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

[geni]

On 14 July 2010 02:07, FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> The expectations upon admins are the pivot point for that. See [[
> User:FT2/RfA <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FT2/RfA>]].
>
> Any ideas how we can get somewhere like that?
>
> FT2
>

Well to start with you could chuck your requirements out of the
window. Your requirements like most at RFA are selecting for 3 things

1)some degree of editing skill
2)Not appearing to cause trouble
3)A decent set of wikipolitics skill


It's two and three that cause the problem. Anyone whith a decent set
of wikipolitics skills is going to archive 2 by playing safe going
along with the flow and not challenging things. Almost anyone actually
passing RFA is going to have got into the habit of going along with
the ah "bad faith combined with mob justice". The people who might
actually try to challenge such things are unlikely to pass RFA because
either they lack the wikipolitics skills needed in order to pass (you
would tend to fail them under the "nor into politicking" clause among
others) or because they are not prepared to use them in a way that
would let them pass.

Upshot is that we have for some years now been promoting a bunch of
admins who will go with the flow rather than challenge low level bad
behavior by admins and long standing users. The tiny number of rebels
and iconoclasts left are from years ago and have little to day to day
stuff.

-- 
geni