Essay talk:Sysop rights must change

I disagree that policy discussions should be further restricted than they already are.

I do agree with the flaws in sysop policy. I am shocked a number of users on this site are actually sysops -and the only check on their abuses is that other users hate their guts.

You must understand that many people would lose their sysop rights under stricter rules, so it would be extremely unpopular. I'm prepared to accept this -I'm a nobody here, and I got on fine without being a sysop, but I don't get under anyone's skin. You yourself would be hounded off the site. --TheLateGatsby (talk) 18:00, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * This whole hounding Brx off the site business needs to stop. Sure, he's a clueless idiot who is a nuisance sometimes (lately, not as bad as he used to be), but at this point the people trying to hound him off and openly provoking and trolling him are more of a problem than he is. And if sysop rights are restricted, they should be given to level-headed, mature people, not people who abuse blocking as a way to hound a user off the site. -- Nx  / talk 18:30, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. We're an open community, and in an open community, it is almost 100% certain that there will be people who others do not like. That's the cost of openness, and we all need to accept that, and conduct ourselves accordingly. Theory of Practice Still tryin' to figure it all out. 19:01, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Nx, I absolutely agree that I am cruelly persecuted, a martyr for the ages. However, this essay was written with primarily Abd in mind, and is not about how I have been treated-- "Shut up, Brx." 21:03, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I read your comment before Gatsby's. Makes more sense when I follow the conversation in chronological order.  It must be your signature.  My eyes go straight to it.  I'm not blaming your signature, just explaining what happened-- "Shut up, Brx." 21:06, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Brother Bricks, your conclusion makes no sense
"Sysop rights should not be taken likely, and should be taken away from obvious troublemakers."

I cannot take that seriously, for numerous reasons which I will keep to myself. One reason I will share is the difficulty of fairly determining who is or is not an "obvious troublemaker."

Bricks, over many moons I've gotten the sense that you would like to be comfortable in a regime where rules are laid out plainly, strong authority figures see that they are enforced, and most of us follow along in our own helpful ways. I favor a model more along the lines of collaboration between independent actors, each with the tools and ability to set things right as they see fit. I do not find the spectacle entertaining when those tools are used capriciously or irresponsibly, but I believe the alternatives tend towards cultures of sycophancy and dependence. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 18:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Do you feel there is no mechanism to ensure transparency? I agree with the assessment that wiki set-ups force transparency, and people have to consciously circumvent it (CP and its special discussion groups) --TheLateGatsby (talk) 19:05, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * What motivates that question? How is ensuring transparency even possible, until someone gets caught in a smoke-filled room? In general, I believe transparency is best, and I mean complete, stark transparency without exception, sausage factory and all. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 19:28, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I think a good way to determine obvious troublemakers within the context of sysop rights is looking at the different kinds of discussions and how users interact with them. If someone is a crank and uses their sysop bit to push their garbage onto mainspace, then they are a troublemaker.  If someone blocks somebody else for posting a dissenting opinion, they are a troublemaker.  If someone posts dick pictures on my talk page, reverts me when I try to remove them, and uses their rights to make sure they won't be deterred (unblocking themselves, blocking and removing others' rights, protecting the page), then they are obviously a troublemaker.-- "Shut up, Brx." 21:12, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Sprocket: What happened this weekend was a pain in the ass, just like it is every time someone shits in the meat-hopper (to extend your sausage analogy). I want a few clear rules, but I assume the reason we never get them is because certain people expect the rules to be used against them. Brx and Abd are the first people I'd expect to be targeted by stricter rules, and I bring up transparency, because I would like nothing more than to see full explanations why someone has to go, rather than "The Mob" throwing people out. --TheLateGatsby (talk) 21:26, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The sausage analogy is not mine, but comes from a quote hazily misattributed to Otto von Bismarck: "Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made."
 * I used it, fully accepting that the squeezing of mystery mince through an intestinal casing is metaphoric defecation. Enough about that. I think the recent kerfuffle was not amusing, but it wasn't a pain in the ass either. It's a marginally interesting wiki with a group of self-selected contributors, ferfuxxake. I'd like to see it continue as a useful resource for its target audience, and it will, to some degree or other.
 * As far as rules go, I happen to think that "don't be a dick" covers most cases, but relies on the assumption that prompt accurate community feedback will identify dickish behavior. Wishful thinking, I know. That, along with a few simple rules about such things as user talk pages belonging to the community (with troll-collapsing templates available) should suffice. Yeah, I know...
 * @Bricks: Your examples are, in order, vague (depending on who/what qualifies as "crank" or "garbage") sort of vague (blocks... dissenting opinion) and overly particular (dicks on your talk page.) Breathe. Relax. Use the collapse template on it, and move on. Chiseling a rule in stone about "no putting penises on Brx's talk page" is just inviting a Streisand effect. Be well, my friend. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 21:53, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I did collapse it. Anyways, let me provide some more specific examples for the first one.
 * Abd attempted to lock the Cold Fusion article to stop people from reverting his edits. Thankfully, page protection from other sysops is a laughable endeavor.  But he can also unblock and unbin himself and immediately resume editing mainspace if he is blocked to prevent him from doing so (as a temporary measure, as a warning, etc)
 * -- "Shut up, Brx." 22:16, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, let's leave aside whether Abd is or isn't a "crank," and whether his take on cold fusion is or isn't "garbage." (I don't know enough to evaluate that, but his tone seems reasonable, and his explications have been, mm, thorough.) That example, in my view, shows the strength of a many-sysops model, with reasonable, flexible, easily met requirements, administered by a social stucture instead of being hemmed in by bureaucratic hoops. With many eyeballs, iffy behavior tends to be not all that troublesome, and wiki-content is easily mended, for the most part. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 14:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. ABD is a long-winded boring crank. Taking away his sysop rights will make him a long-winded boring crank without sysop rights, it won't make him any smarter or any more fun to be around. We're a pretty big community, and the number of people who have abused or who still abuse the powerz can be counted on one hand--me, Nutty, Ace. That tells me that the system works. Theory of Practice Still tryin' to figure it all out. 14:47, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

If fuckwits like this http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User:Mikal can immediately undo any changes I make in a serious discussion/edit then this site is useless and pathetic. It is not even worth the small price of owning the domain name. It actually diminishes the advance of science and gives credibility to the creationists and quacks. It is not worth the effort. So... fare thee well my lovelies! --Dirk Steele (talk) 19:20, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Take the first step first.
Attempting to determine sysop policy before there is a clear understanding of the site purpose is likely to be a waste of time.

The Main page does have some, ah, "twaddle" about site purpose. It's obvious that purposes are being served other than those stated. A majority of regular actors in the drama act from desires and habits other than those. That these are not documented doesn't make them go away.

Until the site purpose is clear, details (such as rights and powers of sysops, and how freely sysop rights are assigned) are not rooted in a common purpose.

Another fundamental issue that's not documented is actual control. The RationalWiki Foundation is responsible for the site. That organization is on the line, legally, and if it screws up badly enough, failing to exercise its legal responsibilities, the corporate veil can be pierced and individual board members and officers can be held responsible. The only point here is that the Board must have the ultimate power, even if it routinely chooses to stand aside and let the "community" decide.

We can see, in Brxbrx's essay, a series of assumptions about what is desirable and not desirable, but they are not rooted in site purpose, or community purpose. --Abd (talk) 21:21, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * What the fuck are you talking about, Abd? Did you really just pop of out of the blue about how board members and officers might be susceptible of being sued personally? What appallingly irrelevant and imprudent bullshit. [[file:Nuttysig.svg|95px|link=User:Nutty Roux|Nutty Roux]]100x100 anarchy symbol.svg 23:07, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Cool. Nutty is. I was explaining why the ultimate right of decision must rest with the Board and corporate officers, as well as responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. This is a general truth. There is a reason why corporations buy insurance for board members and officers. It's an actual risk. It's not a high one, but it exists.
 * However, I'm not being paid to issue legal opinions here, nor to do the legal research to write a brief citing evidence, showing proof. Ask a lawyer if you doubt what I'm saying, or feel free to continue believing whatever you like.
 * The issue here is wiki structure, and the point I raised is crucial in setting up the foundations of structure. Wikis are generally hybrids, with a "community" power structure, sometimes anonymous, handling routine decisions, and a defined, non-anonymous power structure that has the right, and sometimes the responsibility, to intervene. --Abd (talk) 14:50, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * "Ask a lawyer if you doubt what I'm saying." hilarious. Abd made a funny. Theory of Practice Still tryin' to figure it all out. 14:57, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter if you are not on the board or an executive. Look, suppose I'm wrong. How would we know? On what are TheoryOfPractice and Nutty Roux basing their opinions? I've studied common law, and I've served on real nonprofit boards for active organizations with substantial budgets, public grants, etc., and, believe me, what I've mentioned is a real concern. But, of course, I'm not a lawyer and I could be wrong, and you can't sue me for a wrong opinion. Get a formal opinion from a lawyer, you could sue him or her for an error that costs you something.
 * You are highly unlikely to get an opinion from a real lawyer that "la, la, la, it doesn't matter."
 * And, once again, the only relevance here is only whether or not it is necessary for the Board to have control. Legally, in general, Boards are self-elected; they may have bylaws that provide for some kind of membership elections, but they can also change those bylaws at any time, they can reject the results of elections, they can create whatever elections rules they like, they can do a lot, and if the members have not paid for specific rights, those rights, even if promised, aren't enforceable. Legally, the power of the board is necessary, because otherwise there is no responsibility; without that responsibility, corporations would be a way to commit crimes and create massive harm with no human being responsible. And the corporate treasury might be empty. So, tough? --Abd (talk) 15:54, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * "I've studied common law." That's nice. You know Nutty is a practicing lawyer, with a real law degree and everything, right? Theory of Practice Still tryin' to figure it all out. 15:58, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * No, I did not know that. I haven't seen Nutty actually contradict what I've said. Is Nutty's real name known, so that we actually know that he's a lawyer, can we check this? Seems to me there is an important issue here, for those who are members of nonprofit boards, like the RWF, or for officers acting for the board. Wouldn't it be useful to actually get it resolved? Nutty's opinion, "bullshit," is not a legal opinion, it's just a reaction. I'm not seeing legal advice here, from him. He can easily remedy this. Or he could point to a source of legal advice. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Not quite as chaotic as it might seem
Brxbrx complains about my behavior, extrapolating from the behavior of a single day, with a small amount of follow-up, to imply a massive pattern. However, he makes a series of claims that are just plain false. I'm countering this to point out the general principle, my particular case is not at all unique.


 * Binning Abd is not possible.
 * Giving him warning blocks to stop him derailing a discussion is not possible.
 * Protecting a page to stop him from editing it is not possible.

This is preposterous, because there is a right routinely granted with the sysop bit: the right to remove that bit from others. You can do any of the above things to me, if you simply strip my sysop right first. Quite a few users have done this, without suffering consequences, other than sometimes seeing it reversed.

You can also do these things if the community supports your action and shows it, even without promoting me. I don't always respond to a single "shut up!" but when responsible members of the community say it, I usually do, and quickly.

Brxbrx himself complained during the events of the 20th that I wasn't "helping."

Brxbrx had an agenda, knows community politics, and was attempting to manipulate it, bottom line. What I do is to document what communities do, I've been doing it for years. To Brxbrx, those events had a meaning which he didn't want to be lost: that Ace is a dangerous asshole, should be dumped, and if I wanted to "get rid" of Ace -- which he assumed --, I should shut up.

But I never had that goal. Ace is an asshole, he knows it, we know it, and what is popular about Ace is that he doesn't deny it. Lots of others do. Frankly, I prefer assholes to hypocrites.

That Ace is an asshole is far from the most important lesson that can be derived from those events. They showed how this wiki works, and how it doesn't work. But that knowledge is more likely to slip into the mists of time if not documented. And those who prefer to keep things as they are don't want the community to wake up.

Tl;dr is exactly how communities fall into mobocracy. Long posts can be summarized, condensed, subpaged, and all that. On Wikipedia, I found that when issues were complex, the mob could make it impossible to truly consider them, so I created a coherent deliberative process, and it worked. It the top level, it was extremely brief, but then each detail of the decision was covered, with consensus. The result: a popular cabal editor found that the real community, given the opportunity, rejected his position. If you'd really like to know what happened there, someday, this is a summary: the cabals did not want the community to wake up and function coherently. --Abd (talk) 21:54, 22 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Unilaterally removing sysop rights is very controversial and is never uncontested, even when done explicitly as a temporary measure. Actually, look at the user rights log concerning you.  People wanted to remove your rights, but others were squeamish at the concept.-- "Shut up, Brx." 22:19, 22 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Moving argument. I've been promoted unilaterally quite a few times. Nobody was "squeamish." Nobody got any actual sanction for it. Some didn't support it, that's all. Basically, it's possible to stop an editor from editing entirely, warn the editor and back up the warning with enforcement, protect a page against non-sysops, etc., all of that which Brxbrx denied as being possible.


 * What's not possible is to do these things easily if an editor is not, as might be pretended, an isolated crank, without support at all. RatWiki does indeed make it difficult to indef block. Like it or not, that's part of the community design.


 * The most preposterous of the claims is that it's not possible to give me warning blocks. Eh? Sure. If you aren't a sysop! Otherwise, it's really, really easy. Sure, Brxbrx, you know that, so some agenda is clouding your mind here. --Abd (talk) 22:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think Abd is the problem
I don't think Abd is a real problem. At least he engages a discussion about a topic he's passionate about, even if he disagrees with most people on this site about cold fusion. RW has a history of that.

I actually do think there are problems with sysopship. It's like autoconfirmed but with too many tools. That and there's very few ways to reinforce good behavior and discourage poor behavior. Blocking doesn't mean anything if everyone can do it. (Yeah, block wars are fun at times, but they get old sometimes, too.) It actually also seems like the last couple rounds are more about moderators and techs. sterilesporadic heavy hitter 22:58, 22 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Sterile. Sysop rights (specifically blocking) here simply engages all users in handling vandalism and other trolling by non-sysop users. Because a sysop can see deleted content, the process here is more like Pure wiki deletion. Most regular users can do it.
 * The real problem here is the lack of clear mission with a corresponding efficient and reliable decision-making structure designed to support the mission. Or it's not a problem at all, it's simply an experiment in the way it works and doesn't work. --Abd (talk) 01:03, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Seems like overkill to me. The suggestion is that the sysop system needs to be overhauled because of one user. Yet there is no suggestion that that one user has actually abused his sysop rights. There might be a case for changing the system but this isn't it.--Weirdstuff (talk) 15:10, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

An idea
Considering how big a stink everybody makes about user rights, I propose that the next time RW needs money to maintain itself, Tmtoulouse should hold everybody's user rights hostage until they pony up the cash. Two birds, one stone! ±KnightOfTL;DR free guybrush threepwood! no new taxes! down with porcelain! 15:51, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Bad Idea, of course. However, something similar might indeed be a Good Idea, at least it is an option. Create a membership organization, i.e., one could become a member of the RationalWiki Foundation. There could be requirements, and there would be benefits. The requirements could include payment of dues, possibly real-world identification (to the Foundation), and the benefits might include voting rights (i.e., the Board would be elected by *members,* not by the user community, per se. This is within a nonprofit organization model. --Abd (talk) 18:02, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Dirk Steele
Can someone please explain why I get a special mention in this essay. Have I ever abused sysop rights? I may be a dick but all I am doing is explaining why psychiatry is a pseudoscience. A view held by over 20% who voted in a poll here and a position held by many rational skeptics. Is there a problem? Dirk Steele (talk) 14:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * By virtue of your existence, you are abusing your sysop rights. You are able to unblock yourself, remove yourself from the vandal bin, and thus continue your screeds unchecked.  Granted, you are not the worst example I can come up with.  But you still qualify.  And please, pretty please, for the love of god or whatever it is you hold dear, do not turn this page into one of your forums, with you constantly adding another set of 1000 characters for each instance somebody else edits the page.  Be concise, do not repeat yourself, and accept that your opinions will not be well received on this page, that this page is meant for the mainstream of RationalWiki users, and that if you read my essay, this is exactly the sort of discussion I'd like to bar you from.-- "Shut up, Brx." 14:43, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Brasov is not a sysop
He's not. --Spud (talk) 15:44, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * True. I included him because he's a problem user, and a prime example of someone who should be barred from most discussions-- "Shut up, Brx." 16:58, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I see. This is not an essay on sysop rights at all. It is a popularity contest. Nice one. Dirk Steele (talk) 17:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you really in any way surprised that it's a popularity contest that you're losing? Innocent Bystander (talk) 17:40, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Dirk, that you and Brasov are continued problems on this site for pushing ideas which wildly contradict accept science is in no way disputed. You may claim that your position is more scientifically correct, but your position still contradicts the accepted scientific and academic view.--Just relax, and stay funny (talk) 21:00, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * And so did Bruno, Darwin and Dawkins. You want the 'truth' to be decided by the X-Factor? Dickfish anti-scientific rubbish. You are stupid and do not realise your stupidity. Just fuck off mate, and keep your insane mental thoughts to yourself so that we do not have to suffer your pseudo shit crap postings any longer. Dirk Steele (talk) 02:38, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * They had evidence. You have repeatedly screaming that you're right while ignoring/denying the existence of all evidence to the contrary. Also, I was made a sysop because I am respected. You were made a sysop so you wouldn't bitch all the time about constantly getting blocked for being a rude idiot with a posting style so ridiculous that the only way anyone can follow what goes on in the threads you post in is by going to the fucking fossil record. So, whose the one that needs to fuck off?--Just relax, and stay funny (talk) 03:06, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * No Hamilton it is you that talks about the 'fall' of Popper and falsifiability, and disagrees with science. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness/2012/05/11/why-are-there-no-biological-tests-in-psychiatry/ But don't waylay this discussion with your crap. Dirk Steele (talk) 21:35, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Is it bad that I don't remember writing this?
Can somebody just delete everything I've ever written so I don't end up corrupting any more impressionable youth?-- "Shut up, Brx." 19:48, 28 July 2017 (UTC)