From Mindspillage
Various thoughts on Wikipedia administration, generally first posted elsewhere. Some of this is seriously uninteresting unless you are already pretty deeply into the project. Some of it is still seriously uninteresting even if you are.
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The "Zero revert rule"
The one biggest problem I see with a 0RR is that it favors the one who is least conservative with admin actions, who will bring out the big guns first.
If several admins are discussing whether or not to block, and several decide not to but one decides "OK, I'll block", technically it would be a violation to unblock. But why? The one who has blocked would also be contradicting the judgment of others, who looked at the situation and decided no admin action was needed. If the blocker remains unwilling to budge, most people are going to be unhappy—but discussing wasn't an admin action and blocking was.
I'm more of the opinion that some leeway is needed. People (even admins) make mistakes, or have bad judgment; it shouldn't be overturned without discussion and considerable thought but room should be there for reversal. I don't expect my admin actions to stand if there is something better to be done just as I don't expect my edits to stand if they can be better replaced. It's thoughtless and inconsiderate reversal—without discussion, without consensus—that is objectionable. But if I make a bad judgment call and most others agree that it was wrong while I hold firm, it shouldn't stand.
What I really mean to say is that I don't like the hard numerical electric fences at all, but the 0RR seems to be too firm. It might be a worthwhile experiment but I can't see it as a longstanding policy.
To clarify: if there are a few admins who are consistently problematic with the leeway all are given, that's a problem to be looked at (and I think they'd stick out even more with something like a 1RR), but I can't see applying such a firm 0RR rule to rein in the few who are the source of the most problems.
"No big deal"
I think it should always be "no big deal" for any reasonable person to be an admin even if they won't use it much; someone who is not should never be one, no matter how many edits they rack up or vandals they catch.
User pages
I don't think setting down hard guidelines as to what is and is not acceptable is sufficient; it invites rules-lawyering. I don't advocate disruptive editing of user pages, such as changing the text someone has written to make it untrue, and I don't think anyone else is either. But the current culture is such that many people think no one else should be allowed to touch your user page, even if you have on it material which is disruptive, offensive, or otherwise generally not acceptable to the rest of the community.
User pages don't belong to the user, they belong to the project. It's been generally beneficial to let people have a fair bit of leeway with this, as has been said: it aids communication and makes people happy. But ultimately, if you want unrestricted free speech, this isn't the place; it belongs on your own personal website. If you want to be part of this project, you are expected to follow community standards, and if you don't like them, to try to change them rather than act against them.
Rants, polemics, and attacks don't aid communication; they pit people against each other. Shiny little boxes claiming that some particular political figure is an idiot, that some religious philosophy is stupid, that some sexual orientation is immoral, that some nation shouldn't exist, that some other user is a menace to the project—all of which I have seen in the past few weeks—start an argument that no one else can respond to, because it's on your user page that no one can touch.
Most* people have pages that are completely fine. I like seeing what people choose to say about themselves and their work, and how they choose to say it. I think we should continue to have user pages, and continue to give people a fair bit of leeway with what they choose to say on them. Removing someone's toolbox links, breaking their formatting, putting attacks or POV or untruths or even some minor but unnecessary change that the user doesn't like on someone's user page should be simply reverted. In most cases what the user prefers should be what stands. But when you're informed that the content of your page is not acceptable, you should be expected to change it or to let others do so, and yes, to run afoul of site policy if you continue to refuse.
Blocking
I think X is generally a good and well-meaning person, but too likely to continue to stick up for those who have extended him friendship even when they've gone past the point of being redeemable. (It's not the worst fault one can have.)
When K was blocked it was well past time, and that the incident for which he was blocked was too small on its own to justify it does not mean it wasn't deserved. Perhaps we should simply be more honest about our block reasons: "OK, this alone wouldn't do it, but that was the final straw." No one cared to stand up for him because everyone thought it was better that he stay blocked.
It seems to be a problem that people won't support a community ban unless there is one incident that is so egregious that everyone thinks a ban is deserved for that alone, when really it's the continuing pattern of smaller antisocial acts that's problematic, and not any one of them in particular.
Using IRC and off-wiki evidence
I have never liked the position that we [the arbitration committee] cannot consider off-wiki evidence in decided whether to block or ban a user..
I think that the main difficulty with some sources is that they can be easily faked: we have no idea really whether some forum poster is who they claim to be (although sometimes it is not disputed), or whether private email exchanges or IRC conversations really happened.
I believe that anything which intersects with the functioning of Wikipedia should be admissible as evidence, even if only submitted to the arbcom list to avoid spreading the problematic posts around everywhere. This includes logs of the admins IRC channel, and Wikipedia Review, and Encyclopedia Dramatica, and forums where people are talking about disrupting Wikipedia where for some reason or another we think they are authentic (this isn't a court of law; we don't really need to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt").
I'm not suggesting Wikipedia policy be applied strictly to off-wiki evidence, but certainly it can support a position and even be made the basis for a finding. (Not "user X made one personal attack on IRC!" but "user X has consistently made attacks on user Y and attempted to bait him".)
[on the admins' IRC channel and behavior]
Part of the problem with the admins' channel is the way people treat it. A lot of people treat
IRC like a conversation, where words come up and then disappear,
ephemeral. I try to maintain civility and courtesy in public spaces no
matter what I feel about the person I am corresponding with, but
speaking among my friends in private, including small private IRC
channels, I may choose not to. It is the implied rule of the social
space that what I say in private remains in private. There are small
social spaces where I have expressed opinions in a manner that I would
never use in public, and I don't expect those things to be repeated,
nor do I think it is inappropriate to do so where it is informal
communication among friends.
However, many people treat the admins' channel this way, which isn't appropriate. It is semi-public, mainly a group of strangers who just happen to have the admin bit, and is intended for on-project work; a functional channel and not a social space. But people talk in it as if it were a social space, chatting among friends, as though only the people participating in the conversation at any given time (often only a handful of people) were there and that nothing will travel any further. Certainly I've said some things in it more suitable to a limited audience that I don't intend to be quoted and repeated for eternity, though nothing that would damage me if it were: why I went to the hospital, how I thought I did on final exams...
I think it would be good if certain standards were more strictly enforced. But unlike on the wiki, you cannot revise or remove an uncivil comment. You can apologize for it, though you might not realize how bad you sounded until someone brings it up. If the person who would be most offended by it is not there, you may simply let it go even if you do realize that you were going too far, and its immediacy means that people say things in heated moments that they might not say if they were committing words to the wiki. Since the medium is ephemeral, people expect it to just be let go, rather than logged and brought back to them.
Perhaps the ops (and I am one also) should be more strict in enforcing behavior, and trying to moderate, rather than being as hands-off as is usual. (Though I am not paying attention to IRC all the time or I would never get anything done, nor are many others. I do log everything and sometimes I will read what has gone on while I wasn't there, but what can you do with a hasty exchange made three hours beforehand?)
The channel was initially founded, as many have claimed, to be a place for urgent complaints to be brought to a roomful of trusted people where the press and the trolls wouldn't find out about it immediately. It has proved not to work so well for that, as several people who were never found decided to leak the complaints. (Requests from people other than Jimbo or Danny usually get reasonably good results, though.) But it is, despite that failing, definitely higher signal-to-noise than #wikipedia (which is now all but useless), and so it continues to be used.
I like IRC, as a medium. I like its immediacy, to get quick opinions (especially since, as may be clear, I am a slow and long-winded writer in email and on-wiki). I like the social aspect, that casual banter goes in between on-topic discussion. I don't think that we should only be focused on work, and I think getting to know each other as people and friends is helpful, though I know some others disagree. When someone who I know has been a friendly person in social settings does something that I think is wrong on the wiki, I feel much more comfortable and think it is much more effective talking to a friend than to a stranger, and have worked out many disagreements on IRC.
I also strongly disagree that it is inappropriate to discuss blocking there. I think it is perfectly appropriate to discuss blocking, to ask others' opinions. However, I think that "we talked about it on IRC" is not sufficient justification to claim you have consensus for anything; if people are not willing to say it in public it cannot count. Either you take responsibility for acting alone (which people are still allowed to do, last I checked) or you get others to speak up. There is nothing inherently evil or corrupt about making a decision that you alone are willing to take responsibility for, after conferring with others who are unwilling to state their opinions in public.
I think that if anything needs to be changed about the use of IRC, it is primarily that people should not cite private evidence to justify public actions ("I decided to block X" but not "I decided to block X because these people on IRC said so"), and people should stop treating the channel as though it were a private social forum and instead act as though every single admin were hearing what they say.