Editors from English--speaking and European countries do operate under more or less the same ethical system, which promotes freedom and fairness [..]
That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will help the project. This was explicitly written down by arbcom members Flonight and Charles Matthews. I hence decided to follow their example of not trying to be fair to others in Wikipedia.
Andries
What's the point of being fair to people if doing so would break Wikipedia?
On 4/1/07, Andries Krugers Dagneaux andrieskd@chello.nl wrote:
Editors from English--speaking and European countries do operate under more or less the same ethical system, which promotes freedom and fairness [..]
That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will help the project. This was explicitly written down by arbcom members Flonight and Charles Matthews. I hence decided to follow their example of not trying to be fair to others in Wikipedia.
Andries
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On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 07:42:46 +0200, "Andries Krugers Dagneaux" andrieskd@chello.nl wrote:
One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will help the project.
That's up there with "verifiability, not truth". It does not mitigate against the idea that there is a set of principles which enjoy broad support, and whose rejection tends to be connected with a short and turbulent life on Wikipedia.
Guy (JzG)
on 4/1/07 1:42 AM, Andries Krugers Dagneaux at andrieskd@chello.nl wrote:
That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will help the project.
What does this mean exactly?
This was explicitly written down by arbcom members Flonight and Charles Matthews. I hence decided to follow their example of not trying to be fair to others in Wikipedia.
What do you mean by "not being fair to others in Wikipedia"?
Marc Riddell
On 01/04/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/1/07 1:42 AM, Andries Krugers Dagneaux at andrieskd@chello.nl wrote:
That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will help the project.
What does this mean exactly?
A clearer-than-it-would-be example: imagine there is a good-faith contributor who just causes unbelivable amounts of strife. They mean well, they make good-faith contributions, they haven't done anything *wrong* per se... but the community gets in vast lengthy wasteful fights with them over things, huge amounts of effort are wasted looking after them and cleaning up after them and trying to calm down the arguments and so on and so forth.
Do you feel we should - a) ban or restrict that user and let people get on with their work; or b) some other remedy which essentially maintains the status quo?
a) is probably more beneficial to the project, whilst b) is undeniably more fair to the user. Both are defensible solutions, but hopefully you can see the difference in the principles underlying each...
[I don't follow arbcom; I don't know if there have been arb bans on the basis of They Just Waste Too Much Time. There have been community bans to that extent, however...]
on 4/1/07 10:09 AM, Andrew Gray at shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 01/04/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/1/07 1:42 AM, Andries Krugers Dagneaux at andrieskd@chello.nl wrote:
That is untrue. One of the working principles of the arbcom is that it does not want to be fair to editors, but to make decisions that will help the project.
What does this mean exactly?
A clearer-than-it-would-be example: imagine there is a good-faith contributor who just causes unbelivable amounts of strife. They mean well, they make good-faith contributions, they haven't done anything *wrong* per se... but the community gets in vast lengthy wasteful fights with them over things, huge amounts of effort are wasted looking after them and cleaning up after them and trying to calm down the arguments and so on and so forth.
Do you feel we should - a) ban or restrict that user and let people get on with their work; or b) some other remedy which essentially maintains the status quo?
a) is probably more beneficial to the project, whilst b) is undeniably more fair to the user. Both are defensible solutions, but hopefully you can see the difference in the principles underlying each...
[I don't follow arbcom; I don't know if there have been arb bans on the basis of They Just Waste Too Much Time. There have been community bans to that extent, however...]
Andrew,
Thanks for this very clear explanation. As for me, I would go with solution a) for a period of time, while - and this is the important part - working with and trying to help this contributor understand the problems they are causing. That, to me, would be a solution fair to both the contributor and the project.
Marc
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 4/1/07 10:09 AM, Andrew Gray at shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Do you feel we should - a) ban or restrict that user and let people get on with their work; or b) some other remedy which essentially maintains the status quo?
Thanks for this very clear explanation. As for me, I would go with solution a) for a period of time, while - and this is the important part - working with and trying to help this contributor understand the problems they are causing. That, to me, would be a solution fair to both the contributor and the project.
Nice idea, doesn't work in practice. Way back when, I tried to help problematic editors a number of times, and there were exactly two outcomes; the person understood what they were doing wrong after getting the one hint, or never understood, no matter how many times it was explained. We get a *lot* of borderlines, and one always hopes that just one more rephrasing will cause the light bulb to come on - but these folks have more serious problems than can be solved with talk page notes.
You should try your hand at it, will be valuable for insight - pick a problem editor, such as one who's come up in an RfC, Arbcom case, etc, and assign yourself to help them.
Stan
on 4/1/07 10:09 AM, Andrew Gray at shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Do you feel we should - a) ban or restrict that user and let people get on with their work; or b) some other remedy which essentially maintains the status quo?
Marc Riddell wrote:
Thanks for this very clear explanation. As for me, I would go with solution a) for a period of time, while - and this is the important part - working with and trying to help this contributor understand the problems they are causing. That, to me, would be a solution fair to both the contributor and the project.
on 4/1/07 5:24 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Nice idea, doesn't work in practice. Way back when, I tried to help problematic editors a number of times, and there were exactly two outcomes; the person understood what they were doing wrong after getting the one hint, or never understood, no matter how many times it was explained. We get a *lot* of borderlines, and one always hopes that just one more rephrasing will cause the light bulb to come on - but these folks have more serious problems than can be solved with talk page notes.
You should try your hand at it, will be valuable for insight - pick a problem editor, such as one who's come up in an RfC, Arbcom case, etc, and assign yourself to help them.
Stan,
This idea is very tempting.
We each bring our own individual professional backgrounds and skills to the building of the WP Project. In this bringing, the focus is still, nevertheless, applied to the substance of the encyclopedia. I believe what you are suggesting goes beyond this and into the WP Community itself.
My particular involvement would be much trickier than, say, someone with math skills offering to tutor someone in the Community who is struggling with understanding the basics of arithmetic. But, in both cases, before such a relationship could have any hope of succeeding, the person in need of this help would need to ask for that help.
I would be willing to make myself available to render such help, but, again. it would be up to the person to ask for this help. I'm not sure how this process would work in the Project. Still, it is an intriguing idea.
I'm open to suggestions on how to make it work in WP.
Marc Riddell
on 4/1/07 5:24 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Nice idea, doesn't work in practice. Way back when, I tried to help problematic editors a number of times, and there were exactly two outcomes; the person understood what they were doing wrong after getting the one hint, or never understood, no matter how many times it was explained. We get a *lot* of borderlines, and one always hopes that just one more rephrasing will cause the light bulb to come on - but these folks have more serious problems than can be solved with talk page
notes.
You should try your hand at it, will be valuable for insight - pick a problem editor, such as one who's come up in an RfC, Arbcom case, etc, and assign yourself to help them.
Stan,
This idea is very tempting.
We each bring our own individual professional backgrounds and skills to the building of the WP Project. In this bringing, the focus is still, nevertheless, applied to the substance of the encyclopedia. I believe what you are suggesting goes beyond this and into the WP Community itself.
My particular involvement would be much trickier than, say, someone with math skills offering to tutor someone in the Community who is struggling with understanding the basics of arithmetic. But, in both cases, before such a relationship could have any hope of succeeding, the person in need of this help would need to ask for that help.
I would be willing to make myself available to render such help, but, again. it would be up to the person to ask for this help. I'm not sure how this process would work in the Project. Still, it is an intriguing idea.
I'm open to suggestions on how to make it work in WP.
Marc Riddell
To fly - you must first suspend your belief in gravity.
But isn't it too late by the time it has gone to RfC or arbcom? Sometimes RfC then arbcom? If an editor doesn't get it in RfC and is still a problem, particularly if they are still contributing exactly the same problems, and this Stan is familiar with, then the situation is already lost.
But when someone mentioned problematic but well-intentioned editors, I thought of someone like our current "rewrite-the-taxonomy of the single-celled eukaryoteic groups according to me and C-S" guy, who has had to be downshifted a number of times on this exact same thing, his original protist taxonomies, but crops up with it again here and there.
I did not consider someone who has been to RfC or arbcom and continues the same pattern. The former (protist dude) is someone worth working with, as he's one of only a handful of editors interested in the protists. The latter happens rather routinely on Wikipedia, people given a billion chances. But it happens because these editors do something else worthwhile to Wikipedia.
So, even if the situation is already lost, even if good editors give up after having been burned a couple of times trying to work with the hopeless, maybe assigning someone to them is a great idea, not just a good idea, because all that time has been spent/wasted on arbcom or RfC because the editor was actually contributing.
Maybe assigning someone to protist-dude would be a good idea also, as he's not just into protists, but I think into the non photosynthetic ones. I wouldn't know one amoeba from another if I were phagocytotically 'et by one.
KP
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 4/1/07 5:24 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Nice idea, doesn't work in practice. Way back when, I tried to help problematic editors a number of times, and there were exactly two outcomes; the person understood what they were doing wrong after getting the one hint, or never understood, no matter how many times it was explained. We get a *lot* of borderlines, and one always hopes that just one more rephrasing will cause the light bulb to come on - but these folks have more serious problems than can be solved with talk page notes.
You should try your hand at it, will be valuable for insight - pick a problem editor, such as one who's come up in an RfC, Arbcom case, etc, and assign yourself to help them.
We each bring our own individual professional backgrounds and skills to the building of the WP Project. In this bringing, the focus is still, nevertheless, applied to the substance of the encyclopedia. I believe what you are suggesting goes beyond this and into the WP Community itself.
My particular involvement would be much trickier than, say, someone with math skills offering to tutor someone in the Community who is struggling with understanding the basics of arithmetic. But, in both cases, before such a relationship could have any hope of succeeding, the person in need of this help would need to ask for that help.
And before people can ask for help they have to realize that they need it. I think a lot of these people start from the belief that they have the only right understanding of the topic.
Ec
on 4/6/07 7:19 AM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
And before people can ask for help they have to realize that they need it.
You are right. But denial is a powerful thing.
I think a lot of these people start from the belief that they have the only right understanding of the topic.
Yes, their goal is to protect, defend and convince others of their beliefs. But what they first need to see is how their very behavior is alienating the people they are trying to convince.
In any case, it is they who need to realize they are getting nowhere in the debate; care enough about the topic to want to know why - and reach out for help with it.
In another setting: It is they who need to realize they are getting nowhere in the relationship; care enough about the relationship to want to know why - and reach out for help with it.
Marc
On 4/1/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
A clearer-than-it-would-be example: imagine there is a good-faith contributor who just causes unbelivable amounts of strife. They mean well, they make good-faith contributions, they haven't done anything *wrong* per se...
How would you define "good faith" in this context? I would say that if a contributor continues to do "X" after several good faith "please don't do X" requests from reasonable people, then that person is no longer a "good faith contributor" and any of his contributions with "X" in them are not "good faith contributions".
Therefore, Arbcom is not being "unfair" to such a person by ruling against him.
Ron Ritzman wrote:
How would you define "good faith" in this context? I would say that if a contributor continues to do "X" after several good faith "please don't do X" requests from reasonable people, then that person is no longer a "good faith contributor" and any of his contributions with "X" in them are not "good faith contributions".
I don't think that follows.
To me, acting in good faith only means that you are well-intentioned. There are a lot of reasons why a person might not follow advice that you see as reasonable; a lack of good faith is only one of them.
To come to a conclusion about somebody else's motivations, which is something you can never know for sure, is rarely something they will enjoy. You could well be wrong, and even when you aren't, you've created ground for an endlessly unwinnable argument.
More importantly, people are creatures of context. If you treat them like they are good people who have made perfectly reasonable mistakes and just need a little help to fit in, they are much more likely to start acting that way. Act like somebody who's in a fight, and they will obligingly step up and fight you back. Get them mad enough and they'll do it forever.
To me, that's the magic of AGF. Most of the time, most people really are acting in good faith. By treating them that way, we avoid letting miscommunication, misunderstanding, or their good-faith flubs wreck the relationship. And when people come to us with mischief in their hearts, treating them as if the meant well can bring out the side of them that does mean well.
That's not to say that we shouldn't boot people that are hopelessly disruptive. We've got an encyclopedia to build. But we should do it with "a countenance more in sorrow than in anger," and without impugning their motives. Not just because it's the kind thing, but because also because it's the practical thing.
William
William Pietri wrote:
Ron Ritzman wrote:
How would you define "good faith" in this context? I would say that if a contributor continues to do "X" after several good faith "please don't do X" requests from reasonable people, then that person is no longer a "good faith contributor" and any of his contributions with "X" in them are not "good faith contributions".
I don't think that follows.
To me, acting in good faith only means that you are well-intentioned. There are a lot of reasons why a person might not follow advice that you see as reasonable; a lack of good faith is only one of them.
To come to a conclusion about somebody else's motivations, which is something you can never know for sure, is rarely something they will enjoy. You could well be wrong, and even when you aren't, you've created ground for an endlessly unwinnable argument.
More importantly, people are creatures of context. If you treat them like they are good people who have made perfectly reasonable mistakes and just need a little help to fit in, they are much more likely to start acting that way. Act like somebody who's in a fight, and they will obligingly step up and fight you back. Get them mad enough and they'll do it forever.
To me, that's the magic of AGF. Most of the time, most people really are acting in good faith. By treating them that way, we avoid letting miscommunication, misunderstanding, or their good-faith flubs wreck the relationship. And when people come to us with mischief in their hearts, treating them as if the meant well can bring out the side of them that does mean well.
That's not to say that we shouldn't boot people that are hopelessly disruptive. We've got an encyclopedia to build. But we should do it with "a countenance more in sorrow than in anger," and without impugning their motives. Not just because it's the kind thing, but because also because it's the practical thing.
These are important points.
Ec
Ron Ritzman wrote:
On 4/1/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
A clearer-than-it-would-be example: imagine there is a good-faith contributor who just causes unbelivable amounts of strife. They mean well, they make good-faith contributions, they haven't done anything *wrong* per se...
How would you define "good faith" in this context? I would say that if a contributor continues to do "X" after several good faith "please don't do X" requests from reasonable people, then that person is no longer a "good faith contributor" and any of his contributions with "X" in them are not "good faith contributions".
To a point, yes. It depends just as much on how the "reasonable" person is presenting himself. As long as the "reasonable" is just reverting without engaging in any kind of meaningful coversation, or just protecting a POV perhaps neither party is acting in good faith.
Ec