[WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.

[George Herbert]

On 10/8/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Oct 2006 11:56:03 -0700, "Matt Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> I'm not very good at defusing tense situations either.  But I tend not
> to try.  Tony is, on the other hand, possessed of pretty good
> instincts in respect of content and has a long history of spotting and
> correcting obvious errors in the deletion process.

I think I saw Tony comment that only a few things he'd done for many
months had both truly required the admin bit and not been
controversial, and that he thought he could still do nearly as much
good, with much less controversy, without it.  I am hopeful that he
follows through and does stay actively involved.

I think we're clearly seeing a bunch of smoke settling from pushback
on "problem admins" getting very serious.

The results are a mixed bag - I would not have suggested Tony give up
his admin bit, I would not have recommended Kelly Martin leave,
especially given that she wasn't the source of the problem she got
caught up in.  I am quite glad that Fred came up with "No action taken
for excessive zeal" for the Arb case Mongo was caught in, and that
everyone including him accepted that after a bit more heat.

I certainly don't like some of the trolls taking this as some sort of
victory.  But complaints have been building for some time.

Ultimately, "customer service" skills are probably becoming
increasingly important for WP admins.  Part of that will be an
increasing need to step back from an incident and have someone else
handle it more often, rather than stay involved when it may be
increasing tension rather than reducing it.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com