User blog:Étiolles/Maintaining good relations within the administration and with the community

Hello everyone!

After presenting the different ways of appointing new members to the administration, today I'm going to present how to maintain and preserve good relations both within the administrative team and with the community. This is obvious to some, I'm sure, but it's still possible these days to see administrations fracture or wikis struggle because of communication problems.

Being a good listener
The first and most important point for any administrative member is to listen and pay attention to other users. First of all, for your team. The best way of avoiding problems is quite simply to avoid creating them! To avoid creating them, you need to listen carefully to the needs and comments of others and try your best to respond to them, without favouritism or anything else that could damage relationships. Be honest and constructive in your remarks, as the individual may feel hurt. Nevertheless, when things need to be said, there's no point beating about the bush (but don't be aggressive all the same).

Also, listen to your community and its members. Don't be in denial if, for example, the theme (all the interface customisations; we often distinguish between light and dark themes) is ugly and everyone tells you to change it. If the community complains about a member, do your best to listen with a neutral ear, without prejudice or bias. I know it's difficult for some people or for those who aren't used to communicating, but it's important to consider all users in the same way, regardless of their role. After all, a lot of people already know what I'm talking about, and better communication comes with experience of administration. Everything I'm saying is common sense, but it doesn't hurt to point it out!

Be correct, friendly and welcoming
When a user cancels your modification, or changes what you have done, assume good faith and favour discussion over reprimands, which create tension and drive users away. Also, when you see a new user modifying but there are errors, don't modify without communicating: go to the user, explain kindly what's right and what's wrong; and also explain why you've corrected this and how to avoid making mistakes next time. Always in good spirits!

A good reflex, when you observe new users discussing or modifying, is to send them a jovial welcome message. This gives users confidence and helps them to get on well with each other.

A slightly forgotten way of preventing users from overflowing is to make simple rules that appeal to common sense and put the links to these rules on different pages so that users have quick access to them and can understand them easily. Feel free to make conventions that are more precise but that clarify the rules. Ideally, they shouldn't be too restrictive, but that's up to you and I'll probably write a post about it... In the meantime, I recommend you read this post by Kjnoren on certain practices in this area: Style Guides Should Be Guides.

Boosting communication
This part is aimed more at small wikis and those where the community is weak.

Before you want to have a tight-knit community, make sure that the small (or even better, large) committee of active contributors and admin members is tight-knit too. There are plenty of ways of doing this: create a discussion thread to coordinate projects (example on the wiki where I'm administrator: we created an "Information thread" on my wall a year ago and we still use it when we have ideas, comments, etc.). You can also use Special:Community as an update and communication page, but personally I don't really like it because of the way it looks and its isolation... If the wiki has a Discord server, you can use it for the same purpose, but consider keeping Fandom as the main means of communication so that everyone can participate and no-one feels excluded because they can't participate on Discord. To unite this same team, set up projects: concentrating your energy on a project will create links within your team and this is useful for fostering good understanding; but also for making the wiki evolve significantly!

Once you've found a way to bind your core group of active participants, set up an information and sharing relationship with the members of the community: to take the example of projects again, invite them to participate by creating a blog post announcing and explaining the project in question; use the polls in Discussion to create tournaments, etc. There are few bad ideas in this area and it's worth trying. However, to avoid doing it clumsily, don't hesitate to ask active users, experienced administrators or even your WR/IWR, who will be able to identify the needs of the community and how to reach fans.

Conclusion
In conclusion, if you want to have a fast-moving wiki with a stable and fulfilling environment, it is essential to have effective and healthy communication within the wiki. To achieve this, the administrators and moderators are the key players and must do their best to create an environment that is good for everyone. Various means can also be put in place, depending on your needs and abilities, to boost communication, but don't forget that you are always supported and that users will always be happy to help you!

Finally, as usual, I'd like to thank Alastor le guerrier and Thegamer1604 for their proofreading and advice!