Administrator abuse on Wikipedia

Administrator abuse on is a pattern of behavior on whereby administrators, or sysops, enforce their own will in upon the on-line community in disregard 's internal policies and processes that have been determined by collaboration and consensus. Social scientists and scholars who have evaluated the operation and governance of observe that administrators function outside the bounds of policy and without the scrutiny and oversight applied to regular editors.
Background
was founded by Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001 and is now the largest reference resource on the internet. is edited collaboratively through the use of a "wiki" model that allows articles to be edited by registered and unregistered users. Although open to editing by anyone, the reliability of the encyclopedia has been found to be comparable with that of Encyclopedia Britannica. To prevent vandalism and to control user conduct, the community relies on a power structure that entrusts volunteer administrators with the authority to discipline users and control editorial content.
Administrators
To become an administrator on , an editor is subjected to a formal process, called a , in which the entire community of editors has an opportunity to evaluate and discuss the candidate's qualifications and arrive at a consensus on whether to promote the candidate to the position of administrator. Once an individual is vetted by the community and granted administrator status, he holds the position for life. Conferring administrator status was not intended to develop a special subgroup of editors to be set apart from the community. Nevertheless, over time administrator powers have increased, even though there has been no formal increase in administrator authority. This phenomenon is at odds with the original intent that administrators remain a part of the community on par with editors who do not have administrator tools.
Criticism
Complaints about abusive administrators are fairly frequent: "some disillusioned former ns gripe about such bureaucratic heavy-handedness and/or the rabidity of some of the site’s devotees, grumbling about 'Swastikipedia.'" Despite the need for some form of control in an open system, this "doesn't explain the kind of territorialism—the authorial domination by 1 percent of contributors—on the site's pages." In this case, an admin banned an editor that was extremely productive and claimed that the reasons could not be publicly discussed because of the sensitive nature of the information. Then, according to The Register, another editor published a list e-mail from the admin, admitting that the banned editor was productive, but believing that the editor was on a mission to destroy from within. Within 75 minutes of imposing the block, it was lifted, and the admin subsequently relinquished her sysop position.

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