[Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things)

[Svavar Kjarrval]

Hi.

There's also the viewpoint that a person being fired could go overboard
and do irreparable harm to the site and the public's view of the WMF.
There's of course the possibility to revert the changes on the website,
since it is a wiki, but very hard to do on the public opinion, like if a
soon-to-be-fired admin changed a protected page to something which would
damage public relations of the WMF. That's why many companies don't want
fired employees to continue working for them after the employee
termination has been announced.

Of course a counter-argument would be that a majority of those admins
wouldn't do something like that and I don't doubt their good intentions.
But the WMF wouldn't be aware of which admin would go on an unwarranted
rampage, if any, and who wouldn't. The safest approach would be to take
away their admin privileges without a prior announcement. I do agree,
though, that some kind of public announcement should have been made
after the fact regarding this policy change and the former admins
thanked for their contributions.

With regards,
Svavar Kjarrval

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