* Jesse W wrote:
I just want to note that I agree with this. We do have a problem with sometimes inflaming "problem users" rather than educating them into good contributors or deflating and wearing them out until they leave. Is this primarily due to the growth of the site? In my opinion, yes.
Absolutely. It is easier to remain patient when dealing with a handful of 'less than perfect' users than it is when dealing with hundreds... but that's an explanation rather than an excuse. As the job gets more difficult the need to keep a cool head becomes all the more important.
What can we do about this without making our problems (this and/or others) worse? I don't know. Conrad, do you have any suggestions? In any case, I do appreciate you bringing this up, it is good that we are (once again) having this discussion. This *is* the sort of "good response to critics" that we hope to practice.
Ultimately I think the answer is to maintain standards of civility / no personal attacks / consensus building / et cetera NO MATTER WHAT. Far too many admins sometimes act as if civility only applies to 'good' users or 'users who agree with me'. HOW do we change that? Bring it up when people start disregarding civility (a quick glance at AN/I of late should give you an idea what prompted me to comment NOW) and look for ways to nudge the culture. I really DO think that 'admin re-affirmation' could work in some form (e.g. requires X signatories to open, cannot be called for sooner than Y months after adminship/last re-affirmation, need roughly Z% approval to remain admin, et cetera) and plan to make a self-test of it once I've been an admin long enough to have built up a respectable sized collection of people who hate me. :]