User blog comment:CyberTheNerd/SOG Wikia Staff Meeting 4/@comment-5849201-20140727110803/@comment-7706473-20140730070851

Cosmic: Referring to people without naming them (thanks for stepping forward, M!) or as 'some admins' doesn't help us track down who you mean at all; and neither does saying that you aren't on 'everyone's favorite' list. Who is everyone, and more importantly, why should their opinion of you as a person matter in regards to our work as admins? Speaking personally, such vague words don't help me to tamp down who you feel is being problematic, or more importantly - how. And if I cannot understand what the problem is or how you perceive it to be, the last thing I can do is set about rectifying it!

For example - are you referring to me? If so, please feel free to mention me by name - the last thing I'd do is take offense at it! I have said numerous times in the past that I'm not the most active, and if the current of people is that we need to prune inactive admins, then I will gladly resign my post so that someone who has more time to regularly visit and maintain an active role is present. Are you referring to someone else? Is it a vague, non-directed kind of feeling of we should be doing more but not being quite able to place it? For ease of purpose, I'm going to assume the last for now, though it'd really help if you could clarify for me.

Speaking personally, I must disagree on all accounts. Master - Vandals happen fairly irregularly, and though it would be wonderful if we could get them before they appear, that's an unlikely dream. They are blocked and edits are reversed on a fairly tidy schedule, and more to the point - we have a very low incidence for a wiki of our size and popularity, may it always stay as such. Could more be done? Absolutely - but I'd much rather have a sporadically active but present userbase then one that approaches burnout. Rephrasing this -

If you were to have administrative powers and privilieges, do you feel you would have time to do more of the things you already do? Would it guarantee that you would be the first responder to a vandal or spammer, or react in an 100% by-the-book manner? If so, what do you think limits the rapid response of the current 'lazy' admins? And if not, what why?

Marcus: What you're experiencing could be burnout, something that tends to happen when generalized blame is assigned. I think you've been active as much as anyone else has, and at least as efficient. Then again, my standards for what are efficient and conductive may be somewhat skewed.

My thoughts: Though I absolutely agree that comments and notifcations are just common courtesy and good housekeeping, I know I personally have made stupid decisions, especially when tired; I cannot imagine that I or Marcus am alone in making such mistakes, nor do I think they are made frequently. I find that updating the number of votes counted in a relatively small - fun, but small - contest is less important then encouraging contributors, reviewing feedback, and overall helping the community to grow.

We've expanded to the point where I'm doubtful that all of our members even come directly from SOG proper, or are even introduced to the channel through the wiki, instead of just the reverse. As such, we're not just a community but ambassadors of a sort. A goodly portion of our members don't comment much, preferring to use the chat or simply browse the wiki without frequent interaction; and so I think that community building, something that I see many of our staff, from chat moderators to administrators to regular users, doing with fantastic aplomb.

These do not mitigate or stand in opposition to your complaints - or rather, thoughts - Cosmic, Master. Instead, I hope that by asking for clarification and voicing my own, such concerns might be mitigated or perhaps eliminated entirely.