[WikiEN-l] Meet the Metz

[George Herbert]

On Dec 7, 2007 3:44 PM, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> On Fri, 7 Dec 2007 11:18:42 -0800, "George Herbert"
> <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Cade is clearly looking for and finding controversy.  The Register
> thrives
> > on that.  The reality is rather different.  Rendering aid and comfort to
> > people who behave sociopathically online is not in the best interests of
> the
> > project.
>
> However, it's a logical fallacy to go from there to where several
> admins seem to be on various related articles lately (e.g., [[Gary
> Weiss]]), where they're dismissing all concerns that are in any way
> related to those mentioned in that article, even when brought up by
> perfectly rational, non-sociopathic, non-banned editors.
>
> If mapped out in outline, the line of argument seems to go:
>
> 1) Bagley claims that [list various claims of his, such as that the
> Weiss article is non-NPOV]
> 2) Bagley is a sociopathic, evil harasser.
> 3) Therefore, the claims in (1) are all false.
> 4) Thus, anybody who repeats the claims should be dismissed out of
> hand.
>
> This does not follow logically.
>

So that we're clear on this, I agree that this does not follow logically.

However, IMHO, Bagley's claims are false, for reasons unrelated to him being
a sociopathic, evil harrasser.

I don't agree with completely stifling discussion on whether they could be
true... There's some sense of "echoing harrassers is bad" but we have to be
able to move beyond "X was harrassed and therefore is now untouchable."

And I think we organizationally have.  Responsible persons (arbcom, Jimmy,
etc) have looked into claimed abuse by people who were also harrassment
victims.  They certainly aren't skating away scot-free from credible claims
of problems.


THAT said... We do end up with a vicious cycle, where a self-defining "out
crowd" find themselves "up against" a self-defining "in crowd" within
Wikipedia, and both sides then do illogical things either to attack or
antagonize the other, or in response to attacks or antagonism.

One of the things that gets done is that illegitimate claims by people like
Bagley get echoed a lot more than their fundamental credibility deserves.


I don't know that there's a good solution, other than everyone assuming more
good faith about the active participants in the project, and trying less to
polarize and antagonize each other within the various Wikipedia social
cliques.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com