[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 02:43 AM 5/31/2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
>Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> > The Wikipedia community
> > painted itself into a corner, and it's entirely unclear to me if it
> > can find the exits, the paths to fix it.
>As this discussion illustrates rather well, the argument "if you want to
>fix A, you'd have to start by fixing B (my pet gripe) first" is
>routinely deployed, making for an infinite regress in some cases, and in
>others the generation of suggestions that are rather clearly
>counterproductive for fixing A, whatever they may do for B. In the real
>world, if you want people to do thankless and time-consuming tasks for
>you for no money, and much criticism, you have to rely on something more
>than "be sure that you'll be told if we don't like you and what you do".

Eh? Is this coherent?

Who is the "you" who wants "people" to do thankless tasks?

What is the "pet gripe" in the discussion?

What is being discussed is "declining numbers of EN wiki admins," and 
how to address it. In that, surely it is appropriate and even 
necessary to examine the entire administrative structure, both how 
admin privileges are created and how they are removed.

So "A" here would be declining numbers. "B," then, must be the 
difficulty of removal, which leads to stronger standards for 
accepting admins in the first place, which leads to declining 
applications and denial of some applications that might have been just fine.

There is no evidence that there are declining applications because of 
fear of being criticized as an adminstrator, and the numbers of admin 
removals are trivial, so Charles is expressing a fear that is 
imaginary. If it were easier to gain tools and still difficult to 
lose them unless you disregard guidelines and consensus, there would 
be no loss of applications, there would be a gain. A large gain.

What I'm seeing here, indeed, is an illustration of the problem. The 
attitude that Charles expresses is clearly part of the problem, and 
Charles is suggesting no solutions but perhaps one of ridiculing and 
rejecting all the suggestions for change.