Long reply I m afraid hope it s helpful It s possible no people are flawless But in fact it very rarely happens I ve been asked to investigate about 6 or so cases this last 9 months by Irpen Giano Bishonen at RFAR on ANI and others but in most of those in fact all but one or two in a nine month period the channel actually functioned exactly as one would wish it to The one case it didn t I myself reported in full to the community at ANI with full summary of the IRC dialog so that it was made public in detail a blocked admin had sought an unblock on dubious grounds another admin had unblocked trusting that without sufficiently checking for themselves The problem with using IRC as a smokescreen is those who go there know in fact it s extremely rare so naturally it loses credibility and is seen as a way to further a politicized agenda by those who have bad memories of IRC from years ago We have an agreed structure to address problems in the channel yet for whatever reason those who feel there is a problem never actually come to me or any channel operator to have it resolved They instead pass logs round a move guaranteed to shed more heat but not actually solve the problem That to me says a lot a person genuinely with a concern would ask to discuss it and aim for resolution just like any other dispute These cases though are never used for dispute resolution but only ever for dispute escalation That seems to say something As for your specific question again yes it s possible But unlikely Administrators who undergo a quite strict and probing debate over their conduct and understanding of wiki attitudes are quite a varied bunch They include diverse views Bishonen Lar Coren 1 2 myself Carcharoth to name but a few at random in this context Any and all admins can go to that channel and some 60 70 users on average are regularly there at any given time They cover extreme diverse views too to the point that no one stance can get much if any of a toehold there if it isn t proper There will always be strong voices around RFA candidates will not be representative of the community as a whole The community includes many vandals for example under represented at RFA and many who understand policy well probably over represented at RFA What is possible to say is the users at en admins are probably representative of those users the community has deemed sufficiently trustworthy in judgement and clued in on wiki ethos to use the tools This shows in a few ways for example an outburst by a user rare in itself will often be addressed by general refusal to endorse it and letting one or two users speak for everyone or resolving in private chat to actually educate people how to handle things better and that works very well On wiki you d get more people inclined to shout than fix En admins as a channel tends to look to fix problems by resolving them When problems are visible they get addressed They re also rather long suffering and I suspect used to the idea that bad faith will exist no matter what they say or do and used to having their words pored over in a manner that nobody else would expect on wiki and misrepresented if necessary to create smoke That s not ideal It s a bit dysfunctional as it encourages others to stir up problems that have little to no merit make a large noise over a tiny number of tiny matters major drama someone used a bad word once and then when corrected by others agreed it was wrong a few minutes later for example to shout rather than approach those who might help and so on That kind of foolishness and hype helps nobody Lastly it s worth noting that critically minded users play a very valuable role in that they can approach channel operators if they have concerns on the spot or indeed speak up in the channel When they do if it s merited it is usually supported and would indeed be the best way to effect disapproval or correction I strongly encourage this because I greatly suspect the number of cases that would be raised and found genuine would be very small and they should be raised openly in the channel when noticed But they probably only happen extremely rarely To take an extreme case suppose someone is present believes an action is wrong but says nothing does nothing and instead complains to a third party non admin who lacks all knowledge but whom they encourage in a belief they have been conspired against And all the time not broaching it in the channel nor to any of the channel operators who have made their names known for exactly this purpose last month This does the community a disservice Such matters should be named openly to channel users or privately to channel operators if they are felt