Re: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping
On 14/02/2009, George Herbert wrote: > For what it's worth on the wider question - I've been jumping on civility > problems that surface on ANI for the last few days - they're all responding > to calm down warnings (and one block), and I haven't gotten any nasty > pushback or anything. Every little bit helps. Another issue that admins are quite prone to (along with many seasoned editors) is that they tend to get *really* overprotective of articles. They tend to get this, 'we have written this *wonderful* article, and we have established that nobody can edit it without persuading the Committee Who Likes To Say No to say yes at talk pages X and then we'll consult different committees at Y, Z and maybe A, B as well if you get that far, otherwise we'll revert everything you do because it isn't Our Consensus And You Haven't Discussed It(tm)* and then report you on ANI for being Disruptive (tm)'. I mean We Really Like This Article (tm), why are you editing it, don't you like this article? > -- > -george william herbert > george.herb...@gmail.com n.b. *Consensus (tm) means we simpy vote and you simply lose; what's that you say? There's a policy about consensus? What's a policy? We outnumber you. ;-) -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be much better. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping
On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote: > geni wrote: > > 2009/2/12 David Gerard : > > > >> Indeed. As I suggested, a small amount of enforcement of good > >> behaviour amongst the admins by the ArbCom will go a long way to > >> getting all admins to behave in a more fitting manner. As Lar pointed > >> out, the admin bit is so much of "no big deal" that people will do > >> anything not to lose it. > >> > > > > No. Arbcom needs one of a pretty narrow set of Casus bellis to even > > act. There are quite a selection of problematical actions an admin can > > carry out that arbcom will never be a realistic threat against. In > > theory this kind of thing should be prevented by other admins but that > > isn't always too effective. > > > > > People have thought that in the past - that the ArbCom won't act against > admins doing certain things - and they have been wrong. Your theory is > more like wishful thinking from the admin side: there is a tariff, > there are procedural things that are constants. In other words the old > business of a system that can be gamed in some ways, because it is too > rigid. David is essentially correct, and it is faitly obvious that > sanctions have a deterrent effect on most people (though not all). Most importantly - even if it was true in the past, there's a problem, and it can be not true in the future. I don't think admins are the bulk of the civility / abuse problem but I think that they're the right place to start for a number of reasons. More seasoned users "set the tone" to a large degree. Admins are supposed to be trusted on top of being more seasoned, so them setting a bad example is even worse. Etc etc. For what it's worth on the wider question - I've been jumping on civility problems that surface on ANI for the last few days - they're all responding to calm down warnings (and one block), and I haven't gotten any nasty pushback or anything. Every little bit helps. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping
geni wrote: > 2009/2/12 David Gerard : > >> Indeed. As I suggested, a small amount of enforcement of good >> behaviour amongst the admins by the ArbCom will go a long way to >> getting all admins to behave in a more fitting manner. As Lar pointed >> out, the admin bit is so much of "no big deal" that people will do >> anything not to lose it. >> > > No. Arbcom needs one of a pretty narrow set of Casus bellis to even > act. There are quite a selection of problematical actions an admin can > carry out that arbcom will never be a realistic threat against. In > theory this kind of thing should be prevented by other admins but that > isn't always too effective. > > People have thought that in the past - that the ArbCom won't act against admins doing certain things - and they have been wrong. Your theory is more like wishful thinking from the admin side: there is a tariff, there are procedural things that are constants. In other words the old business of a system that can be gamed in some ways, because it is too rigid. David is essentially correct, and it is faitly obvious that sanctions have a deterrent effect on most people (though not all). Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Desysopping
On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 7:44 PM, Charles Matthews wrote: > Well, "active" admins are the only ones likely to be the subject of an > Arbitration case, no? It's not common, but there are also the cases of admins (and editors) who take a very long break, and then come back. I'm not talking months here, but years. Or who are only sporadically active. Consider someone who became an admin in 2003, then went inactive and resurfaces in 2009. It's not totally implausible. Or an admin who was very active for two years, then only edited 20 times a year or so for the next four years and then becomes very active again. There are real reasons why people would do this (university, jobs, even some kinds of enforced absences, or just wanting a very long break), but also reasons for people to be concerned about whether trust and knowledge of the "norms" (which change over time) have carried over from before the break (let alone lingering concerns about compromised accounts). The same applies to editors, though less so (or more so, YMMV). Having said that, such cases are rare enough that they can be treated on a case-by-case basis. In the general case, my feeling is that if you take a long enough break (enough that the community, the encyclopedia, the "rules" and the editor/admin themselves, may have all changed), then such editors and admins are effectively starting "from scratch" and need to rebuild knowledge and trust. The difference is that admins carry over their bit. Ditto for other tools such as checkuser and oversight. Essentially, I'm saying that a certain minimum "activity level" should be built in somewhere, but how to judge what that activity level should be is difficult (different people have naturally different activity levels). Some people will ease themselves back in gently. Others will wade back in. In both cases, some will succeed, and some will fail, in adapting to the changed environment. There is also the case of long-term tool users failing to adapt to changing times and acting in 2009 like they are in the encyclopedia of 2004 (for example), but the level and degree of the resulting problems may vary (and the encyclopedia is so large today that the behaviour is not always consistent across the whole anyway). Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
