Problem 1: Editorial policy is almost impossible to figure out.
Translation 1: It is too hard to game the system on technicalities.
Exposition 1: Stop trying to figure out the editorial policy and write.
Problem 2: There is confusion over communication methods and power roles in the adminstration.
Translation 2: My OCD is acting up and I feel I am entitled to more order.
Exposition 2: So what.
Problem 3: There are no systems in place to encourage user feedback on writeups.
Translation 3: Occasionally, something is not about me. Please fix this.
Exposition 3: There are ten million websites that care deeply about being Facebook. Why does this one need to do that too?
Problem 4: The little quirks, jargon, and inconsistencies across the site add up to a society that is insular and difficult to penetrate.
Translation 4: Once we have a strict set of rules and have tied up the admins in bureaucracy, I will need a large influx of new users who agree with me. Please enable this.
Exposition 4: This community is such a hugbox because it consists entirely of people for whom these quirks "work." You may think the site will have greater appeal by removing them, but you're wrong. You will cause the site to have LESS appeal, even while you "turn away" fewer inflexible mouthbreathers who can't identify the purpose of a "chatterbox."
Bonus: "This insistence on bizarre and obscure words for common site features and things reminds me a lot of one other high-profile site: 4chan. Until you spend the time digging through offsite dictionaries or enduring racial and sexual slurs from other users, interpreting the text is maddening."
Bonus Translation: Here is some irrelevant text about a website you do not want to be. There is no real connection, but I wanted to raise the allegory to make you uncomfortable about disagreeing with me.
Bonus Exposition: Shut up what are you even talking about you dummy. You know what you get when you take the anarchy out of 4chan? Reddit. Gross.
* Do not fix or change anything else on the site until the interface inconsistencies are corrected and the whole of it standardized.
Translation bulletpoint: What I say is more important than anything else, including crippling database-interface security holes.
Exposition bulletpoint: You might want to talk to a programmer before you start signing operations orders like this
* Scrape the jargon and cutesy names off of the interface, tools, and help documents and put something logical in their place.
Translation bulletpoint: This place isn't enough like Wikipedia. Make it more like Wikipedia.
Exposition bulletpoint: Get over yourself, and then get over the idea that this website needs to be the Biggest, Highest Traffic website on the planet. If size is the measure of quality you will never win.
Problem 5: The site culture, by way of the interface, encourages seniority over merit and the past over the future.
Translation 5: Remember that part about building my personal fiefdom within the site? That would be easy if I could pretend my minions were more important than they actually will be.
Exposition 5: The whole "merit" system is a huge joke which is easy to game, precisely because it was put together with the sort of myopic armchair-politics you want to apply to the administration. If a number on a homenode and a "joined on" date are enough to sway a user's opinion about something, that user is stupid and the opinion swayed was a worthless one.
* Hide the "User Since" bullet on everyone's profile from everyone but the user who owns it.
Translation bulletpoint: Seriously please make this place more like Wikipedia.
Exposition bulletpoint: Reconsider your priorities. Take a deep breath.
Dramatic political speech-ending bonus line:
"This isn't just your Everything2. This is everyone's Everything2."
Dramatic political speech-ending bonus translation:
"This isn't just your Everything2. This should be Wikipedia's Everything2."
Dramatic political speech-ending bonus exposition: I keep harping on wikipedia because the kind of crap you're spewing here is exactly how they came to be the bureaucratic, ineffective, mismanaged pack of drama-breeding politicians they are today. Overspecifying roles and regulations is certainly what the internet was founded on, but once you start throwing out RFCs for the Regulation and Standardization of Human Organization you've crossed over into a very bad parking lot and you are putting the keys into the ignition of the stink truck. Stop it. Let this place stay fast and loose as long as you can. Eventually, it will come under the control of some bean-counting squint-eyed asshole, and then it will spiral down into the endless disputes about who gets to click what and whether or not to put a diaeresis mark in the word "cooperate" on the powerpoint slide about what a great 'community' you've built. That is how community-run projects stagnate and die, and this place has been coasting along on user turnover for a long-ass time. Once the user turnover stops turning over... once you've got people with emotional investment in leading the bureaucracy...