Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 09:16, Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I don't think it's a single incident:
>
> I do. Dscho has been keeping the old wiki clean for I don't know how
> long. He has done the same for the new wiki. I am confident that those
> other bans are for good reasons.

I also find the subject line distasteful; there is no evidence of
misbehaviour, and the subject line implies that there is.  I'm
hesitant to change the subject line and break the thread, however.

However, the best advice I ever got about trust is: "Trust, but verify."

Right now, whether or not Johannes has done the right thing has been
called into question and is resulting in such an angry thread *only*
because it's impossible to verify what has actually been done.  When
people can verify what happened - which in this case just means
looking at the deleted pages - then trust is possible and easy.

Most social problems come from the social environment, not individual
people's actions.  In this case, the social environment (wiki
settings) have been configured explicitly to cast doubt on Johannes.
It was an accident waiting to happen, and it finally happened.

The proposal to add a second admin to the wiki - or at least make
deleted pages visible to one other person - is not about Johannes.
It's about creating a healthy social environment that allows people to
relieve their suspicion before they let it get out of control.

So far, all the counterarguments have been of the form, "But Johannes
is a good guy, so we don't need to check on him."  That's an invalid
argument, because the real proposal (modulo the stupid subject line of
this thread) is not about Johannes at all.  Checking on him isn't
about preventing him from being an idiot, it's about preventing
everyone else from being an idiot.  Which I think we can all agree at
this point, would have been nice.

Have fun,

Avery