On Wed, 7 Nov 2001 lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
I'm not sure we should waste any time on these folks (i.e., those Wikipedians who occasionally take offense and leave). Being able to see your own ideas from other points of view is a necessary skill here, as is having a thick skin.
I generally agree. There's a bit of a tension between going out of our way to see to it that *no one* leaves the project, and preserving high standards. Nupedia, by the way, has faced a similar problem. Should reviewers in their roles as reviewers, we asked ourselves, be expected to hand-hold writers with poor ability in English or whose mastery of the material is questionable? On the one hand, we want the project to be open and to encourage the development of content. On the other hand, we don't want to alienate some of our most productive members.
If people are upset by aspects of the process we have deemed important, then trying to attract them back will have one of three results: (1) We just piss him off again; (2) We compromise the process out of misplaced guilt to keep him from leaving; or (3) He grows a spine, gets with the program, and stays.
Obviously, we want (3).
In nearly all cases, yes.
But if the person is capable of that and has stuff to say, he'll come back after he cools off regardless of what we do, as Manning apparently did.
Actually, a lot of us wrote to Manning asking him to come back, and that seems to have been one reason he came back. Of course, we all know the real reason he came back is that he's an addict, just like all of us. :-)
Anything we do is more likely to lead to (1) or (2).
It's hard to tell, though, I suppose. I think your most important point here, Lee, is that indeed we *could* compromise the process out of misplaced guilt. I think that's right. I do not think that we should allow disruptive elements (of *all* sorts!) to be able to sidetrack us from the good habits we have developed or that we are trying to develop.
On the other hand, I really *don't* want us to act like a "clique." So far, I think there's been rather little danger of that--my evidence is that all of us disagree with each other on various issues from time to time, which is healthy.
So if people leave, let 'em. If they come back, welcome them back. But let's not go out of our way to analyze every reason some person leaves and beat ourselves up. If we do everything right, some people will still get pissed off and leave. That's life.
I agree with the above analysis 100%.
Larry