User:Writ Keeper/thoughts

Preamble
Y'know, I've been thinking. (A dangerous pastime, I know.) But I just don't know about this admin thing. This is all in reference to [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&oldid=579343167#Indefinite_block_of_Eric_Corbett this discussion on AN] (of course). I find it very weird that, not only did two separate admins (at least one of which I highly respect) propose a measure that I personally find disturbing, but that I edit-conflicted with two other admins who were opposing it, and neither of them wrote out the same objection to it that I had (though Nick might've thought of the same without vocalizing it). In a nutshell: who appointed us godkings of all communication between users, such that we can judge with impunity whether something is civil or not? Different people have different ideas about what is offensive and what isn't. I experienced this myself in my own RfA, actually, where I prefaced an answer of another user's question by saying that it was "kind of a weird question." He took very deep offense to that, which caught me completely off-guard, as I saw it as completely innocuous. So, who was right? The answer, of course, is neither of us, because there is no "right" or "wrong" in that scenario. We both have different interpretations of our different actions. I hate to go all relativist, but there are no black and white answers to these kinds of things. And yet, we have two proposals allowing any admin to post an irrevocable block (even if it is limited to 24 hours) on a user based on their own interpretation. That's not power I'm comfortable holding.

Turning in the bit
And so, [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Bureaucrats%27_noticeboard&diff=prev&oldid=579356987 I've asked not to hold it any more]. I'm sure that anyone who wants to can cite any number of my previous statments that show just how big a hypocrite I'm being right now, and they would probably have a point. Also, I would not be overly surprised if I ask for it back in the next few weeks/months. That's fine: this isn't really meant to be an "Admin strike" or anything. Such a strike would be pretty pointless, anyway: I rather doubt it's the actual presence or absence of the bit itself that makes one part of "the club", so it would have been an empty gesture. I'm just not sure that I, personally, am qualified to hold that kind of power. I'll give it some more thought and see. This is for the best, really; there are a couple articles I want to try to write (I have Highbeam access now, thanks Ocaasi!), and being an admin is a distraction from that anyway, so that's a benefit even if nothing else is. And not being an admin doesn't really stop me from doing that much anyway, so it's kind of whatever.

Malleus
N.B.- "Malleus Fatuorum" is the name I first knew him as, and still the name I use in my head, so I'm going to refer to Eric Corbett as "Malleus" for the duration.

It's kind of a shame that Malleus is the editor all this is revolving around, because many of the issues surrounding Malleus are quite specific to Malleus's situation, and they obscure the general concern that I have. Much of what Malleus says, if taken in a vacuum, could probably be nearly universally agreed to be offensive; the complication with him is in the context, in whether he was baited, provoked, etc. So, the conversation about him inevitably drifts away from the actual subjectivity of the appropriateness of his comments, and moves toward the mitigating circumstances. I think the who "mitigating circumstances" bit is a very valid defense that has been used a few times too often, but I'm not going to pretend that I understand the full scope of the problem or have The One True Solutiontm. Better people than I have tried and failed to resolve the situation, so I doubt my input is of much value. I just kinda find it sad that this actually pretty important issue keeps getting pushed into the background because of the circumstances, rather than discussed as it should be. Oh well.