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

[Ryan Delaney]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 8:32 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>
>
Somehow this thread became about RFA standards. What happened?

- causa sui