[WikiEN-l] De-sysoppings in the year of 2007

[Guettarda]

On Dec 27, 2007 2:27 PM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> In the real world, organizations plan for a 10-12% turnover of management
> staff every year; Wikipedia is well below that level.
>

But this isn't a matter of "management".  Admins aren't management - they
are editors who the community feels it can trust with a few extra tools.
And admin tools are - fundamentally - editing tools.  It isn't fair to
separate voluntary from involuntary de-adminning - lots of people quit
because they realise they are about to be fired.

There are a few reasons to be voluntarily de-adminned.  The only good reason
is because you no longer feel you need the tools - you aren't editing enough
to justify having them.  That's a fair reason.  More often, it's a way to
walk out in a huff, to throw a temper tantrum.  It's just one more way to
slam the door and hope people notice.  Understandable.  In some cases it's
the hallmark of someone who wasn't well suited to being an admin in the
first place, but often it's a sign of problems that should concern the
community.  Related to this is the "quit because of drama" kind of thing -
either because you were involved in controversy, or because you were the
source of controversy.  As I mentioned before, there are the people quit
because they can read the tea leaves.  Sometimes this is also
attention-seeking behaviour.

And then there are the people who give up the tools for none of these
reasons.  Often these are people who seem admins as managers, who didn't
actually grasp the idea that adminship is an editing tool.

De-adminning isn't a very good metric for turnover.  The number of admins
who enter the "semi-active" and "inactive" categories is a far better
measure.