On Dec 27, 2007 2:27 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
In the real world, organizations plan for a 10-12% turnover of management staff every year; Wikipedia is well below that level.
But this isn't a matter of "management". Admins aren't management - they are editors who the community feels it can trust with a few extra tools. And admin tools are - fundamentally - editing tools. It isn't fair to separate voluntary from involuntary de-adminning - lots of people quit because they realise they are about to be fired.
There are a few reasons to be voluntarily de-adminned. The only good reason is because you no longer feel you need the tools - you aren't editing enough to justify having them. That's a fair reason. More often, it's a way to walk out in a huff, to throw a temper tantrum. It's just one more way to slam the door and hope people notice. Understandable. In some cases it's the hallmark of someone who wasn't well suited to being an admin in the first place, but often it's a sign of problems that should concern the community. Related to this is the "quit because of drama" kind of thing - either because you were involved in controversy, or because you were the source of controversy. As I mentioned before, there are the people quit because they can read the tea leaves. Sometimes this is also attention-seeking behaviour.
And then there are the people who give up the tools for none of these reasons. Often these are people who seem admins as managers, who didn't actually grasp the idea that adminship is an editing tool.
De-adminning isn't a very good metric for turnover. The number of admins who enter the "semi-active" and "inactive" categories is a far better measure.