On 18 Oct 2007 at 15:27:13 -0700, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
And in my opinion, we should always reach out to the offended party or community to at least make nice, and hopefully to work with them to the extent possible.
"I'm not ready to make nice." -- Dixie Chicks
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On 18 Oct 2007 at 15:27:13 -0700, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
And in my opinion, we should always reach out to the offended party or community to at least make nice, and hopefully to work with them to the extent possible.
"I'm not ready to make nice." -- Dixie Chicks
Yeah, some people won't be in that state to begin with. But I'd point out that a lot of people -- the Dixie Chicks included -- end up in that state only after what they see as long-running provocation. Whether they're right or not, the sooner we break their perceived pattern, the better.
As well, some people like conflict, and are eternally in the will-not-make-nice state. The best solution I've found, short of calling the police, is to be relentlessly friendly and upbeat. If they can't get your goat and can't get you to fight back, they get bored and go bother somebody else. Eventually.
William
On 19/10/2007, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
As well, some people like conflict, and are eternally in the will-not-make-nice state. The best solution I've found, short of calling the police, is to be relentlessly friendly and upbeat. If they can't get your goat and can't get you to fight back, they get bored and go bother somebody else. Eventually.
If carefully applied, by the way, this has even worked on quite a few of the ones I'd quite definitely class as "lunatic stalkers" rather than merely "disaffected outsiders." Not all, but enough.
It also avoids the problem of wrestling with pigs in mud. Will, although Kathryn Cramer's POV-pushing and defense of such was and is odious, you completely blew the high ground by getting into the mud with her. She would have blown it all by herself, but you managed to blow it worse. And failed to realise that every action you take as an admin with respect to outsiders is taken as being from a representative of Wikipedia.
- d.