[WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins

[Delirium]

On 05/13/2010 12:29 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 13 May 2010 07:07, David Katz<dkatz2001 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>    
>> Yes, "stagnation" is far more accurate. Thing is, it used to be a
>> source of pride to tell your real world associates that you're a
>> wikipedia admin. You'd even put it on your resume. Now, it's a bit of
>> an embarassing secret and you definitely would not raise it in a job
>> interview.
>>      
> o_0 Citation needed. I've been amazed how it's become increasingly a
> talking point on my CV over the years. (I put it in "other interests"
> at the end.) People *like* Wikipedia.
>    

Same here. When I first became an admin in 2004, the usual reaction was, 
"Wikipedia? Never heard of it", but now I put it on my CV when applying 
for academic jobs, and it usually becomes a talking point. I think being 
heavily involved in *the* main source of information for a large portion 
of the internet-using public is and should be an interesting sort of 
thing. At the very least, I've had lots of interesting conversations at 
academic conferences from academics who are very curious but very 
confused about Wikipedia, but relatively few who have unredeemably 
negative opinions (the few tend to be from the "aristocratic academic" 
sort of personality, shocked that anyone without a PhD is allowed to 
write things).

-Mark