[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[Parker Peters]

On 2/22/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/22/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > But one can not legitimately "defend" an article against a newbie being
> > bold in a good faith effort to fix an article.
>
> But what if previous consensus has determined that it "ain't broke"?


Previous "consensus" as defined by who? An organized POV clique?

One of the biggest problems for Wikipedia is that "Consensus" morphs into
"Ownership" and "Groupthink" too darned easily. A group of editors forming
"consensus" see anyone who comes in to challenge that as a "vandal" and a
threat to their control of the article, and are likely to attack and abuse
anyone who thinks differently.

It's even worse when we have a known group of editors with severe POV
problems that are obviously apparent (members of X political party/grouping,
members of X wacked-out cultish religion, etc), but who stick around and
exercise de-facto Ownership of articles while claiming it's "Consensus."

> A newbie being bold is
> > not, in and of itself, a violation of any policy.
>
> No it's not. And if the newbie is being whacked by an admin acting as
> the article's pit bull after a bold or two then yes, the admin himself
> should be whacked.
>
> This should never happen...
>
> bold/revert/bold/whack
>
> However, this is what we see in too many of these cases...
>
> bold/revert/bold/revert/dick/whack


No, what we see more often is:

bold/revert/bold/ (revert+argue/bold+argue repeatedly)
/revert+ownership+admin+dick+revert=whack.


> Quite the contrary, we
> > encourage it. If a change to an article does not violate policy but is
> > reverted, and then the change stonewalled on the talk page, the
> > "defender" is violating policy ([[Wikipedia:Ownership of articles]]),
>
> And this can be responded too by the dispute resolution procedures.
> This is mentioned in WP:OWN. If the "newbie editor" responds with
> "dickery" then whether or not he's right or wrong he will get whacked,
> not for the bold but for the dickery and I don't believe you can argue
> that he was goaded into being a dick (uncivil, personal attacks etc.)
> or somehow magically made to act like a dick by the article's "gang".


If wikipedians act like dicks, a new user coming in will see that Wikipedia
is a place for people to be dicks. It's the normal course of procedure, and
they are GOING to respond in kind.

Dickery is goading, plain and simple. The so-called "experienced"
wikipedians and admins goad and provoke people all the time, knowing they
can get away with it since their friends will protect them.

As I stated earlier, the "dispute resolution" process is a joke, because
it's laid out in a byzantine fashion, and set up so that any new editor
coming in who actually successfully navigates it can be accused of being a
sockpuppet/returned vandal/whatever the fuck new BS charge has been created,
because they "know too much about the system."

Look at past cases. I know it's going to be met with groans, but it's a case
in hand, and it readily illustrates the point - User:RunedChozo. The problem
for RunedChozo on the PSP pages was that he felt User:ZakuSage was violating
WP:OWN. He posted to this effect in multiple places.

ZakuSage then responded by wikistalking RunedChozo, and engaging in
deliberate provocation and harassment. ZakuSage, however, had friends to
protect him, while RunedChozo didn't - he got a one-week block, "extended"
to two weeks by the blocking admin for blowing up on his talk page in
response, reduced back to 1 week when it was pointed out that this was out
of process and invalid

End result? ZakuSage got off with a verbal "warning" and his friends waited
around to harass RunedChozo when he returned. And we know how that's gone
now and we can see the collateral damage as ZakuSage's friends went
ballistic trying to harass other users based on the case, and defending the
admins who abused RunedChozo.

Do I think RunedChozo deserved blocking? Hell yes. He crossed the line.

Did it deserve to be indefinite? He was deliberately provoked by
administrators abusing their power and authority, so a "Hell no" is in order
there. It didn't deserve to be any more than 24 hours, but our admins have a
history of out of process, ever longer blocks for the purpose of
antagonizing and provoking people and just being downright vindictive.

Instead of converting RunedChozo - who proved he could make constructive
edits, learned to create workspaces so that he didn't get into a fight while
trying to make something look right, and showed that his edits could be
valid when other people took his suggestion and created the portion of the
article he'd suggested in the first place - into a good editor, Wikipedia's
abusive admin culture turned him into an enemy, and likely now a vandal.

That's why Wikipedia fails.

Parker
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com