[WikiEN-l] Re: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

Tue Jun 21 16:53:29 UTC 2005

Dan Grey wrote:

>Haven't people made attempts at formulating a policy for de-sysopping
>before now, and been shot down in flames?
>
Particularly by those who see such a response as an act of 
self-preservation.

>Admins, by and large, behave perfectly well. I would hope that the
>community is selecting those who are trustworthy to be admins, and
>that peer-pressure from the responsible majority will keep the odd
>rouge in line.
>  
>
I presume you mean "rogue". :-)

I agree that most do behave perfectly well, and the same can be said 
about most contributors.

Choosing trustworthy admins is just a pseudo-democratic crap-shoot.  
Most of us don't participate in the voting; we have more useful things 
to do. The only functioning standard is the ability to get votes in an 
"election" that is only attended by people interested in elections, and 
thus reflecting the POVs of that group.  The person who quietly and 
without controversy continues to work and build in his own special area 
is probably not represented.  I would like to see more objective 
criteria for candidacy as sysops.  These could cover time spent, number 
of edits, number of original contributions, social skills, etc.  Unless 
a person meets these criteria, he would not be eligible to receive votes.

Peer pressure will work well in most cases, but there will still be 
problem sysops.  Notably these are individuals who do a tremendous 
amount of good work, but whose good works are often offset by an 
inability to muster the social skills such as patience needed to deal 
with others holding a different opinion.

Ec