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

[Fred Bauder]

> 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

Yes, that does seem to be the main requirement, a successful candidate
must never have taken a stand. This for a job that requires taking
stands.

Fred