I've been thinking about this all day, and now I fear that I may have caused more trouble than I bargained for. The cure is worse than the disease.
I don't think that's related to your actions specifically, just to the fact that you brought the issue to the attention of more people, and more of us told the hotheads to cool off for a while. I don't think that's a bad result at all. The article pages on which they were fighting (e.g., "Anti- semitism") are actually pretty good articles at the moment, so there's no immediate need for revision. And I've noticed Graham at least making useful edits to non-controversial pages in the last day or two. I think that's a fine result.
I'm also sympathetic to the possibility that maybe one way to attract and keep more experts is to be less tolerant of nonsense and more liberal with blocks and other "official" sanctions.
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 16:48, lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
I'm also sympathetic to the possibility that maybe one way to attract and keep more experts is to be less tolerant of nonsense and more liberal with blocks and other "official" sanctions.
And I'm entirely unsympathetic to that.
In fact, I think we should ban LDC for making that kind of comment.
At 01:48 PM 06/09/02 -0700, lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
I'm also sympathetic to the possibility that maybe one way to attract and keep more experts is to be less tolerant of nonsense and more liberal with blocks and other "official" sanctions.
I've been thinking along these lines myself, but didn't want to be the first to say it. :)
Putting up with disruptive participants is noble and useful up to a point, especially if these participants are also providing some positive input along with the nonsense. But past that point it starts to drive away lots of other participants who don't want to put up with them any more, and one has to decide whether it's worth it.
Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only the disruptive yahoos stick around.
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote:
Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only the disruptive yahoos stick around.
This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent "disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban them.
But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has worked every time so far.
We already have sufficient policies in place for banning people. The harm in expanding them would outweigh the benefits.
On Sat, 07 Sep 2002 07:42:40 The Cunctator wrote:
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote:
Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about
doing
it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that
only
the disruptive yahoos stick around.
This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent "disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban them.
But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has worked every time so far.
We already have sufficient policies in place for banning people. The harm in expanding them would outweigh the benefits.
That policy has worked, after a fashion, but it bears substantial costs - like creating an environment that some people just can't cope with, where we constantly have to argue with kooks, nutters, and other assorted people who just don't understand when they're either a) totally wrong, or b) that they're going to have to accept that there are other opinions besides theirs which, often, are far more widely held, and c) don't know how to have a civilized discussion about it without ad hominem attacks, and d) can't be taught.
If people can't debate issues sensibly for whatever reason (and that includes not resorting to accusations of "this person is an anti-foobar or a burglephobe and thus should be banned" at the drop of a hat) then they need to be told to behave. If they can't do that, they are getting in the road of the goal and should be dealt with so the rest of us can get back to work.
At 05:42 PM 06/09/02 -0400, The Cunctator wrote:
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote:
Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only the disruptive yahoos stick around.
This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent "disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban them.
Odd bit of logic there, not sure if I can untangle it. Of course banning people isn't the _only_ way to stop disruptive people from disrupting, there are other gentler strategies to try beforehand. But what I'm objecting to is a reluctance to use banning _after_ those other strategies have failed, which means that disruptive people who are immune to those other strategies (the merciless editing and ignoring you mention below) _do_ "get away with everything" because there's nothing else we can do to stop them.
But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has worked every time so far.
It's also resulted in the loss of a number of excellent contributors. I believe that relying on merciless editing and ignoring doesn't work _well_, and that being more willing to ban disruptive people will result in a higher quality of Wikipedia overall.
Maybe we should try it and see.
|X-Sender: bderksen@pop.srv.ualberta.ca |From: Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@ualberta.ca |Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com |X-BeenThere: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com |X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.4 |Precedence: bulk |Reply-To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com |List-Help: mailto:wikipedia-l-request@nupedia.com?subject=help |List-Post: mailto:wikipedia-l@nupedia.com |List-Subscribe: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l, | mailto:wikipedia-l-request@nupedia.com?subject=subscribe |List-Id: An unmoderated discussion of all things Wikipedia <wikipedia-l.nupedia.com> |List-Unsubscribe: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l, | mailto:wikipedia-l-request@nupedia.com?subject=unsubscribe |List-Archive: http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/ |Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 20:12:25 -0600 | |At 05:42 PM 06/09/02 -0400, The Cunctator wrote: |>On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote: |> |> > Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a |> > "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing |> > it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting |> > disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only |> > the disruptive yahoos stick around. |> |>This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent |>"disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban |>them. | |Odd bit of logic there, not sure if I can untangle it. Of course banning |people isn't the _only_ way to stop disruptive people from disrupting, |there are other gentler strategies to try beforehand. But what I'm |objecting to is a reluctance to use banning _after_ those other strategies |have failed, which means that disruptive people who are immune to those |other strategies (the merciless editing and ignoring you mention below) |_do_ "get away with everything" because there's nothing else we can do to |stop them. | |>But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has |>worked every time so far. | |It's also resulted in the loss of a number of excellent contributors. I |believe that relying on merciless editing and ignoring doesn't work _well_, |and that being more willing to ban disruptive people will result in a |higher quality of Wikipedia overall. | |Maybe we should try it and see. |
Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing? Banning is personal. Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or month is impersonal.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan 88
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 22:30, Tom Parmenter wrote:
Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing? Banning is personal. Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or month is impersonal.
Freezing discussion shouldn't really be necessary...freezing articles is a reasonable concept.
On Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 11:06:19PM -0400, The Cunctator wrote:
Freezing discussion shouldn't really be necessary...freezing articles is a reasonable concept.
The trouble with freezing articles in an edit war is that the frozen article will be in one state or the other - that is, someone will have 'won' the editing war.
So far, sysops have not been reluctant to intervene in arguments in which they have been involved themselves.
-M-
|From: The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com |Date: 06 Sep 2002 23:06:19 -0400 | |On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 22:30, Tom Parmenter wrote: | |> |> Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing? |> Banning is personal. Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or |> month is impersonal. | |Freezing discussion shouldn't really be necessary...freezing articles |is a reasonable concept. |
The edit wars take place on the article pages, but the pain is dealt out on the talk pages. Freeze both.
Tom Parmenter wrote:
Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing? Banning is personal. Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or month is impersonal.
Freezing articles is the very height of anti-wiki -- not only can't the warring parties contribute, *no one* can contribute to the article in question except the sysop "cabal". (And what if one party to the dispute *is* a sysop, as seems to happen not infrequently?)
The only reason the main page is frozen is to discourage petty vandalism on our front door. (And the main page, I will point out, is not an encyclopedia article.)
Which reminds me... here's my periodic sweep of all the articles currently frozen:
[[Main_Page]] See above.
[[Seneca]] There's no justification for this in its very light edit history. No talk page. I assume some sysop hit the "protect" link by mistake...? I've unprotected it.
[[Titulus_Regius]] Isis protected it, giving as justification in the talk page that it contains a source text. I've unprotected it, as it is ultimately an _article_, large citation or no large citation. There are better ways to create and reference an uneditable document if you want to, and none of them include blocking out edit access to encyclopedia articles.
[[Wikipedia:Upload_log]] [[Wikipedia:Deletion_log]] [[Wikipedia:Blocked_IPs]] Auto-maintained log pages that should not be manually edited.
[[Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License]] We need to have a copy of the license in the work, and that definitely shouldn't be editable! Note that this is *not* an encyclopedia article, unlike [[Titulus Regius]]. The article *about* the GFDL is freely editable.
[[Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not]] [[Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view]] [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]] [[Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines]] [[Wikipedia:IP_probation_watchlist]] [[Wikipedia:Most_common_Wikipedia_faux_pas]] [[Wikipedia:Policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages]] [[Wikipedia:Naming_conventions]] [[Wikipedia:Administrators]] [[Wikipedia:Policy]] [[Wikipedia:Database_queries]] Various policy and help pages. I'm a lot more leery of these being protected, but again they're not encyclopedia articles so it's not _completely_ anti-the-whole-point-of-the-exercise.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
--- Brion VIBBER brion@pobox.com wrote:
[[Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not]] [[Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view]] [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]] [[Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines]] [[Wikipedia:IP_probation_watchlist]] [[Wikipedia:Most_common_Wikipedia_faux_pas]] [[Wikipedia:Policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages]] [[Wikipedia:Naming_conventions]] [[Wikipedia:Administrators]] [[Wikipedia:Policy]] [[Wikipedia:Database_queries]] Various policy and help pages. I'm a lot more leery of these being protected, but again they're not encyclopedia articles so it's not _completely_ anti-the-whole-point-of-the-exercise.
I didn't know that certain policy pages were frozen. What was the reasoning behind it?
Stephen Gilbert
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 22:12, Bryan Derksen wrote:
It's also resulted in the loss of a number of excellent contributors. I believe that relying on merciless editing and ignoring doesn't work _well_, and that being more willing to ban disruptive people will result in a higher quality of Wikipedia overall.
Which excellent contributors? What's the particular story?
You have to understand, I'm by nature skeptical of arguments that call for increased levels of hard security. There's usually a better way. I'm also skeptical of arguments that would be used against me.
On a side note, it may not be healthy for people to be contributors (espcially in a manage-the-Wikipedia way) ad infinitum; just as representative political systems work best with a constant flux of members, I suspect Wikipedia will too.
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 22:12, Bryan Derksen wrote:
It's also resulted in the loss of a number of
excellent contributors. I
believe that relying on merciless editing and
ignoring doesn't work _well_,
and that being more willing to ban disruptive
people will result in a
higher quality of Wikipedia overall.
Which excellent contributors? What's the particular story?
Michael Tinkler and Julie Hoffman Kemp are two off the top of my head. Note that they are both historians, and many of our less than cooperative contributors operate on history articles.
You have to understand, I'm by nature skeptical of arguments that call for increased levels of hard security. There's usually a better way. I'm also skeptical of arguments that would be used against me.
I am as well. I believe that soft security is often the best way to go. But not always.
Stephen G.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com
I was away from the computer all weekend, and now I'm reading this thoughtful discussion carefully.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
But what I'm objecting to is a reluctance to use banning _after_ those other strategies have failed, which means that disruptive people who are immune to those other strategies (the merciless editing and ignoring you mention below) _do_ "get away with everything" because there's nothing else we can do to stop them.
I think this argument has merit.
I am opposed, politically speaking, to the death penalty. My reasons don't have much to do with the morality of doing away with some people -- I think it's perfectly moral in some cases. My reasons have to do more with the rather alarming rate of erroneous convictions.
But I do support the death penalty in a handful of unique sorts of cases. If someone is already in prison for life, then there's not much in the way of possible deterrent unless the death penalty is an option. And the odds of error are very low in such a case.
I say this only by way of loose analogy and support for the idea that banning _is_ a serious penalty, to be entered into only after much effort is put into other means. But it cannot be ruled out entirely, or there is ultimately no "stick" behind other things.
Someday we will meet someone with perl skills and no interest at all in working with the group. This person will set a cron job to insert their nonsense into some subject pages, on a regular basis. We _could_, of course, always just revert their changes every time. And they can just increase the frequency of the cron job from weekly to daily to hourly to every 5 minutes.
We don't have to put up with that. Banning, pagelocks, etc., are valuable tools for dealing with a situation like that.
The instant case is relevant, too. We have a contributor (Helga) who has been unable, so far, to improve her contributions. So far, in discussions here, she has been purely defensive and repeats her allegations (while simultaneously denying them!) that people are trying to censor.
At some point, the cost in terms of loss of diversity is much much lower than the cost in terms of lost time on the part of others.
--Jimbo
The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com writes:
But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has worked every time so far.
No, it hasn't. The load of merciless editing has already driven away the valued and reasonable Julie Hoffman Kemp, and yet many of the German and French history pages she looked to save are still full of petty nationalists. Kooks 1, Wikipedia 0.
|From: lcrocker@nupedia.com |Cc: |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com |X-BeenThere: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com |X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.4 |Precedence: bulk |Reply-To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com |List-Help: mailto:wikipedia-l-request@nupedia.com?subject=help |List-Post: mailto:wikipedia-l@nupedia.com |List-Subscribe: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l, | mailto:wikipedia-l-request@nupedia.com?subject=subscribe |List-Id: An unmoderated discussion of all things Wikipedia <wikipedia-l.nupedia.com> |List-Unsubscribe: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l, | mailto:wikipedia-l-request@nupedia.com?subject=unsubscribe |List-Archive: http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/ |Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 13:48:04 -0700 | |> I've been thinking about this all day, and now I fear |> that I may have caused more trouble than I bargained for. |> The cure is worse than the disease. | |I don't think that's related to your actions specifically, |just to the fact that you brought the issue to the attention |of more people, and more of us told the hotheads to cool off |for a while. I don't think that's a bad result at all. |The article pages on which they were fighting (e.g., "Anti- |semitism") are actually pretty good articles at the moment, |so there's no immediate need for revision. And I've noticed |Graham at least making useful edits to non-controversial |pages in the last day or two. I think that's a fine result. | |I'm also sympathetic to the possibility that maybe one way to |attract and keep more experts is to be less tolerant of nonsense |and more liberal with blocks and other "official" sanctions. |
I have moderated two mailing lists and it is very common for quiet to descend following even the mildest reproofs from the moderator. Both my lists were kind of sensitive, one was for addicts and alcoholics, of which I was not either, and the other was for my company where I had to let free speech reign without letting the list get too offensive. That is, in both cases I had to censor, but with the lightest possible hand. I usually let things run their course until actual insults, cussing, accusations appeared, but whenever I finally stepped in to a dispute or flying insults it worked and no one ever accused me of being a fascist. And it was always quiet for a couple of weeks.
It's easy to tell when pages are getting out of hand from watching recent changes, so if no one likes my idea of freezing pages (I guess not, no response anyway), then some of you folks with authority ought to be prepared to do what Ed did (with a slightly lighter hand) and sort of jump in quietly and tell everyone to cool it a bit.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
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