At 10:34 AM 5/31/2010, AGK wrote: >On 31 May 2010, at 00:39, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> >wrote: > > (1) most legitimate admin work is not controversial to any degree > > that would affect an admin's status in the active community, which is > > what counts. Blocking an IP vandal isn't going to harm that, and it > > will only help it. If the IP vandal then registers an account and > > goes after the admin, sure. But, then, as to proposals that those who > > supported an RfA might retract that, or cause adminiship to be > > suspended pending examination, are concerned, this would be useless. > > Legitimate administration is indeed like janitorial work. Can we > > imagine a good janitor getting into an argument with other employees > > of a school or office as to what should be thrown away? Adminship was > > supposed to be "no big deal." When an administrator is asserting > > personal power over an editor, something has gone awry. Police have > > no power to punish, they may arrest on probable cause, but they then > > step aside and let the community make decisions on sanctions or > > release. A police officer who has become personally involved and > > insists on pursuing an individual might well be removed or ordered to > > work in other areas. > >Thomas may be referring to any administrator work that is at all not >purely technical in nature. This work usually involves policing the >conduct of established accounts (and often long-term editors) in >contentious subject areas, and will almost always cause the >administrator to gain enemies.
Sure. However, administrators are, indeed, police and not judges. But, too often, they become judges and make conclusions about sanctions. An adminstrative sanction is, by design, temporary and reversible, and "policing" a particular user should never become a crusade for an administrator; if it does, and if it's allowed, then adminship has become the "big deal," giving the admin power over the user. A police officer may arrest me, but cannot keep me in jail (the equivalent of an indef block with opposed unblock). Administrators who do the police work well will, in fact, not generally "gain enemies," that will be the exception rather than the rule. But AGK is an administrator, and if he expects that "police" work will "almost always cause the administrator to gain enemies," I rather suspect that some of his work is less than optimal. If I become an enemy of an administrator if the admin blocked me with anything like good faith, because I was engaged in bad conduct at an article, or other inappropriate conduct, I've got a problem, and I will surely have this problem with other administrators as well. One of the biggest errors I've seen on the WikiMedia wikis is admins to decline unblock requests when they also blocked the editor. They should make sure that the reasons for the block are documented, and then leave it alone. When they don't, they very possibly create an editor who now thinks of them as an enemy. Another common error is to gratuitously insult the editor as part of the block, or to otherwise behave as if the administrator is in charge, owns the wiki. No, an administrator is properly acting in expectation of consensus; for admins to act otherwise creates disruption for no good reason. Thus an admin, blocking, will always, for an inexperienced user, point to appeal process, and will be unfailingly polite. Or should be! And who polices the police? I've thought, sometimes, that there should be many more bureaucrats, and that bureaucrats should not have the ability to block or delete articles. But they would have the ability to, ad-hoc, remove admin privileges. Police for the police, independent of them. Chosen for general trustworthiness. Perhaps they would only *add* tool usage as a restoration of what they or another bureaucrat took away, or, even, it's possible, the whole RfA process could consist of convincing a bureaucrat that you'd be decent as an admin. That's much closer to the rest of the way that the wiki operates, routinely. (Bureaucrats do this on some of the other wikis. Wikiversity has "probabionary adminship," which is apparently easy to get, it just takes another admin to declare and accept mentorship, and there is a discussion just to see if there are objections. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
