G'day Steve,
On 8/11/06, jkelly@fas.harvard.edu jkelly@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
I think that there is plenty of room for contributors to wikimedia projects who aren't interested in the potential for reuse of those projects, but I am wondering where en is at if admins are actively dissuading contributors who value it.
Incidentally, why has no one pointed out that what "admins" think is irrelevant. They have no particular standing within the project, and no more say than anyone else on *any* issue. Admins are employed to take care of obvious vandals and various other boring tasks. They don't decide who stays and who goes.
Whether we like it or not, the views expressed by an identified admin carry more weight than those of, say, Joe Bloggs, who's merely written a few hundred articles, taken thousands of beautiful photographs, taken dozens of pages from Cleanup to FA status, and so on, but has not otherwise contributed meaningfully to the project as yet (what a parasite!).
We can repeat "adminship is no big deal" as often as we want, and hopefully some non-admins will start to believe it. Regardless, what an admin says *is* often noticed, and so admins have a responsibility to behave themselves. Admins who say stupid things should not be noticed more than users who say stupid things; however, given that they *are*, our collection of admins therefore damn well ought to *stop* saying stupid things.
(I note the admin in question was Herostratus, whose recent passing RfA I was very cheered to see. It's always the one you least expect, eh?)