[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy is a problem)

[Bryan Derksen]

At 02:53 AM 11/7/2004 -0500, Delirium wrote:

>Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>Thirdly, sentences should be much, much harsher. Ban them for life and 
>>get it over with. Banning only slows them down anyway, most of them will 
>>come back under a different name. But at least the community will be able 
>>to unite behind the AC ruling.
>
>I think the problem with this is that, if the community had its way, a lot 
>of the best contributors would be banned if they were unpopular.

But this raises a couple of questions. What qualifies someone as being 
among the "best" contributors, and why are some editors so unpopular?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so presumably extensive knowledge of various 
subjects is a good thing to have in contributors. Contributors who know 
lots of stuff and can write it up well would therefore get a lot of points 
towards being ranked among the "best". However, Wikipedia is a 
_collaborative_ encyclopedia. Contributors who are unable to function in a 
collaborative environment, who pick fights and push their POV and defend 
"their" articles tooth and nail, lose a lot of points towards being ranked 
among the "best". I'd go so far as to say it disqualifies them outright, no 
matter how knowledgeable they are.

Personally, I'd much rather work with a contributor who's good at 
collaborating within the Wikipedia environment than one who "knows his 
stuff" about the subject at hand, given a choice of only one or the other. 
Holes in knowledge are easily filled but dealing with a bad collaborator 
can be very hard. I think it's not unreasonable to consider unpopularity as 
an important and relevant factor here, though of course not the only one.