[WikiEN-l] for years been promoting admins who go with the flow rather than challenge low level bad behavior by admins and long standing users

[FT2]

But I think the key norms are universally accepted.

Take "No personal attacks" and "civility" as two examples. Differences may
exist whether a particular matter is or isnt an attack or uncivil, whether
to act or ignore it, and a number of long-term users and admins have at
times posted in a way that clearly breaches those and do not seem to hold
them in high regard judging by their conduct. Despite all the breaches of
these, in 10 years I have yet to see any communal proposal gain any kind of
traction to agree that incivility is okay, that rudeness or attacks are
sometimes allowed, or that vested/long term users should be held to a
different standard than anyone else. Nothing to that effect has ever been
proposed seriously nor gained traction. Why? Because we don't believe in
those things. The belief in a common high standard is universal, even if
some users don't act up to it.

What we have trouble with is people who _know_ these are universal norms but
still seem to think "who cares" about them. The first problem is basic
attitudes - people who know what is agreed but flagrantly ignore it when it
suits them, or selectively apply it.

The second problem beyond that is the problem of "fiddling while Rome
burns". While we potter round discussing if, perhaps, such and such an
incident was uncivil or BITEy, and whether anyone feels consensus exists to
act, the user affected may be discouraged and leave. That's fine, we want to
go careful and not be over extreme. Again we count on users to act to a high
standard and enact the norms of the community. if they do - and the norms
are pretty uncontroversial - then these issues would largely be resolved by
the involved person themself.

Given that the community has fairly stable long term and universal norms
(although the detail and edge cases are very uncertain) what we need is
admins who at least agree and follow those norms or try to, to a high
standard. This would mean taking care in grey cases to avoid risk of upset
even if it's an "edge case"... take care to be visibly fair and neutral even
if they could argue they aren't involved, take care to explain and apologize
if needed rather than assume or act rough.

This is what I mean by needing users to have the right basic attitude. the
rest then overlays that.

FT2





On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>wrote:

>  This all sounds good, and comes off as straightforward -- and it would
> be,
> if we lived in a world where "Wiki norms" were clearly defined and
> universally accepted. The problem there is that there is a great deal of
> disagreement about what those norms should be, as well as what should be
> done in any particular case, and disagreement often leads to exactly the
> kind of personal judgments about character and fitness to be an admin in
> general that you make here: "These are the expected standards [chosen by me
> - who else?], we need people who exemplify them, and if you don't either
> because you can't or don't want to, you're not fit to be an admin and
> should
> be desysopped." That is profoundly alienating in practice, and you cannot
> win people over to your point of view when your approach is that
> authoritarian -- and it is the "norm" on AN/I.
>
> If I had to read minds, I'd guess that this is exactly what Jimbo was
> trying
> to avoid when he said adminiship is not a big deal. Obviously, it has
> become
> a big deal, but not for any good reason, and you're going to continue to
> lose valuable contributors as long as this continues to be the standard.
>
> - causa sui
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