[Foundation-l] How to make unstoppable petty complaint a feature?

[Nathan]

It's not just changes that draw petty, sarcastic and juvenile replies
for Wikipedians. We have a pervasive problem of burnout, wherein our
more experienced contributors became jaded and disillusioned and make
a practice of appalling behavior. Two recent cases in point... I don't
need to explain the Tanthalas situation more than just to mention it
as an example, but the second case is, I think, more serious. An
administrator replies to a plea for help from a new contributor, who
has uploaded his own work several times and tried to release it under
public domain. Rather than explain, the administrator uses what
appears to be his boilerplate response - snide, condescending, and
perfectly tailored to send this new contributor away with a bad taste
of the entire project. [1][2]

Unfortunately this type of interaction isn't even unusual. In some
respects it appears to be the norm, in fact, and there doesn't seem to
be any effective way of addressing this problem. I can no longer
recommend people to become involved in editing, because frankly I
refuse to subject friends and colleagues to the risk of this type of
treatment. Perhaps the Foundation should put some effort into this
issue before soliciting new participants who are likely to be shocked
at the editing culture.


Nathan

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fastily#SYS_logo.png
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#Fair_use