I like:
* what Jeronimo said about etiquette
* what Jimbo said about giving others some slack
* what Lee said about requiring rational participation
* what Maveric said about not bending over backwards to retain anti-social people
* what Toby said about a voting mechanism
Because:
* when I was new, people were courteous to me and gave me some slack
* when I was new, people insisted I be rational instead of anti-social
* I like holding elections! :-)
Ed Poor
> You may count me as insulted at the suggestion that
> I would care for one moment about the person's age.
> ...
> I can't let these unconscionable slurs against 9-year-olds
> stand.
Heavens! I said that children were immature and irresponsible.
Next thing you know I'll be saying that Africans have dark
skin or that women have breasts. Shame on me for making such
sweeping generalizations.
On Wednesday 23 October 2002 12:01 pm, wikipedia-l-request(a)nupedia.com wrote:
> So I think I will have to do so. I always resisted becoming an
> admin since admin privileges are always combined with admin duties,
> but since maveric is not the first to complain that I always list
> even the most stupid pages on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]
> instead of deleting them myself, I think I should take this burden.
>
> I promise not to delete any page that has similarities with an=20
> article without prior discussion on the above page.
>
> Best regards,
>
> JeLuF
Speaking of which, what is the status of making a user rights promotion
interface available to Admins again? I remember somebody else asking for
Admin privileges before and I don't think anybody followed-up on it.
Wikipedia is growing so fast that we need more people like JeLuF to be Admins
and there currently is a bottleneck at the developer/Jimbo level.
IMO somebody should be able to simply ask the list for Admin privileges and
then if a current Admin agrees then that Admin should be able to go ahead and
do the promotion so long as nobody else disagrees.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Anthere wrote in small part:
>Option3: the main list becomes the main list (metalist), and a new en.list is
>created for english issues
IMO, Anthere is absolutely right,
and the above quoted portion is the absolutely rightest bit.
-- Toby
> Maybe we should revive the idea of a partial ban:
>* Contributor blocked from editing articles -- stops the edit war
>* But can still edit talk pages -- which keeps dialogue open
I proposed exactly that once, but the idea got little support.
I'm all for it, though I don't think even a complete block
really shuts down dialog. After all, Bridget did show up here
on the list, and she's quite free to e-mail anyone (the "you're
blocked" page shows the user who blocked you, and the "e-mail
this user" function is not blocked).
But the real issue is acceptable criteria for imposing such a
block. While we all agree that outright vandalism and obscenity
are legitimate reasons and that "point of view" and "emotional
involvement" are really bad reasons, I hold that "demonstrated
unwillingness to work with others" is a perfectly legitimate one
as well, so long as one judges this on genuine content-neutral
grounds. Others may disagree.
Here's another thought experiment. Suppose you are organizing
a conference to dicuss some topic, and preparing for it by hosting
a mailing list discussion. A troublemaker appears on the list
and disrupts things. It is discovered that the troublemaker is
in fact a bright 9-year-old. Is there any question in anyone's
mind that it would be a perfectly legitimate exercise of control
to simply drop the kid from the list and the conference, because
it's clear that a child that young doesn't yet have the maturity
or experience to effectively work with the group or understand
the deeper issues? "Free speech" and other freedoms are marvellous
things, but such rights only apply to adults whom we can hold
responsible for their actions.
On Wikipedia, we can't see whether the troublemakers are adults
or not, so we give them the benefit of the doubt. But some of them
probably are, in fact, children. It wouldn't surprize me a bit to
discover that Lir is a very bright 14-year old. Why should we
bend over backwards to give such a person presumed rights here that
even the most liberal of us wouldn't grant in real life?
And since we can't know the physical age of someone here, it is
perfectly reasonable for us to evaluate the /actual actions/ of
of contributors, and to judge whether or not they have the maturity
to work within this system. If someone acts like a 10-year-old,
they should be treated like one. A block isn't saying "you're an
awful person" or anything--it's just saying "go to your room for
a while, the grown-ups are talking".
KQ wrote:
>This I don't like because it puts undue emphasis on rules to consider. Except for NPOV and respect of copyrights, all "rules" here are simply "to consider".
>
I think etiquette is another important one. Being nice to others, and
being constructive, as you also wrote in the remainder of your e-mail.
And people calling names aren't nice, and people repeatedly ignoring
rules and refusing to accept or discuss them are not constructive.
Jeronimo
Hi,
I just found this on my talk page:
> Thanks for doing the grunt work seeking out copyright violations
> and marking them for deletion. This is something I used to do
> a lot of but lately I haven't \ had much time to do this. I've
> also noticed that you don't appear to be an Admin. You might
> want to consider posting a note on the Wikipedia mailing list
> asking to be one -- I'll make sure it happens. Then instead of
> having to post pages like Cervidae on the votes for deletion
> page you can just delete the page yourself (these are recoverable
> by other Admins if you make a mistake). Thanks again for doing
> Wikipedia weeding. --mav
So I think I will have to do so. I always resisted becoming an
admin since admin privileges are always combined with admin duties,
but since maveric is not the first to complain that I always list
even the most stupid pages on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]
instead of deleting them myself, I think I should take this burden.
I promise not to delete any page that has similarities with an
article without prior discussion on the above page.
Best regards,
JeLuF
Jeronimo proposed:
>Anyway, maybe it is better to have something like this: If a user
>repeatedly violates some rule, convention, whatever and has ignored
>pleas from others to follow that rule, we could raise some flag in the
>database and show the user a page with "Other Wikipedians have not you
>have repeatedly violated X. Please read this documentation over X. If
>you disagree with X, please go to Talk:X or Wikipedia-L. If you continue
>to disrespect X, other measures may follow...".
This I don't like because it puts undue emphasis on rules to consider. Except for NPOV and respect of copyrights, all "rules" here are simply "to consider".
Lee pointed out that the underlying issue is working with others. Perhaps on some prominent page (even the main page?) we could make it explicit that in order to keep this thing going (and we've got a good thing going), playing nice with others is a must. Not so much as a rule or something draconian and non-negotiable, but just a reminder--"hey, look what you're doing. Let's try to work together, and make contributions pleasant and respectful."
Maybe this is too flower-powery an idea to work, but really so is wikipedia itself. :-)
kq
>Ed wrote:
> > Maybe we should revive the idea of a partial ban:
> >* Contributor blocked from editing articles -- stops the edit war
> >* But can still edit talk pages -- which keeps dialogue open
On Tuesday 22 October 2002 03:27 pm lcrocker wrote:
> I proposed exactly that once, but the idea got little support.
> I'm all for it, though I don't think even a complete block
> really shuts down dialog. After all, Bridget did show up here
> on the list, and she's quite free to e-mail anyone (the "you're
> blocked" page shows the user who blocked you, and the "e-mail
> this user" function is not blocked).
I vote for this too - this would give a person who is trying to "hijack" a
page time to focus on crafting their arguments on why the page should be
changed. Most contributors want us to have the best encyclopedia there is so
we will listen and consider the arguments. But I would probably freeze the
page as Ortolan suggests before I would block a user. I would also only
resort to blocking the "hijacker" from editing anything in the 'article
namespace' if they did something to subvert the process like copying their
version under a different page name and then proceded to orphan the frozen
page by pointing all links to it to their version at the new page title.
> But the real issue is acceptable criteria for imposing such a
> block. While we all agree that outright vandalism and obscenity
> are legitimate reasons and that "point of view" and "emotional
> involvement" are really bad reasons, I hold that "demonstrated
> unwillingness to work with others" is a perfectly legitimate one
> as well, so long as one judges this on genuine content-neutral
> grounds. Others may disagree.
Not me - I find it odd that we tend to bend over backwards to try and
accommodate people who exhibit anti-social behavior when this very behavior
/has/ resulted in the loss of great contributors in the past (and is
threatening to do so for at least two others now - and those are just the
ones we have heard from). Do we really want to encourage this type of
behavior and thus decrease the average quality of our contributor base? I
hope not.
>....
> And since we can't know the physical age of someone here, it is
> perfectly reasonable for us to evaluate the /actual actions/ of
> of contributors, and to judge whether or not they have the maturity
> to work within this system. If someone acts like a 10-year-old,
> they should be treated like one. A block isn't saying "you're an
> awful person" or anything--it's just saying "go to your room for
> a while, the grown-ups are talking".
That's right. We are a community of contributors and if somebody can't work
with the community then they are working against it. Nobody gets paid to
contribute to Wikipedia and the only reason people do contribute is because
they derive some enjoyment from it.
The question before is this; What type of "enjoyment" do we want to encourage?
I for one enjoy working with very intelligent people from all around the
world while writing a unique, neutral, free and useful encyclopedia. Other
people enjoy being anti-social and/or starting fights while pushing their own
POV agendas.
Which type of contributor should be bend over backwards to keep?
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>But the real issue is acceptable criteria for imposing such a
>block. While we all agree that outright vandalism and obscenity
>are legitimate reasons and that "point of view" and "emotional
>involvement" are really bad reasons, I hold that "demonstrated
>unwillingness to work with others" is a perfectly legitimate one
>as well, so long as one judges this on genuine content-neutral
>grounds. Others may disagree.
>
I completely agree with you. Lir is not aware at all of the basic netiquette. Insulting other
users and changing their quotes is in my opinion equivalent to vandalism. How could
someone be called a useful contributor, if he calls other users "racists" or "idiots", and this
more than once. We should not make so many efforts to protect persons behaving this
way.
Mirko (Cordyph)