From: fun@thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard) Subject: [WikiEN-l] How to work better with brittle users?

There's a common personality type for trouble on Wikipedia: brittle in interactions with others, can't tolerate ambiguity, so gets into rules-lawyering. Sees "common sense" and "judgement" mostly as excuses to exercise bias, not as recognition that all rules are fluid in the pursuit of our goal.

I am not thinking of any individual, but of a general type I've noticed. I think something about Wikipedia will tend to attract them. I would *guess* it's something that attracts people from further up the autistic spectrum than the general populace, but that's just speculation.

The point is that they're good and hard-working contributors, but can get difficult to work with. And putting them on a processing line that leads to arbitration strikes me as not being a good thing. Is there a better way? I welcome your thoughts and speculation.

I agree. No answer, but a great question.

And of course this is a general phenomenon on the Internet. In fact I read an article somewhere that there are a significant number of autistic individuals who are managing to earn a living primarily because computer-mediated interactions (email, etc.) provides some protective insulation against the direct personal contacts that they have trouble managing.

I don't think I'm going to mention where _I_ score on the AQ test, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html

I've also opined (and got shot down on the basis of its being pure speculation) that some of these "brittle" contributors are just very _young._ I had a personal run-in with one contributor who indiscreetly revealed (or asserted) an age in the very early teens. I have to think that some of the emphasis on pop-culture, fancraft, Harry Potter, and Pokemon topics is age-related. And a certain degree of "brittleness" is characteristic of adolescents in general, and bright adolescents whose intellectual and emotional development is out of sync in particular.

A common characteristic of that age is a total inability to let things go and not sweat the small stuff. Every tiny rejection is fought tooth and nail, not for personal reasons of course, but because of The Principle Of The Thing.

I am sure that if I personally were fourteen years old right now I would a) be contributing to Wikipedia and b) would be one of those "brittle" and problematic users.

Instead of being the trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent, and modest person I am now.

-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/