james-
I think Erik's decision is misguided and wrong, as
he would have
realised if he followed the debate in detail. The problem arose when on
person tried to insert a semi-literate POV rant against catholicism onto
the page.
First, let me point out that I'm not very happy with the tone you are
using towards new users who make mistakes. You're right, of course, that
Nostrum's additions were highly biased, factually inaccurate and grossly
misplaced. I read them. But calling people semi-literate or vandals does
not exactly help in turning them into valuable contributors.
People come to Wikipedia and are amazed by being able to add information.
We encourage them to do so. Be bold!, we say. So they add what they
believe is right, at the best of their ability. If you check the edit
history, you'll note that Nostrum actually made attempts to follow NPOV. I
believe if he had been encouraged a bit more softly, nicely, the whole
thing would not have turned that ugly as fast. WikiLove is about giving
people the benefit of the doubt, and not attributing to malice what can be
explained with simple ignorance.
The author outrageously also equated paedophilia with
homosexuality.
He used the headline "Homosexual abuse in catholicism", which is certainly
misleading but not necessarily meant as an equation of pedophilia with
homosexuality. It is an unfortunate fact that the large majority of
pedophiles are interested in boys -- that's why these groups (well, not
the Catholics, really) call themselves "Boylover associations", have sites
like
boylinks.net and so on. There are also "girllovers", but these are a
minority. I can cite studies on this if you are interested.
I removed the nonsense he kept putting in the article
and put a critique of
it on the talk page. JHK, referring to the additions, commented 'BTW, I also
find Nostrum's stuff unreadable and his posture amusing.' Harris7 in one
revertion "Substantial excision of anti-catholic rant" and in another case
'The recent mods were highly POV and rather nonsensical '' Nostrum's
justifications included ''added overbearing proof to people who would like
to live in big holes under bridges, Say hi to sammy for me'' ''If you
think
there is POV in homosexual abuse in Catholocism then take it out, don't
delete it, remember, fix, not censor, otherwise I will list you as a censor
and you don't want to be on my bad side''
I saw these edit comments and this is what I am referring to when I use
the word "ugly". If the whole matter had been addressed calmly on the talk
page of the article and the user talk page, we might not have seen
Nostrum's "bad side" so quickly. I think he made some attempts to
understand and follow our guidelines, and I will certainly not label him a
vandal -- the vandalism label is for different types of actions.
172 commented: 'I know that I've been warned
against this, but I'd be
tempted to protect this page from that garbage.' -172
See, this is the problem. 172 was aware of the guidelines but chose to
violate them because he felt he was sufficiently backed up. And of course
he was right, to a degree -- with you by his side, what could go wrong?
But these guidelines are there for a reason. We do not give people sysop
status so that they can act as editors and choose which content is
appropriate and which isn't. Such editorial decisions are limited to
weeding out obvious junk, and much as I agree that these edits were
biased, inaccurate or flat out nonsensical, they do not meet the sysop
definition of junk, especially his later edits.
172 had already taken a strong position in the discussion, where others
did come out in Nostrum's support and tried to work with him. But unlike
these others, 172 enforced his position by protecting the page, knowing
that he would receive support for doing so from some participants. But it
doesn't matter if you do or don't support 172's decision -- what matters
is that sysops are not supposed to do these things, because this leads us
down a slippery slope where we end up with a cabal that makes decisions
for the unenlightened masses. I would think that people from a leftist
political perspective would be more sensitive to such issues of developing
power structures.
But I would not have revoked 172's sysop privileges if he had just agreed
to ask someone else who did not participate in the debate to protect the
page, as our guidelines recommend. He flat out refused doing so and
reprotected the page after I had unprotected it, without discussing the
matter first. He now says that he refuses to "apologize". I never asked
him to apologize, I asked him to follow our protected page guidelines. If
he doesn't want to do that, he should not be a sysop.
I will not reinstate Abe's sysop status until one of these two things
happens:
1) He agrees to follow our protected page guidelines and not to protect
pages in edit wars in which he is involved
2) Jimbo asks me to reinstate his sysop status.
Given that 1) is not likely to happen, the best course of action for 172
at this point is to talk to Jimbo.
Furthermore Erik's decision to leave the page
unprotected was clearly wrong.
I'm not so sure. Protecting pages has increasingly become questionable as
a remedy against edit wars now that we have a very large group of sysops.
This is dangerous, because it makes it easy for sysops to ignore the rules
and to just continue editing the protected page while normal users cannot.
Again, this blurs the sysop/editor distinction and leads us down a
slippery slope which we should avoid.
If a user cannot be worked with, the logical consequence should be to ban
that user. But until we do that, we should make all reasonable attempts to
be friendly and cooperative. I don't expect you to accept nonsense in
articles. I just ask you to be a little less aggressive. Wikipedia is not
Nupedia. Articles can be in a bad state for a couple of hours -- just work
things out calmly and explain what is wrong without resorting to words
like "semi-literate", "garbage", "outrageous",
"laughing stock", "doesn't
know the most elementary facts", "hideously written", "gibberish"
..
Let's say you're a reasonably smart 19-year old atheist who thinks the
misdeeds of the Catholic church should really be exposed, and comes across
this free editable encyclopedia. You add a little stuff without
researching it, and immediately people tell you that you're worthless,
your edits are bullshit, crap, nonsense etc. Your heart starts racing:
these guys attacked you. Nobody should talk to you like that. So you write
a hasty response without even thinking about it. Then you come to your
senses and try to understand what these people are babbling about. Your
edits improve somewhat, but people are still in a frenzy. Now suddenly the
page is protected and you can't write anything at all. But hey- some
people still can. You're a second class user now. Aha: Wikipedia is not an
open project as it claims.
When dealing with people, you should give them a way out. A way to agree
with you without hurt feelings. We present a much better picture of
ourselves if we explain things reasonably, and we make it much easier for
others to join us and to follow our principles if we live them and don't
just use phrases like "WikiLove" as the occasional ironic reference.
Nobody is perfect. We can all fail to accomplish WikiLove. Sometimes
people just seem stupid, obnoxious and daft and you feel like you've had
quite enough. Just remember that you're part of a project that's evolving,
and that you don't have to solve all problems -- if you can't gather the
necessary calmness yourself, let others do it. The problem will eventually
get addressed. It's not like the Catholicism article is a shining example
of NPOV and historical research as it is.
I'm not saying we should embrace people like DW even after they give us
constant abuse. I'm saying we should be tolerant of newbies, tolerant of
young Wikipedians who don't have the knowledge we expect of them. We
should be teachers and models, not arrogant editors who chase away the
meddling kids. Wikipedia is and will continue to be used in schools.
Realistically we will have to put up with a certain level of ignorance. If
you can't do that, you should just wait until you cool down and restore
the edit to a reasonable state. Or get the Sifter project up and running
so that we can have a "stable" variant of Wikipedia that never includes
any nonsense.
But turning the nonsense into sense, that's part of the whole fun. Keeping
the good and throwing away the bad can be a rewarding experience for
everyone involved.
Regards,
Erik