I checked his recent work and immediately came on another hasty, poorly
considered nomination.
Please do some research, see what else is up and comment.
Fred
OK, but let's get down to cases. What should we do
about it? Think
ahead
to community reaction, but assume, in good faith, that he is doing his
best and could do better. (or is that just a game of going through the
motions?)
This has now played out more or less as I thought it would: He has
twice
said he doesn't care, it's not his problem, and after some other
discussion
by other editors which he decided wasn't involving him he's removed the
section from his talk page entirely.
I need to look at this more and also take a good look at his current
behavior.
I emailed him saying that was his prerogative and his position was
clear,
but that I might stop in and audit his patrol log and contributions on
occasion in the future.
I'm glad the distraction is over so I can return to doing more
content-related editing, as I have some long-range plans. However,
things
like this will happen again with this editor, and others like him.
It doesn't surprise me that Wikipedia would attract such serious
Asperger
cases as this. The phenomenon of indivudals with poor social skills
(mostly,
to be fair, male) finding a haven online where singlemindedly obsessive
behavior can be of benefit, as it often is especially on Wikipedia, is
not
new to Wikipedia.
I'm not comfortable about running everyone off with mild disabilities,
although we are prepared to do so in individual cases based on chronic
disruption.
Diagnoses of the sort you are making are inappropriate, however, even in
our closed lists. None of us are qualified to do so, and even if we were,
have had no opportunity to evaluate him in an appropriate way.
Frankly, Tim's fault wasn't his alone. The original article he marked
had
not included the code that makes footnotes show up
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swim_~&oldid=362817720)720).
This:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Swim_~&diff…
adding {{hasty}} to the hatnotes, however, is evidence that our system
worked in this case.
Now
that, of course, doesn't mean it should be deleted. And in fact it
wasn't
... the subsequent work on the article resulted in the tag being
removed
(the only deletion in the record is from a previous incarnation, in
2008).
But reviewing admins should be careful about this, and Tim's absolute
refusal to discuss this when asked, even in a less confrontational way,
is a
cause for concern.
First, these things are not always evident in the Twinkle or Huggle
user
interface. That's a technical issue.
We need to follow up on that observation.
But given the mentality expressed by his userpage
and discussions
initiated,
it's clear that the benign neglect from the rest of the community has
allowed the evolution of a space within Wikipedia where users like
this,
users who actually flaunt their antisocial tendencies, can thrive under
the
cover of a necessary project function.
We are aware of this problem, which arose quite early on. A number of
such users are banned, but they are often quite upset about it and may
continue to pester us for years.
Clearly greater oversight is needed.
We can always do better but going overboard is not wise either.
Daniel Case
Respectfully,
Fred Bauder
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