[WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

[K P]

>
> on 4/1/07 5:24 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs at earthlink.net wrote:
> >>
> > Nice idea, doesn't work in practice. Way back when, I tried to help
> > problematic editors a number of times, and there were exactly two
> > outcomes; the person understood what they were doing wrong after getting
> > the one hint, or never understood, no matter how many times it was
> > explained. We get a *lot* of borderlines, and one always hopes that just
> > one more rephrasing will cause the light bulb to come on - but these
> > folks have more serious problems than can be solved with talk page
> notes.
> >
> > You should try your hand at it, will be valuable for insight - pick a
> > problem editor, such as one who's come up in an RfC, Arbcom case, etc,
> > and assign yourself to help them.
> >
> Stan,
>
> This idea is very tempting.
>
> We each bring our own individual professional backgrounds and skills to
> the
> building of the WP Project. In this bringing, the focus is still,
> nevertheless, applied to the substance of the encyclopedia. I believe what
> you are suggesting goes beyond this and into the WP Community itself.
>
> My particular involvement would be much trickier than, say, someone with
> math skills offering to tutor someone in the Community who is struggling
> with understanding the basics of arithmetic. But, in both cases, before
> such
> a relationship could have any hope of succeeding, the person in need of
> this
> help would need to ask for that help.
>
> I would be willing to make myself available to render such help, but,
> again.
> it would be up to the person to ask for this help. I'm not sure how this
> process would work in the Project. Still, it is an intriguing idea.
>
> I'm open to suggestions on how to make it work in WP.
>
> Marc Riddell
> --
> To fly - you must first suspend your belief in gravity.


But isn't it too late by the time it has gone to RfC or arbcom?  Sometimes
RfC then arbcom?  If an editor doesn't get it in RfC and is still a problem,
particularly if they are still contributing exactly the same problems, and
this Stan is familiar with, then the situation is already lost.

But when someone mentioned problematic but well-intentioned editors, I
thought of someone like our current "rewrite-the-taxonomy of the
single-celled eukaryoteic groups according to me and C-S" guy, who has had
to be downshifted a number of times on this exact same thing, his original
protist taxonomies, but crops up with it again here and there.

I did not consider someone who has been to RfC or arbcom and continues the
same pattern.  The former (protist dude) is someone worth working with, as
he's one of only a handful of editors interested in the protists.  The
latter happens rather routinely on Wikipedia, people given a billion
chances.  But it happens because these editors do something else worthwhile
to Wikipedia.

So, even if the situation is already lost, even if good editors give up
after having been burned a couple of times trying to work with the hopeless,
maybe assigning someone to them is a great idea, not just a good idea,
because all that time has been spent/wasted on arbcom or RfC because the
editor was actually contributing.

Maybe assigning someone to protist-dude would be a good idea also, as he's
not just into protists, but I think into the non photosynthetic ones.  I
wouldn't know one amoeba from another if I were phagocytotically 'et by one.

KP