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

[Ryan Delaney]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 2:15 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

>  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
> >
>
> To tie this back to the original post: It is this sort of insight that
> enables a person to continue to participate and contribute over long
> periods of time. That sort of insight has been developed by people who
> have participated in the give and take of making decisions, some of which
> have worked out, while some have not. So how can we, in a practical way,
> socialize administrators in the skills involved in continuing to
> participate effectively in an important project when everything isn't
> going as you might like. This happens in all large organizations.
>
> I keep thinking that stories of our adventures are relevant. That's what
> happens in other social situations, building the culture of how
> difficulties are coped with. Stories of successes and disasters; I'm
> afraid most of that lore has been closely held by insiders and not widely
> shared in the administrator community, as much of what when on was
> confidential for one reason or another.
>
> We'd like people who get into trouble to work through it and continue to
> contribute on a long term basis. That is a different path from someone
> getting into trouble, then we're done with them.
>
> Fred
>
>
>
This is good stuff and I think it's a good thing for people to learn how to
cope with adversity in general. Mistakes and stressful situations are
inevitable, and working in an administrative capacity is inherently more
likely to attract "flak" when people don't like the decisions you make. I
developed a pretty thick skin doing RCP, for example. I was harassed and
received death threats as a result of blocking vandals or protecting pages
on The Wrong Version during a content dispute. It happens all the time. Some
people don't deal with that well, especially when they're also getting
second-guessed by the community, and the project would be well served if
administrators had psychological tools available to them to handle the inner
conflict.

The other side of that coin is that when there are systemic problems that
necessarily reduce in stress or even abusive treatment of administrators,
you ought to be identifying and correcting that. Right now, you have exactly
such a situation. Working toward identifying and correcting whatever
cultural aspects of Wikipedia community compound rather than relieve the
stress and suffering caused to administrators doing their jobs is an
important priority not to be "crowded out" by the thinking that we need to
learn to deal with oppressive bureaucracy or a culture of mob justice.

With that in mind, there is a diplomatic pitfall to the approach you
suggest. In same cases, focusing on helping administrators learn to "cope
with the pressure" inherent to the jobs they've volunteered to do is going
to come off patronizing. I certainly heard it that way when people made this
kind of suggestion in real-time, because it was another example of someone
telling me what *I* needed to be doing differently. I didn't feel like the
problem was that I needed to learn to accept that I was being treated badly;
it may well have been better for my peace of mind if I had, but that is not
a solution that is going to help the project.

So from a strategic perspective (retaining human resources) it's perilous,
but also it might lead you to develop blind spots to real and solvable
problems. You don't want to get into a situation where any time a problem
comes up you recall that "Stressful situations are inevitable, we need to
[take a break and cool down / come back later / apply whatever other
therapeutic technique we've prescribed]" because then you'll not do what you
need to do to fix a serious cultural problem that necessarily gives rise to
administrator "flame out".

My skin was already plenty thick. A lot of the people who have burned out or
resigned as a result of this were experienced editors who knew what it was
like to be under pressure for making a decision someone didn't like. You
can't do everything right, but you can recognize problems and take steps
toward addressing them. Helping people learn to cope with stress may be one
prong of your attack, but it can't be the only one -- not here.

- causa sui