[WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

[Josh Gordon]

"Custodian" works nicely. It's properly pretentious. "Sanitation
engineer" is also appealing...

On 3/6/07, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/6/07, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
>
> > I have always liked the name "custodian". It's a little like janitor,
> > but implies that you are doing your job in order to protect and help
> > wikipedia rather than solely cleaning up after (messy) people. I think
> > that term fits much better with the others as well (Bureaucrats etc).
> > Thoughts?
>
>
> We thought through the title of "admin"/"sysop" when we set up
> Wikiversity - and we named it "custodian"
> <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Custodianship>. We also
> organised the system by which people become custodians (or lose that
> status) specifically so that it would be seen as having a learning
> curve, and that new custodians would be peer-monitored - similar to
> the system of apprenticeship. It's also something that is "easy come,
> easy go" - it should be "no big deal" to 1) be a custodian, 2) to
> become a custodian, and 3) to lose your custodianship (though we
> haven't yet had to face the latter situation).
>
> My general thoughts are that - no matter what we call it - "adminship"
> should be seen as simply a willingness to help out with the
> maintenance of a wiki - but that it should *not* be fetishised as an
> object of status, which it clearly is by many people. And yes, we're
> here to write an encyclopedia, as John Lee says above - but in a way
> it is and in a way it isn't that simple. As well as writing an
> encyclopedia, we're also here to create the *culture* within which to
> do so - and culture doesn't just exist in policy documents, nor
> materialise out of thin air - culture is something that we all
> actively construct as an inherent part of writing this encyclopedia.
>
> Cheers,
> Cormac
>
> http://cormaggio.org
> http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Cormaggio
>
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