I have noticed, as of late, there are many editors around Wikipedia, including admins and long-term established users, who do very little in the way of writing an encyclopedia. Some do nothing at all in fact. I find this use of Wikipedia incredibly odd, considering this is not a social networking site, or a site to hang around on doing nothing. Let me go into more detail:

There are certain types of unproductivity:

  1. People who hang around RFA: There are several people who hang around RFA and its related pages, making pointless and unnecessary comments. I was, at one time, guilty of this. There are several reasons why such activity is unproductive. First off, obvious one, is that RFA doesn't have anything to do with encyclopedia. Second, some people exist at RFA just to push unpopular ideas (think DougsTech), rather than evaluate candidates. Historically, people who spend the vast majority of their time effectively trolling oppose sections of RFAs, will eventually get banned. The pattern is very similar: user starts making strange comments on RFAs; people respond to it; people notice the user is another Boothy/Masssiveego/Kmweber/whatever; someone brings up the issue on RFA talk; some say it is trolling, some say it is dissenting - it is the former, usually; no one can agree; the user continues to troll RFA; someone else proposes a ban at AN/I; there is consensus for a ban, and the user is blocked; more people show up and then there is not consensus; the user is unblocked, and continues to troll RFA; (possibly) another RFA talk thread opens about the issue; another AN/I thread opens, there is no consensus again; the user continues to troll RFA, but then breaks the proverbial "last straw", and is eventually banned.

    A third point is that RFA is just a popularity contest. The result of an RFA very rarely reflects a candidate's ability, and a failed RFA does not necessarily mean you would have made a bad admin. It's just the turnout of the week, and the mood of people. It's very rarely a true reflection of community approval, since the community consists of more than 100 or so people. If re-RFAs were held for truely bad admins, we would see the consensus change greatly from their first RFA (if they even had one). In short, RFA is a waste of time and I would advise people to stay away from it.

  2. People who hang around drama-boards: there are so many of these. I have never been one to enjoy dramaboards, aka AN/I or AN. The problem with people who hang around these pages are that they will give input into a situation they know nothing about, and often get it wrong. Then they go around giving punishments to people for their mistakes. It's painful to watch. When I was an admin, I rarely, if ever, made blocks for users who were in a fight of some sort. I rarely, if ever, touched 3RR because I don't believe in its usefulness. My point here is this: people should only go to the admin noticeboards when they need to. There are plenty of methods to deal with a dispute: telling tales on AN/I is not the way, and having a bunch of "uninvolved" admins (or admin wannabes) trying and failing to deal with the issue won't help one bit.