Crisis of the staff system

[NickTheRed37]

Hello everyone.

The FTB Wiki started as a non-publicly-editable project served by specially appointed users which together form the FTB Wiki staff. The wiki faced the problem of low activity, and one of the staff members, Jinbobo, proposed to make the project publicly editable. The proposal was accepted, but the problem where practically no new “regular” users do anything and everything is did by the leading group remained. Jin proposed that the staff system is the problem — the very existence of it may cause thoughts of viewers or newcomers like “They have staff, why should I ever bother working on this?” — and proposed to remove it. (ref 1) The full list of problems told by Jinbobo is as follows (he points out that the first two are the main ones):

• Establishment hegemony: The same people occupy important positions for too long and no fresh ideas are injected.
• New editor mentality: They have staff, why should I bother contributing. (this is a wiki after all)
• Overwhelming: There are too many ranks to climb. The ladder is hard to navigate.
• Intimidating: Everyone editing has X rank, what if I make a mistake? Do those people with rank Y override my opinion?
• Time commitment: It appears that the purpose of editing the wiki is climb up the ranks, and I don't have the time for this.
• Undervalued contributions: This person has rank X and I have rank Y, does that make his contribution more important or valuable?
• Fixation on prestige: He got rank X and has Y edits. Does that mean I need Y edits to obtain that rank? (edit counts are counterproductive! By all means include it on your user page, it is a metric of your impact on the wiki indeed. But putting it on page level 2 (one click from the main page) might not be the wisest idea. I realize this now and I regret including that on the staff page.)
• Improper motivation: User X join the wiki with the specific intention to get to rank Y for bragging rights. However, User X does not fully understand the workings of the wiki resulting in low quality contributions.
• Sense of divide: The most visible people here all have rank X, but I have rank Y, does that mean I am unwelcome here?

(ref 1, section Addendum)​

Meanwhile I, the former Russian translator, questioned the requirement of the staff system and independently proposed to remove it. (ref 2) These events have begun the epoch which I call “the crisis of the staff system” and paved ground for a new group overhaul proposal by Retep998, which poses as an alternative to the system. (ref 3)

All these events may have a big effect on the FTB Wiki and the FTB community, so I have to open the discussion here, on the FTB Forum. Anyone is free to give feedback and to vote on the proposal.

References:

1. http://ftb.gamepedia.com/Feed_The_Beast_Wiki:Administrators'_Noticeboard#New_editor_retention
2. http://ftb.gamepedia.com/Feed_The_Beast_Wiki:Staff's_Noticeboard#Necessity_of_the_staff_system
3. http://ftb.gamepedia.com/Feed_The_Beast_Wiki:Centralized_discussion#Group_overhaul_proposal