On 2/28/07, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
John Lee wrote:
Indeed - I noticed it was disappearing in 2005, and by 2006 it seemed to have almost completely vanished. I recognise that part of my feelings about this are just irrational wishing for the "good old days" (I have noticed it's always the same with any online community people have been members of for a long time - we tend to get nostalgic and hype up how good things once were). But still, there was a culture of mutual respect for each other. Even if you thought someone was dead wrong, you didn't get into a wheel war or edit war with them.
I don't know how accurate your perceptions are on this point. I've been involved with Wikipedia since late 2002 and haven't noticed a huge change in the amount of respect that Wikipedians show for one another. The main thing I've noticed is that there seems to be a bigger corpus of formalized rules, and a correspondingly higher likelihood that disputes will turn into officious rule-wielding rather than debates directly about articles and their merits. I don't know whether this change is a good thing or a bad thing -- some of both, probably.
Yes, my views may be skewed by the massive assumptions of bad faith I've constantly stumbled across - I can't say that my experiences represent an accurate sample. I just feel that there's a lot more assumptions of bad faith these days than there used to be. I recall a lot of nasty debates, especially over deletionism vs inclusionism, but I can't think of any (except trolls, of course) who assumed the other party was acting in bad faith. That's the kind of respect I'm talking about.
As for the "culture of mutual respect," though, I remember some knock-
down-dragout fights, ideological wars, and some incredibly nasty experiences with trolls, vandals and cranks. Moreover, this seems to have been going on at Wikipedia since its earliest days. Larry Sanger (who left Wikipedia before I got here) recalls its early history as follows:
I too can recall many contentious arguments - but none of them as detrimental (I would say) to the community as the kinds of arguments we have today. Today, instead of just arguing, people are more likely to take things to the next level by assuming the other party is acting in bad faith, and revert/wheel warring. I'm well aware of the acrimonious atmosphere engendered by the earliest trolls, but putting the trolls aside (since they rarely contributed much either to the project or the community), I think there was a lot more good faith and mutual respect for other Wikipedians (but not necessarily for the opinions of those Wikipedians).
I don't know whether the Wikipedia commmunity today is overall more
or less successful than it was in the past at fostering a "culture of mutual respect," but if John Lee thinks it used to be better, I suspect that this may simply reflect his early good luck rather than an actual change. My own experience suggests that the overall culture hasn't changed much. If anything, it probably has gotten marginally better over the years.
Well, a sample of one (or two) is never a good foundation for any factual findings. ;) I would note, however, that the mailing list has always been full of acrimonious debates, and has generally been more confrontational than the project as a whole. What concerns me is what actually goes on in the project, because whereas last time, despite the discretion available to all editors and admins courtesy of WP:BOLD, WP:IAR, etc., these powers were rarely abused, today, they are the very first guns to be rolled out in an argument. If you disagree with someone, increasingly the tendency seems to be to revert them, despite our best efforts to contain such attitudes.
Johnleemk