On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
The other side of that coin is that when there are systemic problems that necessarily reduce in stress or even abusive treatment of administrators, you ought to be identifying and correcting that. Right now, you have exactly such a situation. Working toward identifying and correcting whatever cultural aspects of Wikipedia community compound rather than relieve the stress and suffering caused to administrators doing their jobs is an important priority not to be "crowded out" by the thinking that we need to learn to deal with oppressive bureaucracy or a culture of mob justice.
With that in mind, there is a diplomatic pitfall to the approach you suggest. In same cases, focusing on helping administrators learn to "cope with the pressure" inherent to the jobs they've volunteered to do is going to come off patronizing. I certainly heard it that way when people made this kind of suggestion in real-time, because it was another example of someone telling me what *I* needed to be doing differently. I didn't feel like the problem was that I needed to learn to accept that I was being treated badly; it may well have been better for my peace of mind if I had, but that is not a solution that is going to help the project.
So from a strategic perspective (retaining human resources) it's perilous, but also it might lead you to develop blind spots to real and solvable problems. You don't want to get into a situation where any time a problem comes up you recall that "Stressful situations are inevitable, we need to [take a break and cool down / come back later / apply whatever other therapeutic technique we've prescribed]" because then you'll not do what you need to do to fix a serious cultural problem that necessarily gives rise to administrator "flame out".
My skin was already plenty thick. A lot of the people who have burned out or resigned as a result of this were experienced editors who knew what it was like to be under pressure for making a decision someone didn't like. You can't do everything right, but you can recognize problems and take steps toward addressing them. Helping people learn to cope with stress may be one prong of your attack, but it can't be the only one -- not here.
- causa sui
Yes, we need to address the problems, not blame the victims and help them cope with nightmares.
Fred
What do you propose?