[WikiEN-l] Oversized criticism sections and WP:UNDUE (was: Notability and ski resorts)

[George Herbert]

On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 2:30 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> (1) There is actually no substantive consensus position that uncivil
> editors are a net negative to the site;

I would disagree - I think there's no consensus on individual cases
where the editor's positive contributions are widely thought to be
very good.  There's no consensus on "when does the uncivil outweigh
all the good they are doing", but not on "are they uncivil or not".
There are dissenters on the uncivil point - but they are at the
fringe, not within the mainstream.

(I could be wrong on that, but that's my observation, and what I act on)

> (2) Practical implementation of measures has proved completely divisive;

Not always, but too often.

We have had a fair number of successes, where despite someone crying
to ANI a consensus formed for a good civility / NPA block very rapidly
and robustly, even with experienced editors being blocked.

One can no longer go around being abusive and have a statistical
expectation that one will in fact get away with it.  The odds, for ANI
/ AN known persons, are high that they will get away with it - but the
odds of being nailed are now high enough that people are taking note.

> (3) The waters are fairly comprehensively muddied by those who take up
> tactical positions amounting to the assertion that any arbitrator who
> attempts to enforce the civility policy is part of the problem, not part
> of the solution.



> In terms of "crafted" remedies, we see this clearly enough in that
> civility paroles have proved hard to enforce, and those who do try to
> enforce them are (fairly systematically) embroiled by insult. This
> rather suggests we have gone past the point where ad hoc solutions might
> have worked.

I have had good limited success, when I can spare the time.

Admins / arbitrators / senior editors who are staying above the
tactical fights before it becomes a serious issue (ie. are not in fact
conflict of interest appearance in an incident) are having good luck
imposing civility warnings and blocks and making them stick.

The problem is - being active on ANI and staying above those tactical
fights, and yet engaged enough to spot and call the true civility
serious cases, in a timely and responsive manner.

I have been busy the last couple of months at prior workplace
(coworker left for weeks on honeymoon) and new workplace (ramping up)
- which took my time away nearly entirely for the last month and a
half, plus or minus.  There are a couple of incidents that, had they
happened two months ago, I would have just blocked someone near the
beginning for 48 hrs with a nice long polite civility discussion on
their talk page.  Instead we had pages and pages and pages on ANI.

It's not so much that it's impossible to do and make stick, as doing
it and making it stick requires the right people, timing, attention,
and focus, and those are all in perpetual short supply.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com