let me give a completely different example where i fell into a similar trap. at that time, when i was young, stupid and idealistic ....

at that time, it bothered me a little that articles contained miles, foot and inches. so i started to convert it slowly to the metric system. i even started to search for miles and converting it systematically. and it ended up, that i did not make any other edits but these ones. of course it attracted "real americans" who made clear that this is not the right way forward. and it attracted admins.

then, beeing young, idealistic and stupid, it started to bother me more. my reasoning was, to formulate it strong: "these measuring units do not exist in the world, but only in the united states. the united states is maybe 2% of the worlds population, and these 2% of people fuck up the whole contents of the most popular wikipedia, the english one." but of course such an attitude did not go well with some people, including admins.

but i guess i got wiser, and i remembered why i like wikipedia: because of the contents. and i stopped worrying about such details. and i stopped worrying about americans. and i stopped worrying about the fact that somebody reverts what i am writing. and, most importantly, i stopped making a point twice. the person reverting my change is not stupid enough to not understand it the first time :) the cause is a differing opinion. and that is fair enough. if somebody else thinks like me she will make the same edit. if not, its good thing the other person reverted mine.

and ... i continue editing. i am a lazy editor, i created only a hundred or 200 articles in different language editions. and i know i only created them because i want the contents of wikipedia. and i know if everybody on this earth was like me then we would have 6 billion times 100 = 600 billion articles. and i know if everybody would be like you than wikipedia would not exist. which would be a good thing as you would not have had that problem described in this mail thread, isn't it?

i am going back to take care about our children, work or, write a new article, my last priority. and my really last priority in life is writing an mail. but of course that is not fully true ... otherwise i would not be subscribed here :)

but, i really admire your attitude and passion, this is the perfect ingredient to be a productive wikipedian.

rupert.

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 21:22, Charlotte J <ravinpa2@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, Sue,

On 6/22/11, Sue Gardner <sgardner@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Charlotte, thank you for writing this, and welcome to the list.
>
> I don't want you to stop editing Wikipedia. I have spent a lot of time
> immersed in Wikipedia culture, and for what its worth I can tell you
> that your e-mail exemplifies the best of Wikipedia culture. I don't
> know anything about your work as an editor, but this mail is
> thoughtful and articulate and beautifully-written, and it's obvious
> from it that you've got a good understanding of Wikipedia's policies.
> I bet you are a terrific Wikipedian, and I bet you're contributing
> information that would otherwise not get written about.
>
> I am so sorry you had a bad experience with the Recent Changes
> Patroller. But you should stay! Obviously it's your decision, and
> obviously when Wikipedia loses people by treating them badly, that's
> our fault and our problem to solve. So I am not trying to imply that
> you have any kind of obligation: clearly you don't. But seriously: you
> can make (and presumably have been making) an enormous, important
> contribution here. You have no obligation or responsibility to keep
> editing, but I really, really wish you would.
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
>

Hi, Sue,

Thank you most sincerely for your kind words and your encouragement,
but the principal reason I'd mentioned my bad experiences is to try to
help you all get a better handle on whatever segment of Wikipedia's
disgruntled-non-geeky-former-female-editors I might be characteristic
of, because I very much doubt I'm unique.

I'd started editing Wikipedia casually, as I'd explained, much the way
I straighten out the clean towels in my linen closet when I open the
door and unexpectedly discover that one of my children has jammed them
in helter-skelter, rather than folding and putting them away neatly,
and that attitude is what had continued to motivate virtually all my
subsequent edits. I'd joined a WikiProject not long before I first
encountered the Recent Changes Patroller, mostly because its umbrella
just happened to cover a very narrow set of articles that bear on an
arcane scholarly interest of mine and I was thinking of trying to
improve them with the public domain images I'd located, but I still
wasn't truly "hooked" on Wikipedia yet the way virtually everyone else
on this list seems to be hooked.

I'm emphasizing that not to be churlish, but because I think you all
need to figure out ways to get casual new editors hooked if you're
going to retain them after they have what appears to be a nearly
inevitable bad experience like mine. The Recent Changes Patroller was
only the initiator and dominant actor in the "series of unfortunate
events" that caused me to begin interacting with other editors for the
first time, and only one of those follow-on experiences was remotely
satisfactory; on two article talk pages where I tried to initiate the
appropriate discussions I was sneered at by other editors. Neither
could offer a reasonable or logical objection to my proposed edit (a
usage correction), so one derided it as "hilarious" and the other
sneered that "it must be a slow day on Wikipedia." That editor is a
long-time contributor with 60,000+ edits who's also an administrator,
which doesn't speak at all well to me for the quality of the
administrators, who are presumably supposed to enforce and exemplfy
the civility policy, not to breach it with new editors.

I gave a good deal of thought as I read through the archives in the
community section of Wikipedia as to how ostensibly positive policies
and guidelines actually seem to end up being twisted into weapons to
be wielded by the more entrenched editors against newcomers and those
who express a minority viewpoint. It's not really surprising, though,
given Wikipedia's adherence to a model of pure democracy. James
Madison had explained in Federalist Paper No. 55 that the reason the
Framers had rejected pure democracy as the structure for the new U.S.
Federal government in lieu of democratic republicanism was because as
they studied the ancient Athenian assembly as a potential model, they
concluded that, "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every
Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."

That's why I cannot share your optimism that modeling good behavior
for the "troglodytes" is likely to produce any significant improvement
in Wikipedia's culture.

When I joined Wikipedia I agreed to abide by its policies and
guidelines (and I will continue to do so, so long as I remain a
member), but I frankly think that some of them are outright harmful as
applied, probably especially to women. I don't think it's at all
healthy, for example, for women to patiently tolerate the kind of
treatment I was subjected to on those two article talk pages, because
doing so implicitly grants permission to keep doing it. In both cases
the incivility was just minor enough that I didn't feel that
complaining about it formally would be productive, so I'm not going to
pursue anything, as I explained before, but the cumulative effect has
been to leave a very, very bad taste in my mouth.

Given all this, I'm not convinced that being a "good Wikipedian" is
something to aspire to, although I don't mean to be at all snarky in
disclosing that.

Best,

Charlotte

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