David Gerard wrote:
The other problem is that admins on Wikipedia are powerful figures on an important top-10 website that's regarded as a public resource - and, as such, are somewhat public figures and hence a legitimate subject of critical comment. And this is not to justify insane stalkers, but that's not what I'm talking about. Deciding anyone criticising on such an assumption should be treated as an insane stalker is ... probably not workable.
I'd agree with that strongly, and I'd like to amplify your point.
If you look at the other websites and resources in our class, both the organizations and the leaders take a fair bit of crap from the public. It just comes with the territory. And really, it should. A lot of it is probably unjustified, but the substantial portion that has merit has a lot of value both to society as a whole and to the entities criticized.
However, I think an important difference is that anybody who signs up to be an executive at Yahoo or a senior figure at the Wall Street Journal knows what they're in for. When a lot of us got involved in Wikipedia it was a much smaller thing. And it seems to me that its social prominence lagged a fair bit behind its traffic curve.
But like it or not, we are now playing in the big leagues. The companies that own the rest of the top ten are Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, News Corp, Baidu, and Facebook. Each one is worth billions, and each one endures a firehose of public examination and criticism. And none of them claim our mission of public service.
To my mind, our prominence and our mission means that we should welcome public feedback to a much greater extent than those other organizations. Often we even do. But sometimes our skins are awfully thin.
William