[WikiEN-l] You really don't get it

[John Lee]

On 4/21/07, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I thought you'd never ask.  This is the third time I've posted the exact
> same sentence and the first time someone's been curious (although I have
> mentioned the issue itself before, including in my RfA).  However, I don't
> want to change the subject of this thread, which is important, so
> responses
> to this comment, if any, should go into a new one.
>
> 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.


I think this might be time to bring us back to the thread on "Major
dysfunction in RfA culture" which died a few days back. RfA is presently
only accepting candidates willing to run the gauntlet of participating in
certain obligatory things such as vandal patrolling, the deletion process,
etc., even if there's no reason to believe the candidate lacks the necessary
clue to read relevant policy and/or use common sense should he/she decide to
go on vandal patrol or close a deletion debate, and even if the candidate
has not expressed any desire to get involved in those areas of the 'pedia.

As a result, the only people accepted are those obsessive enough to do these
things - and it's not surprising that there's substantial correlation
between obsessiveness and likelihood to burn out, so it should be no
surprise either that many admins are likely to burn out. I think if I ran
for RfA today, I would be rejected because I simply haven't shown the
requisite obsessiveness. I've tried before, but I'm just not the type to
stay focused on something for too long - I totally understand why so many
people get burned out. (Those who don't are normally...not exactly normal.
Some just snap and start forgetting why they are here in the first place, as
RickK did.)

As I've said before, we're relying too much on these powerhorses and not
enough on the "long tail". WP relies on the thousands of editors who
anonymously make one edit and never come back. Why can't we rely on
thousands of admins to make one admin action and never come back (to
exaggerate a little)? What's wrong with tolerating admins who don't really
use the tools except when they come across a situation warranting tool usage
in their normal course of using WP? (That's basically what I do these days,
avoiding the drudgery of focused obsessive admin work.)

If someone can be trusted not to abuse the tools, and to have a clue about
using them, there's really no reason to deny them adminship. That's the
whole point behind adminship not being a big deal. If this was actually
practiced, I think we might see a little less burnout than we do now.
Spreading the load makes a lot of sense.

Johnleemk