Triptych wrote:Ming wrote:Fine then: the issue I see here is that you/we have really no chance of making any sort of accountability stick; or to put it in other terms, you/we aren't actually able to call them to account. I'm not seeing the problems with ARBCOM which could have something do do with their real-life identities; really the biggest issue may well be that that their continual declining to take cases is pushing too much on AN/I...
You don't need a mechanism beyond the identification, unless you count self-control. In other words, the anonymity is the root, well
a root of the abusive behavior. You eliminate the anonymity, the behavior improves.
That was never Ming's experience of the internet. Back in usenet days, a lot of the hugest pains in the neck were people whom everyone knew. There wasn't a lot of real anonymity, because the guy down the hallway in the CS department or at DEC or wherever knew who you were. There was some spoofing but the size of the thing was such that it was generally easy to kill off. And you know what? Every aspect of bad internet behavior we suffer through now was invented back then. Suppressing anonymity mostly puts matters more in the hands of the bloody-minded. If you're lucky you'll get someone like NYB, but more likely you'll get a petty tyrant like
Schuminweb (T-C-L), whose real life identity was right out in the open, and whose abusive behavior took well over a year to be called to account, and only because a big enough "lynch mob" got together and petitioned ARBCOM to take this guy's admin powers away. His name didn't make him accountable; only ARBCOM's willingness to act brought him to account.
I appreciate the comment but feel you don't understand just how bad the abuses of the administrative culture are.
Ming has cosmic powers of imagination, so he has no problem understanding the possible extent of admin abuse. What he does not see is this having any effect on whatever problems are out there; he sees instead that this would make them more entrenched. If the current attitude towards anonymity and its loss be a contributing factor, doing this would simply provide "proof" that editor identities need be protected ever more strongly.
Administrator accountability can only be made effective through a culture and power structures which make calling them on the carpet both more readily done and less necessary. An ineffectual outside threat (for you do intend to so threaten them) simply is going to promote them closing ranks against outsiders, including against lowly editors.
As for WP:AN/ANI, they don't have stuff "pushed" on them, those are chat forums inhabited largely by the most abhorrent people who reach out and grab ever more stuff, because they enjoy the heck out of judging and controlling their latest targets, and of course the popcorn-muching drama of it.
If that's what you see, Ming isn't confident of your powers of observation. There is plenty wrong with what goes on at AN/I, but when Ming counts incidents instead of volume, he mostly sees routine slap-downs of people whose acts merit it. The drama fests are of course another story, but exposing identities is only rarely going to fix that.
