[WikiEN-l] Dangerous factionalism (Was: Re: SlimVirgin and CheckUser leaks)

[Alec Conroy]

On 7/22/08, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, FT2 wrote:
> "Punish everyone involved" is common in the schoolyard.
>
>  Which is not a positive comparison.

But does desysopping really have to be a punishment?   Can't it just
be a change in job title?  A request, from the project, that an
individual step back from the stressful job of managing inter-user
conflict and devote all their efforts to encyclopedia work?

Is it possible a desysopping could be as simple as "We think you could
be more useful to the team as an editor than an administrator?"


If there are any desysopping of long-time contributors, I hope they're
done in the form of:  "You've been heroic, you've fought a good fight,
and we think you've completed your tour of duty.  We've noticed you're
a little shell-shocked, it's time for you to have some R&R and get out
of the theater of combat, so we're going to do a strategic
redeployment"

Fundamentally, the administrator's job is one of inter-user conflict
resolution.  So maybe it makes sense to ask some admins to step away
from the stressful (and extremely complex) job of conflict resolution
and just focus exclusively on the more straightforward task of
building an encyclopedia.

In some departments, a police office who suffers a severe trauma will
automatically be transferred to a desk job for a while.  It's not a
punishment, it's a way of saying "anybody who went through what you've
been through needs a break from having to resolve conflict".

Of course, I realize anyone who is ever desysopped will probably have
some hurt feelings and will, on some level, feel "punished"--  but I
really don't think it _has_ to be a punishment. Not really.    On some
levels, a desysopping really can be a matter of "We could really use
your help more over here".

That may not solve the factionalism, but it would be a start.
Getting the people who are  a little too-factionalized off the front
lines and away from day-in day-out inter-user-conflict would have to
help mend rifts in the community.   Maybe problems will persist, but
on the other hand, maybe factions would start the fade once people
were no longer assigned to the realm of inter-user conflict in the
role of admins.

Just my thought.

Alec