I think that the English Wikipedia is already a very hostile environment, due in no small part to certain gung-ho admins who do not assume good faith on the part of newbies.
When I first came here, I could've vandalised 40 pages in a row and somebody would've sent me a nice warning message, welcoming me to Wikipedia in the process and encouraging me to log in. Not that I did that, but the environment at that time was such that such a thing doesn't seem unbelievable.
People were always at least somewhat nice to each other.
But now, if anybody asks any question about an edit, you (meaning everybody, or at least many people if not most) just tell them "I am right. Shut up and bugger off." (not exactly; you give them a somewhat more polite response but give them the impression that you are not willing to have an academic discussion about it).
It's especially harmful when people say "I'm reverting this." or "Your changes are unacceptable." or "Leave this page alone.", or other things that make them sound like a parent scolding their child (and in many cases, it gets more abusive).
There is too much voting and too little simple attempts to reach a consensus, nobody is willing to compromise, and in addition to such helpful-but-harmful utilities as mediators, we now have the ArbCom (in my view, while they have help weed some bad people out, they have also caused a lot of trouble, not intentionally though), bureaucrats (a mean, pompous, or abusive bureaucrat is 10 times worse than a bad sysop), and worst of all the AMA (in my view, that organisation should be forcefully disbanded and anybody who tries to start it up again should be shot - note that I personally have not made use of them, nor have I had a dispute with anybody that did, but so far as I can tell they just make things worse for everybody). I think quickpolls were better. Sure, they were tantamount to mob rule, but that was that and it was less toxic to the community, at least in my view.
People do not really think about proposals or ideas that they don't like a whole lot - they just say "no" without thinking about it or reading further. There are few moderates anymore. Everybody believes that their POV is NPOV, or else their "NPOV" is at least somewhat POV.
Every case the ArbCom handles, every person to seek an advocate, every post to a talkpage that isn't nice and polite, all of this contributes to sending the en.wikipedia community from the purgatory it's in now to the residence of one Ms Helen A. Hampbaskytt.
Is there anything that can be done to keep the community out of the paws of vile Ms Hampbaskytt?
I honestly don't know. Maybe we should create a new Wikipedia for a language called "enGlish" but that's really the same as English, and ban anybody who is anything but nice and courteous.
Mark
On 4/14/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Wikipedia is an increasingly hostile environment. Don't dismiss alternate venues because the wave is cresting on wikipedia.
For me, the important question is: how do we prevent Wikipedia from becoming an "increasingly hostile environment".
My own view is that we should trust the ArbCom to rid us more quickly of poisonous personalities. Of course this is non-trivial, etc. But we really do put up with an astounding amount of absurd behavior in the name of openness.
--Jimbo
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