[WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

[Gwern Branwen]

Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> writes:

> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>> Remind me who was advocating taking risks that offer no reward?
>> 
>> No-one. I phrased that wrong, sorry. I meant a negative expectation,
>> ie. less reward than risk, which is how I assess the expectation of
>> this proposal, rather than no reward at all.
>> 
>>> Also, my question wasn't about whether one should balance risks and
>>> rewards, but what the right level of risk tolerance is for Wikipedia.
>>> I'm saying that I expect Wikipedia would be pretty hungry for
>>> well-managed risk. Unless people feel that the era of innovation at
>>> Wikipedia is more or less over, in which case the minimum-risk strategy
>>> you suggest seems more appropriate.
>> 
>> I agree, we have to take significant risks for Wikipedia to work.
>> Allowing everyone to edit is an enormous risk, and we frequently lose
>> time because of it (ie. we have to fix vandalism). However, the gain
>> in terms of good contributions is even more enormous, so we consider
>> it an acceptable risk. The risk of allowing large numbers of people
>> access to admin tools without the strict standards we employ at the
>> moment is extremely high, and the reward is very small, so (in my
>> opinion, according to the values I've placed on the risk and reward
>> and the balance between them that I've determined) it's not an
>> acceptable risk.
>> 
> You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being 
> an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and 
> despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people 
> being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either 
> non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage".
>
> Why is it that those admins, let in under much less strict processes, 
> have not resulted in all the nastiness that are predicted if we somehow 
> relax the process again?
>
> -Rich
> user:Rholton

Because Wikipedia is more of a target now? and those who would seek adminship
can no longer be trusted to be self-selected well-meaning geeks? For
much of Wikipedia's history, the rest of the world really didn't care
about the avenues to power in Wikipedia because they wouldn't try to
take them even if they were easy.

I daresay things have changed since those early days.

-- 
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.