On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 1:08 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson
<oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 11:53 AM, David Gerard
<dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The strength of "Assume Good Faith" is
that it's a good heuristic for
life in general. <snip>
That's a fantastic quote, David.
And *shit happens*, but people are unwilling to
accept that it's
possible - they ignore the ridiculous fucked-up complexity and
emergent behaviour of evolved systems and keep looking for someone to
blame. It's the same place conspiracy theories and witch-hunting come
from.
Yeah I agree. While the arguments may have gotten a bit more vicious,
it's always been there (I remember basically the same discussion from
a year before, and before that, and it hasn't gotten significantly
worse), there was never a time (at least not that I can remember) that
was "peaceful", really, but then again I wasn't here from the
beginning.
Sarah commented that it seemed like there was much more spirit, much
more drive to do something good back when she started in 2004. I think
that has more to do with the fact that she was just starting out, more
than the relative peacefulness of that year. All of us here are old
dogs, who reads about every controversy and have definite views on
most issues that come up. Most of the community isn't like that.
I have a friend who started out a month or two ago, and he still feels
what Sarah felt in 2004. He has gotten into a few arguements, but they
have been settled amicably (everyone Aed GF) and he still feels that
initial rush that all of us felt in the beginning; the joys of
contributing. Doubtless, in six months or so, he will have been
properly disillusioned and in two years he will be wondering what
happened with all the civility there was in early 2008.
--Oskar
Even today, as a vetern user of a couple years, I find it very easy to
edit articles and only run into helpful, friendly people. I just
follow a few simple rules.
Don't choose articles to edit by hearing about them on enwiki-l
Don't choose articles to edit by hearing about them on WP:AN or WP:AN/I
Don't choose articles to edit by hearing about them on User_talk:Jimbo_Wales
Don't choose articles to edit by hearing about them on
wikipediareview.com (.org?)
Just go edit something you're interested in, know a little about, and
be polite. Almost everyone will be very nice to you. Editors just
seem to gravitate towards ZOMG DRAMAZ centres as they gain experience
- but if you deliberately go the other way, you'll find those centres
are only a tiny part of our universe.
Cheers
WilyD