[WikiEN-l] drama and incivility

[John Lee]

On 8/29/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Marc Riddell wrote:
> > [...] The fact that anyone would even try to rationalize and/or
> > justify saying to another person, "Go away, you trolling fuckwit" is
> > symptomatic of the cancer that exists in the culture. [...]
> This is just SO not true. Marc, as I believe you've said yourself in the
> past, you're not especially experienced with large collaborative online
> projects. Trolls and other disrupters will keep poking and poking and
> poking and poking and poking and poking and poking until even the most
> patient of saints lose their cool - by definition, that is the goal. It
> doesn't mean there is a cancer in the project, or that it's doomed, or
> whatever, it just means that everybody has a breaking point. Of the
> various online projects I've worked in the past 25 years, WP is by far
> the most tolerant of troublemakers; on serious projects like GNU or
> Linux, people won't even talk to you until you've proven yourself useful
> somehow, and if you even slightly irritate one of the project owners,
> you might as well as give up and move on to something else.


Absolutely. I think many of us are approaching this situation from different
angles, with different points of reference. Please bear in mind that this is
a mailing list, not a wiki, and that our standards here are different
because of this.

Also, folks, please try to reread the conversation that took place prior to
David's comment. I would not have reacted the way David did, but what he did
was hardly unjustified, and I think, not inappropriate.

Johnleemk