Suggestions for Administrative actions
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 | This page in a nutshell: Administrators should maintain productive Talk pages by discouraging incivility and requiring focused discussion in place of posturing, rants and unruly debate. Their job is not unanimity, but a fair hearing for all. They are referees, not coaches |
A few precepts that I think should be obvious:
(i) Admins should not respond to mere clamor about disruption, but to documentable rules violations.
(ii) Admins should maintain a good editing environment on Talk pages: violations of WP:Civil,WP:NPA,WP:Talk & WP:Poll should be prevented, including catcalls, cheerleading, and red herrings, as elaborated below.
- Admins should suppress catcalls; by this is meant interjections into a thread on the Talk page that are jeers or boos, such as Buckle your seatbelt, here we go again!
- Admins should suppress cheerleading; by this is meant that accolades like "Me too!", "I echo that!", "I concur!", should be taboo, because they are made to snowball or bandwagon a viewpoint, not to add dimension to the discussion. They simply intimidate opposing viewpoints without contributing substance.
- Admins should suppress red herrings; by this is meant injection into a thread on a Talk page a diversionary topic, meant as a distraction to interrupt discussion, or as a means of introducing a pet topic or rant that otherwise would be ignored. Separate threads should be started for separate topics.
(iii) Admins should narrowly interpret and rigidly enforce WP behavioral guidelines regardless of whom Admins believe to be in the right.
(iv) Admins should ride herd on waving about of WP:POV WP:OR WP:SYN WP:Fringe as self-evident labels and insist that the evidence supporting their use be presented explicitly. In other words, these guideline references should not be used as pejorative terms. Admins should not make judgments of the validity of the evidence presented, only insist that there be evidence presented.
(v) Admins should insure that Main article page rules are not applied to Talk page discussion, which last should be more open and free.
(vi) Admins should not take preemptive action based upon personal predictions of what might happen, but restrict themselves to what actually does happen. They are not fortune tellers.
(vii) Admins say themselves that they cannot address content, and so should not propose remedies that are content specific. For example, topic bans should not be imposed, frankly because Admins are unable to distinguish occasions where the topic actually has been discussed (a violation), from other occasions where the topic has been merely alluded to, or has been used only as an example, or in fact hasn't come up at all although some of the vocabulary has been used. Page bans are better, because infractions are readily identified, whether you know anything or not. Behavioral control is even more appropriate, such as strict enforcement of WP:NPA or WP:Civil or WP:Talk. See formulating clear sanctions
(viii) Admins' overriding principle should be to catalyze open discussion of content, and rules should be enforced to engender exploration and comparison of viewpoints (not to impose unanimity), especially in the presence of vocal support for a particular view. Wikipedia:Reasonableness should be kept in mind. Brews ohare (talk) 21:33, 26 October 2009 (UTC)