[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority

[Toby Bartels]

Larry Sanger wrote in part:

>(1) In the absence of people who are generally respected as in authority,
>"rebellion" will continuously break out.

One can only have rebellion if there is someone to rebel *against*.
Rebellion continuously breaks out, then, in the *presence* of people
that claim to be in authority but are however not resepected as such.
So there are two ways to reduce rebellion: increase the respect,
or reduce the claim.

>Doesn't [the moderator system] mean an even more baroque power structure?
>(No, I'd tentatively suggest we strip all erstwhile "sysops" of their
>too-easily-abusable rights, in favor of this system.)

Have administrators ("sysops") been abusing their power?
While some have made *mistakes*, I haven't seen any abuse.
And the mistakes are correctable, since there are many administrators
(more than just 3 at any given time!).
Even abuse should be correctable in this way.

>I am not going to argue for this or elaborate it anytime soon.  (I'd like
>to get the Wikipedia peer review project going first:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/sifter-l )  But I would lot to
>hear nonfallacious, nonvacuous, non-potshot-ish comments about it, if
>anyone has any.

Of course, you *have* been arguing for it since this post ^_^.
But I won't hold you to a promise that was probably unwise to begin with
(much as I don't hold politicians to promises to retire after 2 terms).
You should be able to defend your position against unreasonable attacks
(or even those that you think to be unreasonable).


-- Toby