[WikiEN-l] declining numbers of EN wiki admins

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 12:11 PM 5/31/2010, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
>On Sun, 30 May 2010 21:49:49 -0400, Abd wrote:
>
> > And I feel that I did. I've watched the community, in a few cases,
> > adopt as consensus what I'd proposed to jeers and boos, there is
> > some satisfaction in that....
>
>Maybe the initial reaction you get to your proposals, even ones that
>eventually become community consensus, is due in large part to your
>personal style, such as your tendency to overwhelm people with huge
>walls of text, and to be negative in tone to everybody else involved
>in the issues you're discussing?

Sure. But I don't agree that I'm "negative in tone to everybody else 
involved in the issues." Isn't that a bit extreme? As it happened, 
here, I didn't particularly respond to posts that I agreed with, and 
there were quite a few.

Tell me, was Socrates condemned to death because of his "personal 
style"? It certainly could be said to be so. He surely knew that what 
he was doing was irritating.

As to huge walls of text, that's relative, and whether or not this is 
a problem depends on context. Obviously, if someone doesn't read 
them, they are not negatively impacted. What I've seen is that 
*usually* -- but not always -- the "wall of text" as a complaint 
comes most vociferously from those who are really objecting to the 
content, and, in my experience, when I'm more compact, which takes a 
lot more time -- not less! --, they become even more upset. It's a red herring.

Then there are others, friends, who think that I should abstain from 
writing the walls of text. Do they realize that this may represent, 
in practice, that I'd simply abstain entirely. After all, that's what 
I usually do!

I would have accepted, with no problem at all, as an example, if 
ArbComm had ruled that a bot could be set to automatically revert any 
contribution of mine over some certain length, and that could have 
been quite short as to Talk pages! (And I had no problem with 
logorrhea in article space.) Or had ruled that anyone could revert 
such a post. But, of course, that, then, it could be brought back in, 
or quoted or referred to by any other aditor agreeing that it was 
worthwhile in some way.

I also consented to the editing of my posts by certain friendly 
editors, who did it. And guess what? Those who were trying to get me 
banned objected to that!

Dan, please consider this: Either I'm writing something of value or 
not. If it is not of value, for me to take time to boil it down would 
be wasted. People who don't expect my writing to be of value learn 
quickly not to read it. Or do they? If they understand that I write 
garbage, but they read it anyway, who is to blame for their suffering?

But if it is of value, why not quote what is of value in a response, 
commenting on it? That way, with your choice and editing, you'd be 
contributing value to the coversation. Otherwise, telling me what 
I've heard hundreds of times from hostile writers, and dozens of 
times from friends, is wasting your time and the time of the readers 
as well. *Of course* the initial reaction is at least somewhat 
related to the length. And there is a reason for that, and if I were 
to explore that, there would be even more wall of text. It's not like 
I've never thought about this stuff!

Do you think I"m going to bother to reply on this list every day? 
It's become unusual, and it will, I assume, stay that way.