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

[Jonathan Walther]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 06:27:59PM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>Are you saying that rather than (A) banning jerks, we should rather (B) simply revert their "work" and drive on without them?
>
>If so, this sort of combines what Jimbo had said before about just letting them have their way for a day -- with the anarchists ideal of "not exercising power". 
>
>But do you think edit wars won't mushroom out of control? Should I go back, say, 15 edits ago (to yesterday's "clean" version) and edit that? I can't figure out whether that's bending over to accommodate anti-social behavior -- or that's anti-social in itself.

I see no problem with going back 1 day to get a clean edit, as long as
you incorporate any of the new material that was actually valid/good.

I don't know exactly what you had in mind for increased sysop power Ed,
but I do worry.  Where there is a controversial topic, what is to stop
the older users with thousands and thousands of edits to their name (the
"prolific" Wikipedians, quantity over quality) from throwing up their
hands and shouting "VANDALISM!" when a comparitive newbie comes along
and starts making edits that they disagree with?

I wish there was a way of asserting that one has domain specific
knowledge, and this should protect one from the drive-by
edit-everything-under-the-sun Wikipidians who have opinions, and are
good at writing down "what everyone believes", but lack the detailed
knowledge to proper evaluate a new-comers submissions.

I hope you will provide more detail as to what you specifically had in
mind, Ed.

Cheers!

Jonathan

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