Erik,
Thanks for the reply.
I'm not familiar with Helga's writings, so I cannot comment on that
specific case. In general, I do not see the problems you see.
That's probably one main point of disagreement, then. Suffice it to say I've been with Wikipedia from the beginning and I do think that things are very bad right now, far worse than they have been in the beginning. I think it's becoming nearly intolerable for polite and well-meaning people to participate, because they're constantly having to deal with people who simply don't respect the rules. I take it you do care about that, if it's happening, but perhaps you don't see it happening. In that case, we can always collect a list of people who have been driven away or who have quietly stopped editing so much out of disgust with having to deal with people who just don't get it.
Put me at the top of the list.
There will always be edit conflicts, and giving a small, however
selected elite control to resolve them seems like an awful idea.
I'm talking about a body of trusted members, not an "elite." Tarring the proposal with that word isn't an argument.
Sure, many times those who are shouting against the majority are just
cranks. Sometimes, however, they happen to be right.
Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't necessarily times when people are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other words, violating community standards.
Note that one of your favorite "bad examples", Everything2, is an
example for a community that has been completely eroded by a supposedly benevolent elite (albeit not a random, changing one).
Note also that the group I propose to great is far more reasonable a notion of authority than the arbitrary hierarchical power structure of Everything2. We can learn from their mistakes without being committed to a completely anarchical situation.
I am, like many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft
security".
Why don't you explain exactly what that means here on the list, and why you and others think it's such a good thing?
If we want Wikipedia to develop in a certain fashion, we should try to
enforce our rules through peer pressure. People who violate NPOV should be educated about its purpose.
It seems to me that in growing numbers people refuse to bow to "peer pressure" or to be "educated" about anything regarding Wikipedia. Without generally-accepted standards and moral authority and the shame culture that accompanies them, peer pressure is impossible.
Peer pressure seemd to work relatively well in the past. It is working less and less well as the project has grown and since I left a position of official authority.
Antagonistic statements of the "if you don't like it, leave" sort do
not cool down conflicts, they drive and fuel them.
They do certainly cool down conflicts if the person receiving the statement knows that the person issuing the statement has the authority to do something about it. They also let the recipient know that there are some lines that just can't be crossed without the community taking a forthright stand against it.
Express respect for the other person's view, and try to find a way to
integrate it without violating NPOV.
When the disagreement concerns Wikipedia policies and obvious interpretations of them, when the violator of those policies does so brazenly, knowingly, and mockingly--and surely you've been around long enough to know that this happens not infrequently now--then it's not particularly important that we "express respect for the other person's view." By then, it's clear that diplomacy will not solve the problem.
If this kind of behavior was more effectively trained and practiced by
Wikipedia regulars, I believe we could deal with seemingly destructive newbies much more rationally. But the prevailing attitude by many contributors seems to be: "If the other child plays with my toys, I either take them and go home, or I find someone to complain to". If we want to be the adults on this playground, we should behave accordingly.
Please do acknowledge that some newbies (and a few not-so-newbies) really *are* destructive, at least sometimes. And that's a really *serious* problem, that we must not ignore simply because it violates our righteous liberal sensibilities (I have 'em too; I am a libertarian but not an anarchist).
You seem to be implying that, if we simply were nice to people, cranks, trolls, vandals, and other destructive elements would be adequately manageable.
First, Wikipedia has grown a lot. It's the biggest wiki project in the world. We *can't* make people nice as you suggest. They will be as they are. We can try, of course; but the point is that we will utterly fail. I'm trying to be realistic about this. If I thought you were right that people *could* be made more nice, what you say would be more plausible.
Second, again, our experience with *many* different damaging elements shows that some people just will not behave, no matter what we try.
Third, your proposal requires that the best members of Wikipedia follow around and politely educate an ever-growing group of destructive members. We've tried that. We've lost a number of members as a result, and I personally am tempted, every so often, to completely forget about Wikipedia, and resign it to the dogs. But I don't want to do that. I still feel some responsibility for it, and I think I helped build it to where it is now. I don't want to see something that I've helped build wear away into something awful.
Note that Everything2 does have a few good ideas, and one of them are
so-called mentors. Newbies are taught the ways of the site by old-timers. To make this work, however, we need an improved internal messaging system and a mentor selection process.
We do this automatically, of necessity, on talk pages. No internal messaging system would be better than direct constructive criticism on offending pages. And, indeed, this is one of the things that has made Wikipedia work as well as it has: unlike Everything2, we are working together on the articles themselves, and in order to work together, we must respect each other.
But there are some people who constitutionally are unable to work with other people and who do insist on flouting the rules that define the community. It would be nice if those taking your view, Erik, would acknowledge that more often. No amount of niceness and mentoring will solve that problem.
Article certification mechanisms we are currently discussing may serve
as a further incentive for people to come around.
This I agree with 100%.
But one reason I'm worried about the current state of Wikipedia is that we might have some expert reviewers coming in to do some good work here, only to be attacked by some eedjit who gets his jollies out of attacking an expert precisely because she's an expert. That *will* happen, almost certainly, if the Wikipedia peer review project gets going.
IF and only if *all* else fails, [...]
When would we have determined that all else has failed?
[...] I believe randomly chosen samples are a bad way to make final
decisions. Slashdot uses such a scheme, and you probably have noticed how well it works. Decisions should not be made randomly but by those who care about the subject in question and have all the necessary information. A random sample tends to make uninformed decisions following a certain average pattern.
The whole reason behind a random sample is precisely to forestall the sort of "elitism" and abuse of power that you fear. I fear it probably as much as anyone, in fact. I also fear mob rule, though. Both are to be avoided, and I'm confident that with wisdom we can avoid both.
Thanks again for the reply.
Larry
LMS makes the argument that Wikipedia right now is much worse than it has been in the past.
He asserts that there is an ever-growing group of destructive members.
I don't see that. There seems to be a pretty fixed number of Wikipedians who write "write nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff" on a consistent basis.
And that fixed number can be counted on one hand.
It is a problem that people stop editing out of frustration, but the evidence just isn't there that this is a ballooning problem.
That's probably one main point of disagreement, then. Suffice it to say I've been with Wikipedia from the beginning and I do think that things are very bad right now, far worse than they have been in the beginning. I think it's becoming nearly intolerable for polite and well-meaning people to participate, because they're constantly having to deal with people who simply don't respect the rules.
It would be nice to get some specific examples. Perhaps Ed's "Annoying users" page (if renamed) isn't such a bad idea. I have certainly observed some people like Lir to be quite persistent and sometimes silly, but I have also noticed quite a bit of hysteria from the other side (see the recent "Lir again" thread).
So maybe we should start collecting individual case histories and examine them in more detail, instead of relying on our personal observations entirely. This might allow us to come up with better policies, and quantify the need for stronger enforcement.
In that case, we can always collect a list of people who have been driven away or who have quietly stopped editing so much out of disgust with having to deal with people who just don't get it.
That's not the kind of list I'm talking about, because it only tells us about the reactions, not the actual actions. You may say that these people were driven away by silly eedjots, but I cannot tell whether this is true without looking at the actual conflicts. Often I've seen so-called experts on Wikipedia try to stop reasonable debate by simple assertion of their authority. This doesn't work, and this shouldn't work on Wikipedia, and if they can't handle that fact, it's my turn to say they should better leave.
I'm talking about a body of trusted members, not an "elite." Tarring the proposal with that word isn't an argument.
Sorry, but I do not really see much of a difference. A group with superior powers is an elite, trusted or not. The word "elite" requires a certain stability of that position, though, so it might not apply to an approach of random moderation privileges.
Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't necessarily times when people are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other words, violating community standards.
Do you mean nonsense in the sense of "something that just isn't true" or in the sense of simple noise, like crapflooders? How do you plan to define / recognize "crankish unspported stuff"?
Yes, I know, there are egregious cases where we would all agree that they are not tolerable. I'm just worried that such terms might mean different things to different people, and if we adopt them, we risk suppression of non-mainstream opinions. Is Wikipedia's page about MKULTRA, a CIA mind control project, nonsense, crankish? No, it's not, it really happened, but the large majority of Americans would never believe that.
I am, like many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft
security".
Why don't you explain exactly what that means here on the list, and why you and others think it's such a good thing?
The idea of soft security has evolved in wikis, and it is only fair to point you to the respective page at MeatballWiki for the social and technical components of soft security: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
As to why I, personally, think it's a good idea, that's simple: Once you introduce hard security mechanisms like banning, deletion etc., you create an imbalance of power, which in turn creates a risk of abuse of said power against those who do not have it. Abuse of power can have many different results, it can encourage groupthink, drive newbies away, censor legitimate material, ban legitimate users etc. We already *have* a situation where we occasionally ban legitimate users and delete legitimate material. We need to get away from this. I am absolutely disgusted by the thought that we are already banning completely innocent users.
My underlying philosophy here is that it's worse to punish an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.
It seems to me that in growing numbers people refuse to bow to "peer pressure" or to be "educated" about anything regarding Wikipedia.
I'd like to see evidence of those growing numbers. Wikipedia's overall number of users has been growing constantly, are we talking about absolute growth or relative growth? Again, we should try to collect empirical evidence.
Without generally-accepted standards and moral authority and the shame culture that accompanies them, peer pressure is impossible.
Yes, but in my opinion, the worst way to attain authority is through the exercise of superior power. The best way is through respect. With the trusted user groups that are part of my certification scheme, it might be easier to build a reputation.
Peer pressure seemd to work relatively well in the past. It is working less and less well as the project has grown and since I left a position of official authority.
Well, you know that I disagree about the effect of your departure on the project, so let's not go into that again.
They do certainly cool down conflicts if the person receiving the statement knows that the person issuing the statement has the authority to do something about it. They also let the recipient know that there are some lines that just can't be crossed without the community taking a forthright stand against it.
I think this kind of last resort authority should not be concentrated but distributed. If a poll shows that many members think that member X has "crossed the line", this sends a much stronger message than any non- totalitarian scheme of concentrated authority. Especially if last resort measures like banning *can* be approved by the majority.
It appears that Jimbo opposes voting, though, so you might be able to convince him of your stance.
When the disagreement concerns Wikipedia policies and obvious interpretations of them, when the violator of those policies does so brazenly, knowingly, and mockingly--and surely you've been around long enough to know that this happens not infrequently now--then it's not particularly important that we "express respect for the other person's view." By then, it's clear that diplomacy will not solve the problem.
Yes, I agree that those cases exist. But I also believe that we need to have a lot of patience when dealing with newbies. Not an infinite amount, but a lot. And I think everyone should be given the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves.
Please do acknowledge that some newbies (and a few not-so-newbies) really *are* destructive, at least sometimes. And that's a really *serious* problem, that we must not ignore simply because it violates our righteous liberal sensibilities (I have 'em too; I am a libertarian but not an anarchist).
True.
You seem to be implying that, if we simply were nice to people, cranks, trolls, vandals, and other destructive elements would be adequately manageable.
No, I just consider hard security a last resort, to be used carefully and only when all else fails (as to when we know that is the case, we might actually develop a timeframe of conflict resolution, based on data about previous conflicts).
First, Wikipedia has grown a lot. It's the biggest wiki project in the world. We *can't* make people nice as you suggest.
Allow me to psychoanalyze a bit. My experience is that most people just want to be respected, to be part of the "club", but some people have failed in their life to learn the necessary behaviors to do so. Sometimes we are dealing with years of problematic experiences, and often we cannot really help these people, I agree. But I've also seen the opposite cases, especially on Kuro5hin, where the combination of peer pressure and voting/ rating has driven many trolls away or made them serious (although often somewhat unskilled) contributors. Why? Because they learned which behaviors worked and which didn't.
The best example I can think of is a troll called OOG THE CAVEMAN. At first he would troll and post crap in all upper case. A large number of his comments were hidden by majority vote, and OOG suddenly started posting on-topic comments. They still weren't rated highly or of high quality, but he stopped his behavior. I've seen (but not recorded) similar turnarounds.
To make this work, we probably need both the carrot and the stick. But I disagree with the Christian philosophy of "Spare the rod, spoil the child". Force should not be used as a training mechanism but strictly for self protection. We should try to *always* be friendly and courteous, even if we ban people.
Third, your proposal requires that the best members of Wikipedia follow around and politely educate an ever-growing group of destructive members. We've tried that. We've lost a number of members as a result, and I personally am tempted, every so often, to completely forget about Wikipedia, and resign it to the dogs. But I don't want to do that. I still feel some responsibility for it, and I think I helped build it to where it is now. I don't want to see something that I've helped build wear away into something awful.
Again, I'm not seeing that happen. I've seen many articles improve rapidly, though. Simple vandalism is a growing problem and really putting the wiki model to the test. We might consider a rather simple solution: edits only for logged in members. This drastically limits the accessibility of the wiki, but we do have a core of contributors, and if we can't grow without losing some of them, maybe we should slow our growth.
(user-to-user comm.)
We do this automatically, of necessity, on talk pages. No internal messaging system would be better than direct constructive criticism on offending pages.
Talk pages are nice, but they have the disadvantage of being not very personal. The mentor idea truly centers around building a social bond. Although you might not want to "bond" with strangers, I can tell you with authority that some people are very, very good at this, and actually enjoy it a lot. Within a sufficiently large community, which Wikipedia is, you will have such mentors.
But one reason I'm worried about the current state of Wikipedia is that we might have some expert reviewers coming in to do some good work here, only to be attacked by some eedjit who gets his jollies out of attacking an expert precisely because she's an expert. That *will* happen, almost certainly, if the Wikipedia peer review project gets going.
Well, I can predict that I'm going to "attack" experts myself if they add non-NPOV content, fail to cite sources properly, insist on their authority to make their point etc. As you want me to acknowledge the problem of vandals and cranks (which I do), it would be nice if you would acknowledge the fallibility of experts more often. My view on experts and what makes an expert is very different from yours, but I believe both views can coexist in a good certification system.
The whole reason behind a random sample is precisely to forestall the sort of "elitism" and abuse of power that you fear.
I know, and I respect this good intention. I just don't think it's the right approach, it will only lead to less informed decisions. Better keep the decision process open to (almost) everybody (we need to prevent vote flooding as well), that way we can reduce abuse of power the most effectively. That's why K5's moderation system works and Slashdot's doesn't.
Regards,
Erik
Hysteria? I'm getting very very close to the point where I find my usefulness to the Wikipedia as being not only denigrated but unappreciated. Zoe erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:> That's probably one main point of disagreement, then. Suffice it to say
I've been with Wikipedia from the beginning and I do think that things are very bad right now, far worse than they have been in the beginning. I think it's becoming nearly intolerable for polite and well-meaning people to participate, because they're constantly having to deal with people who simply don't respect the rules.
It would be nice to get some specific examples. Perhaps Ed's "Annoying users" page (if renamed) isn't such a bad idea. I have certainly observed some people like Lir to be quite persistent and sometimes silly, but I have also noticed quite a bit of hysteria from the other side (see the recent "Lir again" thread).
So maybe we should start collecting individual case histories and examine them in more detail, instead of relying on our personal observations entirely. This might allow us to come up with better policies, and quantify the need for stronger enforcement.
In that case, we can always collect a list of people who have been driven away or who have quietly stopped editing so much out of disgust with having to deal with people who just don't get it.
That's not the kind of list I'm talking about, because it only tells us about the reactions, not the actual actions. You may say that these people were driven away by silly eedjots, but I cannot tell whether this is true without looking at the actual conflicts. Often I've seen so-called experts on Wikipedia try to stop reasonable debate by simple assertion of their authority. This doesn't work, and this shouldn't work on Wikipedia, and if they can't handle that fact, it's my turn to say they should better leave.
I'm talking about a body of trusted members, not an "elite." Tarring the proposal with that word isn't an argument.
Sorry, but I do not really see much of a difference. A group with superior powers is an elite, trusted or not. The word "elite" requires a certain stability of that position, though, so it might not apply to an approach of random moderation privileges.
Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't necessarily times when people are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other words, violating community standards.
Do you mean nonsense in the sense of "something that just isn't true" or in the sense of simple noise, like crapflooders? How do you plan to define / recognize "crankish unspported stuff"?
Yes, I know, there are egregious cases where we would all agree that they are not tolerable. I'm just worried that such terms might mean different things to different people, and if we adopt them, we risk suppression of non-mainstream opinions. Is Wikipedia's page about MKULTRA, a CIA mind control project, nonsense, crankish? No, it's not, it really happened, but the large majority of Americans would never believe that.
I am, like many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft
security".
Why don't you explain exactly what that means here on the list, and why you and others think it's such a good thing?
The idea of soft security has evolved in wikis, and it is only fair to point you to the respective page at MeatballWiki for the social and technical components of soft security: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
As to why I, personally, think it's a good idea, that's simple: Once you introduce hard security mechanisms like banning, deletion etc., you create an imbalance of power, which in turn creates a risk of abuse of said power against those who do not have it. Abuse of power can have many different results, it can encourage groupthink, drive newbies away, censor legitimate material, ban legitimate users etc. We already *have* a situation where we occasionally ban legitimate users and delete legitimate material. We need to get away from this. I am absolutely disgusted by the thought that we are already banning completely innocent users.
My underlying philosophy here is that it's worse to punish an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.
It seems to me that in growing numbers people refuse to bow to "peer pressure" or to be "educated" about anything regarding Wikipedia.
I'd like to see evidence of those growing numbers. Wikipedia's overall number of users has been growing constantly, are we talking about absolute growth or relative growth? Again, we should try to collect empirical evidence.
Without generally-accepted standards and moral authority and the shame culture that accompanies them, peer pressure is impossible.
Yes, but in my opinion, the worst way to attain authority is through the exercise of superior power. The best way is through respect. With the trusted user groups that are part of my certification scheme, it might be easier to build a reputation.
Peer pressure seemd to work relatively well in the past. It is working less and less well as the project has grown and since I left a position of official authority.
Well, you know that I disagree about the effect of your departure on the project, so let's not go into that again.
They do certainly cool down conflicts if the person receiving the statement knows that the person issuing the statement has the authority to do something about it. They also let the recipient know that there are some lines that just can't be crossed without the community taking a forthright stand against it.
I think this kind of last resort authority should not be concentrated but distributed. If a poll shows that many members think that member X has "crossed the line", this sends a much stronger message than any non- totalitarian scheme of concentrated authority. Especially if last resort measures like banning *can* be approved by the majority.
It appears that Jimbo opposes voting, though, so you might be able to convince him of your stance.
When the disagreement concerns Wikipedia policies and obvious interpretations of them, when the violator of those policies does so brazenly, knowingly, and mockingly--and surely you've been around long enough to know that this happens not infrequently now--then it's not particularly important that we "express respect for the other person's view." By then, it's clear that diplomacy will not solve the problem.
Yes, I agree that those cases exist. But I also believe that we need to have a lot of patience when dealing with newbies. Not an infinite amount, but a lot. And I think everyone should be given the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves.
Please do acknowledge that some newbies (and a few not-so-newbies) really *are* destructive, at least sometimes. And that's a really *serious* problem, that we must not ignore simply because it violates our righteous liberal sensibilities (I have 'em too; I am a libertarian but not an anarchist).
True.
You seem to be implying that, if we simply were nice to people, cranks, trolls, vandals, and other destructive elements would be adequately manageable.
No, I just consider hard security a last resort, to be used carefully and only when all else fails (as to when we know that is the case, we might actually develop a timeframe of conflict resolution, based on data about previous conflicts).
First, Wikipedia has grown a lot. It's the biggest wiki project in the world. We *can't* make people nice as you suggest.
Allow me to psychoanalyze a bit. My experience is that most people just want to be respected, to be part of the "club", but some people have failed in their life to learn the necessary behaviors to do so. Sometimes we are dealing with years of problematic experiences, and often we cannot really help these people, I agree. But I've also seen the opposite cases, especially on Kuro5hin, where the combination of peer pressure and voting/ rating has driven many trolls away or made them serious (although often somewhat unskilled) contributors. Why? Because they learned which behaviors worked and which didn't.
The best example I can think of is a troll called OOG THE CAVEMAN. At first he would troll and post crap in all upper case. A large number of his comments were hidden by majority vote, and OOG suddenly started posting on-topic comments. They still weren't rated highly or of high quality, but he stopped his behavior. I've seen (but not recorded) similar turnarounds.
To make this work, we probably need both the carrot and the stick. But I disagree with the Christian philosophy of "Spare the rod, spoil the child". Force should not be used as a training mechanism but strictly for self protection. We should try to *always* be friendly and courteous, even if we ban people.
Third, your proposal requires that the best members of Wikipedia follow around and politely educate an ever-growing group of destructive members. We've tried that. We've lost a number of members as a result, and I personally am tempted, every so often, to completely forget about Wikipedia, and resign it to the dogs. But I don't want to do that. I still feel some responsibility for it, and I think I helped build it to where it is now. I don't want to see something that I've helped build wear away into something awful.
Again, I'm not seeing that happen. I've seen many articles improve rapidly, though. Simple vandalism is a growing problem and really putting the wiki model to the test. We might consider a rather simple solution: edits only for logged in members. This drastically limits the accessibility of the wiki, but we do have a core of contributors, and if we can't grow without losing some of them, maybe we should slow our growth.
(user-to-user comm.)
We do this automatically, of necessity, on talk pages. No internal messaging system would be better than direct constructive criticism on offending pages.
Talk pages are nice, but they have the disadvantage of being not very personal. The mentor idea truly centers around building a social bond. Although you might not want to "bond" with strangers, I can tell you with authority that some people are very, very good at this, and actually enjoy it a lot. Within a sufficiently large community, which Wikipedia is, you will have such mentors.
But one reason I'm worried about the current state of Wikipedia is that we might have some expert reviewers coming in to do some good work here, only to be attacked by some eedjit who gets his jollies out of attacking an expert precisely because she's an expert. That *will* happen, almost certainly, if the Wikipedia peer review project gets going.
Well, I can predict that I'm going to "attack" experts myself if they add non-NPOV content, fail to cite sources properly, insist on their authority to make their point etc. As you want me to acknowledge the problem of vandals and cranks (which I do), it would be nice if you would acknowledge the fallibility of experts more often. My view on experts and what makes an expert is very different from yours, but I believe both views can coexist in a good certification system.
The whole reason behind a random sample is precisely to forestall the sort of "elitism" and abuse of power that you fear.
I know, and I respect this good intention. I just don't think it's the right approach, it will only lead to less informed decisions. Better keep the decision process open to (almost) everybody (we need to prevent vote flooding as well), that way we can reduce abuse of power the most effectively. That's why K5's moderation system works and Slashdot's doesn't.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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