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
--
William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri