I was once warned for canvassing, because I told people offsite how to vote
in a discussion about to keep certain page. These people were mostly of a
female audience and interested in women's history, and the group who were
wanting to delete were mostly anglo men.
Also, Peter, when a person is offended by something someone else has said
and you don't understand it---it's probably best not to comment on it.
I actually *have* read it very closely due to that situation. But thanks for
assuming that I am not capable of doing so.
--Maggie
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2011 10:02:22 -0700
From: Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com>
Subject: [Gendergap] Canvassing
To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects
<gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <CEFD590F-2C51-468E-9274-2DCC9C7CAA3C(a)gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On Oct 1, 2011, at 6:55 AM, Maggie wrote:
Wikipedia is set up so that only people who look
for these
articles/pictures will know about voting procedures. So of course if
there
is a vote, the majority would probably be overall positive unless serious
canvassing went on to let people who care about the other side know about it
so it evens out. Canvassing is set up to prevent this--I believe it's
actually a way of biasing the community to serve only the community, and not
the readers. Because the readers are--the world. Telling people about the
topic is just like how any election goes. I guess unless you are in some
sort of fake election where people are led to believe that their votes
actually count.
Maggie, I can relate to the frustration you're expressing. But I'd like to
draw a distinction between the Canvassing guideline itself (which I consider
a helpful and insightful document, that illuminates important collaborative
practices) and the way accusations of Canvassing may be made in certain
contexts.
The Canvassing guideline is an important part of our world. If you haven't
read it recently, I highly recommend it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CANVASS
It is often quoted by people who, I think, *haven't* read it closely, and
used to criticize behavior that is actually constructive. That is a problem,
but it's not a problem with the guideline itself.
-Pete