On Dec 2, 2007 4:01 AM, Todd Allen
<toddmallen(a)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.
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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...)