I think really the core issue here was a sort of broader issue of poor communication and lack of transparency that goes beyond individual admins. In other words, what made me impatient about refederation in the above comment, is less how long it’s taking and more that I just didn’t know why it was taking so long: since Carcosa has now provided us in this thread with more of the background for why things are moving at this pace, I now think it seems like a much more reasonable pace — I can accept that the admins need to do what they need to do, and take the time that they need to take to do these things, Hell I feel bad for them for needing to deal with all this nonsense. What they’re dealing with does sound like a drag!

So my impatience here was, if anything, really a manifestation of this underlying tension caused by that broader communication issue, which surfaced with the domain name revocation back in mid-February and has only continued in its aftermath. Because having that chaos of the domain name revocation just thrusted upon us “rank-and-file” users without warning, when the admins were able to provide us with ample warning of Impending Disaster long in advance… I dunno, that type of incident might create some lasting trust issues, right? And lack of trust tends to create discontent or hostility, even in cases where this is not really rational or productive.

So I think that was the basis for my impatience here: that as long as the explanation for the wait for refederation was just left at “technical issues … we’ll be back by the end of the month” rather than the admins explaining what specifically the technical issues were and what they would have to do to fix them, that I was just going to fill in the blanks with whatever felt fitting in the context of the previous incident that had undermined my trust in the admins.

This tension I’ve identified here can certainly be resolved at some point through action on both my own or the admins’ part, but in any case just being told that the admins are “unpaid volunteers” at even just the implication of dissatisfaction… Well, I can’t exactly dispute that fact, and I can even recognize that I probably am causing the admins stress by being vocally dissatisfied with them, which might lead to burnout down the road — but the “unpaid volunteers” line is still a little frustrating, isn’t it? I guess because the underlying tension is still there and ought to be resolved regardless of whether the admins are getting paid — that pointing out that they’re “unpaid volunteers” comes across as just being dismissive of any grievances that someone might have with how this site is run, regardless of the legitimacy of those grievances.

I guess I’m just thinking out loud here, though.