This is a reasonable concern. I remember some time ago -- several months
or a year -- when there was an edit war on a particular page and an
administrator joined in with a message like this: "What's the trouble
here? I am a sysop -- let's sort this out." Indeed, this was a very
inappropriate use of the position. However, a number of other sysops
pretty quickly chastised the person in question for projecting power in
this way.
I think the only reasonable solution to this problem -- and my response to
your concern -- is that sysops should act as "police" in one particular
regard: we have a responsibility to police ourselves against this kind of
abuse of power.
New contributors need to learn all sorts of stuff when they come to
wikipedia -- from the ~~~ trick to the sometimes subtle NPOV policy. I
think their learning what a sysop is and isn't is just one more of those
things.
Steve
At 02:34 PM 5/23/2003 -0700, you wrote:
--- "steven l. rubenstein"
<rubenste(a)ohiou.edu> wrote:
Let's not get bogged down in semantics. This
may be
a case where an
analogy to sysop is neither needed nor helpful.
After all, judges under
certain circumstances have a lot of power, and
police often listen to
different sides in a dispute, act as mediators, and
are themselves
policed. If we continue on this track we may end up
having a very
interesting and informative conversation about the
differences between
police, judges, and I would then add to the mix
constables. But if we are
having a discussion as sysop, I have three comments.
1) I never sought out the position of sysop but
given that it implied a
certain amount of trust by a segment of the
community I didn't feel I could
turn it down. When I first saw my new screen, with
all the powers suddenly
at my disposal, I really felt overwhelmed, almost
dizzy. Of course my
first act was to abuse the power -- although I was
the only victim of that
abuse. I have recently had an experience where I
have been sorely tempted
to put a block on a page and ban a user. Obviously
I did not. But -- and
I realize this may be of little interest to most of
you -- so far I see
being a sysop as a sort of zen exercise in accepting
and renouncing power.
2) But I have also deleted a couple of pages, and I
know some others have
been very active in this. I wanted to ban one user
with what I thought was
good cause, and someone else did it the next day.
Since virtually everyone
in the community saw that person as a pest more than
as a member of the
community, I'd say -- if we really must have an
analogy -- I'd compare
sysop to house-cleaner.
3) Whether sysop is a mop or a cop, either way I see
the role as being an
agent of the community. If I understand the deal
right now, there is
virtually nothing a sysop can do that cannot be
undone by another
administrator; it seems to me that virtually all
sysops, if they ever act,
do so when they have a sense from the community.
Anyway, aside from my periodic zen moments, it does
seem to me that the job
is mostly about tidying up. It seems to me that
anyone can do this on a
limited basis (by editing -- just like we don't
expect the maid or
custodian to do all cleaning), and that the other
tasks (e.g. cultivating
NPOV) really are for the whole community, sysop or
not.
Steve
Yeah, I guess that makes more sense than an anology.
But I just realised that sysops have another, rarely
used power. Sysops have power just from their name
"sysop". If a sysop tells a bunch of non-sysops
something, and they haven't heard the type of
conversation on the mailing list (ie don't know that
sysops aren't this exclusive band of 5 people who go
around fixing the server and banning people), they'd
probably listen to you more than a non-sysop. I don't
think this power is actually used by anyone other than
jimbo, though.
--LittleDan
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