---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Daniel R. Tobias" dan@tobias.name To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 00:43:12 -0400 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Cla68 blocked for asking question 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.
****** I don't hate the particular editor I blocked. Nothing personal. And in situations like this it's rather farfetched to ask for love. I can ask for civility and adherence to site standards, and when someone drives wedges into that I can use the tools. They may not construct love, but they do construct a space in which certain things don't happen - where Wikipedia is not a battleground, or a soapbox, or a lot of other things people would like to make of open edit capabilities. Wikipedia isnt anarchy either. We're an encyclopedia, and people who stray too far from that get a short block to think about it. If they're basically reasonable people they see that we mean it and adjust.
-Durova
Durova wrote:
I don't hate the particular editor I blocked. Nothing personal. And in situations like this it's rather farfetched to ask for love. I can ask for civility and adherence to site standards, and when someone drives wedges into that I can use the tools. They may not construct love, but they do construct a space in which certain things don't happen - where Wikipedia is not a battleground, or a soapbox, or a lot of other things people would like to make of open edit capabilities. Wikipedia isnt anarchy either. We're an encyclopedia, and people who stray too far from that get a short block to think about it. If they're basically reasonable people they see that we mean it and adjust.
Hi! I agree with all of this, and don't have an issue with the block. But I did want to suggest one thing.
Although it truly is far-fetched to ask you to love troublemakers at the same time you block them, you might consider doing it anyhow. Why? Well, for one thing, it can work pretty well.
Long ago in college, one Saturday night I watched a friend of mine cross a footbridge occupied by a group of surly, rowdy drunks. I was worried for his safety; they were clearly spoiling for trouble, and he was a small guy. But in the space of two minutes, he was through them and got some high fives as he left. I was dumbfounded.
When I asked him about it, he said that he knew they were likely to love the local football team just as much as he did. So he excitedly brought up the big upcoming game and got them excited about it. And then walked on through unscathed.
On another occasion we were at the closing cast party for a musical we had worked on. Knowing everybody well, we were surprised to see two strangers there, drinking our beer and systematically hitting on one girl after another. Turned out they had climbed the exterior wall up to the balcony with the keg. I saw red.
My friend, on the other hand, loved it. He congratulated their audacity, laughing it up with them. He even filled their cups up as he was saying, "of course you'll be going on to another party now" and then led them out the door with a hearty goodbye. They left happily, and never returned.
Once I cooled down, I saw his point. If you get past it being horrifically rude, climbing a wall to party-crash was pretty impressive, and it made a great story. And by treating them as lovable jokers who would of course leave now that the prank was over, they acted like it. It was eerie, powerful magic.
Over the years I have used this Jedi mind trick myself a number of times. It's hard, because you have to mean it. You can't pretend to love them while thinking, "what assholes!" But if you can find one smidgen of something to admire, people often respond very well to that.
William