[Foundation-l] Growth vs. maintenance

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 12:51 AM,  <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> How about this one.  Every arrest (read block for 24 hours or longer) must be approved by an "Admin Supervisor" (let's just call it for now).  That Admin Supervisor, must use a Real Name and be Verified.
>
> That by itself, would greatly cut down on the policing actions of those who are, shall we say, less scrupulous than others.  Of course we'd still need a way to ensure that the Verified admin, is not the same person as a sock running the blocks, and is impartial, unbiased and uninvolved.
>
> No block may be longer than 24 hours without the approval of the community-at-large, no matter what the infraction.  Otherwise, we need a system of judges and juries who are *not* the same persons as the police and prison wardens.  What we have now, essentially allows a single person, or a single group of "friends" to be police, prosecutor, jury, judge, bailiff, and warden.  That in my opinion is what drives away a significant number of good prospects and it should stop.

We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours
minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get
the whole wiki in flames for a week. You are handcuffing one problem
group here (out-of-control admins), but giving free reign to another
problem group (people using Wikipedia as a means for doing politics,
and considering every admin action admin abuse) at the same time. As a
member of the community-at-large I don't _want_ to have to check the
correctness of each and every block. That's why I favored having an
arbcom. Its workings are not ideal, but at least it finally brought a
few of the greatest troubleseekers to order by saying that they _can_
be blocked if they continue their disruptive actions. It's hard enough
to have to withstand the criticism to each and every block as it is -
it would be much worse if we were to invite that criticism as well.


-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com