-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Riddell [mailto:michaeldavid86@comcast.net]
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 06:22 AM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] You Really Don't Get It
on 4/20/07 11:20 PM, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) at newyorkbrad(a)gmail.com wrote:
What I view as the other top priority issue
facing the project is the
extraordinarily high rate of turnover and burnout that we seem to suffer
from, especially among top-level administrators and leading contributors.
Turnover is part of any Internet project as any other part of life, but when
I read the names of the participants in an RfA from say a year ago, or
I look at the list of bureaucrats or former arbitrators or top featured
article contributors or whoever, I am consistently amazed and saddened by
how high a percentage of the names on the list have moved on. Sometimes
after a spectacular departure, sometimes after vanishing without a trace.
As highly as I think of our collective contributor and administrator base
at present (and I do think that we have an incredibly strong talent base on
this project, no matter how critical I or anyone might be of some or another
aspect from time to time), just imagine how much greater we could be if a
percentage of those people were still with us. I believe we need to
identify the causes of Wikipedians' stress and burnout -- or in NPOV terms,
of departures from the project -- and figure out if there is a way to reduce
them.
Brad,
CULTURE! CULTURE! CULTURE! CULT?! What you are talking about presents to the
very culture of Wikipedia itself. The quality of a culture can be measured,
in part, by what that culture produces. Yet every time I have tried to bring
this up the subject has been met with silence, or dismissed as a "fuzzy
liberal's POV". The fact is - if a serious look at this aspect of the
project is not undertaken in earnest, it is facing a future of increasing
mediocrity, deteriorating credibility - and ultimate failure.
Marc Riddell (also referred to by some as Cassandra)
What is happening is the result of combat fatigue (stress in less dramatic terms) By
being very demanding regarding actions by anyone in a leading position there is more
stress, and less satisfaction. Most people can be stressed in this way only for a short
period of time. Trial lawyers and combat veterans for a bit longer.
We are all part of the problem. The solution is to be much more forgiving of the
"mistakes" of others and being less quick to criticize. Another solution is to
get rid of the attack dogs or at least
not join in when they go into full cry.
Fred