[WikiEN-l] Worthy admins? (was "The userbox fad")

[Chris Jenkinson]

jayjg wrote:
> Well, that's great, but again, the issue isn't this particular individual.
> Rather, this is a symptom:  Why do we have administrators who are unfamiliar
> with policy? Why do we have administators who are unwilling to accept
> community consensus, and, indeed, seem almost unfamiliar with the concept?
> Why do we have administrators who think that it is so important to have
> "fair use" images on userboxes that it is reasonable to completely ignore
> any risks of copyright lawsuits against Wikipedia?
> 
> Those are the issues here, and your having a chat with your friend isn't
> going to fix the root cause.

Well, I talked with Karmafist for about an hour trying to persuade him 
to stop his actions on this matter. Unfortunately it didn't go anywhere, 
but perhaps I can add some insight based on the discussion as to why he 
is acting the way he does.

Firstly, one of the things about the internet is its anonymity which 
helps lower the barrier for social interaction. People with autism and 
related psychological conditions such as Asperger's syndrome tend to 
gravitate towards it. One reason I think for his actions is due to the 
fact that he has Asperger's which means he finds social interaction 
difficult and because of what he sees as hostile comments tends to cloud 
his judgement of the entirety of the group who hold similar viewpoints - 
for example, he has had bad experiences with Kelly Martin, who holds 
that fair use images shouldn't be in user/template namespace. 
Unfortunately this clouds his perception of others who hold similar 
viewpoints on fair use, even those with who he has got on perfectly fine 
otherwise (guilt by association).

Part of the reason he is re-adding them is because people like Kelly 
Martin are removing them - due to Kelly's actions which he sees as a 
breach of policy and process (concepts which he agrees with), and due to 
the fact his opinion has been ignored or dismissed by some, he feels he 
has no other way to "be heard" than to breach policy himself (a fact he 
fully admits) and just undo the removal of the images. This scenario has 
arisen due to a lack of communication between both "sides", a lack of 
presuming good faith by all and temporary gaps in civility. We're all 
guilty of it. As they say, you can do nice things to someone 99 times 
and be an arsehole once, and their opinion of you will be that you're an 
arsehole.

So what can we do to stop situations like this from occurring?

Obviously we all need to be civil, presume good faith and listen to, and 
respond to other's opinions, so they don't feel ignored. Being ignored 
is more socially exclusive than being told you are wrong, and for people 
who are not as naturally talented at communications with others, who 
tend to be more common on Wikipedia and other online communities than in 
offline communities, this is definitely a common problem. It's much 
easier to ignore someone on the internet than in 'real life'. We also 
need to be more apologetic when people misinterpret, answer every 
message we get, even if just to say "thanks for the message". We need to 
increase our communication with each other and to make it more friendly.

Just some thoughts for digestion,

Chris