User:CComMack/Relief

Burnout is one of the leading causes of drama and other social friction on Wikipedia. Editors, especially those who engage in high-stress activities like new page patrol and vandal-fighting, eventually become jaded by the high rates of unhelpful edits, and begin to make errors in judgement, failing to assume good faith, or biting newcomers. Unfortunately, the nature of these tasks is that they incur severe consequences for Wikipedia's future growth and health if they have endemic problems. For many editors, an encounter with a new page patroller will be their first taste of interacting with Wikipedia, and we should make sure that it isn't needlessly unpleasant.

All this, however, raises the question of what to do about burnout. And the clear answer, to me at least, is that we need a mechanism for editors to know when they are taking their roles at Wikipedia too seriously and need a break. So, taking inspiration from admin recall, as implemented at Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall, I am proposing the concept of Editor relief. And to put my money where my mouth is, I am putting myself up as the first editor open to be relieved.

The concept is simple, and is mostly cribbed straight from the admin recall procedures.

1. This is a voluntary process.
   • It should not and cannot be formally initiated for editors who have not placed themselves in an appropriate user category or placed a notice on their own user page.
   • The only enforcement behind any of this is the culture of trust on Wikipedia, and the inevitable loss of trust in an editor who goes back on his or her word and refuses relief. There is no way to make someone go, but it is usually in their interests to go quietly.
   • Final decisions in all judgement calls are the solely in the hands of the editor being relieved.
2. An editor shall stand relieved and go on wikibreak if he or she recieves a set number of requests to do so from established editors within one week.
   • The definition of "established editor", and the number of them sufficient to initiate relief, shall be at the discretion of the editor, but ought to be set ahead of time, and should not be made stricter while a relief application is in progress. A good example, and the level I will set for myself initially, is twelve editors with 500 articlespace edits.
3. A relieved editor's wikibreak shall last a fixed length of time. Lengths should, in general, be no shorter than 20 days, and no longer than 92 days except in extreme circumstances.
   • Editors may, solely at their own discretion, use technical means in enforcing their own wikibreak. In the event of an early return, however, admin assistance in disabling such obstacles should be provided on request.