[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

David Goodman wrote:
> Arb Com at this point seems very willing to encourage arbitrary action
> by administrators, when we really need to be be moving in the opposite
> direction, of requiring greater admin responsibility and care. 
As far as I know, the principle remains that admins are personally 
responsible for their use of the tools, and (in effect) put their 
adminship on the line every time they make discretionary use of those 
buttons. The traditional principle is to give admins wide discretion, 
and hold those who make bad use of that discretion to account. Now this 
is a case where mistakes can be made; those mistakes can also be 
rectified easily enough by another admin. We'll have to see how it all 
works out. If my braglist started turning red, and I could see that a 
particular admin was acting unreasonably, I would discuss the matter 
(this is also traditional).

So I don't really agree here: "arbitrary" can be the pejorative of 
"discretionary", but we'll have to see to what extent this is for the 
worse. (I'm babysitting two troublesome BLPs myself, and have failed to 
get deletions, one via AfD and one via PROD, quite recently. Both have 
serious problems with reliable sources, and real world enmities. It had 
not occurrred to me to delete them out of hand. The post I'm replying to 
is a bit WP:BEANS, therefore.)

Charles