Hopefully innocent question about editors...

[jcraven]

As a disclaimer, I am asking this purely out of curiosity. I am NOT using this to get info about submission status or to complain about any particular category.

 

Anyway, my questions are: 1) do editors have "quotas" or is there a system in place that requires approved editors to make contributions (either in additions, changes, or removals) to the category that they edit? 2) is there a system that weeds out editors that don't perform (based on the opinion of other editors that is) or do nothing once they've been approved?

 

Sorry if this was in the FAQ and I missed it...Hopefully I'm not requesting too much information....My questions are the result of having read many many posts on this board.

 

Thanks

[spectregunner]

Fair enough.

 

Editors are required to do one edit every three (it might be four) months in order to keep their log-in active.

 

Even if an editor only does the minimum, they are warmly regarded and a good part of the editing community. This is sometimes difficult for non-editors to understand, but let me try and explain. An editor who only does four edits a year has done four edits that someone else does not have to do. Since there is no ceiling on the number of eidtors, and an editor who only does four edits a years is not taking up a space that an editor who might do 100 edits a week could otherwise occupy.

 

The other relvant fact in all of this is that the named editor of a given cateogry does not "own" or have "exclusive editing rights" to that category. There are, as the FAQ explains, more than 200 editors who can edit any given cat, so an editor who does the bare minimum harms no one, and in their own small way, helps.

 

Besides, the optomist in me hope that the editor who does the bare minimum will catch on fire someday and start doing large volumes of edits in a short period of time.

[hutcheson]

That's a very typical question, among people who haven't volunteered. An organization obviously wants to cut out the deadwood.

 

But an online community has a different concept of "deadwood" from your typical M.B.A. See, our "deadwood" are all the empty suits who make up pointless rules for other people to follow, thus not only not doing work but wasting the time of people who do work.

 

Not the editor who actually does a little work and doesn't bother the other real workers with those silly rules about, um, things like quotas.

 

Because if the hassle of editing gets too much -- man, the pay is nothing (literally); you spend your time picking through the worst toxic waste spam to find the bits of identifiable information; and the abuse from the spamming webmasters who think of themselves as the "public" (well, all the public that counts) is pretty, well, abusive; and even other editors always want you do do "better" (for some definition of better). YOU HAVE TO WANT TO EDIT! Or you stop.

 

So it's pretty silly to tell people that they have to do what they want to do? And telling volunteers that if they don't do what they don't want to do, we won't let them do it any more ... is downright Kafkaesque.

 

So ... we cut out the deadwood. The folk who'd make rules like that. The folk who'd enforce rules like that.

 

It makes for a more pleasant work environment. Which, considering the pay scale, is about the best we can hope for.

 

It's a different mindsuit. Privileges, not assignments. Empowerment, not micromanagement. But if you look, you'll see the same thing in any volunteer community. Things get done because people want to do them, not because they are assigned them. Things that people don't want to do badly enough, things that people don't think worth doing, don't get done.

[hutcheson]

Or you can look at it this way:

 

Write your own job description! Priorities, assignments, quotas, work times, subjects ... working with self-starting, self-managed autonomous people who care passionately about what they are doing -- and ask only that you care about it too.

 

If you do well, treat yourself. If you do badly, stand in front of a mirror and curse yourself out. Or take a break and come back to work refreshed.

 

A good manager ... would kill for that kind of boss. Any other kind ... ought to be consigned to watering the plastic ornamental cabbages in the foyer, and strictly forbidden to hassle the help.

[jcraven]

Appreciate the thorough answers....That definitely gave me some good insight and has quenched my curiosity. Thanks!