On 01/03/2008, WJhonson(a)aol.com <WJhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
And sometimes admins have a very odd idea of what a
certain policy actually
states.
That certainly happens. Sometimes its because their a bad admin,
sometimes it's because they follow the spirit of the rules rather than
the exact wording that the last person to edit that policy page
happened to choose.
One flaw in the promotion system seems to be there is
no real test of
whether an admin understands something as simple as the difference between
"source-based research" vs. "original research". I had to teach one
that recently.
I guess the idea is that you show you understand the rules by following them.
Another is why you should *not* use your admin bit,
when you are engaged in
content disputes.
Absolutely. However, people often complain that an admin is involved
when they actually aren't. If an admin comes along an edit war, tries
to calm things down using discussion rather than instantly throwing
the banhammer around, fail, and end up having to resort to admin
actions they are accused of having been involved in the content
dispute when they never expressed any view about content whatsoever.
There are admins who behave badly. Although I agree
that people complain
when admins "do their job", they also complain when admins act abusively.
Many
admins understand, and some do not. Some admins will apologize when faced
with actions which are suspect, and some will not.
Sure, there are valid complaints, but they are a tiny minority.
The ones whom the community has become annoyed with
from time to time, and
who also refuse to apologize or act contritely are the ones that don't bode
well for the project and need a vigilant eye.
I can think of three reasons why an individual admin would get a lot
of complaints:
1) They are making bad admin actions
2) They are making good admin actions but hang around controversial
areas of the site
3) They are making generally good admin actions but have attitude
problems which get people's backs up
It's the 3rd case that causes the problems. The 1st we can simply
desysop, the 2nd we can just ignore the complaints, but with the 3rd
will have to tread a little more delicately. Sometimes it gets to the
point where there is no choice but to desysop, but there is a tendency
to try anything else in order to avoid losing the admin's
contributions - it's a difficult balance.