Exactly as you say, it's a vicious cycle -
That is what I said
do things that discourage people from participating, then say that nothing can be changed because the people aren't available.
That, however, is not what I said.
The root of the problem (as far as i see it) is not that any one is actively "doing things that discourage people from participating". It is the dissonance between peoples expectations of what commons "should do for them" versus what commons "can do for them" with the limited resources we have.
It would very easy to encourage better bot-writing; toughen up the rules, and don't approve bots until they adhere to those rules. I'm
That is kind of easy to say. It is not like commons currently has much of a choice. Without the help of countless bots there would be no way to deal with the workload. And we could not even think about growth. We cannot afford to tell bot operators who spend their time writing and maintaining the code to sit down and write a zillion translated pieces of lengthy prose or else their bots are blocked.
routinely astonished at what is permitted, but in the few cases where I've said something about it, the response has been to argue or ignore. So I've learned my lesson, don't say anything.
Sorry, but the lesson should rather be to listen what those people have to say rather than shut down.