User:Ben MacDui/Deathwish

This user is an administrator, but would like to be de-sysopped someday. (Discussion)

But Seriously Folks,

I am not the most active of administrators – the concept of “administration” is inherently uninteresting to me and I largely conduct these activities when I run out of steam for my current editing obsession. I am therefore not generally in the loop and when I recently came across the list of Former Administrators I was genuinely shocked at the number of names I knew on it. I had no idea all these folks had, for one reason or another, laid down their mop.

There could be many reasons why this is so.

1. Battle fatigue – the endless wear and tear of dealing with vandals, POV pushers, wiki-lawyers and the like, results in increasingly grumpy behaviour, leading to sanctions.
2. No. 1 is as seen from the individual admin’s point of view. The same behaviour as seen from someone else’s might be the good old “power corrupts” observation.
3. In some cases a single, high profile “mistake”.
4. Some may get inadvertently caught up in a complex feud and in trying to resolve it are accused of malfeasance.
5. Some may be high-profile drama queens whose gaudy signatures and regular appearances on stage were always going to end in tears.
6. In my case, it’s only because I would like to hang out with the cool older kids.

Whatever the reason, it looks to me as if we lose some of our better administrators due to this attrition. Perhaps few of them want their tools back. Perhaps some of them do, but are too proud to ask. I don’t know, but I’d like us to find a way to offer support to “administrators in distress”. This may not best involve scooting off to IRS discussions or getting feedback from friends (who are always likely to say – “yes these POV pushers/ArbCom members etc. are a bad lot, it's not your fault, I hate them too”.

What to do? Here is some unsolicited advice to myself if I notice that I am becoming unduly cross or dramatic or have commenced fantasising about creating an “alternative account” to get back at those baddies.

1. Take a break from the topic.
2. Post this user box on your user page.
3. Drink a large glass of water.
4. Remove controversial pages from your watch list. If you must, look at the pages direct once a day.
5. Ask for help from someone uninvolved.
6. Make a few unbold comments to the talk pages of articles you don’t normally edit, but inspire you (“I’d like to know more about Tahiti, can anyone recommend a good book”) or help out at DYK.
7. Go outside and look at the sun/stars/clouds. They don’t care about Wikipedia, and neither do 99.9+% of the people you see. That doesn't make Wikipedia valueless, but it may bring some perspective.
8. Whatever Wikipedia's objective achievements as an educational tool, it has other, more subjective "purposes". One of them may be to make you a better person. One of the ways this might happen is if you learn about what makes you angry/afraid/depressed/frustrated so that you can deal with this more appropriately. Sometimes this might mean confronting it, on other occasions, walking away. You know how to tell the difference.
9. Sanity lies this way.

Notes