Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 02:43 AM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
The Wikipedia community
painted itself into a corner, and it's entirely unclear to me if it
can find the exits, the paths to fix it.
As this discussion illustrates rather
well, the argument "if you want to
fix A, you'd have to start by fixing B (my pet gripe) first" is
routinely deployed, making for an infinite regress in some cases, and in
others the generation of suggestions that are rather clearly
counterproductive for fixing A, whatever they may do for B. In the real
world, if you want people to do thankless and time-consuming tasks for
you for no money, and much criticism, you have to rely on something more
than "be sure that you'll be told if we don't like you and what you
do".
Eh? Is this coherent?
Who is the "you" who wants "people" to do thankless tasks?
What is the "pet gripe" in the discussion?
What is being discussed is "declining numbers of EN wiki admins," and
how to address it. In that, surely it is appropriate and even
necessary to examine the entire administrative structure, both how
admin privileges are created and how they are removed.
So "A" here would be declining numbers. "B," then, must be the
difficulty of removal, which leads to stronger standards for accepting
admins in the first place, which leads to declining applications and
denial of some applications that might have been just fine.
There is no evidence that there are declining applications because of
fear of being criticized as an adminstrator, and the numbers of admin
removals are trivial, so Charles is expressing a fear that is
imaginary. If it were easier to gain tools and still difficult to lose
them unless you disregard guidelines and consensus, there would be no
loss of applications, there would be a gain. A large gain.
Actually, most people
who don't apply as an admin just don't apply. They
don't generate "evidence" one way or another. It is a perfectly sensible
attitude for a well-adjusted Wikipedian getting on with article work not
to want to be involved in admin work. There are editors on the site who
make the lives of those who cross them miserable: and an admin has the
choice of avoiding such editors, or getting in the way of abuse. My
expressed fear is very far from "imaginary". You put your head above the
parapet, you may get shot at, precisely for acting in good faith and
according to your own judgement in awkward situations.
What follows that seems to be a non sequitur. It was not what I was
arguing at all.
What I'm seeing here, indeed, is an illustration of the problem. The
attitude that Charles expresses is clearly part of the problem, and
Charles is suggesting no solutions but perhaps one of ridiculing and
rejecting all the suggestions for change.
Ah, but this is in line: "Charles's attitude" becomes something that
must be fixed before recruiting more people to stand for adminship. I
was actually commenting on the thread, not the issue. We should examine
this sort of solution, amongst others: identify WikiProjects with few
admins relative to their activity, and suggest they should look for
candidates.
Charles