Rubenerd

I've had some time to think about my criticisms of Wikipedia and the rebuttals people have posted, so I've modified my user page to reframe my "worrying out loud" into governance proposals.

While he finds the philosophy and mission of Wikipedia noble, he firmly believes administrators who repeatedly have their short-sighted article deletion nominations rejected should have their privileges temporarily or permanently revoked depending on the number of offences. He also thinks indiscriminate template boilerplate should always have an accompanying explanation specific to the article or media in question; it’s the polite thing to do.

Both these proposals would help to discourage administrative abuse.

I use Wikipedia a lot but rarely edit it, and part of the reason has been because of heavy handed administrators. I understand there have been plenty of abuses from malicious or self serving editors, but as I've said here before the fact that decent, honest people like Jim Kloss have felt their large contributing days are over is a loss not to him, but to all of us.

As with terrorism and government policy, the fact some people abuse the system should not be used as an excuse to unfairly restrict honest people or treat them with less respect. Even if the motive of some administrators isn't to be condescending or rude when they slap indiscriminate introductory boilerplate onto a contributors talk page, it doesn't negate the result.

Wow, a seriously worded post on Rubenerd.com, who'd have thunk it.