[WikiEN-l] cancelation of the deletion review of the satanism userbox

Fri Jun 2 05:47:39 UTC 2006

On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 12:47:45AM +0100, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 6/2/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Your attitude that it's ok to move beyond that into actually pissing them
> >off, and doing things like rejecting RfCs out of hand merely because 
> >they're silly, is a serious problem.
> 
> Obviously not.  There comes a point at which one must simply recognise
> that a completely and utterly fatuous complaint is being made, and
> move on.

It almost seems as if you're proud to be irritating people.  That you
think that those people are beneath you, or unable to understand the
rightness of your position ... and that the fact that they oppose you
and criticize you, only further demonstrates your rightness.

But Wikipedia makes tough decisions by seeking consensus.  If lots of
people think you're doing the wrong thing, that means you are operating
without the support of consensus.  And that's a problem.

As an administrator, your authorization to use administrative tools 
such as deletion extends only insofar as you use them to implement and
support consensus.  You are not authorized to use them to pursue your
own projects.  You are trusted to *implement* consensus decisions, not
to make up the rules for yourself.  When there is a controversy rather
than a consensus, you are not authorized to "settle" it by your own
say-so.  Wikipedia has dispute-resolution procedures for settling
controversies.  Administrative fiat is not one of them.

Now, I'm not saying that just because _anyone_ complains, that you have
to stop.  Obviously, if vandals complain about being blocked, that's not
a bad thing.  But when actual contributors raise objections and go to
the effort of formalizing those objections, a respect for the community
that is supposed to trust you, demands that you stop the objectionable
conduct.

We've seen what happens when an administrator decides that he gets to
make the rules.  We've seen what happens when an administrator decides
that the objections of those he doesn't respect don't count.  That's how
we lost Ed Poor.