[WikiEN-l] drama and incivility

[Todd Allen]

K P wrote:
> Every day on Wikipedia I come across shockingly major scientists who
> don't have articles, while every Pokeman card in the universe is
> well-catalogued.  Species?  We don't even have decent articles on the
> two dozen or so model organisms that each have hundreds of major
> citations.  Today I found a nobel prize winner in physics whose topic
> we don't even appear to have an article on.
>
> KP
>
> On 8/28/07, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>>> From: Aude <audevivere at gmail.com>
>>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> Subject: [WikiEN-l] drama and incivility
>>> Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:06:39 -0400
>>>
>>> Some messages that come through this mailing list, such as the recent NY
>>> Times article on BLP issues, are good to receive.  I like being informed
>>> about such matters relevant to Wikipedia.  Others like all "Go away, you
>>> trolling fuckwit." have no place on the mailing list.   Am I the only one
>>> here annoyed with such messages?  Why can't we be more cordial and polite
>>> towards one another?  It's gotten to the point where I may unsubscribe.
>>>
>>> The drama here, along with AN/I and other places is souring my opinion
>>> about
>>> contributing to Wikipedia.  Why bother anymore?  I still like the ideals
>>> behind the project and wish to continue, but would really like it if we can
>>> please tone down the drama and be more civil and cordial towards one
>>> another?  If people can't control themselves, then maybe this list could
>>> use
>>> moderation.  Though if the moderator is engaging such language, that's not
>>> good.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Aude
>>>       
>> You'll never get rid of enwiki drama, certainly not on enwiki mailing lists.
>>
>> Simple reason? Most people don't have anything to write any more, so they
>> start fighting instead. Seeing [[Africa]] as a redlink and writing "Africa
>> is a continent" is fun, but that doesn't happen anymore (and "Africa is a
>> big continent" is no longer an FA). So, people turn to drama as an
>> alternative, because conflict is fun as well. A shame, but in this respect
>> enwiki has become the victim of its own succcess. Antandrus talks about this
>> better than I can.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Antandrus/observations_on_Wikipedia_behavior
>>
>> Particularly numbers 19 and 20.
>>
>> C More schi
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
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>>
>>
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>>     
>
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>   
And aside from that, a lot of existing articles could sure use a lot of
work. The cleanup backlog is huge, a lot need merged (and my hat's off
to anyone undertaking -that- task), there's still a ton of nonfree image
cleanup to do, and there's tons and tons of stubs that need some type of
disposition (expansion, merge, prod, whatever it may be).

I think, though, that sometimes that's a little tougher-and quite often,
our best writers like to start with a blank page, because there's no one
there owning the article to say "Hey, you can't remove anything!" "Hey,
you can't merge this!" "Hey, what do you mean third-party sourcing is a
requirement, it's optional!"

If there's really a problem that's pernicious and under-addressed, it is
OWNership and resistance to routine maintenance. We should be cheering
on those who take on such gnoming tasks, and instead we're impeding them
at every turn. In the same vein, there's also a persistent bias against
"deletion" which I can't comprehend. We're all called editors, and the
best editors cut ruthlessly and relentlessly. (Not thoughtlessly,
though, and I think that some people doing it thoughtlessly have created
a bias against doing it at all. This is something else which must be
addressed.)

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