Seeing as this thread is (indirectly) about me, I feel I ought to say something...


I'll take a deep breath here and disagree with Lara; that drawer is where you put things that aren't necessary, whereas the bureaucracy of Wikipedia is a collection of necessary processes that have become contaminated with eight years of crap. The best analogy was made by (I think) Kelly Martin in the old days; Wikipedia is like a meatpacking plant. The end product is a lot more palatable if you don't look at exactly how it's made.

Yes, the proverbial sausage-maker.

Thing is, if NOBODY examines how the sausage is made, then pretty soon you've got whole populations of people dropping like, er, flies.

Wikipediots as E coli — yup, that fits.

Jon

Stretching the analogy... I'd say the admin role as it should be - and while I do try to stick to it, I'm well aware others don't - is that of the Food Standards Agency inspector who checks the sausage-machines are functioning correctly, orders the operators of dirty machines to clean them up, and tracks down and disposes of any contaminated meat that reaches the food chain, before it's had the chance to do too much damage.

Bringing the sausage analogy back to the original point of this thread, the reason Shalom had so many people lined up to oppose him (it's not exactly a frequent event for Majorly & I to agree on anything), is not, by and large, that he'd sold contaminated meat in the past, but that he enforced the food hygiene laws too literally - "it's illegal to sell meat with E. Coli infection but the law doesn't mention salmonella so I guess I'll let this batch through" - coupled with an apparent total inability to admit he was ever wrong about anything. Yes, Wikipedia has cabals and cliques - but people opposing you does not automatically mean that there's a conspiracy against you.

Admins are more like the drunken shop foremen who sweep up saw dust, the severed digits of employees and their own vomit into the sausage mix. Then tosses in a little formaldehyde to cover up the rot.

It's a Jungle out there. So you might want someone independent of the plant doing the inspecting.

Which is what WR should be, and what I'm sure was the intent when it was established - at it's best, it's an independent arbiter raising issues that need to be addressed; at it's worst, it's a flameboard of "mummy look at me" posturing and whining to equal anything found on WP.

I can't say what the intent was when established, but you are right about the worst of this place now. I've got a theory of one way to try and address that which I'd like to try at some point. It seems to me that as we have more or less won the battle of making WR an acceptable site for Wikipedians to be seen in, it has allowed the nonsenses to migrate over here - added to those of our own devising.

I can't take credit for that one; I heard that analogy used by David Gerard before my first reference to it. And it's not very likely original to him; describing any process as being like "sausage-making" is a timeworn simile.

Presently if WR inspected the sausage it would consist of one person actually looking for contamination, three Wikipedians saying "looks good to me" and someone discussing at great length 9th century Mongol sausage curing techniques.

You forgot one person who alternates between hawking his own sausages, and trying to sneak into the other sausage factory to add rat droppings to their sausage vats.

Kelly, even though I never agree with you, if you ever want to come back I'll personally nominate you for admin myself on the basis of that metaphor. We need more people who think about the problems and less "oppose per policy" human robots who don't ever dare think that the policy might be wrong. 50% of the current crop of admins & admin candidates could be replaced with a few lines of code and a set of policies, and I doubt anyone would notice the difference.

Actually you would; the robots would be far more civil.

That's pretty funny, even if not altogether fair.

And then there's another person who participates in an "off the record" community chat with the community she's abandoned, making up things that simply aren't true about the person who hawks his own sausages.

Yes, Jimbo doesn't really "sneak" into the Halls of Academe (The Other Sausage Factory) — he gets invited (like some Trojan Horse), and at a pretty hefty fee, to boot.

Jon

I've used it independently (i.e. never having particularly heard, or not having noted, anyone else's use of it to describe WP) in describing the "wiki process" to RL acquaintances.

Thirded.

Doubtful - my best guess at how it would turn out is "BCBot with delete and block buttons"

Mod note: The above sausage related posts were split from the completely kosher Shalom Leaving thread.