On 1 June 2010 05:56, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
Let's not mince words: Wikipedia administratorship can be a serious liability. The 'reward' for volunteering for this educational nonprofit can include getting one's real name Googlebombed, getting late night phone calls to one's home, and worse. The Wikimedia Foundation has never sent a cease and desist demand to the people who have made a years-long hobby of driving its administrators away. It is hardly surprising that, in this weak economy, wise editors have been declining offers of nomination.
This is IMO asymptom of there being insufficient admins. And again, this is because of ridiculously ratcheted-up requirements by serial objectors at RFA that have no reasonable threat model attached.
The way it's done at RationalWiki is that sysophood is inflicted on almost all regular editors without their asking. The criterion is "mostly harmless." That way, it really is "no big deal." Of course, that's a wiki with 1/1000 of the activity of en:wp. (Some powers that sysops have on en:wp, such as editing interface text, are reserved to bureaucrats. I realise this just puts the problem off another level. But then again, the cycle of heavily active participation is 18 months anyway, so changing everything every couple of years keeps the system fresh.)
- d.