[WikiEN-l] You Really Don't Get It

[Fred Bauder]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Marc Riddell [mailto:michaeldavid86 at comcast.net]
>Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 06:22 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] You Really Don't Get It
>
>on 4/20/07 11:20 PM, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) at newyorkbrad at gmail.com 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.
>> Turnover is part of any Internet project as any other part of life, but when
>> I read the names of the participants in an RfA from say a year ago, or
>> I look at the list of bureaucrats or former arbitrators or top featured
>> article contributors or whoever, I am consistently amazed and saddened by
>> how high a percentage of the names on the list have moved on.  Sometimes
>> after a spectacular departure, sometimes after vanishing without a trace.
>> As highly as I think of our collective contributor and administrator base
>> at present (and I do think that we have an incredibly strong talent base on
>> this project, no matter how critical I or anyone might be of some or another
>> aspect from time to time), just imagine how much greater we could be if a
>> percentage of those people were still with us.  I believe we need to
>> identify the causes of Wikipedians' stress and burnout -- or in NPOV terms,
>> of departures from the project -- and figure out if there is a way to reduce
>> them.
>
>Brad,
>
>CULTURE! CULTURE! CULTURE! CULT?! What you are talking about presents to the
>very culture of Wikipedia itself. The quality of a culture can be measured,
>in part, by what that culture produces. Yet every time I have tried to bring
>this up the subject has been met with silence, or dismissed as a "fuzzy
>liberal's POV". The fact is - if a serious look at this aspect of the
>project is not undertaken in earnest, it is facing a future of increasing
>mediocrity, deteriorating credibility - and ultimate failure.
>
>Marc Riddell (also referred to by some as Cassandra)

What is happening is the result of combat fatigue  (stress in less dramatic terms) By being very demanding regarding actions by anyone in a leading position there is more stress, and less satisfaction. Most people can be stressed in this way only for a short period of time. Trial lawyers and combat veterans for a bit longer.

We are all part of the problem. The solution is to be much more forgiving of the "mistakes" of others and being less quick to criticize. Another solution is to get rid of the attack dogs or at least 
not join in when they go into full cry.

Fred