[WikiEN-l] admin problem

[charles matthews]

"Leif Knutsen" wrote

> I suspect that people are far more suspicious than is warranted by what
> actually goes on, but I think we can agree that suspicion is distracting
> and
> damaging.

I trust that people are more trusting than one might suspect from some of
the more inflammatory analyses that are put about.  I agree that suspicion
is damaging.  One of the reasons that we have 'assume good faith' is to
prevent people, where possible, from reading far too much into things, as in
'cock-up rather than conspiracy'.  And to prevent, where possible, the kind
of partisan talk prevails outside WP being imported here, as in 'leave it at
the door'.

Those who find it hard to do those things - assume good faith, and see WP
not as a partisan but as a participant - may indeed have problems.  But
their suspicion is really not so much a distraction, as a systematic missing
of the point about Wikipedian culture.  And they damage themselves, above
all.

And for those who really can't get it, I wonder what changes of current
practice would actually suffice.  The Main Page right now says en-WP has
997,857 articles.  That is a massively decentralised system, based on mutual
trust, in action.  Almost all those pages are open to editing.



Is it really surprising that with fewer than one admin to every 1000
articles there are some needs to make patrolling the site effective and
practical?



Charles