On 10/20/07, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
On 20 Oct 2007 at 20:48:48 -0700, "Steven Walling" steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Jimbo, at first glance my Portland liberal brain knee-jerk reacted to
your
comment about bringing back the WikiLove by thinking, "How? By simply blocking or banning anyone who can't agree with our vision and play
nice?
Seems rather in contrast to wiki values."
But then I thought about it, and that's exactly right. For a long time, civility and WikiLove have been rhetoric without any force behind them,
or
at least the force of a block. Perhaps it's time for admins to step up
to
the plate more when it comes to trolls who dance around the letter of
the
law to stick around.
Your first impression makes more sense to me. Love isn't something you can gain by force or threat of it. Fear, yes, and maybe compliance, but not love. Are you looking for a fake civility and feigned love that comes from everybody being afraid to openly show any other feelings for fear of sanctions? That would be like on the Twilight Zone episode where the mutant kid reads everybody's mind and makes people vanish or transform into things if he doesn't like what they're thinking, so everybody has to constantly think pleasant thoughts even though they really hate the kid's guts.
There's some truth to this; we don't want to create a new atmosphere of fear by doing stuff percieved by the community as arbitrary abuse of editors.
But there's also some truth to the fact that some people aren't here to be constructive to the project, build an encyclopedia, and work constructively with other people to do so.
We have always had to balance tolerance and an acknowledgement that some are too distruptive or malign.
It's reasonable to posit that where the line was drawn was in the wrong place; a lot of current incivility would go away if we picked a few offenders and zapped them.
The problem is, who picks them?
I currently believe there's a legitimate problem with some people who are here to be constructive being viewed in bad faith just because they're irritating. I don't want to encourage those who feel irritated to start pulling the trigger on disruption too much more easily.