(copied from earlier untruncated message that was bounced as too long,
apologies for any duplication if that one later goes through)
(By the way NYBrad, what's the other issue? Now I'm curious.)
Seraphimblade
I thought you'd never ask. This is the third time I've posted the exact
same sentence and the first time someone's been curious (although I have
mentioned the issue itself before, including in my RfA). However, I don't
want to change the subject of this thread, which is important, so responses
to this comment, if any, should go into a new one.
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.
Newyorkbrad