Does Wikipedia need an independent "adminwatch?"
On a more or less regular basis, there are protests against perceived inequities, overreaching, and even abuse of power among admins. And while most admins are conscientious, self-sacrificing, and scrupulously honest participants in the Wiki enterprise, it certainly appears that enough editors are unconvinced about the admin process to make for quite a bit of noise and dissent.
The noise and dissent is a distraction for everyone, and certainly the admins, who take on their roles in their spare time. It is also very difficult to assess whether there is any merit to the individual protests, since we always deal with editors who happen to be pissed-off about a particular issue.
The thought behind this userspace article is to set up an independent admin watch community within Wikipedia that takes responsibility for monitoring the performance of the admins, specifically with respect to the policies and guidelines they are expect to uphold and comply with - see Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list for a good overview.
The community would have no special powers beyond editor privileges - its goal would be to improve the quality of admin activities, both by defending sound admin practices and documenting admin misbehavior. Since Wikipedia has no formalized grievance procedures against admins, this community would act as an ombudsman to facilitate more informed decision-making on promoting, disciplining, and in extreme cases banning or de-admining admins.
A few points are worth emphasizing:
Some things to consider:
-- Leifern 16:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Does Wikipedia need an independent "adminwatch?"
On a more or less regular basis, there are protests against perceived inequities, overreaching, and even abuse of power among admins. And while most admins are conscientious, self-sacrificing, and scrupulously honest participants in the Wiki enterprise, it certainly appears that enough editors are unconvinced about the admin process to make for quite a bit of noise and dissent.
The noise and dissent is a distraction for everyone, and certainly the admins, who take on their roles in their spare time. It is also very difficult to assess whether there is any merit to the individual protests, since we always deal with editors who happen to be pissed-off about a particular issue.
The thought behind this userspace article is to set up an independent admin watch community within Wikipedia that takes responsibility for monitoring the performance of the admins, specifically with respect to the policies and guidelines they are expect to uphold and comply with - see Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list for a good overview.
The community would have no special powers beyond editor privileges - its goal would be to improve the quality of admin activities, both by defending sound admin practices and documenting admin misbehavior. Since Wikipedia has no formalized grievance procedures against admins, this community would act as an ombudsman to facilitate more informed decision-making on promoting, disciplining, and in extreme cases banning or de-admining admins.
A few points are worth emphasizing:
Some things to consider:
-- Leifern 16:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)