User blog comment:Joe Copp/An essay regarding the internet/@comment-1025281-20120103105456

I can find a lot to agree with in this post. It does a good job of explaining the relatively rapid turnover of admins on wikis. While the policies of many wikis against removing inactive admins' rights inflate the figures, it's pretty obvious that the amount of time an admin remains truly active is no more than a year or two in more than half of cases. Many dedicated admins simply come to believe that their work isn't appreciated.

Moreover, despite most established wiki's rock-solid policies to the contrary, many (or most) users are still likely to subconsciously perceive admins as people in positions of power, not "janitors holding tools". Even with all the work wikis do explaining the traditional wiki hierarchy, many users are still likely to to think it's a hierarchy of power, not merely "trust". This is unavoidable as the most "trusted" users, the ones with admin rights, usually need to be the most articulate, experienced and committed users on the wiki. Creeping distrust is impossible to avoid.

That said, some admins do last for a long time, and there's got to be reasons for that. I've only been around Wikia for three years, so I can only theorise on these reasons. :P My corollary is that the keys to longevity as an admin on a wiki are:
 * 1) Being nice to everyone every time, and not using the usual rash words people are inclined to use on the Internet. If you treat everyone else as equals, people are far less likely to fall into the usual distrust of authority. Or at least the deterioration won't happen as quickly.
 * 2) Recognising that sometimes, you will "lose". Most wiki's democratic mechanism for making decisions mean that it's unrealistic to expect that you'll get your way on a wiki every single time. You could be the best essayist in the world and you still won't be able to convince everyone.
 * 3) Not taking anything too seriously. If you take every post that disagrees with you personally, you're going to keep falling into heated arguments that can be permanently damaging.
 * 4) Knowing when to take a short break – a few days where you just disconnect from the wiki altogether. I mean, we're not robots.
 * 5) Knowing where to find walruses.