On 6/17/06, Ben Yates <bluephonic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Admins do excercise editorial control, mostly in their
selection of
articles for deletion (and especially speedy deletion). I've read a
few irate bloggers talking about how the articles they added got
deleted immediately -- and while of course it's possible to argue that
those articles didn't belong in wikipedia, it's silly to say that
making *and then enforcing* this argument isn't excercising editorial
control.
But it's not an administrative decision to say what should get
deleted. Presumably the articles were deleted according to deletion
guidelines -- made up by the community, not just admins -- and anyone
could have marked it for deletion; an admin simply avoided the middle
step of tagging. (A large smelly trout and minus 500 points to anyone
who hijacks the thread and makes it about rouge admins not following
deletion policy. Does [[WP:BEANS]] apply to the mailing list?) It's
not their status as admins that allows editors to decide what stays
and what goes.
Even non-admins excercise editorial control, often /en
mass/. It's
just a more participatory form of control, and a more open one.
Right. Admins exercise editorial control as normal editors, not as
admins. (Though sometimes they are empowered to enforce decisions.)
The power belongs in the hands of the community -- which presumably
admins are an active part of, maybe even the bulk of policy-related
edits (this would be an interesting thing to get data on).
-Kat
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