[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[Ray Saintonge]

William Pietri wrote:

>Rob wrote:
>  
>
>>The fact that a block gets someone MAD does not justify further abuse,
>>and the talk page should not be used to give a troll a soapbox to
>>attack people.
>>    
>>
>I'd agree with that. On the other hand, there's this pattern I'm worried 
>about that goes something like this:
>
>   1. A new user tries to do something that seems reasonable to them,
>      but is annoying to us -- e.g., adding their friend's band to
>      Wikipedia.
>   2. Almost instantly they receive a boilerplate negative reaction from
>      us -- e.g., their article is speedied.
>   3. They struggle to understand what the hell is going on and do
>      something they think is reasonable -- let's say they replace the
>      speedy template with {{hangon}} and go on editing their article.
>   4. They get another instant boilerplate negative reaction and
>      experience more frustration -- perhaps they get the template back,
>      a user page warning for removing speedies, and an edit conflict to
>      boot.
>   5. After repeatedly being frustrated in trying to do something they
>      think is useful, they express their frustration with less than
>      perfect politeness.
>   6. The cycle of negative interactions spirals until they end up blocked.
>  
>
The disrespect starts at #2.  If the person so acting took the trouble 
to open a dialogue instead of slapping on impersonal boilerplate and 
initiating hostile action a lot more of these newbies could be mentored 
into becoming useful contributors.

>And then from here, I'm sure a most of those people just go away, 
>nursing their burnt fingers and telling their pals what jerks those 
>Wikipedians are. A few of them take it as a great injustice and turn 
>into long-term enemies.
>
With full justification for doing so.

>I would rather we took more time with these people, as I think we 
>currently create more enemies than we need, and discourage potential 
>contributors.
>
That's the big problem to overcome.

Ec