[Gendergap] Hello and a (small!) manifesto

[Andreas Kolbe]

Daniel,

Thanks. This was the most heartening post I've read in relation to 
anything to do with Wikipedia in a good while. We chuckled, and it was balm 
on my wife's bruised heart -- it made her say, "It makes you think there is 
hope for this thing after all."

I am reminded of what Sydney said earlier, that behaviours that are normal 
in real life -- e.g. that you talk to friends when a situation has upset 
you -- are not normal in Wikipedia. The assumption in Wikipedia is that any 
such conversation would serve a nefarious Machiavellian purpose, rather than 
the simple human need for emotional support. 

You can't let your hair down in Wikipedia, because anything you say on 
a talk page can and will be taken down and used in evidence against you. 

I agree with Sydney that new users find this hard to adjust to. Women in
particular are likely to miss this type of relating, and be upset when it
is used against them. Sometimes we are incivil in the name of civility.

Best,
Andreas


--- On Sun, 6/2/11, Daniel and Elizabeth Case <dancase at frontiernet.net> wrote:
> It isn't just *her* eyes. Based on the information
> provided, I found the 
> user in question. He *is* ridiculous. No, scratch that. He
> would be 
> ridiculous only if he didn't hurt anybody, and if he had
> that effect on your 
> wife imagine how many other people out there gave up as
> well.
> 
> As I would have suspected, he's a heavy Twinkle user. He
> has been on 
> Wikipedia a little less longer than I have; he has
> rollbacker and  reviewer 
> rights but is (thankfully) not an admin. He has, in
> addition to all the 
> self-applied barnstars (a practice that should be
> forbidden), two userboxes 
> near the top of his page proclaiming his use of Twinkle
> (only one is needed, 
> really, if that's something you want to brag about). *And*,
> near the top of 
> the page, links to both WP:VANISPAM (which I haven't seen
> invoked in 
> deletion discussions or anywhere for that matter in a long
> time) and a short 
> essay of his own where he complains about some
> inconsistencies in the speedy 
> deletion criteria (OK, somewhat rightly) and other aspects
> of the deletion 
> policies. The solution he advocates is (surprise!) more
> admins invoking 
> WP:IAR to resolve those conflicts in favor of ...
> deletion!
> 
> Elsewhere on his userpage, his boxes indicate interests in
> energy, classical 
> music, piano, various Google apps and aspects of computer
> programming. I 
> hate to say it, but the whole thing just adds up to
> "extremely socially 
> awkward geek". I'm not at all sure I want to meet him in
> person.
> 
> And looking over his user history, his recent contribs
> show, indeed, a lot 
> of AfD nominations, talk pages, and very little actual
> content editing. 
> Nothing on his userpage indicates any interest in content;
> he doesn't point 
> you to any GAs or FAs or anything else he's had a hand in,
> or suggest he's a 
> member of any WikiProject save the one on infobox creation.
> He's, frankly, 
> the stereotypical deletionist (and makes me not doubt the
> wisdom of taking 
> that box off my own userpage a long time ago). Reading his
> page and thinking 
> about it, I wish there was some reality to the old "In
> Soviet Wikipedia, 
> article delete YOU!!" joke.
> 
> Frankly, this guy isn't an editor. He's a [[griefer]]. This
> is a prime 
> example of someone for whom Wikipedia has become a video
> game where he tries 
> to rack up points by getting as many articles as possible
> deleted. What else 
> can you say about someone who so clearly brags about this
> sort of thing and 
> says he enjoys it? This guy screams "referral to the school
> psychologist 
> needed".
> 
> Of course, here I am trashing him out, in a forum he'll
> likely never read 
> and wouldn't care to know whether it exists or not.
> 
> The question is what can we do to prevent people from
> becoming this sort of 
> user.
> 
> I do have some ideas. I have long said we could benefit
> from making the 
> block function page specific, so that editors could either
> be allowed to 
> work on a set of pages and those pages alone, or otherwise
> more effectively 
> topic-banned by being blocked from a certain set of pages,
> but free to edit 
> anything else (The current setup would be a bit like if,
> instead of issuing 
> a restraining order that says "don't go within 150
> yds/meters of X", the 
> judge had only the option of forcibly excluding the
> individual from the 
> city, state or country for the time period in question).
> This would be an 
> extreme option, but better than blocking them wholesale
> (and might cut down 
> on socking as well).
> 
> It could be used to enforce a policy whereby editors are
> watched via a 
> filter/bot for patterns that suggest this sort of behavior
> (i.e. X large 
> percentage of deletion-initiating edits vs. Y really small
> percentage of 
> namespace edits) and then it would be suggested to them
> that they take a 
> break and do something constructive instead for a while,
> with the 
> possibility of a page-specific block on AfD etc. and
> temporary suspension 
> of, say, rollbacker rights, to make sure they do, beyond a
> certain point. 
> Yes, some editors might consider this heavy-handed and just
> leave. But look 
> at what they become without this kind of shepherding ... I
> think the 
> community and the encyclopedia would, on the whole,
> benefit.
> 
> Daniel Case 
> 
> 
> 
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