I think one thing that is not helpful is labeling people. I am depending on the time and the situation a (rogue?) admin, an expert editor, a content contributor, a moth person (sometimes good/sometimes bad), a newbie killer, a drama queen, an article owner or someone trying to make it into some other article owners turf. What should I be flagged as?
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About the expert role: I am an expert in certain subject matters. Have I felt that I am being driven away? Yes. In my role as admin or non-expert editor have I driven away other expert editors? yes (not on purpose but it has happened as a consequence of bad communication and short tempers). What makes the difference between me and the driven away editors is both the level of addiction (when I have been driven away I always come back), the fact that I have a kind of support network in wikipedia of other experts and people who share my views and approaches (a cabal? a clique? a mob?) so I know that not all of wikipedia hates me.

That's one way of framing it. Another is that they show that they're interested in communicating with others and realize that wikipedia is about communicating and building consensus.

That's not the right way to look at it. It isn't a single one time project with a "formal timeline and estimated completion date" nor should it be. It's about an overall philosophy of development moving forward and there are many different moving parts and it will always be a priority. 20 years from now we will all need to be taking a hard look at new editors and what tools, community conditions, etc. are needed to retain the best among them.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo Wales#top|talk]]) 15:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Ha ha ha. "20 years from now", Wikipedia will be an utter mess (if it is still online in any form).....

They were lucky. Thousands of people were bamboozled into writing content for them. And now those
people have had enough. The "golden age" was 2004-2006, and now the whole thing is going into
senile decay.

One of the best ways to tell when you've successfully announced that the Emperor has no clothes is when Jimbo censors your comments from his talk page.

::::::Jimbo, if this is the attitude, i.e. following "an overall philosophy of development", being taken by WMF's board and its executives, then it sounds like we should expect none of Wikipedia's major problems, many of which ''have'' been identified by WMF management, to be resolved anytime soon. Aren't you a business administration/finance major? If so, then you know that non-profit organizations also should follow a business model, as in identifying the unique and in-demand service or product that the organization provides, developing and implementing a plan to fully market and maximize the returns on that service or product (the returns aren't necessarily financial, right?), identifying obstacles or threats to that plan, and implementing corrective measures to mitigate and resolve those obstacles. If the WMF is not doing this, then is it correct to say that it's, in many ways, simply treading water? A PR plan, which the WMF ''does'' appear to have fully developed, is only part of a business plan. [[User:Cla68|Cla68]] ([[User talk:Cla68|talk]]) 23:54, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

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:::::::Cla68, if this is your approach no wonder people are being put off: we don't need an authoritarian business plan, we need to enjoy improving article content with less of the hassle. Reducing civil pov pushing would be a good start, done by commitment to content policies instead of giving civility and etiquette issues top priority. Yours politely, . [[User:Dave souza|dave souza]], [[User talk:Dave souza|talk]] 00:06, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

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:::::::Cla68 wrote, "that non-profit organizations also should follow a business model." There are many, many, many other forms of organisational model in human history; and many currently in implementation far more suited to running a large volunteer organisation. The Commonwealth public service model of expert service combined with career recognition and high-to-low mentoring for one. The supposition of neoliberal capitalist hegemony doesn't appear in the pillars; and, the opportunity to participate in free work that wasn't subsumed as Value (also known as volunteerism, or sometimes a free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit) is a key element recruitment and retention. I'm not going to suggest that neoliberal totalisation of society as a market is invalid; but, that it is ridiculous to suggest it as fact. [[User:Fifelfoo|Fifelfoo]] ([[User talk:Fifelfoo|talk]]) 00:17, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

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:::::::K, look at it this way. We know Wikipedia has some major problems, such as new editor retention, inconsistent and uneven administration, lengthy and time-consuming dispute resolution process, lack of quality or improvement in "core" topics, and lack of transparency in its administration. The WMF, to its credit, has actually made the effort to identify and and detail many of these issues. Now, comes the next step, actually ''doing'' something about it. The chief executives of an organization are usually evaluated on their performance in ''resolving'' the problems that are afflicting the organization. Instead, what we appear to have here is executives being evaluated solely on their ability to follow a certain "philosophy". It's fine to hold to a certain philosophy or vision with a non-profit endeavor, but you still need to get the problems dealt with. Without a formal plan for doing so, all you have is blather, PR, and abundant earnest demeanors as the problems continue to fester and frustrate the project's volunteers. [[User:Cla68|Cla68]] ([[User talk:Cla68|talk]]) 00:38, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

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:::::::::Given that we use a consensus decision making model, it is difficult to force functional executives (as opposed to policy executives) to take responsibility for policy matters that lie in the hands of the community. In particular, most editors with experience in other organisational modes (The Firm, Public Service, loose political parties, cadre political parties, religious charities, papal, conciliarity, episcopalian, presbyterian churches) expect the solution is a "harder" organisational form. However, in practice, the hard forms of wikipedia: bureaucrats and arbitration, force the issue back on the community as soon as policy becomes an issue. These hard forms also suffer from a continual crisis of legitimacy. Some elements identified by the functional hierarchs are fundamentally disputed—see the Gardner Quality dispute. If a body of editors feel there's a serious crisis, or crises, they'll need to engage the community in a structured manner to achieve policy outcomes. [[User:Fifelfoo|Fifelfoo]] ([[User talk:Fifelfoo|talk]]) 01:18, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

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::::::::::Remember [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-09-26/News_and_notes this]? Based on that episode, the WMF does ''not'' apparently feel that Wikipedia's community consensus is an autonomous governing authority. If the WMF, however, would like to try a bottom-up approach to solving problems such as new editor retention, that's fine. They just need to formally write-it up with a step-by-step implementation plan, timeline, completion date goal, and definition of how success wil be measured. Then, the WMF's executives need to be graded, when it comes to performance evaluation time, on how well their plans actually resolved Wikipedia's problems. [[User:Cla68|Cla68]] ([[User talk:Cla68|talk]]) 04:12, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

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:::::::::::New editors have no idea about most of these things...they probably don't care...most of them are trying to figure out the increasingly difficult wiki-markup, our (from their perspective) increasingly more stingent demands for immediate referencing, our old timers attitude about copyvio (as if they have any idea about that stuff generally at first), and the general cliqueishness of the established editors. Newbies have to have a mission going in since most common knowledge items are already started, and the best known articles have a posse of "protectors" ready to shoo new ideas away. This isn't the military...we can't make life too regimented here since most that edit here do so to ''escape'' real world regimentation.--[[User:MONGO|MONGO]] 04:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

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:::::::::::Yeah WMF are incivil emphatic-noun-persons and violate the pillars and governance principles. On the other hand, they're as hands off as Vice Chancellors in the 1950s (on all matters except BLP/communism respectively). Wikimedia sysmins, well, that's more the interface between two economic/political units. [[User:Fifelfoo|Fifelfoo]] ([[User talk:Fifelfoo|talk]]) 08:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

...when Jimbo censors your comments from his talk page.