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

Tue Jun 21 22:53:24 UTC 2005

Erik Moeller a écrit:
> Anthere:
> 
>> If only because rules and habits are no more the same now that they 
>> were 3 years ago. There is an expectation that the candidate sysop 
>> knows the project quite well, know the people, know the rules..
> 
> ...
> 
>> I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... 
>> he would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors.
> 
> 
> I think it is completely fair to indicate on the list of administrators 
> if an admin hasn't made edits for some months or even years. In fact, 
> this is exactly what we're doing on
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrators
> 
> This helps users to know whom they can contact for help and expect an 
> answer.
> 
> However, revoking someone's status just because they *might* become 
> active again without knowing the rules seems to violate the "Assume Good 
> Faith" principle. If an admin pauses for 6 months and then goes back to 
> performing admin operations, I expect them to make an effort to look at 
> what's changed first. If they don't make such an effort themselves, 
> again, it is not our duty to punish them, but to revert actions which 
> have been made accidentally in violation of newly established rules, and 
> to educate them.
> 
> Adminship is about trust. If we trust a person, we should know that they 
> will try to do the right thing, even under changed circumstances. 
> Therefore, we shouldn't have to take someone's privileges away just to 
> make sure they don't do anything bad -- because this could indicate to 
> them that we no longer *trust* them. I don't want to send this kind of 
> message to people like Mintguy, Vicky Rosenzweig, April, Salsa Shark, 
> Optim, Mirwin, Maximus Rex, or Zoe.
> 
> I believe this is especially true if an admin is still active on 
> *Wikimedia*, but just not on the same project anymore.
> 
> Erik

Maybe I need to remind why this rule was instaured on meta. There is an 
history on it. Which lead me to propose this, while I would probably not 
agree with it on a project such as fr.wikipedia.

There was a time where meta sysops were not elected at all. Anyone who 
was sysop on one project somewhere, and asked to be sysop on meta, was 
granted sysophood.

It is fine for english editors. Sysops are elected first and we know 
they are trusted. This is not the case for some small languages, where 
we give sysophood pretty easily, without any vote or just one support, 
because the project is so small there is less than 5 people on it.

As a result, several very unknown editors were named sysops on small 
languages, and became sysops on meta automatically. One of the big 
problem of meta is its multilingualism, which makes vandal hunting 
doubly difficult.

Enough editors (well, no one opposed) considered it problematic that 
totally unknown and very little involved editors became sysops on meta, 
as meta has its own community.

In this perspective, the reconfirmation and removal of status of editors 
inactive on meta made sense, and ihmo still make sense.

As you say it yourself, adminship is about trust. But when totally 
unknown editors, never elected, are sysops, there is no trust.

Ant