[WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Marc Riddell wrote:

>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.
>>    
>>
>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.
>
And before people can ask for help they have to realize that they need 
it. I think a lot of these people start from the belief that they have 
the only right understanding of the topic.

Ec