On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi(a)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