Wikipedia talk:Ombudsmen

While it would be great to reduce POV disputes, I don't believe this proposal is the answer. It introduces all sorts of new bureaucracy and essentially makes use of "Wiki-dictators" to solve problems. There's already enough problems with editors accusing admins of having a cabal. Adding another level of hierarchy would only makes the problem worse.

If an admin is blocking or protecting inappropriately, any other admin can take action. If there are issues with an admin's behavior, this should be dealt with by the ArbCom. Carbonite | Talk 15:08, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

This is simply not needed, and creates another layer of bureaucracy.--Cberlet 15:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I must admit that I have visions of fast-forwarding a few years and seeing someone post "Our POV ombudsmen-cliques are out of control. We need a new layer of omniombudsmen to watch our ombudsmen and ensure neutrality." But seriously, while this proposal might be worth considering, its basic mechanics seem to hinge on the ideas of holding ombudsmen to a higher standard and making it easier to bring them to account; if we have valid and universally acceptable ways of doing so (and I'm very much not sure we do), then why not just apply those directly to admins? --Aquillion 16:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, that would certainly be an alternative approach to the problem. Perhaps I should make a different proposal, that admins, rather than serving what are essentially life terms, should periodically run for re-election, or be subject to impeachment through a less arduous mechanism than the present one. --HK 14:28, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I think re-election would be a nightmare, with hundreds of admins needing to go through the process. Even if the term were 2 years, we'd have dozens of "requests for re-adminship" every month. We'd also have the problem of trolls looking to punish admins for blocking them.

Having a better mechanism for dealing with admin misconduct might be a more workable solution. Perhaps a policy that admin behavior issues were fast-tracked through ArbCom? Carbonite | Talk 14:42, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

The concept of "fast-tracking through ArbCom" eludes me. The more I consider the alternatives, the better the Ombudsmen proposal sounds. --HK 21:44, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

By "fast-track", I mean that cases of admin misconduct would receive higher priority and be decided more rapidly. Thus, any admin abuse would be dealt with quickly. I think it makes more sense to tweak existing rules or procedures than to institute entirely new positions and/or commitees. Carbonite | Talk 00:49, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I understood what you meant. What eluded me was the idea that it could actually be accomplished, so forgive me for a moment of snideness. --HK 15:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Demonstrated need

• An example of such behavior is what might be called the Protection Racket, where admins watch the Requests for Protection page in order to protect the versions desired by their buddies, and POV warriors time protection requests so as to intersect periods when their Designated Admins are on patrol.
• At present, the remedies are inadequate. Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship seems very unwieldy and is seldom used.

This proposal contains (at least) two assertions with no evidence to support them. Can we first establish that there is a problem with the existing system before we aim to change it? Could the proponents of this policy please document instances of this "Protection Racket", and also failed de-admininship cases that can be used as examples of the failure of the existing system. Until we've defined the problem we can't find the right solution. Thanks, -Willmcw 18:05, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Now Will, don't go being all sensible and reasonable. We'll never be able to burn any witches that way.

On a more serious note, I concur with Carbonite and Aquillion—this proposal would add another layer of bureaucracy and wouldn't work. Any hypothetical cliques would just develop at the next higher level. (Wouldn't it be the existing clique that elected new Ombudsmen and the members of the proposed Ombudsmen Committee? If the Cabal can stack the current ranks of admins and the ArbCom, why would they be too dim to vote en bloc for pet Ombudsmen?)

In other words—if there is a cabal, clique, or 'protection racket', then this proposal would not resolve the problem. If there isn't any shady group of Illuminati, then this proposal is unnecessary; it would aim to solve a problem that didn't exist. Either way, it's of no use. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:46, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The essential feature of this proposal is that unlike the present admins, ombudsmen would have to watch their Ps and Qs, as their position would be inherently insecure. I have seen many editors, having attained the status of admin, rapidly become arrogant, knowing that the odds of a successful challenge to their status are neglible. --HK 15:17, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Need exists

• The issue of clique behavior is increasingly widespread on Wikipedia and may be demonstrated in the form of frequent disputed page protections. In my own experience I encountered a clique operating at an article, during which approximately 4-5 administrators who shared the same view on content issues there and who also frequently tag team with each other on other disputes were active participants in a sustained revert war. Moments after a version of the article that was favored by this group got reverted to, another administrator who is active among them (who had also commented extensively in support of their position on a related dispute at another similar article & briefly to the same effect on that article) came in and page protected it. Multiple non admin editors, myself included, objected to this but nevertheless worked through the talk page to produce a compromise text. When a compromise version began to emerge the non-admin editors started raising the issue of when the page would be unprotected. What followed was a lengthy period of delay tactics by the admin editors (one of them even made the unreasonable demand that I shouldn't be editing the article period, all to let her version stand uncontested), which were essentially little more than excuses to keep the page protection up long after any justifiable need existed. Curiously, even though some 4-5 different admins with unprotect power were watching and participating on this page and thus were well aware that the content dispute had been resolved by a compromise text (not to mention being aware of the posts seeking unprotection on the talk page), none would even entertain the idea. They were all content with preserving what they apparently deemed to be the "right" version of the pre-compromise revert war. Eventually I posted a request for unprotection to get a neutral non-clique admin's input, and within a day or so the article was unprotected and the compromise adopted.

• In another case I encountered an administrator clique that tag teamed a WP:POINT allegation on my user page aimed at sinking a new Wikipedia guideline proposal that I was advocating. The posting of this allegation was threatened openly on the proposal talk page by one of the admins, and a few days later he posted it to my user page. Moments later and in direct coordination with him, another allied admin made two separate sarcastically worded attacks on the proposal to its Village Pump listing that linked to the coordinated WP:POINT allegation the other had posted on my user page. During the incident these same two admins engaged in revert warring and imposed a page protection on my user page under the guise that they were "fighting a vandal," who had edited it. In reality it was aimed at preserving the WP:POINT allegation and its coordinated Village Pump listings for the purpose of sinking the proposal I supported. Much like the first case, this incident also involved two admins who frequently tag team around Wikipedia in support of each other. I have also subsequently had to file an arbitration case against these two admins for this incident.

• I've also seen and experienced cases where Administrator cliques vote down or attempt to bury user conduct RfC's when filed against one of their own. In a recent case I filed an RfC against an administrator for behavior that included clear policy violations (such as using inoccuous edit summaries to describe major content changes) and clearly abusive POV pushing (among other things he was inserting irrelevant quotes from David Duke to discredit and smear article subjects). The RfC drew several non-admin editors who immediately saw this as a problem and also contributed at great lengths to repair and improve the article where this behavior had occurred. Though RfC's are always open to different interpretations, in the very least the evidence that this admin had misbehaved was incontrovertable for the major examples (such as the David Duke quotes). Shortly thereafter all his admin clique buddies showed up and tried to sink the RfC by "voting" against it en masse (even though "voting" is not the purpose of RfC's to begin with). A couple of them also then lingered on the RfC's talk page for the purpose of stirring up disputes while contributing virtually nothing toward a solution at the article itself.

Anyway, these are just a couple examples that demonstrate a need for some sort of policy of this type. In the interest of full disclosure it should also be noted that certain persons presently expressing doubts that incidents of this type exist on wikipedia are the admins themselves who were the problems in the cases described above, and very likely in many others. Not all admins are bad, and in fact there are many good ones. But if I were an admin who abused Wikipedia policies or engaged in coordinated revert warring and bullying of non-admin editors with other admins i'd probably stand to lose by some sort of check being placed over my behavior through a policy such as this proposal. With that in mind it should be little doubt why certain admins will be disinclined to admit that this proposal is warranted. Rangerdude 00:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Is this a good way to address the actual issue?

To me, this seems overly complicated. I agree that (real or perceived) administrative abuse is a problem that runs off editors. It's also commonly reported with no basis in fact. Too often, people brush off all such complaints as baseless, even in cases where there is a legitimate cause for concern. Rather than seeing an Ombudsman as an additional level of heirarchy, what if all editors were encouraged to act as ombudsmen? Maybe it could be a place for review of administrative actions and other editors could review cases and chime in with "I agree with how the admin handled this" or "I think that was inappropriate". In cases of repeated inappropriate behavior, the matter could go on to a formal RFC or even RFAr. Friday (talk) 18:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

In principle, this is supposed to be one of the functions of the Administrators' noticeboard Incidents page, WP:AN/I. Though the page name might be somewhat misleading, anyone can edit AN/I—you don't have to be an administrator.

If an admin takes an action that is controversial, it's usually the first stop to seek some sort of resolution. Ideally, we might see a notice along the lines of "Admin TenOfAllTrades has blocked User:JohnDoe in response to a kerfuffle at RandomArticle. I'm not sure if the block was within policy; could some other admins have a look and unblock JohnDoe if necessary?" In a perfect world, we might even see "I (TenOfAllTrades) blocked User:JohnDoe in response to his actions at RandomArticle. Did I overstep my bounds here?" (For the record, I've posted both types of notice before on WP:AN/I and gotten productive replies.)

Unfortunately, what usually happens is we see a big header screaming 'Admin abuse by TenOfAllTrades' and a complaint that "TenOfAllTrades is a rogue admin who has abused the blocking policy. He needs to be deadminned immediately or I'll sue!" or some variation on that theme. That type of comment usually doesn't meet with a helpful or credulous response. AN/I works quite well when the complainant is calm, reasonable, and adheres to WP:CIV, WP:NPA, and WP:AGF. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:57, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that AN/I can, in theory, be this place. I'd personally like to see a new place for such things, though. AN/I is pretty busy even without this sort of thing. I also would like for it to be easy to review previous issues with the same administrator. If Admin X has done a questionable deletion that gets reviewed, I want it to be apparent in that review whether there were 15 previous complaints of questionable deletions, and whether those complaints were considered warranted or not. Basically, what I'm after is an informal RFC that's always open, and is only about review of administrators' actions. (Whether this means all actions or just uses of admin powers could be debated.) I believe a transparent record of controversial actions, all kept together in one place, would be a good thing. Spurious complaints would of course be easily recognized as such. Friday (talk) 20:49, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• We have a transparent record of controversial actions - try Special:Log. It's relatively easy to check a number of an admin's deletes and see if they were undeleted by someone else, or a number of his blocks and see if they were unblocked by someone else. But Ten's point is rather important - while it is certainly true that admins should be accountable and should listen to complaints, it is also true that a significant number of complaints about admins are nothing but vengeful rants. Radiant_>|< 10:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the log accomplishes what I want. Just knowing something was undone doesn't tell the whole story; the log simply doesn't have enough information. It's useful, sure, but it doesn't fulfill the goal of getting discussion into one place. And sure, there will always be unwarranted complaints- people get them on their user pages frequently already. We're already accustomed to dealing with such things, so I don't see how that issue is a problem. Friday (talk) 23:00, 11 November 2005 (UTC)