[WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins

[Phantomsteve]

> Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:50:53 +0000 
> From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> 
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins 
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org> 
> 
> On 25 March 2010 20:45, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc at ktchan.info> wrote: 
> 
> > Well, they're not dwindling since admin rights don't get 
> taken away on 
> > inactivity. ;-) But to the general question, because the 
> standard expected 
> > of a candidate for RfA has gone up over the years? 
> 
> 
> And because going through a continuously ratcheted-up gauntlet is 
> rather too demeaning for people to consider worth the effort? 
> 
> 
> - d. 

As one of the newest admins on enwiki, I must say that I was lucky in that I
didn't have a contentious RfA, however, I think that over the last few
months, I am the exception rather than the rule.

Despite the oft-quoted "It's no big deal", obviously many of the editors
commenting at RfA *do* consider it to be a big deal. I'm not sure why this
should be - although I notice that it's more likely-than-not to be
non-admins who are the most vehement opposers.

OK, I may be a newbie admin, but I agree that it's not that big a deal - my
admin actions have been to delete obvious CSDs, close xfDs according to the
census - plus a very few protections/blocks/rights changes... Nothing that's
a big deal - very much maintenance, as it is meant to be.

As for the number of active admins - well, people move on from things
online. I remember when I started online, lots of my friends would be in
Messenger, or in the chat rooms - now hardly any of them are. This is mainly
because they have more family commitments than they did (mumbles) years ago.
The same is true for admins - family commitments crop up, work commitments -
or they get bored of the abuse they get (I've been lucky so far, I've not
received abuse for my actions so far - that's not asking anyone here to
abuse me, by the way!)

Has anyone compared the activity rate of admins over time to that of
non-admins? For example, what %age of admins whose accounts were created in
2006 are active, compared to the %age of non-admins whose accounts were
created in 2006?

Is this an admin-only problem, or is it an editors-in-general problem? 

Phantomsteve 



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