[WikiEN-l] Admins who abuse their powers

Sun Feb 13 22:30:00 UTC 2005

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 15:05:28 -0700, slimvirgin at gmail.com
<slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a request for clarification about admins and their powers.
> 
> There's  been a clear case today and yesterday of an admin abusing his
> powers (unprotecting a page he wanted to edit), and engaging in what
> could be argued amounts to vandalism. Complaints about this have met
> with the response that, though it's agreed that this admin abused his
> powers, there's nothing that can be done about it, because admins
> aren't allowed to block other admins for an abuse of power. All
> editors can do in a case like this, we're being told, is begin the
> long process of RfCs, mediation, and arbitration.
> 
> Regardless of the details of this particular case, is it true that
> admins are not allowed to block other admins for an abuse of power?
> 
> If this is true, how do we go about getting that changed?

It's not allowed, yes: the blocking policy does not cover abuses of
admin powers. In any case it would be pointless to block admins for
such reasons, as they can unblock themselves and likely will if they
don't think they were abusing their powers. (I can only remember one
case of deliberate, admitted abuse of admin powers, and the sysop who
did that was trying very hard to make a point about the handling of
problematic users.) Then, too, if a sysop is consciously abusing his
powers, then what's to stop him from abusing them further in order to
unblock himself? Blocking for abuse of sysop powers would be
pointless.

Last, I'm not sure unprotecting a page in order to edit it even
qualifies as an abuse of admin powers---articles are meant to be
edited, and unprotecting a page opens it to editing by all.

--Charles P. ([[en:User:Mirv]])