Wikipedia:Admin burnout and meltdown

There are ways to reduce stress among the wp:Admin users (group: sysop), and thus avoid admin burnout and meltdown. It is important to pace the overall workload, seek helpers, and take periodic wp:Wikibreaks. Many general users also face burnout issues, when trying to handle too many updates, too many articles, as they realize that working on Wikipedia is perhaps 50x times harder than writing a blog, which has few style-guide rules and no continual reverts of edits. However, admins also face the pressures of backlogs of mop functions, with the growing number of high-profile protected articles and more users realizing that Wikipedia has become the world's soapbox for many new users.

Supporting 100,000 active editors
Each month, admins are asked to support far more active users than most people would meet in a lifetime. This strains the typical mindset, where people would rarely place themselves into such a massive crowd, if they fully understood the extent of the teeming masses (perhaps avoid reminding them too much). In recent years, the userbase has declined, since 2007, but even during 2011-2012, the editor-count data has shown an active base of 34,000 active usernames (>4 edits), and an average of 3,500 highly active editors (>99 edits month). Plus, there are editors who only edit up to 4 times, in some months, but those add to the 37,500 others. Then add the uncounted thousands of IP editors, many of whom rarely login with their username account, and that explains the data showing around 100,000 active editors each month. When considering the worries of the readers, remember the "Main page" is read nearly 7.3 million times every day. Despite numerous talks of "mass exodus" of current users, it has just not happened. In fact, some editors have wondered, in the actual migration, if perhaps many experienced, mellow editors have quit, while being replaced by highly active newcomers, who lack broad experience and merely escalate the many problems which admins have had to face.

The active-editor data also indicates that more editors are working in the same articles, increasing the likelihood of conflicts or edit-wars. Consider the number of editors, for each of the top 25 articles, all trying to update the same article in the same month:

1 467 2012 Aurora shooting, 2 339 The Dark Knight Rises, 3 233 2012 Summer Olympics, 4 226 Deaths in 2012, 5 207 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, 6 199 Higgs boson, 7 130 Roger Federer, 8 127 The Amazing Spider-Man (2012 film), 9 121 Syrian Civil War (2011–present), 10 104 The Shard, 11 102 James Eagan Holmes, 12 100 Andy Griffith, 13 99 Sally Ride, 14 93 Joe Paterno, 15 89 2012 Burgas bus bombing, 16 87 Ernest Borgnine, 17 81 Oscar (footballer born 1991), 18 80 UEFA Euro 2012, 19 80 Pranab Mukherjee, 20 79 FIFA 13, 21 75 Big Brother 14 (U.S.), 22 75 Bradley Wiggins, 23 73 2012 Summer Olympics medal table, 24 73 Rajesh Khanna, 25 72 Sage Stallone So there are still dozens of people all editing the same articles, each month, despite many articles having been expanded years ago. The pressures for admins to referee conflicts, to resolve editor disputes, have remained higher than ever.
 * style="font-size:92%"> | Most-edited articles in July 2012:
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Enlist the work of helpers
It is very important to join into active groups of like-minded editors, who can help share the workload, when some crisis or time-dependent pages need to be updated by a certain deadline. For example, if some high-visibility articles appear to be of questionable, uneven quality, then consider listing those articles for requested copy-editing by the WP:GOCE Guild of Copy Editors. Despite the essay "WP:There is no deadline", many users are keyed to the public's expectations of finding current, updated information in Wikipedia. In cases of a watchdog vigil, then perhaps ask specific editors if they could help watch for problems there ("overnight"), while other admins take some break time. A 24/7 watch might occur for a breaking news story, such as a hurricane, shipwreck, or other disaster, where many users are relying on the influence of admins to reduce edit-warring and prankster vandalism of popular articles treated as wp:Soapboxes to "Occupy Wikipedia".

Consider mandatory wikibreaks
After months of continual juggling of user problems, it can be very enlightening to rest during a wp:Wikibreak and perhaps explore whole new activities, even perhaps planning part of some adventures to learn more about topics to write about in Wikipedia. For people who consider themselves to be "wp:Wikipediaholics" perhaps treat a wikibreak as a research expedition to learn more about some other part of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, etc. An admin might decide to write just 1 great new article during part of a break, without the worries of thousands of other users. Even consider researching the general advances in wiki technology, with other wikis, while on a "mandatory" wikibreak. In those cases, taking a break is not "abandoning the struggling admins" but rather, a chance to learn some ways to "work smarter rather than harder" when returning to edit on Wikipedia.

Better forms of crowd control
While each admin can consider ways to limit personal stress, it would also help (a lot) if the problems were made easier by improving "crowd control" in Wikipedia. This essay is not a "self-help" essay, in considering all problems to be a matter of each admin's self-assessment. Instead, also consider improving the ways in which WP problems are handled, to reduce the major stresses which could lead to burnout. For example, if editors could be controlled with "per-article edit-limits" (such as 75 edits in one month to a talk-page/article), then there would be less need to block users, as the limits would indicate when an editor was, perhaps, obsessing too much about specific articles and might take a timeout from those articles (and talk-pages) for perhaps 2-3 months. Such per-article limits could, at first, be tallied by current tools, but maybe special admin tools could be created to formally warn users that they are nearing a per-article edit-limit and should rethink their involvement. To simplify tallies, only some articles would have edit-limits, and only some editors would be restricted, perhaps after being warned about excessive editing. Any other forms of crowd-control tools should be expanded, as well, to reduce the stresses which admins can face. It is not just a matter of admin's "counting to 10" to chill out, but also seeking system-wide continual improvements to reduce stressful activities in Wikipedia editing.

Warning signs of burnout
Among other signs, watch for unusually hostile replies beyond the level of normal reactions, or unusual swings in low-edit then high-edit periods of activity. At any point when overwhelmed, a person might think, "What a pile of cruft!", but usually, most people will re-center and re-balance to understand how one man's Hollywood is another man's Bollywood, Collywood, Dhallywood, Lollywood or Mollywood of their particular cultural interests. However, when a person becomes too judgmental and considers other people's hobbies to be all worthless, then that could indicate a high level of burnout. In normal viewpoints, the great diversity of user interests is understood to be focused only by wp:Notability of mention in multiple WP:RS reliable sources, and the limits of wp:What Wikipedia is not.