[WikiEN-l] Newbies who don't act like newbies

[Todd Allen]

Anthony wrote:
> On Dec 2, 2007 4:01 AM, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Or the "newbie" may be a sock. But all the others are real possibilities
>> too. The important part is to look for -actual- disruption. If someone's
>> editing non-disruptively, and doing good work right when new, well,
>> there's a very good chance that they're simply a conscientious person
>> who bothered to RTFM, and in the absence of evidence otherwise, we
>> should assume that is the case.
>>
>>     
> I'd like to agree with this, and maybe I do, but to play devil's
> advocate, isn't the line between "disruption" and "good faith editing"
> rather thin, especially in the meta namespace?  The lack of hierarchy
> and appeal to what's called "rough consensus" make it very easy for
> people to game the system and cause a lot of drama without doing
> something purely disruptive.  If we assume someone is simply a
> conscientious person who bothered to RTFM, then we'll excuse them for
> inadvertently causing a little drama.  But if they're a sockpuppet or
> meatpuppet participating with the intention to cause drama, then the
> very same actions take on a whole different meaning.  To quote the
> secret email: "So by the time Jimbo does something controversial, most
> Wikipedians don't get more than a sense of vague unease about this
> account's behavior."
>
> I don't know, the issues are a lot more complicated than they seem at a glance.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>   
We don't even need to presume socking, in that case. If they are a
conscientious person who bothered to RTFM, we can hold them just as
responsible for bad behavior as we would a more experienced editor.
(There is the question from there of whether we should hold more
experienced editors responsible for bad behavior more quickly and more
severely, but that's off the topic of this thread...)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20071202/8b6a36d4/attachment.pgp