[WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

[Thomas Dalton]

> 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?

The main difference between Wikipedia then and Wikipedia now is that
we now have people reading who don't contribute. Contributors know
what to expect, they don't mind a little vandalism because they know
how to fix it. Readers need what's visible at the moment to be right,
not just something hidden away in the history. When Wikipedia first
started, the only people that read it were those that contributed too,
that is no longer the case. Originally, Wikipedia was made by geeks,
for geeks. Now it is made by geeks for the world (for a suitable
definition of geek - there are so many definitions out there, I'm sure
one fits). We have a responsibility to our readers.