At 05:21 AM 6/1/2010, Charles Matthews wrote: >I think this is something to untangle. We need to get to the bottom of >the community's fears about "overpowerful" admins, by talking through >and delineating what a single admin can expect to face in awkward >situations.
Yes. >I've never been in favour of restricting admin discretion, >which is really what is being proposed. It's not what I'm proposing. Discretion should be almost unlimited as to primary action; however, there should be much better guidelines so that admins can know what to expect. WP:IAR is a fundamental and very important principle, but that doesn't negate that if one ignores rules, one should be prepared to face criticism and be required to explain why or face warning and possible suspension of privileges. >We can't anticipate the >challenges the site will face (even though it may appear that there is >little innovation from vandals and trolls). There are structural devices which can make vandalism and even editorial review much more efficient, and there are trends in that direction. When Wikipedia starts valuing editorial labor, and sets up systems to make it more efficient and reliably effective, it may get over the hump. I've suggested that it may be appropriate to start channeling labor into what I've called "backstory," i.e., documentation of why an article is the way it is. Then, if a new editor disagrees, that editor can quickly come up to speed on the history, see all the arguments and evidence organized, and would not be imprisoned by that, but rather might be encouraged, if some argument there is defective, to show that, to expand the consensus there. And then that can be taken back to the article. Articles should not slide back and forth, that is incredibly wasteful. They should grow, such that consensus is always that they have improved by a change. Flagged revisions is a piece of this puzzle. > I do think admins can be >held to account for their use of discretion. Right now it seems that a >piece of the puzzle is missing: admins don't know clearly how they stand >in relation to the actions of other admins. I developed, early on, a sense of how Wikipedia worked, and it made a great deal of sense in terms of the organizational theory I was familiar with. And then I discovered that only some administrators seemed to understand it. Others believed that the structure was something else. I saw no disruption coming from administrators who understood the concepts that seemed obvious to me. It came from the others. Recusal policy should be far more clear. But that's not the first priority. The first priority is establishing consensus process that is more efficient; the inefficiency discourages participation and causes proposals that might actually help to go nowhere. "No consensus." That should be a clear suggestion for "refer to committee." That's what successful organizations do when faced with a problem where the response is not clear. (And then committee composition and rules and process become very important.) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
