[Foundation-l] FW: [Wikinews-l] Increased incivility at wikinews [en] <warning: contains rant>

[George Herbert]

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 7:13 AM, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>wrote:

> I have been trying for over two years to bring this issue to the serious
> attention of the "powers that be" in the English Wikipedia. My messages are
> met either with a "there he goes again" attitude, or are not acknowledged
> at
> all. Where does one go from there if not the Foundation itself?
>

Part of the problem is that "the powers that be" in the English Wikipedia is
a wide spread, very diffuse group, other than Jimbo.

A larger number of elder statesman admins / experienced users are discussing
civility issue problems on-wiki, which is a good sign.

Part of the problem is that there isn't an entirely functional community
consensus on what levels of incivility deserve intervention and what don't.
I and a number of others are quietly working to establish a functional
working standard, by intervening more actively, but several of us have been
slapped by parts of the community in the process.

Fred's getting more grumpy about it in public of late, I've had my moments,
etc.

I think that there is not realistically going to be a sudden sea change on
this issue.  But I also think that we realistically can create a momentum
for improvement over a multi-year timescale.

That it will probably take that long is unfortunate, but large online
communities become very unwieldy in some ways.  Having realism about the
community dynamics is a necessary step in engaging in them as an agent of
change.

Jimbo would have to make it a major in-community priority of his, or Arbcom
would have to make it a major in-community priority of theirs, to make it
faster.  I think Jimbo's too busy and Arbcom is too unwieldy in one sense
and focused on more specific problems.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com