Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) wrote:
What I view as the other top priority issue facing the project is the extraordinarily high rate of turnover and burnout that we seem to suffer from, especially among top-level administrators and leading contributors.
My answer is easy - the neverending cr*pflood in one's face. Whether it's anon vandals or psychotic editors, it just never stops, the only way to escape it is to leave the project. I've reduced my watchlist to the most obscure articles imaginable, the freaks are still trying to trash them every day. The mantra is "anyone can edit", and we are definitely learning firsthand what *anyone* means, such as the millions who are quite literally not intelligent nor literate enough to make any useful contributions. On top of the stupid, there are the nutjobs - I don't care if the term isn't PC, that's what they are, and they take pride in doing as many crazy things as it takes to get what they want. I'm all for assuming good faith, but we're so afraid to get rid of those who are proven to be unhelpful that the good editors' only option to get away from them is to quit.
To contrast with another project with which I've been involved, GNU sets a high bar to entry, and a very high standard on behavior. Junior people have to run the gauntlet of code reviews just to get anything in (and ironically, there is a perpetual backlog of submissions). Behaviorwise, the occasional cross exchange is tolerated, but anything resembling the typical WP talk page diatribe would get the complainer kicked out permanently. There are people who've been actively working on GNU software for nearly 20 years now, nearly as long as it has existed.
Stan