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

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> 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

I failed my first try, and could have failed my second if I hadn't
made a serious effort to ameliorate a negative perception from taking
a stand earlier.

The edge of the knife that we must balance on is both being willing to
take stands, and be open to feedback from the community and from other
admins if we take the wrong stand.  Balancing there all the time is
very hard.  Being willing to admit you're wrong on something and still
come back the next day willing and ready to make a hard call on its
merits is not easy.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com