----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Jacobs" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 6:02 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:12:49 -0400
From: Marc Riddell <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
>> Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:07:03 -0600 (MDT)
>> From: "Fred Bauder" <[email protected]>
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] VIP Treatment
>>
>>> why should they
>>> bother
>>> politely pointing someone to OTRS, much less spend time and effort
trying
>>> to be diplomatic themselves?
>>>
>>> Sxeptomaniac
>>
>> Because they are decent capable people, take pride in doing a good
>> job,
>> and are concerned about the accuracy and reputation of Wikipedia.
>>
>> Fred
>>
on 9/12/12 2:58 PM, Matthew Jacobs at [email protected] wrote:
>>
> Oh really? So why do we have to desysop admins? Were they "misusing
> their
> tools" in a "decent capable" way? Was it part of "doing a good job"?
> Were
> they desysopped for being "concerned about the accuracy and reputation
> of
> Wikipedia"?
>
> I can understand if you think I'm overstating the problem, but I find
> it
> ridiculous that you would deny the obvious: some people are drawn to
> adminship for the wrong reasons, and some maybe even for the right
reasons,
> but choose to act on them in a short-sighted way. No RFA process, no
matter
> how good, will ever be able to fully weed out people who really
> shouldn't
> be admins. The problem is, WP has no mechanism for dealing with those
> who
> turn out to not exemplify what an administrator should be, but stop
> short
> of actually breaking rules.
>
> Sxeptomaniac
Agreed. But how could such a mechanism be created given the existing
structure of the Project?
marc Riddell
I've seen a lot of complicated RfA proposals, as well as community
desysop
procedures, and I really think the simplest solution would be for
Adminship
to no longer be a lifetime appointment. Make it for terms of one or two
years, with no limit on the number of terms, and no requirement to
re-apply. It simply means that admins remain accountable to the community,
giving them an incentive to remain polite and fair, to the best of their
ability. I don't buy the arguments that "good admins will never be
re-appointed", as good admins may make a few enemies, but they'll gain
even
more supporters. I also believe that the community could easily adapt to
manage the increase in RfAs.
To be clear, there is no perfect solution, but I think that instituting
admin terms would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, I also
don't think the community will ever accept such a major change, as it's
become far to conservative regarding policy.
This isn't a new idea, and has been proposed, and rejected, more than once:
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Reconfirm_administrators
As you point out, it is open to abuse by enemies the admins may have made-
which is only to be expected if they're doing their job properly, since some
people, sadly, will never accept authoritative statements of WP policy.
Worse (as in my case), they might receive death threats on a daily basis.
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