Useless admins on a Wiki - advice?

[SongsOfDragons]

This probably sounds really stupid and selfish. But it's been bugging me for months...and something that does that surely needs some form of address, right? ...right?

I'm a member of a small literary society. <40 members. We have a Wiki which is (supposed to be) kept up to date about our shenanigans.

I say 'supposed to be' because very few of the people know what they're doing with the Wiki. These few people are the ones who do all the work, who know all the Wikicode and how to update tables and templates and upload pictures into the right categories and such. We update whenever a new fic is produced; and we update whenever others ask us to (usually in the form of moaning on Facebook that something is wrong and needs to be fixed). We have received little to no recognition of what we do.

And whenever we have a serious problem that requires admin powers, we have to message them for help and then wait until they do their something-like weekly check. We have a dormant issue with an awful grammar-troll who is not a member of our society, and we had some serious disruptive trolls earlier this year.

We have three admins. One has had to sort out her life and has unfortunately had to drop out of the Society. She founded the Wiki and I trust her to come back and help when we need her, so I'm not mad at her. It's the other two.

One has just over 200 edits (five times less than myself), knows no Wikicode at all (by her own admission) and demands that we hard-working Wikigardeners do her work for her, and even then I have to fix her mistakes. The other has TWENTY-FOUR edits, is inactive (has not edited for over ninety-one days), has only ever edited articles that relate to his own characters. The first admin has declared that giving sysop (she didn't even know what that meant until I told her - she said she thought it was cough medicine) to anyone else is a useless endeavour because she is sure the three can take care of any problem. She dips in and out of inactivity herself, and while she has the power to take care of the problems we often have to poke her through other channels and wait for her to get round to it to do so.

I know these two personally. They're an item. He lives in the US and I haven't met him personally; she we see regularly. They're only admins in the first place because of the virtue of their characters being the head honchos of the society.

Am I wrong in thinking our leadership sucks monkey biscuits? If we ever have a problem where we need to contact the Wiki staff, we have nobody apart from the admin who's left to speak for us, because the other two don't have enough edits nor are active enough. I know it's a hobby endeavour, something silly and unmonitored and unpaid, just to maintain a database for the society. But it's really annoying. What should I do?

[Dilorenzo]

How about getting in touch with all three, as a group, and spell out your concerns? Point out the inactivity and how long it takes to get things changed/done as needed, and that a fourth person, at least, is required.

Short of that, it's like an inactive guild leader. Sometimes the only choice is to start anew.

[SongsOfDragons]

Both the annoying admins know very well there are big concerns, and yet they both swear they can handle it. They refuse to take counsel from anyone, and indeed a few of their cronies (who are just as ignorant as they are regards the wiki!!) agree with them, saying we're being selfish and/or the Wiki isn't important.

I'd love to kick the pair off and establish some proper and useful powers, but we've worked hard on our Wiki; it's as up to date and nicely arranged as it currently can be, and I don't want to cause arguments within the society.

[Pedersen]

You're asking for some advice, but you're not going to like my answers. I'll warn you of that up front.

Your problem is with the ownership of the wiki. Bluntly put, you're screwed.

Unless you can get one of those three admins to transfer authority to you and others who care, nothing will happen. At this point, your only viable option is to talk to the owner/founder, present the problem, and try to persuade her to grant you the access you need. When you do this, be prepared for your pleas to fall on deaf ears.

By "be prepared" I mean this: You are not likely to get what you want to see. In fact, if things go badly enough, you could lose all access to the wiki entirely. You could alienate all three admins. You could lose every scrap of work you've done, and not even have a way to have recourse for it at all. Be prepared for this possibility.

If you want the realistic option, here's your best bet: Get a new server up and running. Get the data copied over to that new server. Try to make an amicable split. That's really all you can do.

The other option is to try to hack the server, take control forcibly, and commit several illegal acts, divide the community, and (when you eventually lose) be alienated by everybody anyway.

If the people who own/run things are okay with the current state, any attempt to make a change is likely to result in problems between you and them, especially with the description you've provided above.

Go for the amicable split. It's your best hope for fixing the problems and getting easy copies of the data.

[csquared]

Sounds like Pedersen hit the nail on the head.

You did not say, but it sounds like a free service that someone set up as a hobby. They have nothing to lose from their poor service.

If you want better, pay someone or set up your own.

Maybe you should hire Pedersen?

[SongsOfDragons]

I fear you may be right. Sound advice there Peds, thank you muchly. I'm going to try poking the semi-inactive admin first, she's a lovely person. See where that takes me. At the moment we need an admin to do some tasks like updating our terribly out-of-date welcome message and some categorisation of protected images, and we'll see if poking to do their jobs helps.

It is a free service; it's Wikia.

[Rapscallion]

Lovely and effective are not always compatible. Sometimes you just have to be hard.

Rapscallion