Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-4242472-20140816221856/@comment-4242472-20140817093640

Techno: You bring up some very strong points that are actually making me wonder why I bothered joining the community. If my - or any of the post-Darkspore release users' - contributions are of no worth at all then perhaps I am better off leaving since yes, I have little interest in editing the mainspace mostly because I am not sure how to make it any better aside form spelling and grammar corrections or possibly rearranging the sections. Its not something that enthuses me.

Wormy and Cyrannian: I had originally thought that what would prevent or at least mitigate the mindset that adminship is a token would have been that if one of them is effective at maintenance and effective at moderating the community then they are less likely to lose it to someone else. I think what also keeps adminship from becoming a popularity contest is that ultimately its up to the site's active bureaucrat to make the decision; people can nominate themselves or push for others to become an admin all they like but if the bureaucrat says no on practical grounds, that's that.

The paranoia probably arose because the admin base has been largely unchanged for about four years (maybe less, maybe more, I'm not 100% on that). While this might be a testament to the quality of the current team, there are cases (especially recently to be fair) where one or two admins have been seen as distant or uninvolved to a degree with keeping the community calm and cooperative. The fact at the beginning of this paragraph is perhaps also a factor in the newer user vs senior user split and the harassment that newer users have dealing with, since I have seen a few cases where users who for the most part have kept themselves uninvolved with Katarian (an outdated phrase perhaps) activity have been blaming them for recent problems. Its a coincidence at best that all the admins fit into the category of "senior user" but I've seen little evidence that the majority of admins who step in see newer user behaviour as anything beyond self-entitled lashing out.

Maybe the above issue could be sorted by indicating (perhaps a note on their userpages) which admins can be approached as community moderators and which are in the position mainly to keep code clean and/or stop the wiki from being overrun by vandals and trolls.

Its just a passing notice regarding the practicality of Cyrannian's idea but so far the will of the majority on this thread has largely been the will of the admins based on who has made a say and supported certain comments. If more non-admins made a say on this post, I'd be more inclined to support the kind of idea Cyrannian is suggesting.