[WikiEN-l] Admin / experienced user flameout - how do we talk people down off the ledge?

[Bod Notbod]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Many, if not most, companies, major non-profit organizations and virtually
> all government agencies have a Human Resources department...

> Would this be a possibility for the Wikipedia Project?

___________________________________________________________________

tl;dr version of the below ~ possibly, but perhaps a shower of
wikilove is adequate.
___________________________________________________________________

No doubt *some* form of group could be set up to address such issues,
the big question is whether it would be staffed.

At Wikimania a chap from .de gave a talk on mentoring schemes. They
appear to have quite a successful one. Our "adopt a user" programme
[1] is much less so. Without care and diligence being given to the HR
idea it may well lay fallow.

What would probably be better is for people to just be more
encouraging of each other in general, more supportive and more
recognition given to editors (which was another point raised at
Wikimania). In this way at least when someone is getting frustrated
there's a counter-balancing atmosphere of positivity.

I find that I spend hardly any time feeling part of a social
atmosphere on Wikipedia. This will be in part because the community is
so vast that I don't bump into the same people very often. Joining a
Wikiproject would help, but I change my interests all the time and
won't commit to a subject area. My editing activities often feel like
floating on a vast ocean in a raft without companionship. For me,
that's OK, I'm a misanthrope anyway and I get my social buzz from
another site.

It is easy to make enemies on Wikipedia and far less easy to make
friends. It appears to me that most Wikipedia friendships arise in the
real world with meet-ups and 'Manias. But I was one of the people
writing proposals for the strategy wiki about adding social features
[2] which, one would hope, could bond people together a bit more.

It is correct to be concerned, however, that people might start
spending too much time socialising and not enough time doing work :O)

I read something recently about Facebook using our articles as some
kind of seeding facility for their groups structure. I can't find any
stories about this now (anyone?) [3]. Perhaps if we were to embrace
that, and actively collaborate with Facebook, people who have accounts
on each could socialise on the Facebook/Wikipedia mash-up leaving WP
much as it is; ie work-focused.

I'm digressing a little; to return to cases where long-term, valued
users reach the end of their tether perhaps something quite simple
like a page for people to log that they have left the project and
asking them to give their reason would give us an opportunity to get
in touch with them and try to persuade them to return (perhaps after a
wikibreak). There was a survey done recently though (also covered at
Wikimania), sent to users who had left the project and it turned out
most of them described themselves as not having left, despite not
having edited for 3 months.

The idea of a survey of former admins, to establish reasons for
leaving the project, appears to have started up in May and looks like
it's still in the planning stage [4]. Perhaps we can return to these
issues when the results are in?

In this specific case I suggest anyone that knows the user to go and
show some Wikilove.
_________________________________________

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ADOPT

[2] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_features

[3] ???

[4] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Community_Health/Former_administrators_survey
_________________________________________

en.User:Bodnotbod