[Foundation-l] New list admin: Ral315

Sun Aug 17 11:40:56 UTC 2008

I must say, I'm astonished what kind of seemingly uncontroversial
decisions can spark so much drama again.

In fact, I echo Dan's suggestions that this thread should die again
very quickly (for reasoning see below), but I figured that it would
again be seen very negatively if I didn't respond here, so let me make
a short statement:

1) It is my opinion that Wikipedia would not be as successful as it
is, if we had not Assumed Good Faith of each other at times. Can we
please also apply this to this list (administration)?

2) Some people here opposed Ral's appointment on procedural grounds
("How did you choose him? Why was this not a democratic process with a
survey?"). Now, opposing a candidate (under such circumstances as we
have them here) on merely procedural reasons seems rather meritless to
me. May I suggest that you first wait to see how Ral does his job? In
fact, in the best case you will hardly notice him doing anything,
which is the way it should be.  If you have good reason to complain
later, you can still start a 'vote of no-confidence' here...

3) Others questioned his experience or activity: By all means, I can't
take this serious. Ral has been here longer than many of you (or at
least those who are the loudest critics), his en.wp involvement
started in September 2004.
And no, to anticipate a counter-argument, this is not irrelevant in
this context -- he has a good grasp of Wikimedia affairs (obviously,
as Signpost editor), he is experienced in dealing with..."difficult
users" and thus he is in my eyes perfectly qualified for the job.
That he is a less frequent poster than others on the other hand is
really irrelevant here - he is not here to actively moderate any
*discussion* (panel-style), he is here to moderate a *discussion
list*. That's a fine but important difference. In fact, it gives him
more time to do moderation work while you guys fire away your 10 posts
an hour ;-)

4) One last point about procedure: We received many applications, both
off- and onlist. We considered all of them and have now chosen Ral315,
that's the way application systems work. I'm not a friend of model
letters ("Unfortunately your application was not successful, I hope
you will apply again for other functions blablabla") and thus the
approach was rather "Only successful applicants will be contacted".
Sorry, if this wasn't made clear.
And no, it's not practical to make an appointment hearing or even a
vote for the job of list administrator. If you don't trust us as a
team, organise a sound vote of no-confidence and if the board (or the
technical staff or whomever) are satisfied that this vote reflects
broad consensus, I'm sure they will replace us with other list
administrators.

Please, let Ral315 do his job now and if you want to explore this
further, do it off-list with us.

Regards,
Michael