On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 1:08 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 11:53 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The strength of "Assume Good Faith" is that it's a good heuristic for life in general. <snip>
That's a fantastic quote, David.
And *shit happens*, but people are unwilling to accept that it's possible - they ignore the ridiculous fucked-up complexity and emergent behaviour of evolved systems and keep looking for someone to blame. It's the same place conspiracy theories and witch-hunting come from.
Yeah I agree. While the arguments may have gotten a bit more vicious, it's always been there (I remember basically the same discussion from a year before, and before that, and it hasn't gotten significantly worse), there was never a time (at least not that I can remember) that was "peaceful", really, but then again I wasn't here from the beginning.
Sarah commented that it seemed like there was much more spirit, much more drive to do something good back when she started in 2004. I think that has more to do with the fact that she was just starting out, more than the relative peacefulness of that year. All of us here are old dogs, who reads about every controversy and have definite views on most issues that come up. Most of the community isn't like that.
I have a friend who started out a month or two ago, and he still feels what Sarah felt in 2004. He has gotten into a few arguements, but they have been settled amicably (everyone Aed GF) and he still feels that initial rush that all of us felt in the beginning; the joys of contributing. Doubtless, in six months or so, he will have been properly disillusioned and in two years he will be wondering what happened with all the civility there was in early 2008.
--Oskar
Even today, as a vetern user of a couple years, I find it very easy to edit articles and only run into helpful, friendly people. I just follow a few simple rules.
Don't choose articles to edit by hearing about them on enwiki-l
Don't choose articles to edit by hearing about them on WP:AN or WP:AN/I
Don't choose articles to edit by hearing about them on User_talk:Jimbo_Wales
Don't choose articles to edit by hearing about them on wikipediareview.com (.org?)
Just go edit something you're interested in, know a little about, and be polite. Almost everyone will be very nice to you. Editors just seem to gravitate towards ZOMG DRAMAZ centres as they gain experience - but if you deliberately go the other way, you'll find those centres are only a tiny part of our universe.
Cheers WilyD