[WikiEN-l] 172's sysop request (was "Communist state and rudeness")

Sun May 11 21:22:59 UTC 2003

Note to Abe Sokolov (aka 172)

I'm sorry you think that me expressing my opinion automatically makes you a 
pariah (I'm not the Pope nor any special authority). You, on average, have 
been a good to great contributor but I have seen too many instances where you 
have, IMO, caused more harm than good and have steadfastly refused to budge 
or admit you were wrong (let alone apologize). IMO, this is not the type of 
person that would make a good Admin. You also often seem to be rather 
selective in what you write about when inputting large amounts of text into 
an article (creating a one-sided article). And I also found it odd that you 
wanted to be an Admin so badly even though, in my experience, you haven't 
done much Wikipedia Weeding or had a desire to edit protected pages. 

In retrospect, I should have not have went on to state my opinion that such a 
person would be likely to leverage their sysop powers over others (impling 
that you would use sysop powers to make sure your POV dominates articles). 
You do seem to be tolerant of other people adding-in balancing POV into 
articles you've worked on (even when, such as in the Saddam article, you were 
the one who unbalanced the article to begin with by adding masses of text 
about all the good he did for Iraq while not stating the more negative 
aspects of his regime). So, simply stating my observations and avoiding the 
particular conclusion should have been enough to block your Admin 
application. I'm sorry that I elaborated to such an extent. 

I do hope that you will return after a much-needed break (maybe even with a 
real user name next time - it is hard to be sympathetic to a number).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)