Hysteria? I'm getting very very close to the point where I find my usefulness to the
Wikipedia as being not only denigrated but unappreciated.
Zoe
erik_moeller(a)gmx.de wrote:> That's probably one main point of disagreement, then.
Suffice it to say
I've been with Wikipedia from the beginning and I
do think that things are
very bad right now, far worse than they have been in the beginning. I
think it's becoming nearly intolerable for polite and well-meaning people
to participate, because they're constantly having to deal with people who
simply don't respect the rules.
It would be nice to get some specific examples. Perhaps Ed's "Annoying
users" page (if renamed) isn't such a bad idea. I have certainly observed
some people like Lir to be quite persistent and sometimes silly, but I
have also noticed quite a bit of hysteria from the other side (see the
recent "Lir again" thread).
So maybe we should start collecting individual case histories and examine
them in more detail, instead of relying on our personal observations
entirely. This might allow us to come up with better policies, and
quantify the need for stronger enforcement.
In that case, we can
always collect a list of people who have been driven away or who have
quietly stopped editing so much out of disgust with having to deal with
people who just don't get it.
That's not the kind of list I'm talking about, because it only tells us
about the reactions, not the actual actions. You may say that these people
were driven away by silly eedjots, but I cannot tell whether this is true
without looking at the actual conflicts. Often I've seen so-called experts
on Wikipedia try to stop reasonable debate by simple assertion of their
authority. This doesn't work, and this shouldn't work on Wikipedia, and if
they can't handle that fact, it's my turn to say they should better leave.
I'm talking about a body of trusted members, not
an "elite." Tarring the
proposal with that word isn't an argument.
Sorry, but I do not really see much of a difference. A group with superior
powers is an elite, trusted or not. The word "elite" requires a certain
stability of that position, though, so it might not apply to an approach
of random moderation privileges.
Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't
necessarily times when people
are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen
political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other
words, violating community standards.
Do you mean nonsense in the sense of "something that just isn't true" or
in the sense of simple noise, like crapflooders? How do you plan to define
/ recognize "crankish unspported stuff"?
Yes, I know, there are egregious cases where we would all agree that they
are not tolerable. I'm just worried that such terms might mean different
things to different people, and if we adopt them, we risk suppression of
non-mainstream opinions. Is Wikipedia's page about MKULTRA, a CIA mind
control project, nonsense, crankish? No, it's not, it really happened, but
the large majority of Americans would never believe that.
> I am, like
many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft
security".
Why don't you explain exactly what that means here
on the list, and why
you and others think it's such a good thing?
The idea of soft security has evolved in wikis, and it is only fair to
point you to the respective page at MeatballWiki for the social and
technical components of soft security:
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
As to why I, personally, think it's a good idea, that's simple: Once you
introduce hard security mechanisms like banning, deletion etc., you create
an imbalance of power, which in turn creates a risk of abuse of said power
against those who do not have it. Abuse of power can have many different
results, it can encourage groupthink, drive newbies away, censor
legitimate material, ban legitimate users etc. We already *have* a
situation where we occasionally ban legitimate users and delete legitimate
material. We need to get away from this. I am absolutely disgusted by the
thought that we are already banning completely innocent users.
My underlying philosophy here is that it's worse to punish an innocent man
than to let a guilty man go free.
It seems to me that in growing numbers people refuse
to bow to "peer
pressure" or to be "educated" about anything regarding Wikipedia.
I'd like to see evidence of those growing numbers. Wikipedia's overall
number of users has been growing constantly, are we talking about absolute
growth or relative growth? Again, we should try to collect empirical
evidence.
Without generally-accepted standards and moral
authority and the shame
culture that accompanies them, peer pressure is impossible.
Yes, but in my opinion, the worst way to attain authority is through the
exercise of superior power. The best way is through respect. With the
trusted user groups that are part of my certification scheme, it might be
easier to build a reputation.
Peer pressure seemd to work relatively well in the
past. It is working
less and less well as the project has grown and since I left a position of
official authority.
Well, you know that I disagree about the effect of your departure on the
project, so let's not go into that again.
They do certainly cool down conflicts if the person
receiving the
statement knows that the person issuing the statement has the authority to
do something about it. They also let the recipient know that there are
some lines that just can't be crossed without the community taking a
forthright stand against it.
I think this kind of last resort authority should not be concentrated but
distributed. If a poll shows that many members think that member X has
"crossed the line", this sends a much stronger message than any non-
totalitarian scheme of concentrated authority. Especially if last resort
measures like banning *can* be approved by the majority.
It appears that Jimbo opposes voting, though, so you might be able to
convince him of your stance.
When the disagreement concerns Wikipedia policies and
obvious
interpretations of them, when the violator of those policies does so
brazenly, knowingly, and mockingly--and surely you've been around long
enough to know that this happens not infrequently now--then it's not
particularly important that we "express respect for the other person's
view." By then, it's clear that diplomacy will not solve the problem.
Yes, I agree that those cases exist. But I also believe that we need to
have a lot of patience when dealing with newbies. Not an infinite amount,
but a lot. And I think everyone should be given the opportunity to
rehabilitate themselves.
Please do acknowledge that some newbies (and a few
not-so-newbies) really
*are* destructive, at least sometimes. And that's a really *serious*
problem, that we must not ignore simply because it violates our righteous
liberal sensibilities (I have 'em too; I am a libertarian but not an
anarchist).
True.
You seem to be implying that, if we simply were nice
to people, cranks,
trolls, vandals, and other destructive elements would be adequately
manageable.
No, I just consider hard security a last resort, to be used carefully and
only when all else fails (as to when we know that is the case, we might
actually develop a timeframe of conflict resolution, based on data about
previous conflicts).
First, Wikipedia has grown a lot. It's the biggest
wiki project in the
world. We *can't* make people nice as you suggest.
Allow me to psychoanalyze a bit. My experience is that most people just
want to be respected, to be part of the "club", but some people have
failed in their life to learn the necessary behaviors to do so. Sometimes
we are dealing with years of problematic experiences, and often we cannot
really help these people, I agree. But I've also seen the opposite cases,
especially on Kuro5hin, where the combination of peer pressure and voting/
rating has driven many trolls away or made them serious (although often
somewhat unskilled) contributors. Why? Because they learned which
behaviors worked and which didn't.
The best example I can think of is a troll called OOG THE CAVEMAN. At
first he would troll and post crap in all upper case. A large number of
his comments were hidden by majority vote, and OOG suddenly started
posting on-topic comments. They still weren't rated highly or of high
quality, but he stopped his behavior. I've seen (but not recorded) similar
turnarounds.
To make this work, we probably need both the carrot and the stick. But I
disagree with the Christian philosophy of "Spare the rod, spoil the
child". Force should not be used as a training mechanism but strictly for
self protection. We should try to *always* be friendly and courteous, even
if we ban people.
Third, your proposal requires that the best members of
Wikipedia follow
around and politely educate an ever-growing group of destructive members.
We've tried that. We've lost a number of members as a result, and I
personally am tempted, every so often, to completely forget about
Wikipedia, and resign it to the dogs. But I don't want to do that. I
still feel some responsibility for it, and I think I helped build it to
where it is now. I don't want to see something that I've helped build
wear away into something awful.
Again, I'm not seeing that happen. I've seen many articles improve
rapidly, though. Simple vandalism is a growing problem and really putting
the wiki model to the test. We might consider a rather simple solution:
edits only for logged in members. This drastically limits the
accessibility of the wiki, but we do have a core of contributors, and if
we can't grow without losing some of them, maybe we should slow our
growth.
(user-to-user comm.)
We do this automatically, of necessity, on talk pages.
No internal
messaging system would be better than direct constructive criticism on
offending pages.
Talk pages are nice, but they have the disadvantage of being not very
personal. The mentor idea truly centers around building a social bond.
Although you might not want to "bond" with strangers, I can tell you with
authority that some people are very, very good at this, and actually enjoy
it a lot. Within a sufficiently large community, which Wikipedia is, you
will have such mentors.
But one reason I'm worried about the current state
of Wikipedia is that we
might have some expert reviewers coming in to do some good work here, only
to be attacked by some eedjit who gets his jollies out of attacking an
expert precisely because she's an expert. That *will* happen, almost
certainly, if the Wikipedia peer review project gets going.
Well, I can predict that I'm going to "attack" experts myself if they add
non-NPOV content, fail to cite sources properly, insist on their authority
to make their point etc. As you want me to acknowledge the problem of
vandals and cranks (which I do), it would be nice if you would acknowledge
the fallibility of experts more often. My view on experts and what makes
an expert is very different from yours, but I believe both views can
coexist in a good certification system.
The whole reason behind a random sample is precisely
to forestall the sort
of "elitism" and abuse of power that you fear.
I know, and I respect this good intention. I just don't think it's the
right approach, it will only lead to less informed decisions. Better keep
the decision process open to (almost) everybody (we need to prevent vote
flooding as well), that way we can reduce abuse of power the most
effectively. That's why K5's moderation system works and Slashdot's
doesn't.
Regards,
Erik
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