Matt Brown wrote:
I feel that the immediatist attitude of the
vandal-fighter has
infected many of the decision-making processes of en-wikipedia way too
much. Everything must be fixed NOW. We must act as if we have the
attention span of a mayfly, because later is as good as never.
With the absolute deepest respect for the vandal fighters, whose
immediatist attitude saves us from untold volumes of unspeakable
horrors, I will say that I agree totally with Matt here.
Some things require immediate action. Even some things having to do
with WP:OFFICE, although my view is that if it comes to that, what we
really really should do is look at what failure of process led us to
that impasse in the first place.
But mostly, no. Mostly, if we (any of us! for any reason!) stub a
controversial article and demand careful sourcing for rebuilding it,
that's fine, EVEN IF THE ARTICLE SUCKS FOR A FEW DAYS.
Whereas in my belief most administrator actions do NOT
need to be
fixed *right now*, even if they are wrong. Bans and blocks - in most
cases, the world will not end if an individual can't edit Wikipedia
for a day. Frustrating though it might be. Page protection: everyone
can live with not editing an article for a little bit. Deletion:
undeletion can be done at any time, and unless an article is a very
high-traffic one, our readers are unlikely to even notice.
Totally. Some of the silliest fights we have gotten into about alleged
'censorship by admins' was over the most trivial of topics.
The culture of feeling entitled to instantly revert,
though, is quite
damaging. It escalates arguments, builds up pressure, makes everyone
tense, encourages revert wars. Nothing on Wikipedia should be settled
by a fight. I feel that instant, no-discussion reverts of anything
other than *obvious vandalism* - whether edits or administrative
actions - encourages a quite unpleasant pattern of behaviour.
If we feel we have to do things instantly because it's too hard to
keep track of things otherwise, then we need tools - procedure or
software - to help with that.
Absolutely!