On 1/13/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jay Converse
I couldn't have put it better. [[WP:NOT]] a social
experiment - it's
an encyclopedia. For some people, this is too much to
accept, but the
rest of us who are here to write an encyclopedia couldn't care less.
To add to this, those who are here to fight vandals also couldn't care less about half of the WikiLawyering that goes on around here. Sometimes I think the people involved in that particular sector of the Wiki automagically assume that they're the only section of the Wiki anymore.
I can't say that I care much about the nuts and bolts of anyone else's disputes, but to be fair, when someone comes along here, gets treated unfairly and unjustly and finds that this applies all the way up, they feel entitled to have a complain about it.
The crowning irony is that nobody cares about the complaint. The relevant admins and Arbcom reckon they have done their job, and besides they have plenty of other work to get on with, and just about everyone else assumes that the ArbCom have worked through the issue and the complaint is unjustified.
The thing is that very little about Wikipedia's social government conforms to the standards one might expect from a real-world justice system or national government. We're somewhere else.
I'm not saying that the system is a total shambles, just that it's patchy. Much like WP itself. Some bits are really really good, some are OK, others need work and others suck.
And the complaints that make their way here aren't from vandals. We can recognise vandalism and act upon it swiftly.
Peter (Skyring)
I may have been missing the point when I wrote that. What I was trying to point out is that just as some people are here to write an encyclopedia, not to get into fights, people like myself are here to fight vandalism, and so neither have time nor patience for knock-down drag-out content disputes.
-- I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.