[WikiEN-l] The admin problem

[John Lee]

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>geni wrote:
>  
>
>>On 3/7/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Obviously, the larger and more contentious the community, the bigger the
>>>challenge of consensus.  But we cannot undertake such a debate without
>>>an open analysis of parliamentarianism's defects.  Such a system
>>>encourages the forming of parties that will promote and protect
>>>particular policies, and who will be happy to have their POV succeed by
>>>a bare majority.  It leads to the tyranny of the majority.
>>>      
>>>
>>Parties generaly require a representive democracy. What we have is
>>closer to the athian system.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Oh, I don't know; first there were the Inclusionists, Deletionists and
>Mergists; then there were the "joke parties" like the
>AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD; then the ultra-conservative nuts like the
>Association of Moral Wikipedians, Wikipedians for Decency, and finally
>the Catholic Alliance of Wikipedia...
>
>...and now, while the people who still take the ADW and AIW seriously
>are largely confined to AFD/DRV (where they've become anally retentive
>process fetishests), two new powers have emerged: the Pro- and Anti-
>Userboxes camps.
>
>An interesting thing to note about all of the wrangling is that most of
>it has been about "What is Wikipedia"; the Inclusionsionist/Deletionist
>debate was largely about whether we should have articles on schools or
>not, and the Userbox debate seems to be about whether user pages are
>free webspace where you can promote your political agendas or not.
>  
>
I don't know if anyone ever took those things seriously, let alone to a 
factionalist partisan level. I know I didn't. I just joined the ADW 
because I *tend* to agree with the deletion of most articles I see on 
VfD/AfD, and even if I disagreed with the rest, I couldn't stomach the 
behaviour of the inclusionists. I *think* I later joined the AMW, 
because I think merging is a good compromise. I would have joined the 
AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD, but I think my "bipartisan" approach has 
already made it clear that I don't pre-judge articles. :p

Most hard-line partisan deletionists and inclusionists would be that way 
even if the ADW and AIW were never founded, IMO. I've never seen any 
reference to either of those in AfDs, because the vast majority of 
deletionists and inclusionists at least behaved politely to one another. 
Only a couple of rogues polluted the image of either side.

The userbox debate, on the other hand, has both sides assuming bad faith 
of the other, and those taking a stand who don't ABF or otherwise act 
like dicks are in the clear minority. It's the opposite of the 
deletionist/inclusionist debate. Most of the "anti-userboxes" people 
I've seen love to speedy/support speedying as many userboxes that might 
be deemed factionalist as possible, regardless of disagreement because 
"it's the right thing to do". Most of the "pro-userboxes" people I've 
seen will immediately yell "ZOMG ADMIN ABUSE" when an admin blocks a 
pro-userboxen fellow because they *think* the admin blocked the fellow 
for that reason, or when an admin speedies a userbox, regardless of 
whether it really is divisive. (Case in point: the deletion of the UDUIW 
userbox, which I already brought up on the list.)

The userbox debate has been particularly poisonous to the Wikipedian 
community because of how starkly the lines have been drawn, and how 
belligerently those on either side of the line have behaved towards one 
another. Whereas once the rogues were in the minority in the 
deletionist/inclusionist spectrum, it is now commonplace to see people 
yelling assumptions of bad faith and incivil remarks from the tree-tops, 
while the voices of those trying to be reasonable/civil on either side 
are drowned out.

I think those trying to speedy delete/keep all userboxes have got it 
wrong -- userboxes are not important in the long run to the fate of 
Wikipedia. What's important is reasoning with each other, assuming good 
faith, and spreading WikiLove. If we can't do this, we haven't just lost 
the "userbox war", we've lost the war to build an encyclopedia through 
the wiki process. And that, my friends, is where I believe we are 
headed. And please, don't cast the blame on "rogue deletionist admins" 
or "unacculturated newbies". Practically *everyone* involved in this 
dispute has been up to their neck in bad faith and WikiHate. I don't 
know about you, but if sacrificing userboxes (or sacrificing the 
deletion of divisive userboxes) is what it takes to restore good faith 
and WikiLove to the community, I'd take the latter over the former any 
second.

John