[WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 18:29:54 -0800, "George Herbert"
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
>ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
>need to learn to do right?

Ultimately the only way to fix this is probably to be more willing to
chuck out people who resolutely refuse to follow policy.  Look at the
crap Carnildo got simply because he was bot-tagging images which
violate our copyright policies.  A lot of Alkivar's problem is that
there are quite a few editors who flatly refuse to accept that an
image scraped off the net somewhere is not an inherently legitimate
illustration for any vaguely related article.  That's probably the
biggest cause of friction.

The second major cause of admin burnout in my opinion is trying to
keep insidious POV pushers and off-wiki warriors apart.  As soon as
you step in and prevent one action, you are immediately seen as
"involved" and are no longer trusted by the other side - the best that
can happen is when both sides decide you are biased against them.
Wikipedia is the number 1 destination for people seeking to fix
problems without he outside world, and the editors who come here to
pursue these agendas have endless time to pursue them.  Caring even
slightly about the neutrality of the project means that you *will* get
stress.

The third biggest cause of friction is groups who believe they
"deserve" a Wikipedia article because they are so great, even though
there are no reliable secondary sources.  I am getting crap at the
moment about the General Mayhem forum, which is of surpassing
significance to its members and (as far as I can tell) nobody else.

Guy (JzG)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG