[WikiEN-l] cool it

Mon May 30 23:36:24 UTC 2005

steven l. rubenstein (rubenste at ohiou.edu) [050531 09:28]:

> This isn't about the fact that I think SlimVirgin is a dedicated editor who 
> has added much to Wikipedia.  We can discuss questions of improper action, 
> or possible reasons for it, here or more appropriately at the Admin 
> bulletin board, incident report page, whatever.  But it doesn't matter who 
> you are talking about.  This phrase "rogue admin" is inflammatory, 
> unnecessarily insulting, and has no place at Wikipedia.  If we as a 
> community or some body representing the community decides that a sysop 
> should be de-sysopped, okay, we de-sysop the person.  But until that 
> happens, they are an administrator.  Period.  If you don't like what that 
> administrator has done, fine, but focus on the action.  And certainly don't 
> go around calling someone a rogue administrator -- this insults the whole 
> community because the person using this phrase is abrogating the authority 
> to decide who is or is not a legitimate administrator.  You may not like 
> what they did, you may not like them personally, but as long as they are 
> administrators, call them that, or don't call them anything at all.

More seriously, I will point out that when we *have* had an administrator
apparently go batshit, they get desysopped on an emergency basis in pretty
short order - someone typically goes to the dev IRC channel and lets them
know, someone with the relevant power takes a look, and if they look at the
edits and blanch the sysop bit is switched off until we know WTF is going
on. So actual "rogue admins" are dealt with on a sharp and effective basis.

- d.