QUOTE(radek @ Sat 12th November 2011, 5:53pm)
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Anyway, another meme/analogy that should be dragged outside, executed, buried and covered with lye is that somehow Wikipedia administrators are "volunteers" whereas, say, US Senators are not. US Senators are also volunteers! Nobody forces them to seek public office just like nobody forces anyone to run for adminship. Sure, Senators are paid a salary but even if you think that could potentially make a difference, then the fact that the salary is peanuts compared to the actual wealth/income of the people who become Senators makes the argument irrelevant. Just like Wikipedia admins, the Senators run for Senate because of the "perks" (power, ability to influence the development of society etc.) of the office. There is no practical difference here, except that Wikipedia admins tend to have a tendency to whine a lot about how they're unpaid...
I believe you're overstating this point, and this may be what Mr. BeadGame is objecting to. It's true that most Senators are rich to begin with, and money isn't the reason they run for office... but there's a big difference between being paid less than you could make in the "private sector" and being paid nothing at all. And obviously the amount of actual
power, the ability to influence people and events, is far greater for a Member of Congress, or a Member of Parliament, or what-have-you.
I might be willing to accept that Wikipedia
as a whole might be more influential than any one, or even two, average US Senators... but compared to the whole schmeer, not even close. Besides, the fact that Wikipedia isn't
supposed to influence people politically makes it much more difficult for any one administrator to direct or control the nature of that influence.
You can make a much better general-point argument that Wikipedia is more
useful than a legislative body, or any particular politician, but obviously that's not saying much. Also, let me hasten to add that I'm not saying this as an argument against term limits. But the people who say that term limits would increase administrator attrition are probably right - and while I would say that's a good thing, I'm guessing they probably wouldn't.