[WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 07:34 PM 5/31/2010, you wrote:
>On 31 May 2010 23:17, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
>
> > You are not that important, and your influence is rapidly fading.
>
>No indeed I'm not, and I am most pleased that it is, because I get
>annoyed a lot less. However, I hope I can tell the obvious, e.g. that
>bringing interesting ideas to wikien-l is most useful for debugging
>ideas - in terms of influence, you can only get consensus for changes
>on the wiki itself. (Something I point out to Marc Riddell when he's
>at his worst, and note his strange reluctance to actually engage
>himself with the community he champions so strongly.)
>
>So if you want your ideas to go anywhere in finite time, I would
>suggest you would have to convince people on the wiki. And if you want
>to run them past wikien-l first, knock yourself out, but epic novels
>are likely to get a tl;dr.

I'm glad that Mr. Gerard understands and accepts what's happening, 
because it will make it much easier for him.

I have an obligation to share my ideas, but none to try to make 
people adopt them. Inna maa al-balagh, is the Arabic, "the obligation 
is only to convey." I have limited capacity, so I do what I can.

>You are of course under no obligation to listen to a word of this, and
>I fully expect you won't change your behaviour a dot. Ah well.

Lucky guess. After all, I'm an old dog. You want me to learn new 
tricks? What reward are you offering? What's the advantage for me to 
take the time it would take to boil down what I write? People who 
don't understand the process that I go through to write seem to 
imagine that I could just "write less, just the important part," not 
realizing that this is *far* more time-consuming. I do it when it's 
needed. To just reflect on some concepts on a mailing list, to 
discuss as distinct from trying to convince, no. It's not worth it.

I've been an editor, professionally. I know how to do it. But I was being paid.

I certainly edit article content! You'll seek in vain for "walls of 
text" in articles.

Part of the Wikipedia problem, in fact, is rejection of extended 
discussion. My solution would be to move part of that off-wiki. In 
theory, people could largely ignore Talk on-wiki, but perhaps it's 
better if on-wiki Talk is given more importance (don't revert a 
change if it was justified in Talk and you haven't read that!), and 
that more general discussion and background therefore moves off-wiki. 
On the other hand, more use could be made of subpages, collapse, and 
other techniques for organizing discussion.

That genuine consensus could arise with difficult topics without 
massive and deep discussion, though, was a fantasy. In that kind of 
deep consensus process, "tomes" can be more efficient, not less. 
Skimming them might be just fine, but allowing more complete 
expression is essential. It's not necessary for everyone to 
participate in such deep discussion, just those who are interested.