We have had a few relatively competent contributors who in addition to doing
good editing themselves were dismissive or insulting to others. Some of
those others were vandals, some misguided in their efforts, some simply good
editors who incurred the wrath of their betters.
Fred
From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 11:42:08 -0800
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy
is a problem)
At 02:53 AM 11/7/2004 -0500, Delirium wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher.
Ban them for life and
get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them will
come back under a different name. But at least the community will be able
to unite behind the AC ruling.
I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a lot
of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.
But this raises a couple of questions. What qualifies someone as being
among the "best" contributors, and why are some editors so unpopular?
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so presumably extensive knowledge of various
subjects is a good thing to have in contributors. Contributors who know
lots of stuff and can write it up well would therefore get a lot of points
towards being ranked among the "best". However, Wikipedia is a
_collaborative_ encyclopedia. Contributors who are unable to function in a
collaborative environment, who pick fights and push their POV and defend
"their" articles tooth and nail, lose a lot of points towards being ranked
among the "best". I'd go so far as to say it disqualifies them outright,
no
matter how knowledgeable they are.
Personally, I'd much rather work with a contributor who's good at
collaborating within the Wikipedia environment than one who "knows his
stuff" about the subject at hand, given a choice of only one or the other.
Holes in knowledge are easily filled but dealing with a bad collaborator
can be very hard. I think it's not unreasonable to consider unpopularity as
an important and relevant factor here, though of course not the only one.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l