For the past week or so I've been involved in a small-scale but rather frustrating and depressing dispute with another user. He's a long-time contributor who I've bumped into a few times before; he tends to focus his attention on a particular group of articles that receives higher than average amounts of spam and other bad editing and is quite vigorous about keeping them clean. Perhaps too vigorous, IMO, but in the past things have usually worked out okay in the end.
Problem is, I think he's been getting worse. This time around he removed something that looked reasonable to me, or at least debatable, and when I argued that it might be good to keep he instantly became very aggressive and appears to have concluded that my disagreement with him indicated that I must be pushing an agenda. The same seems to apply to everyone else who's disagreed subsequently - they're either pushing an agenda, "stalking" him, or are otherwise biased or meat-puppets called in specifically to load the debate against him. I think that he's spent so much time fighting vandals and POV-pushers that he no longer recognizes that anyone not completely on "his side" isn't necessarily one themselves. Since he's taking such an absolutist approach in his interpretation of the guideline in question it doesn't leave much, and it's made him thoroughly entrenched against any consideration that he might be incorrect.
I'm not looking to go into the specifics of the debate here, I'm just trying to figure out what I should do if it continues to prove impossible to get through to him that I'm not his mortal enemy. I've been pondering arbitration, since IMO his editing style has become problematic due to his absolute refusal to brook any debate or dispute, but it also seems like that would only be another step toward cementing his negative view of any people who disagree with him. For now at least he's still engaged in discussion. But I'm not optimistic about it ending well this time and I'm hoping that someone might have some advice.
First try putting in a RFC to get some more voices in on the debate. If he is being obviously unreasonable (or you're overreacting and you're too hot to realize it), getting a few outside opinions is a good way to make people see sense.
If getting more users in on the debate doesn't work, first try Mediation before you go to ArbCom.
On 6/20/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
For the past week or so I've been involved in a small-scale but rather frustrating and depressing dispute with another user. He's a long-time contributor who I've bumped into a few times before; he tends to focus his attention on a particular group of articles that receives higher than average amounts of spam and other bad editing and is quite vigorous about keeping them clean. Perhaps too vigorous, IMO, but in the past things have usually worked out okay in the end.
Problem is, I think he's been getting worse. This time around he removed something that looked reasonable to me, or at least debatable, and when I argued that it might be good to keep he instantly became very aggressive and appears to have concluded that my disagreement with him indicated that I must be pushing an agenda. The same seems to apply to everyone else who's disagreed subsequently - they're either pushing an agenda, "stalking" him, or are otherwise biased or meat-puppets called in specifically to load the debate against him. I think that he's spent so much time fighting vandals and POV-pushers that he no longer recognizes that anyone not completely on "his side" isn't necessarily one themselves. Since he's taking such an absolutist approach in his interpretation of the guideline in question it doesn't leave much, and it's made him thoroughly entrenched against any consideration that he might be incorrect.
I'm not looking to go into the specifics of the debate here, I'm just trying to figure out what I should do if it continues to prove impossible to get through to him that I'm not his mortal enemy. I've been pondering arbitration, since IMO his editing style has become problematic due to his absolute refusal to brook any debate or dispute, but it also seems like that would only be another step toward cementing his negative view of any people who disagree with him. For now at least he's still engaged in discussion. But I'm not optimistic about it ending well this time and I'm hoping that someone might have some advice.
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Steven Walling wrote:
First try putting in a RFC to get some more voices in on the debate. If he is being obviously unreasonable (or you're overreacting and you're too hot to realize it), getting a few outside opinions is a good way to make people see sense.
If getting more users in on the debate doesn't work, first try Mediation before you go to ArbCom.
Someone else in the debate already tried requesting mediation, it was rejected as an attempt to get a mediator willing to ignore rules to override the guideline under dispute. When I went to AN/I to get an outside administrator to look at some rapid-fire unilateral edits he was making while the debate was still going on, and this too was considered an attempt to recruit people to oppose him (the _last_ thing I wanted to do was to have to block him myself). This is why I've been vague so far and have avoided giving any names, I wanted to avoid giving any more of that impression.
I was hoping for a more philosophical approach rather than a legalistic one, but I suppose it's possible there really isn't any other way to solve things. Though I just found an RfC about this user dating back to 2004 that's about the same pattern of behavior, which leaves me even more depressed.
To be perfectly honest, public humiliation works surprisingly well.
What I mean by that is getting the user to defend himself to those he considers his peers. For example, by making a stink about the militaristic attitude of the Counter Vandalism Unit I got them to change their logo to a cute anime maid from the original pseudo-official swat-team logo and they moderated their language. And by "I got them" I mean "enough other people got involved, many of whom are considerably more diplomatic than me". Which was really all that was needed, since the intentions were good.
It sounds like this is a similar case.
On 6/20/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
For the past week or so I've been involved in a small-scale but rather frustrating and depressing dispute with another user. He's a long-time contributor who I've bumped into a few times before; he tends to focus his attention on a particular group of articles that receives higher than average amounts of spam and other bad editing and is quite vigorous about keeping them clean. Perhaps too vigorous, IMO, but in the past things have usually worked out okay in the end.
Problem is, I think he's been getting worse. This time around he removed something that looked reasonable to me, or at least debatable, and when I argued that it might be good to keep he instantly became very aggressive and appears to have concluded that my disagreement with him indicated that I must be pushing an agenda. The same seems to apply to everyone else who's disagreed subsequently - they're either pushing an agenda, "stalking" him, or are otherwise biased or meat-puppets called in specifically to load the debate against him. I think that he's spent so much time fighting vandals and POV-pushers that he no longer recognizes that anyone not completely on "his side" isn't necessarily one themselves. Since he's taking such an absolutist approach in his interpretation of the guideline in question it doesn't leave much, and it's made him thoroughly entrenched against any consideration that he might be incorrect.
I'm not looking to go into the specifics of the debate here, I'm just trying to figure out what I should do if it continues to prove impossible to get through to him that I'm not his mortal enemy. I've been pondering arbitration, since IMO his editing style has become problematic due to his absolute refusal to brook any debate or dispute, but it also seems like that would only be another step toward cementing his negative view of any people who disagree with him. For now at least he's still engaged in discussion. But I'm not optimistic about it ending well this time and I'm hoping that someone might have some advice.
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This sort of thing happens. The canonical example is Wik. My suggestion would be a carefully-worded Request for Comment. Many RfC's are unnecessarily virulent because they're viewed as just a prelude to an ArbCom case. Phrase it in terms of just wanting outside pairs of eyes to take a look at things.
-Chris Croy
Bryan Derksen wrote:
[...] I think that he's spent so much time fighting vandals and POV-pushers that he no longer recognizes that anyone not completely on "his side" isn't necessarily one themselves. Since he's taking such an absolutist approach in his interpretation of the guideline in question it doesn't leave much, and it's made him thoroughly entrenched against any consideration that he might be incorrect.
Something I deal with a lot professionally is people who are burning out on their work. Sounds like this guy is in that category.
If he's already seeing you as an antagonist, it will be hard for you to reach him yourself. You seem like a pretty relaxed guy, so you may be doing this already, but I'd encourage you to avoid rising to any of his challenging behavior, as that will, from his perspective, justify his defensiveness.
If he's not too burnt, a change of scenery may do him a lot of good. Perhaps some mediator can arrange a deal where some people he trusts take over what he sees as his territory, so that he can take a break. Even if he works on other articles or other tasks, that may be enough to get him to relax and be reasonable again.
Beyond that, an actual break would help more. I know how to persuade people of that in a workplace setting, but I can't think of a way to approach that on Wikipedia that couldn't be taken as a veiled threat. Hopefully one of his on-wiki pals will take him aside and get him to focus on staying a healthy long-term contributor.
William