[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[Rich Holton]

Gwern Branwen wrote:
> 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.
> 

I can think of a few types of organizations/businesses that are heavily 
reliant on a small group of over-worked people...but I don't think 
Wikipedia should be one of them.

FWIW, I think that decreasing the average workload of the "hyperactives" 
should be a major priority. The quality of their work will improve, the 
number of fatigue-related problems will decrease, and there may be less 
hesitation in de-sysopping one of them.

-Rich