[WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

> On 3/7/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> I'm sick and tired of people misunderstanding what an "administrator"
>> of Wikipedia is. It was a misnomer to begin with, and we've had
>> nothing but trouble with this name ever since. Users misunderstand it
>> (and ask admins to make editorial decisions). Media misunderstand it
>> (and either do not explain it, or connect it to power and influence).
>> And it's no wonder. "Administrator" could refer to a manager, or
>> someone appointed by a court; it typically describes someone in an
>> important official position.

I think this is a case of techies never stopping to worry about what  
things are named.

"Administrator" is a piece of Wikipedia in-jargon. The only reason we  
don't notice it is that it is also a piece of computer-related  
technical jargon.

In an IT context, everybody understands that a computer's  
"administrator" is something like a bus driver: someone who has the  
ignition key and the technical capability to drive the bus. In a  
sense he controls where the bus goes in a trivial way (lane changes)  
or even a not-so-trivial-way (staying on a bridge or driving over the  
side into a river), but he doesn't decide the schedule or the route  
or what color the bus should be painted.

I'm not sure why techies use a word that usually means "manager of  
other humans" to mean "operator of a machine;" perhaps it's a handy  
analogy or perhaps it involves anthropomorphizing the machine.

Another example is "edit" and "editor." To a techie, an "editor"  
means something like Notepad. To "edit" means "to perform the  
technical task of changing a piece of text." An editor _really_ means  
a bit of software, not a person, although by extension it can mean a  
human being when he is using an editor... much as, circa 1900, the  
people who sat at the keyboard of an L. C. Smith circa 1900 were  
called "typewriters."

When we say "edit this page," all we mean is "you have the technical  
capability of making a momentary change in what's on this page.  
There's no guarantee it will stay that way for more than thirty  
seconds."

To an average person, an editor is someone who supervises  
publication... a person who gets to _decide+ what's going to be on  
the page and have it stick. A person with a fairly high management or  
(well) administrative position.

If you say "I edit the Wall Street Journal" it means something quite  
different from "I edit Wikipedia."