[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[William Pietri]

Rob wrote:
> The fact that a block gets someone MAD does not justify further abuse,
> and the talk page should not be used to give a troll a soapbox to
> attack people.

I'd agree with that. On the other hand, there's this pattern I'm worried 
about that goes something like this:

   1. A new user tries to do something that seems reasonable to them,
      but is annoying to us -- e.g., adding their friend's band to
      Wikipedia.
   2. Almost instantly they receive a boilerplate negative reaction from
      us -- e.g., their article is speedied.
   3. They struggle to understand what the hell is going on and do
      something they think is reasonable -- let's say they replace the
      speedy template with {{hangon}} and go on editing their article.
   4. They get another instant boilerplate negative reaction and
      experience more frustration -- perhaps they get the template back,
      a user page warning for removing speedies, and an edit conflict to
      boot.
   5. After repeatedly being frustrated in trying to do something they
      think is useful, they express their frustration with less than
      perfect politeness.
   6. The cycle of negative interactions spirals until they end up blocked.


And then from here, I'm sure a most of those people just go away, 
nursing their burnt fingers and telling their pals what jerks those 
Wikipedians are. A few of them take it as a great injustice and turn 
into long-term enemies.

For this to happen, I don't think there need to be malice on either 
side, just ordinary human nature. My mother, who lives in a town with 
one stop light, would occasionally drive to Chicago to visit me. She was 
convinced that all Chicago drivers were either vicious or insane. Most 
of them weren't, but they were used to moving at such a pace and with 
such a focus on throughput that she took it as hostility and madness. 
They in turn saw her as hopelessly clueless and inconsiderate, and a 
great barrier to progress.

I would rather we took more time with these people, as I think we 
currently create more enemies than we need, and discourage potential 
contributors.

William