[WikiEN-l] How to work better with brittle users?

[steve v]

Im sure there are ways, but keep in mind that some of
these issues are of course systemic rather than of the
individual. Using a conceptualized notion of a
"brittle user" at all carries some baggage of
beurocratic prejudice. Any institution which begins
down the slippery slope of referring to people in
generalities rather than dealing with individuals, has
become a beaurocracy. 

"Higher levels of autism" reminds me of Bram Cohen's
recent ripping on Linus Torvalds' concepts rel. code
merge? Anyone can be less than civil in their
discourse when dealing with people whom they percieve
to be idiots.

SV


--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> 
> This is a question that has occurred to me in the
> context of arbitration,
> and how to avoid it.
> 
> There's a common personality type for trouble on
> Wikipedia: brittle in
> interactions with others, can't tolerate ambiguity,
> so gets into
> rules-lawyering. Sees "common sense" and "judgement"
> mostly as excuses to
> exercise bias, not as recognition that all rules are
> fluid in the pursuit
> of our goal.
> 
> I am not thinking of any individual, but of a
> general type I've noticed. I
> think something about Wikipedia will tend to attract
> them. I would *guess*
> it's something that attracts people from further up
> the autistic spectrum
> than the general populace, but that's just
> speculation.
> 
> The point is that they're good and hard-working
> contributors, but can get
> difficult to work with. And putting them on a
> processing line that leads to
> arbitration strikes me as not being a good thing. Is
> there a better way?
> I welcome your thoughts and speculation.
> 
> 
> - d.
> 
> 
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