends" issue comes into play.
>
> I almost wish we had an admin action review board, whose job it was to
> say just quickly look at some fraction (10%?  1%?) of all admin
> actions and see if they're documented, justified, reasonable etc and
> give the admins feedback, request more writeup, ask for
> reconsideration etc.
>
> Key question - in terms of hostility, do people think that hostility
> to new editors is more from admins, more from self appointed
> gatekeepers, more from normal users interacting hostiley in a small
> article space?
>
>
> -- 
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
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