[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[Gwern Branwen]

On 2/26/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
> > On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >> on 2/26/07 10:24 PM, geni at geniice at gmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >>> Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious
> >>> problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do
> >>> so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
> >>
> >> Are you saying that the quantity of the product is more important than
> the
> >> quality of the people? If so, that type of thinking is what has
> seriously
> >> contributed to the cancer in the culture.
> >
> > I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side
> > continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot
> > afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the
> > hyperactive admins.
> >
> > This is simply a description of the current sitution.
> >
>
> How may "hyper-active" admins are there? And if I'm following things
> corrects (and maybe I'm not), it seems that you're assuming that these
> hyperactives are likely candidates for losing their admin status. Am I
> right about that?
>
> -Rich
>

I would argue that hyper-active admins are more likely to have a short admin
career (whether that be because of desysopping or just leaving), and further
that the likelihood is greater than proportional to their edits. As you take
on herculean backlogs and amounts of work, your stress level increases and
the attention you give to each instance is less. This is a case both of
giving them less time (even if you double your time spent on Wikipedia, it
is easy to inadvertently increase your workload by an even greater factor -
new pages alone is basically almost uncatchable these days), and of making
more mistakes. So, you wind up more stressed, with disproportionately more
mistakes and thus complaints, which are easy to react badly to (after all,
aren't you practically single-handedly holding at bay backlogs at CSD/New
pages/ANI/Requested Moves/PROD/AfD/etc.? Don't you deserve a little
gratitude or at least understanding?). One may well be able to handle it
perfectly fine most of the times, and not add to one's stress by becoming
too addicted to Wikipedia or damaging your regular life - but it only takes
one blow up or major mistake.

You hyper-active admins on the list - am I entirely wrong here?

My ideal situation would be that admins would be very active initially so
they can learn the ropes, and that they would then settle down to an
activity level more characteristic of the long tail, where they are not so
much admins but editors with admin powers who regularly (but not
excessively) help out the current batch of very active new admins and once
in a while clear out backlogs.

--
Gwern