Punishment for inactivity

[timwi]

It puzzles me that an apparently large proportion of people think that mere inactivity in a volunteer-driven project deserves some kind of punishment. In particular, I’m thinking of sysop status in MediaWiki-based projects such as Wikipedia: there is widespread belief that inactive users should be demoted. Last week I was asked whether I would

Comments

[pne]

Your post presupposes that removing privileges is a punishment, which is not immediately obvious to me.

Additionally, I think what is at least as important as how privileges are removed is how they are reinstated.

I'm thinking of LiveJournal support, where privileges are also removed after inactivity; the reason I've heard most often is that "privileges are tools, and if you're not using them you don't need them". On return to activity, it's traditionally been much faster to regain privileges than somebody starting from scratch - you might skip a priv level, for example, or be privved after one review rather than after a couple, or whatever.

Basically going, "Oh, it's timwi; he obviously knew what he was doing last time in order to reach 'X' level, so we trust his abilities. Let's just do a quick run-through to bring him up to speed on any recent changes he might have missed, then he can have his previous level back." or something like that.

[timwi]

Looks like you’re the only person left still reading my LiveJournal, eh?

[timwi]

To answer to your point, I still think that removing sysop privileges is a punishment. Even if some people might not think of it as a punishment, the fact that some do is reason enough for me to consider it one. Otherwise you might as well allow people to be tortured just because some masochists don’t mind it. To me, removing sysopship is one half of being banned from the site entirely, and I suspect that the great majority will probably agree that being banned is felt by most subjects to be punishment.

[pne]

I remember reading something along the lines of "sysopship should not be a big deal"; it sounded to me as if it was intended to be a set of tools for people to use to perform certain duties, and if they didn't want to perform them any more, they didn't need the tools. So removing them would be about as punishing as taking away a janitor's mop - hardly a status symbol.

I suppose it's in the nature of things that "dieser hehre Gedanke" (this lofty ideal?) is no longer true and that it's instead a badge of elite membership, in which case, removal of privileges would indeed be a removal of status.

So I guess, if you want to see whether it's punishment, it's important what the privileges represent: mere tools to do (sometimes dirty) work with, or status symbols and in-group membership tokens. The answer will depend on that, I expect.

[timwi]

Somehow I thought these things were more widely known, but I guess I was wrong. Yes, sysopship is supposed to be “not a big deal”, but obviously it is a big deal, and I’m surprised that any reasonable person can seriously think that a privilege that places a small group of users above everyone else could possibly be regarded by that privileged group as “not a big deal”. All you have to do to convince yourself is to look at the process new users have to go through to become accepted. It’s ridiculous, and it’s about as far removed from “not a big deal” as I can imagine. Of course, the elite group themselves now use the “not a big deal” slogan as propaganda to hide the ways in which they make it a big deal. But like I said, they do that instinctively: if asked directly, they will only tell you their rationalisations.

[pne]

Somehow I thought these things were more widely known, but I guess I was wrong.

I try to keep as much out of Wikipedia politics as I can, so I haven't look very closely at the state of such things.

a privilege that places a small group of users above everyone else

Is it an "above/below" situation?

I suppose so, given that you have the ability to do things like impose bans. (I guess? I don't really know what all sysops can do on WP.)

Ideally, there'd be checks and balances - people would be held accountable for their decisions by a neutral party, and you'd be able to appeal decisions to a similarly neutral committee. (You don't have to tell me that isn't the case in WP; human nature being what it is, I'd be surprised if that were the case.)

All you have to do to convince yourself is to look at the process new users have to go through to become accepted. It’s ridiculous, and it’s about as far removed from “not a big deal” as I can imagine.I can imagine; though, as I said, I haven't looked at things closely so I'm not familiar with

[timwi]

If someone has a superset of the privileges of someone else, how is that not by definition “an above/below situation” as you call it?

Of course, I’ve been advocating those checks and balances for some time, but as you already pointed out, human nature is such that it doesn’t stand a chance of being heard. The people who have the ability to make such a change to the system are the same people who vehemently deny that there is a problem.

[pne]

If someone has a superset of the privileges of someone else, how is that not by definition “an above/below situation” as you call it?Where I work, janitors have a master key that will open every room, so that they can vacuum them and wipe down the tables. I only had a key that would open my room. So they have more privileges than I do, but I wouldn't say the janitors are above me - would you