User blog comment:Ildsjel/An Open Letter/@comment-5245301-20190817073555

In an objective sense, no matter what the wiki wants is what we'll do - I want to make that clear before I let my personal feelings get in the way of my response to this.

Whilst I do wholeheartedly agree that mistrust against the admin team is a contributing factor to why people leave and why there hasn't been as much activity here, it always seems to be the reason. It's never the fact that people can - and have - been ousted and ostracised for a variety of reasons, never the fact that there's a lack of new users regardless and never the fact that we're all growing up and putting real life before the wiki. It's never any of those things, it feels, it's always a distrust, a disconnect, between the admin team and the userbase. As I said, I understand and agree that distrust is a contributing factor but whilst we've focused on that for the better part of a year, it seems like there's been a shun to any of the other contributing factors to why someone might leave.

To all of those who may be reading who have left or considered leaving because of a lack of trust towards the admin team, I'm sorry. To those who can juggle real life with the wiki well, I'm envious. We're a small wiki at the end of the day - as Livia's graph has shown - so I'd love for there to be a true sense of community amongst us but I fear that there stems problems and factors beyond just a distrust between the admin team and the userbase. We should still tackle that, yes, but can we please not neglect the other factors on why people leave.

As Liv rightfully said, a lot of us aren't the teenagers we once were when we joined the wiki; it's no longer homework that takes us off the wiki for a couple of hours an evening - it's jobs, degrees, families. Life. I have all the faith in the world that we can make DARP work, but an imperative part of that is accepting that fact of us all growing up and not ignoring it in favour of other issues.