Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:IRC channels/wikipedia-en-admins

Reply to Friday's query
Friday asks What the fuck are we doing encouraging non-transparent discussion of Wikipedia-related matters?

Because a lot of discussion about Wikipedia-related matters must be non-transparent. For instance, you don't want OTRS volunteers going around disclosing the contents of private communications about Wikipedia, do you? And when Jimbo shows up and holds a closed discussion, those involved are not going to blab it all over the wiki, are they? Like any business, there are things that are confidential.

Really it surprises me that such questions are still asked by people who have been around for years. --Tony Sidaway 02:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, yes, of course. That's why I also wrote that I understand that certain small groups may need confidential channels.  I didn't see anything on the page about this being (strictly) an OTRS tool.  In the recent debacle that brought this up, there was no indication that any discussion needed to be private- quite the opposite, if this had been discussed on-wiki, it seems very unlikely that it would have happened. Friday (talk) 03:03, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There's a mix of confidential and non-confidential discussion. It's much less formal than the wiki.  I agree that many steps were missed in the contemplation, planning and eventual execution of a bad block the other day, but I've already discussed that elsewhere.  It has made me doubt, for the first time, that the channel is completely beneficial, because I think it's clear that the editor who made the block believed himself to be executing the will of Wikipedia, and on-channel discussions may have reinforced his delusions. The editor's written justification was so bizarre that I believed he must have taken drugs or something else that impaired his ability to communicate coherently, so I'm inclined to chalk it up as a one-off (the editor has been banned from the channel for the time being).  I've heard rumors about other alleged bad blocks planned on IRC but none of them were convincing. --Tony Sidaway 06:01, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

An addendum to my comments
I apologize for my inappropriate comments. My comments that I should fear a block based upon my "[interaction] with some who use the channel, [when] one sees what has happened, oh, in the past twenty-four hours" impugned the entire community of administrators who use the IRC channel. While I have outwardly expressed frustration with ill-considered blocks and insults being discussed on that channel, I understand that not everyone is party to them; my comments, however, did not distinguish between the parties and the community. I apologize. --Iamunknown 05:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)