[Foundation-l] "Wikidrama" and autonomy of Wikimedia projects

[SlimVirgin]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 5:44 PM, Al Tally <majorly.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On smaller
> wikis such as Meta and Simple English Wikipedia, we more rely on "good
> judgement" than strictly following policies. I don't think a global policy
> is needed. Local projects should make their own decisions, for the best
> interests of what we're all here for: the content, not ourselves. If the
> user in question ever wanted to edit Wikiquote, he or she can create another
> username and contribute in that way. All this "me me me" attitude is bad -
> it's the content that's our number one priority.

Alex, I agree that a "me me me" attitude is bad. But in one of the
cases Cary talked about, all that happened was that someone had
created an account on Wikiquote in the name of an admin on the English
Wikipedia, one with an unusual name. The new user had 47 edits on
Wikiquote (all or most minor); the admin had around 12,000 on the
English Wikipedia, most of them substantial content contributions,
going back to May 2006.

Common sense and courtesy would have told the folks at Wikiquote to
impose a name change on the new guy, because he was probably trolling.
Instead, there was a big kerfuffle (including from the bureaucrats
there) about how dare people on the English WP turn up to dictate, and
maybe the identical names were a cooincidence, and all that really
mattered was the new guy's 47 outstanding minor edits. So the admin
who's had the name for over two years is expected to jump through
various hoops now, including creating a temp account there to request
his name back, even though he doesn't want to post there and give away
his IP address -- the reason is that at least one of the bureaucrats
is an administrator with Wikipedia Review, and has been actively
involved in outing people.

With autonomy comes the need for some common sense. I've had people
impersonate me on other projects, and it has always been sorted out
quickly by the bureaucrats; indeed, it's usually sorted out before I
even notice it. But things seem to work very differently on Wikiquote.