User:Llwy-ar-lawr/walk on both sides
 | This is an essay. It is not an ignorable policy on Uncyclopedia, so you should ignore it even more and disregard the mad ramblings of its writer. Or you could submit it as an Uncycloversity assignment in lieu of actually doing any work. |
A user's roles as sysop and editor must be kept absolutely separate. As a sysop you watch things passively from behind a wall of sorts and only step in when some kind of intervention is needed; as an editor you engage with other editors in front of the wall. You have to be careful not to walk on both sides of the wall at once. At once, in this case, means that you have walked on both sides in a single dispute or discussion. If you have !voted in a deletion discussion in front, you may not go in back and close the discussion; if you have been involved with a user in front, you may not go in back and block or unblock that user.
Continuing with the wall analogy, the reason for this is that if you walk on both sides you risk representing opinions found in front with your actions in back. Administrative actions, those made by a sysop in back, must represent all sides of the editorial dispute in front, and if you have taken one side you cannot be sure of representing all of them.
There is probably greater emphasis on this in Wikipedia because neutrality of content is one of the core principles, and for content to be neutral those who decide what happens to it and to those who write it must be neutral as well. Wikipedia may be largely about truth, but an important part of this is that there is no single right answer to all situations, no catch-all statement of what must happen when, no unifying concept beyond being a free encyclopedia. The closest thing to a right answer is in the sources; the rest is left to the imagination of the community.
On Uncyclopedia, on the other hand, there is no comparable issue of neutrality. The main goal is to be funny; ensuring the verifiable facts are correctly cited and described is considerably less important, if it carries any weight at all. There are, in theory, no sides, and hence no need to be impartial, so there is no rule against walking on both sides. That said, opinions of what is suitable for inclusion, no matter what kind of encyclopedia, are bound to differ, and so there are sides; and if all points of view are to be reflected no one side must control the result from in back of the wall.
In summary, on any wiki where the unifying concept is even slightly open to interpretation, there should be a wall between sysops and editors, and no sysop should walk on both of its sides at the same time.