[Gendergap] the state of civility on en.wiki

[Ryan Kaldari]

On 10/26/11 7:19 AM, ChaoticFluffy wrote:
> The only way to remove these people that has worked in the past has 
> been via arbcom, with enablers screaming bloody murder the whole way.

Yes, I've been down that road before, but I will never do it again. The 
only arbcom case I ever pursued was against a "vested contributor" who 
was clearly misogynistic and driving away other editors. Even though I 
was uninvolved in the dispute that led to the ArbCom case, I was 
pilloried, harassed, baited, name-called, and threatened with a lawsuit 
solely because I was willing to confront this editor's behavior and 
present evidence against them. This editor's friends overwhelmed the 
ArbCom discussion with absurd conspiracy theories about me, and made 
their best effort to make my life miserable for the duration of the 
ArbCom proceeding (including trying to drum up support to have me 
de-admined). After all was said and done, all of my evidence and 
arguments were ignored and the editor was banned for a year due to the 
legal threat.

So I'm definitely not going to pursue ArbCom again, and there's no way 
I'm going to give a vested editor a 6-month block (which would 
immediately be reversed), so I guess the only "solution" is to just be 
silent and allow their abusive behavior to continue. Issuing multiple 
warnings in these cases is a joke (they are just removed with snarky 
edit summaries) and peacefully discussing the issue gets absolutely 
nowhere (at least from my experience), apart from momentarily deflecting 
their invective towards myself instead of their original target.

A friend of mine works as a moderator for Huffington Post and I have to 
admit that I am quite jealous of their system. The moderators are free 
to enforce civility and use their best judgement to keep out trolls and 
trouble-makers. I imagine this is one of the reasons that they have such 
a vibrant community with a healthy gender balance (according to my friend).

Ryan Kaldari