We must have clear guidelines and the power to enforce them, or valuable contributors like Julie, Larry, Maveric, Elian and many more will just quit -- the aggravation is just not worth it.
If the rules are not clear, we have to rely on Jimbo or Lee or Brion to make a decision, inform us and then we have to spend a week or two discussing it.
When I taught Sunday School, I just gave trouble-makers a time-out for: * hitting another pupil * grabbing something (a book, a chair) from another pupil * teasing another pupil
Within a half-dozen classes, I had nearly perfect order -- and, to top it off, my class doubled in size! Kids started calling me Uncle Ed, and everyone wanted to be in my class? Why? Because they liked getting time-outs?
No, because they knew that no one would (1) hit them, (2) grab their things, or (3) tease them.
Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.
Ed Poor is repeating himself, apparently because no one has paid attention to his sensible remarks, so I will do the same. Ed talks of Sunday School, I will speak of my experience moderating open mailing lists on the Internet.
One of these lists was for a group of non-religous recovering alcoholics. The other was a company list for experts in a software-development tool that, frankly, required serious attention from experts to be used at its best. I was neither alcoholic nor software support. Both lists had their cranks, and certainly strong opinions were the norm.
On both lists, I left discussion wide open, but retained for myself the privilege of chiding and chastening when then conversation got out of hand. Inevitably, these interventions of mine were followed by periods of profound silence, even from those who had not offended in any way, and then open discussion would slowly resume. I only banned one person from the alcoholic list and no one from the company list.
People are confusing the Wikipedia (particularly talk pages) with the Usenet. If non-participating "moderators" were willing to jump in, delete nonsense from talk pages, and enforce civility, even incoherent or ideological contributors can learn NPOV.
Exactly how this would work, I don't know. It seems that at least one Wikipedia elder is trying but sometimes has a chip on his shoulder. Nonetheless, I know from experience it is possible to foster civility without hampering discourse.
This is never happening more than a few places at any one time and I believe it is possible to stop it when it occurs.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
|From: "Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com |Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 15:34:25 -0500 | |We must have clear guidelines and the power to enforce them, or |valuable contributors like Julie, Larry, Maveric, Elian and many more |will just quit -- the aggravation is just not worth it. | |If the rules are not clear, we have to rely on Jimbo or Lee or Brion |to make a decision, inform us and then we have to spend a week or two |discussing it. | |When I taught Sunday School, I just gave trouble-makers a time-out for: |* hitting another pupil |* grabbing something (a book, a chair) from another pupil |* teasing another pupil | |Within a half-dozen classes, I had nearly perfect order -- and, to |top it off, my class doubled in size! Kids started calling me Uncle |Ed, and everyone wanted to be in my class? Why? Because they liked |getting time-outs? | |No, because they knew that no one would (1) hit them, (2) grab their |things, or (3) tease them. | |Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give |admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail |the ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia. |_______________________________________________ |Wikipedia-l mailing list |Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l |
On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 16:22, Tom Parmenter wrote:
Ed Poor is repeating himself, apparently because no one has paid attention to his sensible remarks, so I will do the same. Ed talks of Sunday School, I will speak of my experience moderating open mailing lists on the Internet.
One of these lists was for a group of non-religous recovering alcoholics. The other was a company list for experts in a software-development tool that, frankly, required serious attention from experts to be used at its best. I was neither alcoholic nor software support. Both lists had their cranks, and certainly strong opinions were the norm.
On both lists, I left discussion wide open, but retained for myself the privilege of chiding and chastening when then conversation got out of hand. Inevitably, these interventions of mine were followed by periods of profound silence, even from those who had not offended in any way, and then open discussion would slowly resume. I only banned one person from the alcoholic list and no one from the company list.
At first blush, it doesn't seem to be unreasonable to have as a social norm that text on the article talk pages that is OT or personal, overheated, etc., can be erased by people who aren't involved in the topic at hand.
Though I fear that would probably end up not working well unless it's an all-or-nothing thing. That is, the acceptable thing to do would be to erase the talk page entirely, or erase it and summarize the topics of discussion in your own words.
This wouldn't solve everything, but it would certainly help.
Tom Parmenter wrote:
People are confusing the Wikipedia (particularly talk pages) with the Usenet. If non-participating "moderators" were willing to jump in, delete nonsense from talk pages, and enforce civility, even incoherent or ideological contributors can learn NPOV.
I like the idea that people come from outside the discussion to impose civility in this fashion by moderating. We don't have to give people extraordinary powers for us to do this. (To a large extent, this is what Ed Poor has been doing the whole time.) These actions would be based on moral authority, not police force.
-- Toby
|From: Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu |Content-Disposition: inline |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 17:45:55 -0800 | |Tom Parmenter wrote: | |>People are confusing the Wikipedia (particularly talk pages) with the |>Usenet. If non-participating "moderators" were willing to jump in, |>delete nonsense from talk pages, and enforce civility, even incoherent |>or ideological contributors can learn NPOV. | |I like the idea that people come from outside the discussion |to impose civility in this fashion by moderating. |We don't have to give people extraordinary powers for us to do this. |(To a large extent, this is what Ed Poor has been doing the whole time.) |These actions would be based on moral authority, not police force. | | |-- Toby
Larry Sanger has been doing it recently, generally to good effect (against me, as it happens). I would add that anyone doing this sort of graybeard oversight will have to forego the luxury of sarcasm, even in the comment line, and resist the temptation to chime in on every little point. Those things reduce the value of the outside intervention and make it seem less disinterested (neutral).
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
Ortolan88 wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
I like the idea that people come from outside the discussion to impose civility in this fashion by moderating.
Larry Sanger has been doing it recently, generally to good effect (against me, as it happens). I would add that anyone doing this sort of graybeard oversight will have to forego the luxury of sarcasm, even in the comment line, and resist the temptation to chime in on every little point. Those things reduce the value of the outside intervention and make it seem less disinterested (neutral).
Right. You can't be a moderator if you're a participant.
Of course, now the word "moderator" is associated with Larry's proposal of a new class of superuser, in addition to or replacing the ordinary sysops, with powers to back up their (hoped for) moral authority, and limited to a small number at a time (say 3), but rotating randomly to everybody eventually. I'm opposed to all of that (except the random rotation, if it must happen at all).
*However*, nothing is stopping any of us, *right*now*, even those of us that are *not*sysops*, from using the respect that we have gained in the past, and the moral authority that this confers upon us, to act as Ed has been doing since he arrived, as moderators in a purely etymological sense of the term, without the need for any special powers or official appointments.
-- Toby
On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 15:34, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
We must have clear guidelines and the power to enforce them, or valuable contributors like Julie, Larry, Maveric, Elian and many more will just quit -- the aggravation is just not worth it.
That's one opinion. There are a number of assertions there that are not necessarily valid, nor is the syllogism necessarily valid.
If the rules are not clear, we have to rely on Jimbo or Lee or Brion to make a decision, inform us and then we have to spend a week or two discussing it.
I really don't know where you have this idea that Lee or Brion have any special authority to make decisions about participants. There are 15 developers, including me. None of us have any legitimate authority to ban users, etc. I'm at a loss as to why you think we should assert baldly that there is a hierarchy of authority determined not by merit but simply by accidents of code access.
When I taught Sunday School, I just gave trouble-makers a time-out for:
- hitting another pupil
- grabbing something (a book, a chair) from another pupil
- teasing another pupil
Within a half-dozen classes, I had nearly perfect order -- and, to top it off, my class doubled in size! Kids started calling me Uncle Ed, and everyone wanted to be in my class? Why? Because they liked getting time-outs?
No, because they knew that no one would (1) hit them, (2) grab their things, or (3) tease them.
This isn't Sunday School. We're not being taught by Uncle Ed. We're not being forced to do this by our parents. Let's not get carried away by false analogies...
Let's come up with a set of guidelines and figure out how to give admins the power to enforce them -- in a way that does not curtail the ability of contributors to fulfill the mission of Wikipedia.
I really think you're barking up the wrong tree here.
Civility is a laudable goal and a reasonable expectation for Wikipedia.
Civility enforced by a police force is not.
Rather, we should each be able to control our own behavior, and that goes for the people who feel aggrieved by loonies or robotic personalities as well.
Again, none of us is being forced to do this. The psychology of the conflicts that arise in Wikipedia is not complicated, and they can usually be defused simply, without giving particular groups of people powers over others.
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