List of things that might help: * Courtesy blank/delete/oversight things more liberally. ** OTRS should be a badge. ** Discuss courtesy blankings/deletions/oversights privately, not publicly. (This includes BLP deletions in the article space.) ** Blank/delete/oversight first, ask questions (privately) later. ** Remember that courtesy blanking/deletion/oversight is not a sanction. * Allow and encourage banned users to exercise the right to vanish. * Hide everything except the encyclopaedia from Google. ** If Google juice is of concern, I'm pretty sure you can tell Google to follow links on a page but not index it. * Don't archive heated discussions. Bury them in the past. Summarise the conclusions if anything productive was accomplished. * Attempt to repair relations with the 'attack sites'. Send representatives. * AMA may not have been going about it the right way, but there should be an organisation dedicated to providing help to individuals in need of help. Editor assistance doesn't really fill the gap. Start a new organisation. * Replace Wikipaedia:Vandalism with Wikipaedia:Destructive_editing . Focus on the effect on Wikipaedia, not the intent of the destructive editors. Remember even the most blatant things may be the work of drunkards, not guilty by reason of insanity. * Replace Wikipaeda:Assume_good_faith with Wikipaedia:Assume_the_presence_of_a_belly_button . Just because something has some goal other than improving the encyclopaedia does not mean it is bad, and also, good people regularly do bad things, because that is human nature. * Wikipaedia:Civility fails to differentiate between intent and effect. Replace with Wikipaedia:Hurtful_comments and focus on the latter. Something can be hurtful regardless of intent. * Get rid of Wikipaedia:Wikipaedia_is_not_therapy , or at least rename it. Often used as a justification for emotional harm, harassment, and abuse. * Get rid of the 3RR rule and replace it with a per-article policy where the article is protected after a given number of reverts. 3RR blocks are punitive, not protective of the encyclopaedia. * Get rid of the essay on trolls. * Demote WP:COI to an essay, just giving advice to people with conflicts of interest but not pressuring them to come out about it. * Do not reveal a user's location after running a CheckUser. * Make the user warning templates more polite. In particular, avoid the term vandalism. * Make the Blockedtext, Autoblockedtext, and blocking templates more cheerful, to avoid depressing the blocked or banned users. Avoid red backgrounds and annoying red Xs. Instead, try purple, blue, or green backgrounds and pretty pictures of onions.
On 21/09/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
This may be a lovely ethical theory, but it won't help us fix the G-D problems. Blaming groups recuses individuals from the perceived need to fix the problem. If someone is doing something they shouldn't, tell them to stop. Just tell them to stop. Tell them what they should be doing instead. If there's a problem, fix it. If you can't fix it on your own, ask for help.
Just complaining isn't going to get anything done. Go find some actionable problems and fix them. If you need help, ask.
Take responsibility for what's going wrong. If you did something wrong, take responsibility for it. If something is wrong, whether its your responsibility or not, take responsibility for fixing it.
Cheers WilyD