On 7/22/08, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, FT2 wrote: "Punish everyone involved" is common in the schoolyard.
Which is not a positive comparison.
But does desysopping really have to be a punishment? Can't it just be a change in job title? A request, from the project, that an individual step back from the stressful job of managing inter-user conflict and devote all their efforts to encyclopedia work?
Is it possible a desysopping could be as simple as "We think you could be more useful to the team as an editor than an administrator?"
If there are any desysopping of long-time contributors, I hope they're done in the form of: "You've been heroic, you've fought a good fight, and we think you've completed your tour of duty. We've noticed you're a little shell-shocked, it's time for you to have some R&R and get out of the theater of combat, so we're going to do a strategic redeployment"
Fundamentally, the administrator's job is one of inter-user conflict resolution. So maybe it makes sense to ask some admins to step away from the stressful (and extremely complex) job of conflict resolution and just focus exclusively on the more straightforward task of building an encyclopedia.
In some departments, a police office who suffers a severe trauma will automatically be transferred to a desk job for a while. It's not a punishment, it's a way of saying "anybody who went through what you've been through needs a break from having to resolve conflict".
Of course, I realize anyone who is ever desysopped will probably have some hurt feelings and will, on some level, feel "punished"-- but I really don't think it _has_ to be a punishment. Not really. On some levels, a desysopping really can be a matter of "We could really use your help more over here".
That may not solve the factionalism, but it would be a start. Getting the people who are a little too-factionalized off the front lines and away from day-in day-out inter-user-conflict would have to help mend rifts in the community. Maybe problems will persist, but on the other hand, maybe factions would start the fade once people were no longer assigned to the realm of inter-user conflict in the role of admins.
Just my thought.
Alec