Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:50:53 +0000
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
On 25 March 2010 20:45, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc(a)ktchan.info> wrote:
Well, they're not dwindling since admin
rights don't get
taken away on
inactivity. ;-) But to the general question,
because the
standard expected
of a candidate for RfA has gone up over the
years?
And because going through a continuously ratcheted-up gauntlet is
rather too demeaning for people to consider worth the effort?
- d.
As one of the newest admins on enwiki, I must say that I was lucky in that I
didn't have a contentious RfA, however, I think that over the last few
months, I am the exception rather than the rule.
Despite the oft-quoted "It's no big deal", obviously many of the editors
commenting at RfA *do* consider it to be a big deal. I'm not sure why this
should be - although I notice that it's more likely-than-not to be
non-admins who are the most vehement opposers.
OK, I may be a newbie admin, but I agree that it's not that big a deal - my
admin actions have been to delete obvious CSDs, close xfDs according to the
census - plus a very few protections/blocks/rights changes... Nothing that's
a big deal - very much maintenance, as it is meant to be.
As for the number of active admins - well, people move on from things
online. I remember when I started online, lots of my friends would be in
Messenger, or in the chat rooms - now hardly any of them are. This is mainly
because they have more family commitments than they did (mumbles) years ago.
The same is true for admins - family commitments crop up, work commitments -
or they get bored of the abuse they get (I've been lucky so far, I've not
received abuse for my actions so far - that's not asking anyone here to
abuse me, by the way!)
Has anyone compared the activity rate of admins over time to that of
non-admins? For example, what %age of admins whose accounts were created in
2006 are active, compared to the %age of non-admins whose accounts were
created in 2006?
Is this an admin-only problem, or is it an editors-in-general problem?
Phantomsteve
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