Maunus goes insane!, Yeah! Options

[Shalom]

Maunus you are AWESOME for doing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=465453958

...and causing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=..._beyond_uncivil

Maunus, for one sentence you wrote, you caused three screens of wikidrama! EPIC WIN!!

[radek]

Maunus you are AWESOME for doing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=465453958

...and causing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=..._beyond_uncivil

Maunus, for one sentence you wrote, you caused three screens of wikidrama! EPIC WIN!!

With all the stuff going on Wiki these days I totally missed this. Anyway. While Maunus caught some flak here, mostly for being an admin, generally speaking he is one of the "good guys" on that site, and I think this illustrates it.

Btw, good luck.

[mbz1]

Maunus you are AWESOME for doing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=465453958

...and causing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=..._beyond_uncivil

Maunus, for one sentence you wrote, you caused three screens of wikidrama! EPIC WIN!!

With all the stuff going on Wiki these days I totally missed this. Anyway. While Maunus caught some flak here, mostly for being an admin, generally speaking he is one of the "good guys" on that site, and I think this illustrates it.

Btw, good luck.

Well, they said it all

No wonder administrators are all assholes - if you're not you just can't get the job done. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:37, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe not all, but way too many.
Some of them are cowards, some of them assholes, most of them simply cannot care less, or rather they only care about keeping their mops (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif)

This post has been edited by mbz1:

[SB_Johnny]

While Maunus caught some flak here, mostly for being an admin, generally speaking he is one of the "good guys" on that site, and I think this illustrates it.

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with telling a moron to fuck off (assuming the guy deserved it, which I can't be bothered to look into), I'm not sure how that illustrates good-guy-ness.

[radek]

While Maunus caught some flak here, mostly for being an admin, generally speaking he is one of the "good guys" on that site, and I think this illustrates it.

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with telling a moron to fuck off (assuming the guy deserved it, which I can't be bothered to look into), I'm not sure how that illustrates good-guy-ness.

It doesn't, that part was based on my other-familiarity with maunus. But it does show a bit of chutzpah, especially coming from an admin, which I do respect.

[Maunus]

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with telling a moron to fuck off (assuming the guy deserved it, which I can't be bothered to look into), I'm not sure how that illustrates good-guy-ness.

Well, I'm not particularly proud of any of that. But that particular guy had been nagging me over several days where he was continously borderline uncivil and doing the "oh but you're an admin (and everybody knows and all admins are assholes) so I expect power abuse so I'll comply but your wrong and I'm right " passive/aggressive schtick, basically baiting me as much as he could, and making it painfully clear that he'd cry "admin abuse" if I made any use of the tools in his neck of the wiki. The suggestion to fuck himself was a response to this last message of his http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=465472806

This coupled with the fuss over a completely legitimate block I made which I refused to undo because I believed and believe it was solid (while I had said I didn't mind other people to unblock) - it made me think that the kit wasn't really worth the hassle.

So that's why I decided to loose the toolkit and tell the asshole what he needed to hear. But I'd like to note for the record that I was not an admin when I said that to him. Basically I think admin-haters like you guys are making it worse for wikipedia rather than better - only people who don't give a fuck about what people think can tolerate the abuse that's thrown at them and sane people either don't run for admin or give it up.

"Involved admin" is the most ridiculous crap accusation you can throw at people - it is basically a get out of free card you can use if the same admin happens to catch you with the hands in the cookie jar twice. Wikipedia will have the administrators it deserves.

This post has been edited by Maunus:

[mbz1]

"Involved admin" is the most ridiculous crap accusation you can throw at people - it is basically a get out of free card you can use if the same admin happens to catch you with the hands in the cookie jar twice. Wikipedia will have the administrators it deserves.

well, I am not sure what kind of involvement they were talking about in your situation, but please imagine this situation:
A user and an admin are having content disagreement over an article. Then admin blocks the user.

Another situation:
A user and an admin are parties of the same arbitration case. The user says that in a few hours he is going to submit evidences against the admin. The admin blocks the user, and removes his talk page access.

Another situation
For whatever reason an admin does not like a user. When he finds a reason to block this user, he does

In the situations I described above that admin behaves as a teen, who is beating a baby, does he not?

This post has been edited by mbz1:

[radek]

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with telling a moron to fuck off (assuming the guy deserved it, which I can't be bothered to look into), I'm not sure how that illustrates good-guy-ness.

Well, I'm not particularly proud of any of that. But that particular guy had been nagging me over several days where he was continously borderline uncivil and doing the "oh but you're an admin (and everybody knows and all admins are assholes) so I expect power abuse so I'll comply but your wrong and I'm right " passive/aggressive schtick, basically baiting me as much as he could, and making it painfully clear that he'd cry "admin abuse" if I made any use of the tools in his neck of the wiki. The suggestion to fuck himself was a response to this last message of his http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=465472806

This coupled with the fuss over a completely legitimate block I made which I refused to undo because I believed and believe it was solid (while I had said I didn't mind other people to unblock) - it made me think that the kit wasn't really worth the hassle.

So that's why I decided to loose the toolkit and tell the asshole what he needed to hear. But I'd like to note for the record that I was not an admin when I said that to him. Basically I think admin-haters like you guys are making it worse for wikipedia rather than better - only people who don't give a fuck about what people think can tolerate the abuse that's thrown at them and sane people either don't run for admin or give it up.

"Involved admin" is the most ridiculous crap accusation you can throw at people - it is basically a get out of free card you can use if the same admin happens to catch you with the hands in the cookie jar twice. Wikipedia will have the administrators it deserves.

Hmm. Well... there's basically so many dysfunctional aspects of Wikipedia at work here, some of them intersecting with each other, some of them offsetting each other, some of them amplifying each other in both negative or positive ways, that's it's really hard to comment on specific individual cases.

Admin-hating is there for a reason - the competency or intelligence level of the average admin is well below what one would expect from any decently run internet forum (so here the standard of comparison is other internet forums out there, which, to be perfectly honest, is a pretty low threshold), never mind any real world organization. Given this ... dullness, of your average admin, it's particularly grating that the mop gets given for life and that once they get it, it's a "you'll pry the admin privileges from my dead cold hands" kind of thing (you're proving yourself to be a notable exception - but that's more or less an actual quote there). It's essentially feudal. And on top of that the whole process by which admins get chosen is admitted to be completely wack by EVERYONE, even by Wikipedia insiders. Everyone know's it's fucked yet no one wants to do anything about it. The end result is that you get a bunch of know-nothing 16 years old - or their older equivalents - who have never done shit for the encyclopedia harassing and abusing people who actually have written most of it. But hey. Judging by the latest, it's pretty obvious that they take their ques from the top, with Jimbo trashing on Cla68 and mocking his 'track record'.

An the whole "involved admin" card. Yes, yes, yes. It gets abused. The first... the zero pillar of Wikipedia is that "any policy, no matter how sensible in its intent, can and will be gamed, and this applies to WP:GAME as well". If you didn't have trully involved admins, who are buddies with some certain users, plain ol' axes to grind or just simply being part of an established "good ol' boys network" (I think the word "cabal" is more traditional) showing up to various drama boards and, with a straight face, engaging in pharisee levels of hypocrisy and lying by saying shit like "I am not really familiar with this matter but..." then this would never come up.

And you're very much looking at it from the "me, the oh so pure innocent abused admin" point of view. Maybe that's what you are. But that's not what most are, and that's why you get suspected by the nature of your status. But think of it this way - you do some admin action against a particular user, they complain that you're involved ... what's the worst that will happen to you? Your block will get reversed? Someone might say the awful words "you were wrong"? Ok. That's what usually happens. Whining about this kind of thing is essentially complaining about the fact that someone didn't "respectah your authority" enough. But think of it from the complainer's point of view, even if they're wrong. If they get abused by a truly involved admin, what recourse do they have? Basically, at that point they're fucked (unless they have a meaningful mailing list to back them up... (don't pay attention to that, that's old news)) They loose they're editing privileges, they get slandered, their name is shit from then on. Now, maybe... 7 out of 10 times the "involved admin" really is "uninvolved", but the other three is enough to really ruin it for a whole lot of people who probably gave a lot to the encyclopedia only to see themselves shat on and thrown away.

You're very much thinking about things in terms of you social class here. You're smart enough to realize that there are problems but still can't make sense of why it's happening. Well, it's a start.

Anyway, finish your studies first, and good luck.

[Maunus]

Social class? Are you mad? Being an admin is not about class - and in this case I'm not even an admin anymore. I have never claimed to be innocent of anything - the point is in fact that I am not. The hole thing was pretty much my own fault - if I'd been able to keep my cool I would have had no problems. And neither would anyone else. I just lost my temper and told an asshole to go fuck him self (and also a couple of people who didn't deserve it). A stupid thing to do for an adult.

If wikipedia wants innocent admins then it will have none.The point is that admins are guys just like anyone else - some are assholes and some aren't. But if you treat someone like as assholes a priori chances are that they'll become assholes. I agree that power comes with responsibility - but the responsibility should be relative to the power and admins have no power except what the community gives them at any given time. Having the block button is not power. The only kind of power that exists on wikipedia is having many friends who watch ANI. It doesn't matter if your an admin or not if you have sufficient friends at ani you're untouchable.

Regarding my thesis defense I've done what I had to do by now thanks.

Now for MBZ1 scenarios: the problem in those cases is not that the admin was involved but that the person blocked did not commit a blockable offense. If someone does something wrong it shouldn't matter who presses the blockbutton.



This post has been edited by Maunus:

[mbz1]

Now for MBZ1 scenarios: the problem in those cases is not that the admin was involved but that the person blocked did not commit a blockable offense. If someone does something wrong it shouldn't matter who presses the blockbutton.

But "wrong" and "right" could differ, depending on who you ask. That is why, if one is involved with a user in any way, it is better to leave blocking of that user to someone else. Agree?

This post has been edited by mbz1:

[Maunus]

Now for MBZ1 scenarios: the problem in those cases is not that the admin was involved but that the person blocked did not commit a blockable offense. If someone does something wrong it shouldn't matter who presses the blockbutton.

But "wrong" and "right" could differ, depending on who you ask. That is why that, if one is involved with a user in any way, leave blocking of that user to someone else. Agree?

If a block is wrong it gets unblocked - usually within an hour. If it doesn't you basically have unlimited attempts, untill some admin falls for it. So what if you couldn't edit wikipedia for an hour - hardly an infringement of a human right.

This post has been edited by Maunus:

[mbz1]

Now for MBZ1 scenarios: the problem in those cases is not that the admin was involved but that the person blocked did not commit a blockable offense. If someone does something wrong it shouldn't matter who presses the blockbutton.

But "wrong" and "right" could differ, depending on who you ask. That is why that, if one is involved with a user in any way, leave blocking of that user to someone else. Agree?

If a block is wrong it gets unblocked - usually within an hour. If it doesn't you basically have unlimited attempts, untill some admin falls for it. So what if you couldn't edit wikipedia for an hour - hardly an infringement of a human right.

I missed, when we started talking about "infringement of human right." I believed we were talking about blocking by an involved admin. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)
But the thing is that sometimes even a very short, wrong block makes an editor to leave wikipedia. Remember !! (T-C-L-K-R-D) ?

[Maunus]

Lots of things make people want to leave wikipedia. As someone recently noted in an email to me few of those things are worth making a fuss about.

[jd turk]

Having the block button is not power. The only kind of power that exists on wikipedia is having many friends who watch ANI. It doesn't matter if your an admin or not if you have sufficient friends at ani you're untouchable.

To begin with, congrats on the thesis. Now have a beer or two and relax, you deserve it.

As for admins, I'm certainly not anti-admin. The problem with the admin cadre is that once empowered, it takes an act of God to get the tools away. When you have an admin who doesn't get it, the only hope you have is that either they'll wise up, get tired of other admins "trouting" them for foolish behavior, or that they'll eventually anger the wrong people high enough up the food chain to get the tools away from them.

To non-admin editors, every admin has the same powers and abilities. Some of them are very responsible, sure, but in all honesty a couple of them scare the Hell out of me.

Sorry, but the block button is power, especially if you're an editor with less than a couple of thousand edits who doesn't know how things work yet.

Just to be clear here, I'm not talking about Maunus in any of my comments.

[mbz1]

Lots of things make people want to leave wikipedia. As someone recently noted in an email to me few of those things are worth making a fuss about.

Of course, but some things that make editor leave wikipedia could and should be avoidable, and this including being blocked by an involved admin. Maunus, I know you are a caring, and a reasonable person, and I know you understand that an involved admin could get irritated, and be not exactly fair to a user. You said it was not a big deal to get blocked for an hour, but isn't it even lesser deal to be told that you are involved admin?

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[Maunus]

Of course, but some things that make editor leave wikipedia could and should be avoidable, and this including being blocked by an involved admin. Maunus, I know you are a caring, and a reasonable person, and I know you understand that an involved admin could get irritated, and be not
Exactly fair to a user. You said it was not a big deal to get blocked for an hour, but isn't it even lesser deal to be told that you are involved admin?

Yes, it is a very small thing in the large scheme of things. Which is also why I am not wasting many tears on leaving the "wikipedia admin" part of my life behind me. It was just the particular very small thing I happened to be pissed of at at the moment.

But I must say it felt really good to troll for a little while. One might just get addicted to it.

This post has been edited by Maunus:

[jd turk]

You said it was not a big deal to get blocked for an hour, but isn't it even lesser deal to be told that you are involved admin?

I agree with Maunus here, if it's something blockable, block the editor. "Involved admin" is often used as a get-out-of-jail card, and the worst offenders have a laundry list of admins who've blocked them who are now "involved," and shouldn't use the tools again simply because they already know the user's MO.

On the other hand, when an admin shows they don't get it and issues a bad block, they should have that blocking right removed for a period of time. I know the software won't allow it, and that's one of the problems. All admins and tools are not created equally.

[Maunus]

You said it was not a big deal to get blocked for an hour, but isn't it even lesser deal to be told that you are involved admin?

I agree with Maunus here, if it's something blockable, block the editor. "Involved admin" is often used as a get-out-of-jail card, and the worst offenders have a laundry list of admins who've blocked them who are now "involved," and shouldn't use the tools again simply because they already know the user's MO.

On the other hand, when an admin shows they don't get it and issues a bad block, they should have that blocking right removed for a period of time. I know the software won't allow it, and that's one of the problems. All admins and tools are not created equally.

Everyone should get the tools after making 5000 article edits.

[jd turk]

Everyone should get the tools after making 5000 article edits.

And with that platform, I'll go ahead and support your re-RFA.

[Ottava]

While Maunus caught some flak here, mostly for being an admin, generally speaking he is one of the "good guys" on that site, and I think this illustrates it.

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with telling a moron to fuck off (assuming the guy deserved it, which I can't be bothered to look into), I'm not sure how that illustrates good-guy-ness.

It doesn't, that part was based on my other-familiarity with maunus. But it does show a bit of chutzpah, especially coming from an admin, which I do respect.

Chutzpah? More like his disregard for anything realistic or credible. Remember, he did this abusively while an admin. He merely kept up his bullying tactics after. This is the guy who said that 66% to keep a page was not enough consensus merely because three of his friends were in the minority.