Jimbo wrote:
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
Wikipedia is becoming more and more a battleground (does anyone disagree with that assessment?)... and in part that is because we no longer treat the 'problem' users with as much respect as we once did. They cause problems... sooner or later someone comes along and stomps them... and instead of slowly learning to fit in or drifting away with mildly bad feelings they gain an intense hatred of Wikipedia or those they see as the 'abusers'. It's a problem we are contributing to and ought to make more concerted efforts to avoid.
This is possible. However, I am not really sure about it. As ever, when I am asked to look into cases of "admin abuse" and I choose to do so, I generally find myself astounded at how nice we are to complete maniacs, and for how long.
Actually, I agree with both Conrad and Jimbo. I think we're seeing several intersecting trends here.
One is that "problem" users seem to be getting more aggressive in asserting their "right" to be, well, complete maniacs. When the community was younger and smaller and more cohesive, the maniacs had much less "wiggle room"; they either changed their ways or left for good. Today, however, many of them display a breathtaking level of arrogance and defiance, and if they're ever subjected to any actual sanction, they immediately appeal it on Jimbo's talk page or this list. And I suspect that the natural frustration on the part of the rest of us, when confronted with this escalating arrogance and defiance, is sometimes to, as Conrad put it, just stomp on somebody.
But at the same time, as we become ever larger and more visible, we need to be more and more concerned abut the degree to which appearances matter. Intense, festering hatred can of course be a real problem, too, especially when it fuels real-world personal attacks on our editors. We've got to keep working to find ways to carry out our "judicial" actions politely and diplomatically, even if it means, as the old saying goes, overriding our desperate urge to choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it.
Unfortunately, no matter how polite we are about it, it's going to keep getting harder to get rid of the maniacs, now that Wikipedia has gotten Big and Significant. Once upon a time, if you were a maniac who had been raking muck on Wikipedia but got blocked or banned, you probably didn't care so much; there were plenty of other equally interesting sites on the 'net where you could stalk off to torment instead. Today, however, although the "plenty of other interesting sites on the 'net" are all still there, they're no longer as equally interesting; Wikipedia is now much, much more interesting. If you're a POV-pusher with a vengeance, you're not content to just go and push your POV somewhere else; it's vital that you find ways to keep pushing it *on Wikipedia*, since your potential audience is so much bigger.
This is a tricky problem, and it's not going to get any easier.