[WikiEN-l] Admin list--privacy

Sun Jan 22 23:14:35 UTC 2006

> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> 
> By the same token you don't tell 800 people.
> Anything that is too
> secret to be in the public domain should not be told
> to 800 admins.
> --
> geni

Geni is right - very little will be achieved by "going
private" in emails or IRC for Wikipedia admins.

The only thing that will happen is what happened at
dmoz: the admins retreated behind a firewall and
clubbed together for safety. Intermediate users, the
ones doing the real work, could no longer get
"promoted" to being an admin ("meta" as dmoz had it).

So the intermediate users trickled away. Unable to
even see what being an admin meant, they couldn't even
apply. Anyone who did was rounded upon. So they slowly
left and found other interweb hobbies.

That left the admins in their ivory tower and a
succession of new users who were either vandals or
needed cleaning up after.

So the admins spent their entire time booting people
and/or cleaning up. New stuff didn't get added. The
directory ossified.

Five years ago, dmoz had the headlines for being a
wonder of the internet. Now Wikipedia has them. Do we
really need to follow their path so completely that we
must repeat their mistakes?

We are a '''wiki''' after all. If people have an issue
with the 20% downside that the 80% upside allows,
there are other places to go. But they don't tend to
remain dynamic for long.

:"REDVERS"

___________________________________________________________ 
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com