On 8/28/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
John Lee wrote:
Might not be fair, but it reflects the perception of how we deal with whistle-blowers. Arguably we haven't had a serious case of something rotten in the state of Wikipedia being exposed, but is there any assurance that how we deal with false whistle-blowers will not be the same way we deal with real ones?
I don't think we really have "whistle-blowers" because we are vibrant open community which is constantly engaged in honest self-assessment and internal dialog, in an atmosphere where respectful dissent and diversity of viewpoints is not just tolerated but actively encouraged.
And yes, this is never perfect, but I think we do a pretty good job of it.
I think we have a lot of potential whistle-blowers; people who would say something if they detect what they believe to be misbehavior, and are credible in the community.
The recent SV / JayJG / oversight issue was largely brought to "the community's" attention by such a person, who is a member of "the core insiders group", standing up and saying "Hey! It looks like we had a real problem here!".
It looks like the underlying truth to that was that he was fooled by an external troll, taking a small amount of legit concerning evidence and "sexing it up". But, he saw enough to convince him that there might be a legit issue, and he stood up and said so.
And he's taken some lumps for doing so. But he did it anyways.
I didn't lose respect for him over this, despite coming to the conclusion that we were all basically trolled (in the "someone outside intentionally acted malignly to stir up trouble" sense). It might have helped if we'd had a calmer initial look at the "evidence", but he thought there was a legit case to blow the whistle, and did. I can respect that.