G'day Mgm,
On 5/10/07, Gallagher Mark George
<m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au>wrote;wrote:
Vandals are potential future editors. Your friends are current
editors. We don't want to piss off either group. In the
clutch, we should
be leaning towards preserving current editors;
but if we can do
both, as I
believe most admins try to do --- if ineptly at
times --- this
is better.
Has there ever been research about how many vandals reform and
become good
editors? I would be very surprised if this was any significant
percentage of
the total.
If we define "vandal" as a person who, at some point or other, has been justly
or unjustly accused of vandalism, then I'd say (the plural of anecdote is data!)
absolutely, plenty of them "reform". If we define it instead as a person who
deliberately and systematically attempted to harm the project, not so many. As I pointed
out in my post, I would come under that first definition --- and, I suspect, so would you.
I should hope *we* are considered reformed!
That some editors turn out to be vandals (second definition) who won't reform
doesn't justify going all paramilitary on any vandals (first definition) we see.
There is very rarely a need to get gung-ho and behave like a CVU member when dealing with
vandals (either definition), so treating them the way I espoused in my last post is the
Right Thing to do anyway. It costs us nothing if we do it right, and we might gain some
good editors --- or avoid pissing off some good editors unjustly accused.
We have a policy about that --- it's called "Assume Good Faith". My reading
it has always been, if there are two ways you can read a person's behaviour, choose
the one most likely to accord with good faith on his part. An alternative reading that
works just as well is: "cock-up before conspiracy". We don't need to
(metaphorically) club people over the head for making harmful edits --- at least, not
before we explain to them that the edits are damaging the real work of real people and
that they're pissing in their own drinking water. We don't need to string up
everyone that someone calls a vandal, and as long as we're being hasty and assuming
conspiracy over cock-up every time, that's the result we'll achieve.
It's worth more to keep current editors than to
help out people
who are
currently a nuisance and may or may not become helpful later.
Absolutely. However, a good admin should be able to help out vandals (first definition)
without losing reasonable current editors. I don't recall ever losing a current
editor because I was being too nice to a first definition vandal --- and that includes
several situations where the "vandal" has had extremely poor social skills, or
has been the very upset subject of a BLP, or was mentally unstable, or something else
occurred where the vandal was not at his most co-operative.
Of course, I never said to a current editor, "Policy says give another warning. No,
I don't intend to do anything yet. You must follow process. Did you use {{testN}}?
The whole sequence? I didn't think so. Go back and do it again." Instead,
I'd say something equivalent to the above, only shorter --- "I'm going to
give her another chance. She's new here and doesn't understand our rules. How
would you feel if someone had misrepresented YOU in a biography? If she goes too far, I
will handle it, but until then, let's wait and see what happens."
Cheers,
--
[[User:MarkGallagher]]