Anthony wrote:
On Dec 2, 2007 4:01 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Or the "newbie" may be a sock. But all the others are real possibilities too. The important part is to look for -actual- disruption. If someone's editing non-disruptively, and doing good work right when new, well, there's a very good chance that they're simply a conscientious person who bothered to RTFM, and in the absence of evidence otherwise, we should assume that is the case.
I'd like to agree with this, and maybe I do, but to play devil's advocate, isn't the line between "disruption" and "good faith editing" rather thin, especially in the meta namespace? The lack of hierarchy and appeal to what's called "rough consensus" make it very easy for people to game the system and cause a lot of drama without doing something purely disruptive. If we assume someone is simply a conscientious person who bothered to RTFM, then we'll excuse them for inadvertently causing a little drama. But if they're a sockpuppet or meatpuppet participating with the intention to cause drama, then the very same actions take on a whole different meaning. To quote the secret email: "So by the time Jimbo does something controversial, most Wikipedians don't get more than a sense of vague unease about this account's behavior."
I don't know, the issues are a lot more complicated than they seem at a glance.
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We don't even need to presume socking, in that case. If they are a conscientious person who bothered to RTFM, we can hold them just as responsible for bad behavior as we would a more experienced editor. (There is the question from there of whether we should hold more experienced editors responsible for bad behavior more quickly and more severely, but that's off the topic of this thread...)