[WikiEN-l] Admins who abuse their powers

Sun Feb 13 22:29:00 UTC 2005

Sarah is right, and raises an important question.

After considerable discussion a quite sizable majority voted to delete 
"Jewish ethnocentrism"  People discussed the specific contents of the 
article, and the very notion of an article on this topic.

Mikkalai is now making the argument that a specific article was deleted, 
but that a new article could be written in the same name-space.  The 
opportunity for abuse is clear.

If the only problem with an article is its contents, then there is no need 
to delete it -- editors can delete the contents that is inappropriate or 
bad, and put in good contents.

It logically follows that if people believe an article must be deleted, it 
is because they -- or many of them -- consider the article unsalvageable; 
no amount of editing content can save it.

It seems pretty obvious to me that Mikkelai's claim that the name-space was 
not deleted, so he can write a new article in it, is just an attempt to 
circumvent the vote for deletion.  Not only does this demonstrate bad 
faith; it sets a bad precedent.  Anyone who was invested in any deleted 
article can just bring it back and write some more.  And others would once 
again go through the lengthy process of a vote for deletion.

Perhaps we need not always permanently delete a name space -- maybe in some 
cases, a moratorium of half a year or a year would suffice.  But I think we 
need a clear policy on this: the name spaces of articles deleted are either 
deleted as well, or protected for some significant period.

In the meantime, what kind of action can be taken in this case?  The 
standard cycle of attempts -- RFC, mediation, arbitration -- will take a 
lot of time, if the policy is unclear.  If the policy is clear, then we 
should be able to resolve this immediately.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701