On 4/15/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/16/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Increasing the number of admins -> increasing the numbers of both active and inactive admins. The latter might be bad, but I think it's really neutral; the costs associated with it are minimal. The former, however, would yield great benefits.
If we could increase the percentage of fairly active admins many of our current problems would cease.
True, but that actually argues for a very different solution than trying to death-march existing admins into higher levels of activity.
People in volunteer organizations give the time to a project that they want to and feel that they need to. A lot of people who are less-than-completely-focused on Wikipedia as a way of life will contribute less, but can do so in a completely helpful manner.
If what you want is to get more people whose driving ambition it is to make WP better as their primary life goal doing admin stuff, you need to recruit active users who aren't admins, convince them that they need to be admins, and then do whatever it takes to get them through the RFA process.
Others are giving the time and energy that they have. Their jobs, spouses/significant others/kids, social lives won't go away if they become admins. And they shouldn't; an organization that demands more from people on a continuous basis burns them out, and is a horrible place to work. That doesn't make them bad admins. It makes them good people.
Wikipedia being your life's focus doesn't make you bad people, but a lot of people living that life will burn out on it. We can't operate the organization by burning out the most prolific among us on a regular basis.
Everyone who can help should be allowed and encouraged to do so. The more it's shared the better everyone is. An admin who makes one block a day, carefully considered and with excellent comments and warnings, is helping the project. And in an emergency, they may well be able to step up and do much, much more for a few minutes, hours, or days. Having that reserve capacity may save us some day.
Suggesting that we need quotas is silly, IMHO.