QUOTE(Moulton @ Mon 14th July 2008, 2:56pm)
Gag Me With a SpoonQUOTE(Viridae @ Mon 14th July 2008, 9:30am)
QUOTE(UserB @ Mon 14th July 2008, 11:22pm)
If it were up to me, we would make some more basic changes - for one, change the name "admin" to "maintenance user" so that it ceases to be a status symbol. I think a good chunk of the drama goes away right there.
That last suggestion is a very good one.
On Wikiversity, admins are called
custodians.
On LambdaMoo, they were called
janitors.
Gandhi called public officials
servants.
Compare janitorial custodians and public servants to
how Hammurabi envisioned himself.
Now go look up
Narcissistic Personality Disorder one more time.
[Neener.] What's in a name? (etc, etc). I would say "administrator" is no more staus-laden a term than "custodian"; the term "administrator/admin" on Wikipedia, though, is a secondary, Wikipedia-specific meaning that has nothing to do with administration.
If sysops were called "custodians", then you could simply replace every mention of the term "admin" with the term "custodian", and nothing substantive would have changed, except everyone would be complaining about "custodians", rather than "admins".