Countering active admin flight
well i dont know if im supposed to post here or not. A link appeared at the top of a wiki page inviting comments on the task forces recommendations. After an hour or so I still dont understand how it is organised, how the non-normal indenting system works, where i should post or what exactly I am being invited to comment on. I find the whole thing confusing, which can't be good if you are trying to get people involved. So anyone reading please regard this as a general observation of confusion as to how I am being invited to contribute and maybe place this general observation somewhere else where it properly belongs.
As to what I am trying to respond to, why there is a decline in the numbers of administrators, duh, are you serious? Im not an admin but I am the sort of person who might have made a good one. But every year the appeal of being one becomes less and less. Instead of a job where you get to be helpfull and maybe use the added perks to do the odd admin tidy up where you come across a problem, it becomes more a policemans job all the time. The original definition was a janitor who tidies up. Now many admins I come across see it as their job to tell people off for their temerity in trying to edit an article. There are enough rules on wikipedia now to keep lawyers in business for years and they just keep growing. You can spend your whole life trying to keep up with those rules. I have seen comments by quality assessors, dedicated ones, moaning that they no sooner assessed an article than the standards have changed and they have to do it all over again. Do I want a job which involves spending most of my time checking how the rules have changed since last week and then quoting rules I didnt write and dont agree with at people who were just trying to contribute? This place was supposed to work by consensus, not rules imposed from the top.
There seems to be a great emphasis on admins doing administration. Maybe that is what you mean by 'active admins'? If the deal is signing up to spend all my time processing articles to delete, or some other list, then obviously Im not iterested. Some people may like that kind of thing full time. I might do it sometimes but being here is for fun not community service. The image of an admin comes across as someone obsessed with admin, not writing articles. This perception of what an admin does is growing as the beaurocracy here grows.
I sometimes come across someone who has been an editor for only 3 months and is madly clocking up edits on some admin task, and I just think, ah fast track to admin, someone wants the position. I wonder what they will do with it when they get it? Do I want someone like that bossing others about here? no. Do I want to spend my time arguing with them? no. Do i think all the admins already in existence are on a power trip? yes. Do I think they would blackball me as a rebel if I so much as expressed interest in the position? yes. Sandpiper 00:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)