Everyone's pointing out that this is specifically about admins (not editors) and the general difficulty of wikipedia editing specifically due to its rules and reversions, but I really feel compelled to offer a counterpoint: this applies to wiki editing in general.
I've been editing mediawiki-based game sites since the mid 2000s - before Wikia became Fandom, before it was evil, before it started gobbling up smaller wikis with tempting financial offers. I took a decade+ off and only recently found myself drawn back into the hobby in the last couple of years when I found a game I loved that had a burgeoning wiki that seemed to need help.
I was handed admin privileges within a month because an extension I wanted to use (ReplaceText) was locked behind admin. Two years later, I'm still there because I hold 85-90% of the edits on it. And I. Just. Can't. Get. Help. Not even from the site owner that handed me admin. I've gotten interest from I think seven whole people in all that time, and all but two dropped off within a week or two; the remaining two have a page or two they each maintain but leave the rest of the site to me. And this is a live service game, so it's a neverending stream of event pages and new content that I, and only I, keep going.
No one wants to learn how to edit wikis anymore. It doesn't have to do with the high position or the rules of a specific site. It's a dying hobby viewed as too hard for content consumers to wrap their heads around.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Looks like they nearly shut the door on new admins circa 2008 and the existing group is slowly attriting.
Wikipedia is an RPG and it’s too hard for new players.
GunnarRunnar@kbin.social 1 year ago
Hopefully they realize it's not healthy for Wikipedia in long term and make a course correction.
No idea how they work internally but probably some kind of mentoring program would be in order. There's now way someone relatively new will learn all their quirks that have been developed in the past decade and too many people on the internet expect you to know everything already to be worth a shit to them.
Silverseren@kbin.social 1 year ago
There is a mentoring program and I'm a part of it. Unfortunately, a lot of the accounts going through it very blatantly aren't there to actually make a good Wikipedia article on something, but to instead promote themselves or their company.
Aatube@kbin.social 1 year ago
How have they “basically shut the door” in new admins? There has been three new admins in the last three months and there is currently an ongoing request for adminship which has a 100% support rate
Dee@lemmings.world 1 year ago
Maybe they were denied as a Wikipedia admin?