Dear David
I respectfully disagree. My point is that the "community" you refer to
is not a representative community at all. for eg. voices from Asia and
Africa are not properly represented here.
The community is incapable of policing itself because (to quote a
prominent WP criticism site) "the inmates are running the asylum". It
needs an external / independent person (Lila ?) to begin the cleaning
of the stables, but the task was beyond her.
The credibility of Wikipedia as a brand is going down the tubes
rapidly as fresh scandals emerge with alarming frequency. More enemies
of the movement are being created daily.
To cite 1 instance, very recently, a prominent organisation, highly
critical of WMF in India, managed to get the Zeropaid initiative
banned in that country. The organisation is banned on Wikipedia,
including for severe off-wiki harassment of our users [1]
" .. WIKIMEDIA pornographers who are masquerading as champions of free
speech and free internet to promote their obscenities and lies in
India ... TO IMMEDIATELY PROHIBIT ANY FREE INTERNET ACCESS OVER MOBILE
DEVICES .. " [2]
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/India_Against_Corru…
[2]
http://trai.gov.in/Comments_Data/Organisation/India_Against_Corruption.pdf
David
On 3/1/16, David Cuenca Tudela <dacuetu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi David,
you say that "A large number of these persons are paid editors / PR -SEO
"consultants" who have worked themselves up to positions of
administrators".
Although there is no clear evidence, there is a lot of
mistrust and
suspicion about "paid editing". Since people need to make a living, they
find a way to market their skills, sometimes honestly and other times
dishonestly. Not everybody can combine a job and take positions of
responsibility in the movement without burning out after a while.
However you come to say that the WMF should "purge all rogue editors" and I
consider that it is wrong to consider the WMF as the police of the site. It
is right to have assistance in legal matters when the community requests
it, but it would compromise the autonomy of the movement if the wmf would
take an interventionist role. It would do more damage than good >>
https://xkcd.com/1217/
I do advocate for an evolution in the culture of the community, but that
cannot come from external sources, it has to come from volunteers
themselves taking more responsibility, increasing the partnership with the
professional arm of the movement, and creating in the process more trust to
take appropriate action - and there is never a solid definition of what it
constitutes.
When I started the tread I mentioned other volunteership models (like WOOF,
or workaway) that could help create more trust. It is unclear if it could
work for us, or if it would be scalable, but given the state of the
movement perhaps it doesn't hurt so much to try new things and see how it
goes.
Cheers,
Micru