On 2/9/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Keitei wrote:
On Feb 9, 2007, at 9:42, geni wrote:
Editors are people. Being blocked hurts. Haveing your work deleted hurts.
Why does being blocked hurt? If a block is just what happens when you do such and such (like revert three times), why would that be a blow to the ego? You wait it out, you can edit again, no big deal. Ideally, you don't do anything which would lead to a block and nothing happens.
Being blocked hurts simply because it is a slap-in-your-face message that someone doesn't like you, and uses force to keep you out of somewhere. Many users get blocked but don't realise that they were violating some policy. Many users appear to regard the conflicts they get into as a mere disagreement with some opinion, and then if they get blocked it easily seems like the person is using their power unfairly to enforce their opinion and to suppress the user's. If you were a new user and you were to get that impression, I'm quite sure you'd feel hurt.
Timwi
Other newusers, when they get blocked for doing exactly what an adminisrator and long-time user do, get angry that Wikipedia policies are biased to favor established users and administrators over newbies. After all, when the established user and adminsitrator do something and get away with it, what right does any administartor have to expect that a newbie shouldn't act exactly how they were shown to act?
Wikipedia has a lot of unwritten rules, number one of which seems to be post more than humanly possible for anyone who knows any subject outside of Wikipedia.
The trick to getting administrators to stay is to stop proliferating the exact same type of administrators who already own all of Wikipedia, namely editors who have endless time to do nothing but edit Wikipedia. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit is a brilliant idea, one of the leading ones of the Cyberspace era. But an encyclopedia created and edited and administrated entirely by folks who live in Cyberspace 24 hours a day is a prescription for a crappy encyclopedia.
A variety of administrators, limited time as an admin before you have to get revoted (make it a year, it's no big deal, after all, so why should it be dictatorship for life?), and limited admins with limited hoops to jump to gain it, like admins with ISP blocking powers, again for one year.
Again, if it's no big deal, why is it such an exclusive club for only those welded to cyberspace? If it's no big deal, why is it granted for life? If it's no big deal, why can't anyone get it? Especially anyones who don't edit 24/7/365? Thanks to God (insert diety of choice or remove as necessary) for leap years.
KP