From:
"Parker Peters" <onmywayoutster(a)gmail.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org, jwales(a)wikia.com
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 21:38:18 -0500
There's a lot of truth in that email. I'm disappointed with David's
response, which is to question the examples given, and basically
evade the
point. The point is not wrong, and it's that we've allowed
ourselves to
develop a culture of disrespect, contempt, and dickishness. We
haven't made
it a priority to insure that Wikipedians, especially admins, treat one
another with respect and dignity at all times. We're actually
developing a
reputation as a place of arrogance and nastiness, a place of heavy-
handed
thugishness, a place where people treat each other quite badly.
That's bad
for the project.
Rather than defensively trying to say why Parker Peters is wrong,
we should
be introspectively asking what we can do to make Wikipedia a better
work
environment. I see no reason why Wikipedians shouldn't set a
standard for
excellent treatment of contributors. In Jimbo's Statement of
Principles, I
read #7: "Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost
respect
and dignity." We seem to be very quick to revert to the final
sentence of
the paragraph, which says, "I must not let the "squeaky wheel" be
greased
just for being a jerk." The trouble is in being too quick to
decide that
someone is "just a jerk". When you decide someone's just a jerk -
they
often become one, and I don't blame them!
I've seen admins treat regular users like dog shit way too many
times. Why
doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect
contributors? Why
isn't that a high priority? We're not in an early development
stage at this
point, where the whole cowboy, run-and-gun mentality is all that
valuable.
We've reached a plateau where other things start to matter a lot -
things
like maintaining an atmosphere in which good writers will want to
contribute
their valuable time. Wikipedia's grown up a bit, and we should
really start
acting like grownups.
The email from Parker Peters makes me sad, because it hits so close
to home.
If we don't start demanding civility, not in some hollow sense
where we
manage to avoid personal attacks, but in a real sense that involves
treating
people with actual dignity, we're going to start seeing a lot more
fallout.
I'm not citing any examples, or getting specific, not because I
can't (I
could go on and on), but because I don't want people to focus on
attacking
whatever particular case I bring up. The point is that more and
more people
are thinking of Wikipedia as a place to go and get showered with
abuse, with
little or no provocation. Is that what we want?
I suggest we take a cue from those great philosophers from San
Dimas, and
make it a site policy to "Be excellent to each other".
It's the respect of other contributors which is sometimes lacking.
Ultimately, this place has to be fun.