[Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep driving away good contributors

[Poor, Edmund W]

> I hope we are all proud of ourselves about how
> tolerant we are with people who consistently exhibit
> anti-social behavior. Andre has left the project due
> to fatigue with having to deal with these miscreants
> and I am so /disgusted/ with loosing yet another great
> en.wiki contributor that for at least the next several
> days I am going to concentrate on the Spanish
> Wikipedia and contemplate priorities on my own future
> involvement in en.wiki.  
> 
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) 

Now, hold on for just one cotton-pickin' minute here!

By golly, I'm not going to take this sittin' down. I try very hard to _reform_ and _raise_ people who haven't quite got the hang of things here. But I'm usually one of the first to say: if they won't play by the rules, show them the door!

I have repeatedly requested that we come up with some guidelines for -- well, behavior for want of a better word. 

I have:
* made specific guideline suggestions of my own
* supported the ideas of others
* pointed out users who IMHO needed a temporary ban
* banned several graffiti artists and page deleters

The response has always been the same:
* people get up and leave (Like: Andre Engels -- goodbye)
* people tell me not to warn offenders with the word "sysop" after my name

What am I doing wrong, Mav? I trust you. You maintain NPOV, even when you and I are 180 degrees apart.

What am I doing wrong, Jimbo? Can't we have just a tad more authority to keep order? Must you and the developers be the only ones who can enforce the rules?

What am I doing wrong, Lee? We don't let kids break up a good poker game. But a lot of contributors will tell you: if that kid peeks at my cards/spills a drink on the chips/bets out of turn/etc. one more time I'm leaving the game. Right?

We must have clear guidelines and the power to enforce them.

If the rules are not clear, we have to rely on Jimbo or Lee or Brion to make a decision, inform us and then we have to spend a week or two discussing it.

When I taught Sunday School, I just gave trouble-makers a time-out for:
* hitting another pupil
* grabbing something (a book, a chair) from another pupil
* teasing another pupil

Within a half-dozen classes, I had perfect order -- and, to top it off, my class doubled in size! Kids started calling me Uncle Ed, and everyone wanted to be in my class? Why? Because they liked getting time-outs?

No, because they knew that no one would (1) hit them, (2) grab their things, or (3) tease them.

Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.

Ed Poor


I hope we are all proud of ourselves about how
tolerant we are with people who consistently exhibit
anti-social behavior. Andre has left the project due
to fatigue with having to deal with these miscreants
and I am so /disgusted/ with loosing yet another great
en.wiki contributor that for at least the next several
days I am going to concentrate on the Spanish
Wikipedia and contemplate priorities on my own future
involvement in en.wiki.  

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)  


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